Teachers in Telangana schools fudge enrolment, says education department

Hyderabad: With the threat of government schools with low student headcount being merged with bigger units looming over their heads, teachers and managements have resorted to fudging enrolment figures, the education department claims.

For a while now, the state government has been monitoring the enrolment process at smaller government schools. It has directed district collectors to conduct surprise inspection of schools as complaints of teachers manipulating figures are on the rise. During inspections in Ranga Reddy district, it was found that students whose names were shown in the muster were actually studying in some other school, mainly private.

Ranga Reddy collector M. Raghunandan Rao conducted a surprise inspection of a government primary school in Lakshmi-guda. The attendance register showed 103 students but on verification the inspection team could only find 69. The register showed 19 students as being newly admitted during the Badi Baata programme conducted by the state government from June 13 to 17 to increase enrolment in government schools. When the collector asked the teachers to show them, the teachers could only bring forward three.

When he asked about the absentee students, the management told the collector that since the academic year had just begun, all students had not started coming in.