Better learning outcomes will bring students back to municipal schools

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has revived plans to start CBSE and ICSE affiliated schools from the next academic year. The first schools will occupy vacant municipal properties, mostly schools that have been closed down because of lack of new enrolments. The BMC proposed to start 2-3 schools under each of the national education boards.

The civic body runs the largest network of schools in the city, but enrolment has been falling. The number of students in municipal schools has dropped from over four lakh in 2014 to three lakh in 2018. As this newspaper has reported, between 2015 and 2018, 91 municipal schools have closed down. Data collected by Praja Foundation, a citizens group, says that of the 1,192 schools that are currently operational, 53 schools, which have between one and 20 students enrolled, are on the verge of shutting down. Data on new enrolments have alarmed municipal officials; between 2008 and 2019, Class 1 enrolments has seen a nearly 50% dip, with enrolments going down to 32,218 in 2016-17 from 63,392 in 2008-09. If current trends continue, the total number of students in all civic-run schools will drop below 1,50,000 in 2022-023.

Ironically, even as students skip municipal schools, they are flocking to private schools that are being run without adequate classrooms or teachers. Earlier this year, the BMC issued notices to 211 illegal schools, including 163 with English as the medium of instruction. The schools, which had over 12,000 students, were declared illegal as they violate Right to Education (RTE) Act norms.

There are many reasons for the decline in enrolment. Falling birth rates in the city, which has reduced the number of children in the school-going age, is one reason. A more worrying reason is the shift of students to government-aided private schools that provide better learning outcomes.

The BMC has been trying desperately to stem the flow of students from its schools. Last year, it announced that 25 of its schools will get affiliation from the new Maharashtra International Education Board (MIEB), the state government education modelled on international schools boards. The plan was cancelled because of high affiliation fees demanded by the new education board. There are also ideas to change the nomenclature of the institutions — from municipal schools to Mumbai Public Schools. In 2011, 480 municipal schools got upgraded classrooms with digital facility tools. The municipal corporation has been expanding the digitisation process in its schools. In 2015, ₹15.5 crore was spent in buying 22,800 tablets preloaded with course material for students between Classes 8 and 10. All these efforts have, however, failed to increase enrolments.

Surveys by Praja Foundation have shown that it is lack of quality education, rather than infrastructure, that is keeping students away from municipal schools. Parents, even those from poor families, do not care for the free education offered by municipal schools if learning outcomes continue to remain poor. Praja Foundation said there is no monitoring of the process.

This means that teachers and education officers at civic schools are not been held accountable for the abysmal quality of education at the schools. For instance, the BMC started schools offering instruction in English, hoping that parents will send their children there rather than paying fees to a private school. But as education activists have told this newspaper, the teachers in these schools have poor knowledge of English. Poor parents preferred enrolling their children in private schools with moderate fees where at least the teachers can be held accountable for subpar teaching standards.

Many of the plans to improve teaching standards have been pursued in a lackadaisical manner. For instance, the programme to provide electronic tablets to senior students has been a failure, with most devices breaking down for lack of maintenance and upgradation in software. Many of the schools are inadequately staffed, with teachers asked to take up duty as school heads in the absence of principals.