PERNEM: Before setting out for the government primary school she teaches in Pernem taluka, Lata (name changed), has chosen to take up one more job. She travels house-to-house, picking up her students just so that they can attend school. When classes end, she sits them in her vehicle once more to drop them safely back home.
Lata is among the many teachers in the taluka who have been left with practically no choice but to ferry students to and from school to keep enrolment numbers steady and to deter parents from withdrawing their wards and admitting them in government-aided schools that are provided with Bal Rath facilities by the State.
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“The government should understand that parents will naturally opt for better facilities for their children. If there is an aided school offering better facilities, it will obviously be their first choice,” said Santosh Naik, a parent.
“A major setback for government primary schools is the lack of transport facilities for students, which is one of the main causes for dwindling enrolment numbers,” he said.
There are at least 65 government primary schools in Pernem taluka, while six are government high schools and seven are middle schools offering education till Class VII. A few years ago, two government primary schools were shut down in the taluka – one each in Khutwal and Alorna – due to poor enrolment. Another one, offering education in Kannada, met with the same fate this year at Arambol.
A parent from Khutwal said she was forced to enrol her child in a government primary school at Talarna, which is three kilometres away, when the school in her village was shut down. “This happened because the government is only focused on providing facilities to aided schools. This should either stop, or the same facilities should also be provided to the government primary schools, especially transport,” she said.
Many parents also said that with the teachers of government primary schools constantly being transferred elsewhere, their faith in the quality of education being offered in these institutions has shaken. As a result, whenever teachers who are on deputation are transferred, the parents, too, change schools fearing that constantly changing teachers will affect the academic performance of their children.
In a bid to give government primary schools a shot in the arm, the State recently introduced the initiative of introducing pre-primary sections on such institutions. The move appears to have encouraged more and more parents to admit their children at the pre-primary level, in turn boosting enrolment numbers.
In fact, Pernem taluka is believed to have the highest number of government primary schools which have a pre-primary section. Of the 65 primary schools, more than 40 have already begun pre-primary classes after obtaining provisional permissions, in the hope that more students will join them. So far, it seems to be working.
