Telangana upper primary schools to go

Hyderabad: The school education department is mulling a proposal to do away with upper primary schools and limit school education to primary and high schools. The primary schools will be merged with high schools. Equipping all high schools with at least one smart classroom is on the cards.

The education department is inviting views of stakeholders, including various teachers’ unions on these issues. The school education structure comprises 18,139 primary schools (Classes 1 to 5), 3,244 upper primary schools (Classes 5 to 7) and 4,583 high schools, from (Classes 7 to 10).

There is shortage of teaching staff in upper primary schools, and one teacher is given the responsibility of teaching maths and science while another teacher handles social studies and English for Classes 6 and 7. High schools have one teacher per subject.

The proposal to merge upper primary schools with high schools comes in this backdrop. Besides, there is 3-km distance norm for establishing upper primary schools, which is 5 km for high schools.

If the schools are within 5 km of each other, they are proposed to be merged. If there is no high school within a 5-km radius, the upper primary school will be upgraded. School education director G. Kishan said they were seeking the opinion of the teachers’ unions and experts on these proposals.

“We will finalise the proposal after securing consensus from all parties. The intention is to implement changes from the next academic year,” he said.

The proposal has got the backing of teachers’ unions. The Telangana United Teachers Federation general secretary Chava Ravi felt the merger would ensure quality education.

Also, the computer labs in all high schools will be equipped with Receive-Only Terminals to catch signals from educational satellites, LCDs, desktops and Wi-Fi connectivity to transform them into smart teaching rooms.