Hyderabad: Government educational institutions from primary to university level are in a mess in Telangana state and need a complete overhaul to check dropouts, migration to private institutions and improve education standards.
Enrolment of students in government schools is coming down, but there is no move to close them done, Deputy Chief Minister Kadiam Srihari told the Legislative Council on Monday.
Blaming previous governments for the present ills, treating allocations to education as ‘expenditure’ and not investment for future, Mr Srihari, who holds the education portfolio, said that TS was at 32nd spot of the 36 in the country’s literacy rate list.
The state literacy rate was 66.54 per cent as against national literacy rate of 73 per cent, he added.
Explaining the chaotic education scenario in the state during a short discussion on “Educational system in the state,” Mr Srihari said that of the 60.63 lakh students enrolled in Class 1 to Class 10 during 2015-2016, 27.93 lakh were in government and aided schools (46.06 per cent) while the remaining 32.71 lakh were in private institutions (53.94 per cent).
“There is greater migration from government schools to private schools, more so in rural areas. This is due to absence of teachers, parents yearning for English medium schools, lack of playschools, KG and Upper KG, bus facilities etc. There is no English medium in government primary schools. Our intake is from 5 years onwards while parents want to send kids after they reach the age of two to playschools,” he said.
Mr Srihari said there was an urgent need to undertake rationalisation of schools and teachers, continuous comprehensive analysis, one school in every gram panchayat and all new schools in future would be residential schools.
Pointing to Leader of the Opposition Mohd. Ali Shabbir, he said there were erratic government orders in past.
“Government junior and degree colleges and polytechnics were sanctioned without land, infrastructure and staff. They sanctioned one university per district without proper staff and infrastructure. Universities too are in mess. There is no recruitment in universities in past 20 years,” the minister said.
Sending a word of caution, he said nearly 70 to 80 per cent of professors of Osmania University would retire soon and without qualified staff, OU may lose NAAC accreditation. He said government has written to Centre to review the RTE act in view of certain shortcomings.
