263 SCHOOLS FOUND UNECONOMICAL

     The Sarwa Shiksha Abhiyan has turned its focus on as many as 263 government and aided schools in the district found to be running without sufficient students.

     The District Information System of Education, which provides vital statistics to SSA, has found that 263 schools from lower primary to upper primary level functions with less than 60 students, which as per norm are considered uneconomic.

     Of the total uneconomic schools in the district, 53 schools have less than 20 students and the remaining 210 have numbers between 20 and 60 necessitating urgent intervention measures to arrest the decline in these schools. The lower primary school at Sambuvattom had become non-functional for the last two years for want of sufficient students.

     The decline in the number of students in the government schools, which is a State-wide phenomenon, has prompted SSA to come out with a 12-point programme aimed to improve the infrastructure and academic environment in these schools.  Across the state, as many as 3523 schools are found to be uneconomic, said an SSA official.