Quality of education in Mumbai’s municipal schools is poor, study says

Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is perhaps the only civic body in the country running nearly 1,300 schools but the quality of education in these institutions is poor when compared to private schools that are run on a far lesser budget, says a study.

“To start with, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai needs to get the inspection and appraisal of its teachers audited by independent autonomous bodies and only then will the quality of education improve,” said Nitai Mehta, founder trustee of Praja Foundation, at a press conference on Thursday. It appears that the inspection report filed by the school inspector of the BMC appears to be a mere formality, he added.

Releasing a white paper on the status of education, he said, “Real education in municipal schools of Mumbai has been orphaned.”

Incidentally, all BMC schools, including those belonging to government and local bodies, meet 100 per cent of the infrastructure criteria laid down in the Right to Education (RTE) Bill introduced by the central government less than three years ago.

Data gathered by the Praja Team also reveals that the passing percentage of students from these schools remain at 60 per cent. In comparison, “Private schools, many of whom do not meet the RTE infrastructure norms 100 per cent, show a high 80 per cent passing rate,” said Milind Mhaske, Project Director of Praja.

Of the 26,649 students who appeared for the middle school scholarship exam (Class 5) last year, only 23 BMC school students qualified against 1,954 private students. For high school scholarship exams (Class 7), only six BMC school students out of 24,473 qualified.

Ascribing the reason for such a performance to quality of education of teaching, Mehta said, “The inspection reports of schools in each ward (municipal area) tell the story in no uncertain terms. In a school inspection report M East ward (Chembur east area), over 90 per cent of 544 teachers received great inspection remarks on attributes like education experience, teaching methods and so on,” said Mehta. But in this very locality, the passing percentage in civic schools is a mere 38 per cent.

From RTI data sourced by Praja, it is obvious that money is not the issue. The BMC has a budgetary allocation of nearly Rs60,000 (Dh3,558) per child per year, while private-aided schools in Mumbai that include Don Bosco, St Mary’s, Podar, St Stanislaus and others charge anywhere between Rs15,000 to Rs45,000 per student per year. In the last four years, the annual municipal budget for education went up from Rs17.61 billion in 2010-11 to Rs26 billion in 2013-14. Even the teacher-student ratio in municipal schools is good, with 32 students per teacher in civic schools, which is on par or better than private schools.

In a citywide survey conducted by Praja Foundation last year along with Hansa Research, it was evident that most families want to send their children to private schools. The eagerness of parents to send their children to English medium schools is also on the rise.