The ministry wants to reduce the waste of resources spent on providing required basic infrastructure and staff at schools with low enrolment ratio.
Over one-third or 37.36 percent of the government schools across India enrol less than 50 students, according to a report in Business Standard.
Goa has the highest percent of government schools having less than 50 students at 76.9 percent, followed by Himachal Pradesh at 73.2 percent and Uttarakhand at 72.3 percent, the report said quoting data from the Ministry of Human Resource Development.
Government schools in states such as Chandigarh, Delhi and Bihar also enrol less than 50 children. In Chandigarh, over 115 government schools have just 50 students studying in each institute.
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The move aims to shortlist government schools with low enrolment ratio and encourage respective states to either rationalise, merge or shut down such schools to prevent waste of state resources. Education Secretary Anil Swarup has been reportedly engaged with states to see how this can best be done without reducing access.
The ministry wants to reduce the waste of resources spent on providing required basic infrastructure and staff at these schools as most of these schools have fewer students than they can accommodate. Each class in the primary and secondary section would have less than 10 students compared to the overall capacity of the school to accomodate around 250-300 students.
Experts believe student may benefit less if the enrolment is low. "Any school with fewer than 50 students will have very little learning and teaching happening," Aditya Natraj, CEO, Kaivalaya Education Foundation (KEF) told the paper.
Several states have already embarked on this exercise. Over 75 schools with zero enrolment were closed in Telangana, while around 10,000 in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh were proposed to be closed. Even Uttarakhand recently closed over 700 schools as they had 10 or less students attending or enrolled.
Similar exercises have been carried in Punjab and Rajasthan. Students in Rajasthan have been shifted to larger schools called Adarsh Vidyalayas, which have better facilities. The state education department has also identified about 9,895 schools across gram panchayats to be converted into Adarsh schools.