Mumbai municipal schools plagued by high dropout rate

Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) gives free education and 27 free items to every child studying in its school — from note books, uniforms, shoes, flavoured milk, midday meals to umbrellas and raincoats.

Yet, there is a massive dropout rate, with critics saying the quality of education does not meet what parents ultimately want for their children.

“We need to bring the focus back on good quality education and to do this we will need to bring in more accountability and transparency in the education department,” Nitai Mehta, founder of Praja Foundation, said while releasing the report “State of Municipal Education in Mumbai” on Tuesday.

“For starters, we need to get an independent third party to evaluate the performance of teachers and children as per the Right To Education (RTE) norms and stop evaluation from the department,” he said.

He also emphasised teacher training and that teachers should be free from extra governmental work, such as census work and election duty.

In a survey of more than 22,000 households, parents of children from 4,276 households studying in municipal schools were asked whether given an opportunity, they would change to a private school.

Eighty three per cent affirmed that they would and for most of them financial constraints were the main reason they had not done so.

Though the BMC has dismissed the issues raised by Praja Foundation, numbers show that many people in lower income groups who were once sending their children to municipal schools have gradually moved their wards to private schools where students get more attention from teachers.

According to the report, 51,649 children have dropped out of municipal schools during the last five years and in the corresponding period, municipal budget allocation to the education department has more than doubled from Rs12.55 billion to Rs25.34 billion (Dh742 million to Dh1.49 billion).

“Earlier, teachers would merely give marks to students and pass them until they came to 10th standard when they could not cope up with studies and fared poorly in the Board exams,” said Shanta Kamble, a housemaid whose sons were shifted to private schools.

“Though the BMC provides all these free items, what we want is good education so that our children can get jobs later. My two grandchildren are studying in private schools and doing quite well,” she said.

This is exactly the case with many from lower income families who strongly feel that a good education is the best they can give to their children.

The study, too, has echoed the feelings of such parents as its findings reveal that “quality of education, teachers and poor infrastructure form the three big reasons cited by parents for not being happy with municipal schools.”

In 2009-10, 67,477 children enrolled in Class I in municipal schools whereas in 2013-14, this dropped to 39,663. At the current rate, the number of students in Class I will likely fall to 23,072 by 2016-17.

Total enrolment in BMC’s primary and secondary classes went down from 455,900 in 2009-2010 in its 1296 schools to 404,251 in 2013-2014. The drop out rate for Hindi and Urdu medium schools was the highest.

No one is taking responsibility for this sad state of affairs and “if this trend continues, we will not have children left in municipal schools,” says Mehta.