PANAJI: Over the past eight years, student numbers in government primary schools have gone down uniformly across the different regional languages offered as medium of instruction (MOI) in these institutions. Students enrolled in Marathi, Konkani and Urdu schools in government schools have nearly halved since 2012.
However, according to directorate of education (DoE) data, it appears that parents have an issue with the way government schools are managed, and not with the regional languages offered as MOI. This is because during the same period (2012 to 2020), students enrolled in privately-managed Marathi, Konkani and Urdu medium schools nearly doubled.
The number of students enrolling in English medium schools over the past eight years has remained nearly consistent, at around 30,000. The DoE data indicates that only around 1,300 students were lost by government schools purely due to a shift in choice of MOI from regional language to English medium over the past eight years.
The students lost by government primary schools show a direct correlation in the gain in student numbers by privately-managed aided schools offering education in the same regional language.
In 2012, 1,579 students enrolled in Konkani-medium government schools, a number which was down to 893 in 2020.
Similarly, student numbers in Marathi-medium government schools came down from 26,071 in 2012 to 18,231 in 2020.
In the case of Urdu, too, enrolment in government schools dropped from 1,062 to 471.
In comparison, student enrolment in Konkani-medium aided schools rose from around 3,000 to over 7,000 between 2012 and 2020.
In Marathi-medium aided schools, the number of students rose from 8,000 to nearly 13,000 over this period.
The Urdu aided schools gained nearly double the students, from 441 in 2012 to 819 in 2020.
In all, government primary schools have lost approximately 10,000 students over the past eight years, and currently, the total enrolment stands at 20,601.
In 2012, while 20 aided schools had shifted MOI overnight from Konkani and Marathi to English, leading to an upheaval in the state, over the past eight years, at least four aided and unaided schools have changed medium from English to either Marathi or Konkani.