The Department of Public Instruction (DPI), Vijayapura has served notices to unaided private schools with poor student strength. The DPI has asked the schools to either take steps to increase the number of admissions or shut down the institution. The move is being taken in order to increase enrollments in government and aided schools.
So far, the authorities have served notices to as many as 61 private institutions including 24 high schools across the district. The notices have been served to those primary schools where the enrolment is below 15 students for first to fifth grade and admissions for high schools are below 50 students for eight to tenth grade.
The authorities have scheduled a deadline till first week of June for all the 61 institutions, to improve the enrolment for this academic year. If any of these institutions fail to get the required number of enrolments, recognition of the respective private unaided schools will be revoked from this academic year (2019-20).
A total of 18 institutions that are located in the Vijayapura taluk have received notices which is highest compared to other taluks, whereas only three schools in Chadachan have received it. Of the 61 schools, which received notice from the authorities concerned, a few of them belong to prestigious educational institutions of the district which are owned by the local political leaders. In the district, there are total of 3,566 schools including primary and high school, of them 2,114 are government, 600 are aided and 852 are private unaided schools.
Speaking to The New Indian Express, Deputy Director of Department of Public Instructions (DDPI) Prasanna Kumar told, "We have served notices to only those schools which have poor enrolment and lack of basic facilities including the non-availability of playground for students. There are many private unaided schools in the district which have less than 10 enrolments and are still running the institutions. It is difficult for us to provide the required government facilities to those schools. We have asked them either to improve the enrolments or shut the schools."
He continued, "The education quality at the government institutions is also increasing and one can see in the SSLC board exam results where the government school students outperformed than that of private schools. We are hoping that government schools will also witness good enrolments in the following year," the DPI stated.
