JOHN DAYAL
The closure or merger of small government schools has become one of the least discussed but most significant changes in Indian education. It rarely attracts national head lines or mass protests at Jantar Mantar near Parliament House, yet for many rural communi ties, it changes children’s lives in ways that cannot be measured simply through administrative efficiency. Across several states, particu larly those with declining enrol ment or scattered populations, governments have consolidated schools under policies common ly described as “rationalisation.” The stated objective is that instead of operating numerous schools with very small enrol ments, resources can be con centrated in larger institutions expected to offer better infra structure, more teachers, and improved learning opportunities. A school with only twenty students may struggle to pro vide subject teachers, libraries, laboratories, or extracurricular activities and consolidation can potentially improve educational quality if transportation is reli able and children remain within reasonable travelling distance. Official data presented in Par liament show that the number of government schools has declined by roughly 18,700 over the last five years, reflecting a combina tion of closures, mergers and ad ministrative restructuring. The Union Government has also clarified that decisions re garding opening, merging or closing schools fall within the ju risdiction of state governments under the Right to Education Act. The numbers themselves do not tell the whole story, nor is it simply a question of how many schools have disappeared, but what happens to children af ter their neighbourhood school ceases to function. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, established an important principle: every child should have access to a neighbourhood school, which for primary edu cation generally means schools should be located within one kilometre of the child’s home. When a village school is merged into another institution several kilometres away, the im pact depends on local realities.
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In some places, school buses or public transport make the tran sition manageable, but in many others, children must walk con siderable distances over uneven terrain or depend on irregular transport. For families already living on the margins, these additional barriers can influence whether children attend school regularly. Research across many coun tries has consistently shown that increasing travel distance affects educational participation most severely among disadvantaged communities. The burden does not fall equally on every child. Girls are particularly vulnera ble where parents have concerns about safety during long jour neys, and children with disabil ities face even greater obstacles if transport is unavailable or re ceiving schools lack accessible infrastructure. Scheduled Tribe communities living in remote areas often ex perience the greatest disruption because settlements are dis persed over difficult terrain. The National Education Policy 2020 recognises these concerns while supporting school consol idation under appropriate cir cumstances.
It recommends that mergers should be undertaken carefully and only where edu cational quality can genuinely improve. Publicly available information about how merger decisions are made remains limited, and States have adopted different criteria based on enrolment, infrastruc ture and teacher availability with little transparency regard ing whether every consolidation fully complies with neighbour hood access requirements or whether post-merger outcomes are systematically evaluated. If consolidation is intended to improve education, then govern ments should publish evidence demonstrating that learning outcomes have improved while enrolment and attendance have been maintained. The discussion also intersects with the long-standing issue of public investment in education. Nearly sixty years ago, the Kothari Commission recom mended that India should de vote 6% of GDP to education, a goal repeated in successive pol icy documents, including the Na tional Education Policy 2020, yet combined public expenditure by the Union and state govern ments has generally remained closer to 4% to 4.6% of GDP. The gap matters because maintaining small rural schools is expensive and sparsely pop ulated villages cannot achieve economies of scale comparable to urban schools. If governments are unwilling to invest additional resources, financial pressure naturally en courages consolidation. Urban families usually have multiple educational options, including government, aided and private schools, but for rural families, the government prima ry school represents the only af fordable educational institution within walking distance.
When that school disappears, the choice is no longer between two schools. It is between travel ling farther or leaving education altogether. This changing landscape has also created opportunities for non-government educational or ganisations such as the pan-Na tional RSS affiliate Vidya Bharati, which operates thousands of schools across India and serves several million students in rural and tribal areas where govern ment educational infrastructure is limited. Vidya Bharati has expanded steadily over several decades and has become one of the coun try’s largest non-government school systems, causing concern among scholars and educators worried about aspects of its curriculum, particularly inter pretations of history and culture presented in some educational materials. It would be simplistic to ar gue that the decline of govern ment schools alone explains the growth of organisations such as Vidya Bharati; demographic change, parental preferences, migration, and perceptions of educational quality all influence school choice. Nevertheless, when the state reduces its educational presence in rural areas, alternative pro viders inevitably assume greater importance.
The future of public education therefore depends not only on maintaining access but also on sustaining confidence. Another group deserves great er attention in this debate: chil dren with disabilities. Although the NEP emphasises inclusive education, significant barri ers remain. Many schools still lack ramps, accessible toilets, assistive technologies and ade quately trained teachers, school consolidation can unintentionally increase these barriers if receiv ing schools are geographically farther away or insufficiently equipped for inclusive learning. Some very small schools genu inely struggle to provide quality education as classrooms with one or two teachers cannot al ways meet children’s education al needs, and consolidation may therefore sometimes offer better teaching, improved facilities and richer learning environments. Several safeguards would strengthen public confidence.
These include the basic require ment that every proposed merg er be accompanied by a publicly available impact assessment with data on enrolment, attend ance and learning outcomes be fore and after consolidation and guaranteed transport arrange ments with particular attention paid to girls, Scheduled Tribe communities and children with disabilities. Finally, the longstanding na tional commitment to invest 6 percent of GDP in education de serves renewed attention. When a village school disap pears, the consequences extend beyond one building — they impact the lives and futures of children who have a right to en joy practical access to education, regardless of where they live — a constitutional commitment to uni versal elementary education even for someone living in its smallest and most remote villages. (John Dayal is an author, Ed itor, occasional documentary film maker and activist)
