Three government schools, five government-aided schools and one unaided school have registered zero new admissions this academic year in Dakshina Kannada. Government primary schools at Kadandale PB and Guthu Karinje in Moodbidri and government primary school in Hasanadka in Sullia have registered zero new admissions and closed as of now as students have shifted to nearby private and aided schools with better infrastructure, as stated in The New Indian Express.
According to the data available with the Department of Education, as many as 112 government schools in Dakshina Kannada have recorded below 20 new admissions and 37 schools in the district have below 10 admissions this year.
There are 901 primary schools and 170 high schools in the district. The target set for this academic year 2023-24 is 3,36,282 admissions and the district has achieved 3,10,755 admissions including in government, aided and unaided schools.
As many as 112 government primary and high schools, eight aided schools and four unaided schools have registered below 20 admissions while 37 government schools, three aided schools and two unaided schools have registered below 10 admissions.
School authorities blame poor infrastructure for low admissions.
A headmistress of a school in Bantwal said there are no sufficient classrooms, shortage of furniture and toilet facility, due to which, some of the students were transferred to nearby private schools.
DDPI Dayananda R Naik told The New Indian Express there are different reasons for abysmal admissions in a few schools as a few parents prefer transfering their children to other schools, mainly private ones but overall, their target of above three lakh new admissions has been achieved already.
"We continue to motivate the parents to send their children to government schools as facilities are being improved," he said.
He further said that though they are yet to achieve 15,527 more admissions as per the target set, due to the delay in uploading the data by the schools on Student Achievement Tracking System (SATS) App, they are yet to get the exact number of admissions.
"We had directed the schools to feed the data of admissions on the SATs app by June 30. I will look into how many admissions are still pending to be uploaded on the app," he said, adding that at present 77 students are out of school in the district and efforts are on to admit them to schools.
The target set for the year 2023-24 is 3,26,282 and as on July 3, the district has achieved 91.94%. In the primary section, Punjalakatte KPS Bilingual School tops the district with 856 admissions while in the High school section, Sullia Government High School has admitted 590 students while among RMS Schools, Vitla School (I-X) has admitted 1,362 students. Balthila, Yethagallu, Athikaribettu primary schools have the lowest admissions of below 10.
