Student number affiliated with Uttarakhand Board on rapid decline

Despite tall claims of State Education Minister Arvind Pandey and the education department about measures taken for improvement of quality of education in the  institutions affiliated with State education board, the number of students affiliated with the Uttarakhand Vidhyalayi Shiksha Parishad (UVSP) is declining at a rapid pace in the last few years. The data of the UVSP also called Uttarakhand Board suggests that in High School (Class X) examinations the board has lost more than 30,000 students in last five to six years.

The loss of Uttarakhand board is the gain of other boards like Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and Indian Council of Secondary Education (ICSE) as their student enrolment is increasing consistently.

The data reveals that 178738 students were enrolled in class X examination in the year 2013, the number dropped to 168022 in the year 2016 while in this year only 149442 students were enrolled (See box).

The situation is not very different in class XII where 143915 students were enrolled in the year 2015 which declined to 135650 students next year. In the year 2017, the student enrolment in class XII dropped further to 133417 while the number of students this year is only 132281.

The experts list a variety of factors responsible for this decline in interest of students in the state board. They cite the lack of infrastructure in government schools, flawed transfer policy of teachers, politicization of teaching community, migration from villages and lack of discipline in the government schools as reasons for this loss in student numbers. Many schools located in the far flung and hard to access  areas face acute shortage of teaching staff. The teachers who are posted in these schools take frequent leaves and lobby for their transfers to the places of their choices. The school building and other facilities in the government schools are not improving even though the huge budget of state education department keeps on increasing every year.

To make the matter worse for UVSP more and more private schools are opening in the rural areas. These schools opt for a more popular CBSE board and display an affiliation granted by central board as USP to attract students.