Shimla: Big spending to provide education for all children has no enrollment in Himachal government schools dropping at a fast rate and is rising in private schools given the preference public school education is getting.
Making free and compulsory education for students upto 14 years, providing mid-day meals, distributing free dresses twice in a year and from this year having added free travel in Himachal Roadways buses have not proved enough to stop students moving towards private schools, while the government budget for the sector keeps rising.
Contrary to it, the fees structure in private schools is rising very fast every year, yet the number of children being enrolled keeps increasing.
It is hardly surprising that more people are shifting their children to private schools.
Enrollment at government schools is down by 1.96 lakh in the last five years and the number of students at private institutions is up by over 1 lakh.
In 2002, the strength of the students enrolled in private schools was only 32,528. In over 10 years it has increased nearly tenfold to 3,05,420 whereas there are only around 2,900 private schools in the state.
On the other had there are 10,573 government primary schools and 1056 middle schools and the enrollments in government schools is 6, 83,267.
There being not enough students has already let the government to close 150 government and many are proposed to be closed in the student enrollment strength did not increase.
As such the number of private schools is increasing faster than the decrease in government schools.
Despite the state spending about Rs 2500 crore annually on education, the 2012 annual report pointed out that private schools were performing much better than the government schools.
When it came to obtaining results for the public money spent, among the top 4000 positions attained by students as many as 2719 were from private schools.
