ZIRO, 7 Nov: Of the 72 government schools in Lower Subansiri district, 36 have been closed and an additional 11 have been proposed for closure due to low enrollment, leaving 25 functional schools in the district.
Officials of the district’s education department informed this to Education Minister PD Sona during a follow-up chintan shivir which was attended Sona’s adviser and MLA Mutchu Mithi and his team, and officers of the district administration and the education department, besides the ZPC, ZPMs, student union leaders, members of CBOs, and other stakeholders here on Thursday.
The minister while taking stock of the schools and their enrollment suggested that the secondary schools of Hong, Hari and Tajang villages, which have 59, 40 and 26 students, respectively, enrolled, should be taken up for closure and merger. He said that “the main reason for poor condition of schools and poor performance is because of too many schools being run by the government.”
“Many of the schools have low enrollment and very high pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) which strains the limited resources of the government. The PTR ratio is so disproportionate that some schools of Lower Subansiri have a 2:1 PTR. Such high PTR is not only misuse of government resources but also unfair towards other schools and students which have acute scarcity of teachers,” he said, adding that the government aims to consolidate the number of schools and provide best facilities in terms of infrastructure and human resources.
He said that the government’s objective is to build a strong foundation among the primary and upper primary school children by providing them with the best of facilities. “And that can only happen when the number of schools are rationalised and non-functional schools are closed and their resources merged with the selected schools,” he added.
All the stakeholders, however, requested the minister to give them a week to decide on selection of schools for closure.
Deputy Commissioner Vivek HP, on behalf of Ziro MLA Hage Appa, sought assistance for making the polytechnic college in the district functional. He informed that the villagers donated land free of cost for starting the polytechnic college and the college building is ready since 2019.
“Since there are many higher education institutes in Ziro, there will be many students who will be willing to take up diploma courses at the polytechnic, and who can be benefitted by the college,” the DC said.
He also made submission to the minister for introducing Apatani as the third language in private schools. He requested the minister to “allow handholding to private institutions and provideassistance by sharing of human resources from government schools for initial years to include and functionalize Apatani as the third language in private school curriculum.”
Mithi in his address said, “Ziro has the potential to become the educational hub of not only Arunachal Pradesh but the entire northeastern region.” He said that the consolidation of educational institutions would lead to better resource utilization.
Sona also attended a similar meeting with key stakeholders in Kra Daadi district on the same day.
The meeting saw active participation of members ofCBOs, student leaders, the AAPSU president, HoDs and local panchayat leaders. These groups engaged in a collaborative dialogue with the minister, exploring strategies to address challenges faced by the schools in Kra Daadi.
The minister emphasized the importance of adopting innovative approaches like the clubbing system to optimize resources and streamline educational support.
