The Indian Express    31.07.2012

Civic agency to merge schoobls with less than 120 students

 The North Municipal Corporation has planned to “merge” approximately 69 of its schools having less than 120 students and use the buildings to generate revenue.

Rekha Gupta, the chairman of the civic agency’s education committee, said: “There are many schools which do not even have 120 students. There are others where a single teacher teaches every subject or there are several teachers for just 50 students. There is an imbalance in the student-teacher ratio. We will merge these schools to improve the ratio.”

A civic official gave the break-up:

There are 20 schools in the Narela zone which have 53 to 118 students.

In the City zone, there are 25 such schools and all of them have concrete buildings.

In the Sadar Paharganj zone, there are 12 schools with just 53 to 116 students.

In the Civil Line zone, nine schools have 50 to 90 students.

After the merger, the civic agency plans to use the school buildings for commercial activities. “We need sources of revenue and we need land. The corporation will use the buildings for commercial purposes such recreation centres and shopping complexes,” an official said.

“We are facing a fund crunch and need to find ways to augment our income. That’s why we asked the education department to identify schools that have less than 120 students. The list is ready. These schools will be inspected so that the merger does not affect the students,” Gupta said.

She said the buildings could be developed into community halls.A few years ago, the undivided Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) floated a similar proposal and suggested selling the vacant buildings.