33,132 students shift to government schools in Punjab

Sanjeev Singh Bariana

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 12

As a result of the impact of pandemic on education in schools as many as 33,132 students have shifted from private schools to government schools in Punjab during the first week of the commencement of the new academic session (2021-2022), this month. A number of private schools have closed down during this time period.

“Without any financial support from government we were finding it difficult to pay our staff. As some of our staff has been laid off, we don’t have sufficient teachers to teach students. The government, in fact, should think seriously about helping private schools, financially,” owner of a private school, requesting anonymity said.

“Unlike government arrangement of providing classes online through special programmes, Facebook and government television channels, private schools have poor infrastructure to help students continue their classes during the shutdown due to Covid. Some private schools have managed the emergency situation aptly but most schools are helpless. No wonder parents are sending their kids to government schools now”, a teacher said.

Government, meanwhile, has shown a lot of innovation and teacher participation in making the student contact programme successful through the internet and also personal classes during this period. Education Secretary, Krishan Kumar, himself made use of the public address system of gurdwaras and visited homes “door to door” in many villages.

Data compiled by the education department indicates that the overall increase, this year, will definitely outdo the increase of approximately 15 per cent, recorded during the last academic session. The number of students in 2019-2020 was 24,02,548 and it rose to 27,20,616 in 2020-2021.

As per the available information, so far as many as 3,450 students have shifted to government schools in Ludhiana, 3,145 in Hoshiarpur, 2,548 in Patiala, 2,178 in Gurdaspur, 2,080 in Bathinda, 2,041 in Jalandhar, 1,790 in Amritsar, 1,527 in Sangrur, 1,227 in Fatehgarh Sahib, 1,209 in Pathankot, 1200 in Fazilka, 1,180 in Nawanshahr, 1,151 in Tarntaran, 1,093 in Mohali, 1,089 in Ferozepur, 1,074 in Moga, 1,035 in Barnala, 1,005 in Ropar, 983 in Mukatsar, 919 in Kapurthala, 635 in Faridkot and 573 in Mansa.

Besides COVID, one of the biggest reasons for the switch has been the good results of the pre-school education introduced in 2017. The government has spent considerably on making specially designed classes here and also carrying out a special recruitment of 8,393 teachers for pre-primary cadre.