KSTA on a misson to revive 650 schools

Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala School Teachers’ Association (KSTA) will commence a mission to revive 650 schools in the state with poor pupil strength. The teachers’ association, the largest in the field, will prepare unique plans to attract more students to these schools where the class strength is less than 10.
“It’s not the first time that we are on such a mission. It’s after the success of last year’s drive in Malappuram, with more than a dozen schools, that the association has decided to revive more schools,” said KSTA general secretary K C Harikrishnan.
The scheme will be finalized in consultation with PTA and other stakeholders. The association will ensure that all schools in the state that are under the programme will get adequate infrastructural facilities and academic ambience.
“The association will improve the infrastructure and provide funding for the same. Also, if a school requires expert teachers in certain subjects, we will arrange for them to teach students on the weekends,” Harikrishnan said. The association will be choosing four schools each in every education sub-district. The immediate objective of the drive is to ensure that all these schools have a class strength of at least 10.
The move assumes more significance since the recent findings by the general education department has casted doubts over the veracity of the state government claims that the general education protection mission launched by the LDF government was able to attract five lakh more students to public schools. According to the findings, the UID details of over five lakh students, in government, aided and recognized unaided schools together, was either unavailable or erroneous.
The department is not facing such discrepancies for the first time. There were similar findings in the past and the government had threatened to hold the school headmasters responsible for tampering with student UIDs, based on which the government calculates the number of students in each school. As a measure to ensure the veracity of student numbers, which the schools had earlier shared with the education department, the government is learnt to have decided to verify the student strength by sending officials to each school.