Mothers Taking the Lead in Attracting Children Towards Govt Schools

Adilabad: In a welcome change, mothers are going all-out to attract children in villages to government schools as part of the ‘Prof. Jayashankar badi bata’ programme began on June 6 and will conclude on June 19.

These mothers, mostly from self-help groups, are all members of ‘Amma Adarsha Patasha committees (AAPC) that have been constituted in each government school.

The presumption of the state government is that the financial burden on each family would be reduced if children were enrolled in government schools. Motivating parents towards this is part of the ‘Badi Bata’ programme.

On the programme’s fifth day, the committee members were at an awareness spreading campaign on bullock carts at Penchikalapadu village in Nirmal district on Monday.

They raised slogans like ‘Private badi vaddu… Prabhutva badi Mundhu’ and visited houses, which had children aged above five years. They took admissions of the children and explained to the parents about the facilities, including English and Telugu medium, available in their respective schools.

Women can easily convince the mothers to send their children to the government school in their respective villages. The committees are focused on creating basic amenities, including drinking water and electricity supply, compound walls, toilets, repairs to roofs, gardening and painting the premises. Education officials are making arrangements to welcome the students on a colourful note on June 12, when the academic year begins.

The state government is keen on improving the educational standards and putting them on par with the corporate schools.

AAPCs have been formed in 20,680 government schools from the overall tally of 26,823. The state government has allocated `667.25 crore to create basic amenities and carry out repairs in existing government schools. An amount of `147 crore has been paid as advance to AAPCs for the work they have taken up in such schools.

Meanwhile, SHG members will be looking after the school management from this academic year onwards.

Some children of SHG members are already studying in government schools where their mothers are in AAPCs.

The previous government had closed down many schools citing a very low turnout of students while some primary schools, which had less number of students, were merged with another school.