22% dropout in BMC schools as kids move to English-medium
Rukmini Shrinivasan | TNN
Mumbai: It’s not been a good year for Ayesha Sheikh and her family. Her
house in Netaji Subhash Nagar slum in Ghatkopar was demolished twice, her
husband lost his steady job, and she recovered only recently from malaria.
Yet, in May, she took one big decision-she took her three children out of
the free neighbourhood BMC Hindi-medium school and enrolled them in a
private English-medium school.
Figures obtained recently by a voluntary organisation from the BMC’s
education department show that there has been a staggering 22% fall in
enrolment across BMC primary schools (class I to class VII) over the last
six years-from 6,08,591 students in 2000-01 to 4,74,037 in 2005-06.
Since other figures show that 97% of school-age children in the city are
enrolled in schools, this implies that every year more and more parents like
the Sheikhs are pulling their kids out of BMC schools and admitting them to
private, mainly English, schools.
We don’t want our children to end up like us: Parent
Mumbai: The craze for English is evident in the fact that only in the BMC’s
Englishmedium schools has there been a rise (30.5%) in enrolment. In all
other mediums, the fall has been sharp-the steepest for Gujarati at 37.6%,
Marathi at 34.1% and Kannada at 24.4%.
Meanwhile, the BMC’s expenditure on education has risen steadily. In
2000-01, the spending on primary education in BMC schools was Rs 310.51
crore, at a cost of Rs 5,102 per child, while in 2005-06 it was Rs 564.27
crore, at Rs 11,904 per child-a rise of a whopping 32.1% over the last six
years.
The figures were obtained by the India Centre for Human Rights and Law’s
(ICHRL) Child Rights Initiative using the Right To Information Act.
BMC education officer Nemchand Shitole was unavailable for comment.
Ghatkopar resident Ayesha Sheikh said that her reasons for pulling Saira
(8), Naeem (10) and Sayeeda (11) out from the local BMC school were simple.
“They were not learning anything in school. Sayeeda couldn’t even read a
doctor’s prescription. Naeem’s teacher used to hit him. My husband and I
could not make anything of our lives and we don’t want the kids to end up
like us,” she said.
Ayesha washes utensils for a living and her husband collects and sells
scrap after he lost his job as a contract labourer with a factory.
Farida Lambay, educationist and co-founder of child rights group
Pratham, said there are many factors which contribute to this trend,
including the improving quality of life of a section of the poor and the
greater availability of private schools. “Parents prefer putting their kids
in a school which has till class X. It’s true that parents are not seeing
visible results in schools. There’s a negative image of BMC schools and good
initiatives are not being promoted,” she admitted.
“Mumbai has taken a beating with slum demolitions, blasts and floods. A
good education policy should take all this into account,” she added.