Hyderabad: There are 7,077 government and local body schools located in the same premises and these can be merged into 2,500 institutions, official said.
The school education department is looking into its possibilities of merging to reduce the expenses on each of these schools. Every year, schools receive maintenance and other grants-in-aid for the development of the school expenses for each campus.
In total there are about, 26,050 schools in the state of which, there are 7077 schools in a single premise in a 50m buffer zone. Of them, 459, the highest, are in Hyderabad, followed by Sangareddy with 442 schools in single premises.
Though social welfare residential schools were running well, the enrollment ratio in the government and the local body schools are not up to the mark. Though there are initiatives like 'Badi Baata' programmes to increase the enrolment ratio, they have not yielded results.
The designated teacher-student ratio for the primary, upper primary and higher secondary is 1:30, 1:35 and 1:40 respectively. However, as of now, it is 1:19 in primary, 1:14 in upper primary and 1:18 in higher secondary schools in the state.
As the local body and the government schools would be merged, there are chances of increasing the enrollment ratio in the merged schools and the number of teachers would be finalised based on the final figure.
When contacted, Vijay Kumar, commissioner of school education, said, “We are compiling the data and segregating the types of schools and checking out possibilities. However, no concrete plans of the merger have been tabled yet.”
