Students wait for books, authorities play blame game

Students in the elementary schools of municipal corporations in the city would have to wait for at least a month more to get their notebooks.

 The nodal agency for purchasing the notebooks has not received any consignment due to delay in the tender floating process. Although the corporations keep claiming that they are putting in efforts to upgrade their primary schools to the level of private schools, the fact is that over 30 per cent of the students will have to wait for even the notebooks. 

‘It will take another 15 days to receive the first consignment of notebooks for municipal schools. We have finalised the tender process and allotted the work to contractors,’ said Rekha Gupta, Chairman of Education Committee, North Delhi Municipal Corporation [NDMC]. 

NDMC is the nodal body for purchasing notebooks for the three corporations. The municipal corporations get textbooks from Delhi Bureau of Textbooks. But notebooks are provided by  private concessionaire. 

As per the rule of the municipal corporations in the city, free textbooks are provided to students in primary schools, in addition to mid-day meals and Rs 1,000 per student for the uniform. 

There are 1,734 primary schools under the three corporations in the city, which have over 10 lakh students on their roll. An order for over 50 lakh books was placed after one week of the schools opening for the new sessions.

Corporations, on the other hand, passed the buck to Delhi Bureau of Textbooks, run by Delhi government for the delay. ‘We have been sending constant reminders to the bureau  but we are yet to receive over 20 per cent of our books,’ said Satish Upadhayay, Chairman of Education Committee for South Delhi Municipal Corporation [SDMC]. The situation in the East Delhi Municipal Corporation [EDMC] is not much better. ‘We are using old textbooks. There is a shortage of over 30 per cent books in our schools,’ said Kanwar Sen, Head of Education in EDMC.

Schools with less than 100 students to be merged

Facing acute shortage of teachers and infrastructure, North Delhi Municipal Corporation [NDMC] has decided to merge its primary schools with less than 100 students to the nearby primary schools of the corporation.

‘We have asked the officers to identify the schools having less than 100 students on their roll and prepare a feasibility report to merge such schools. The move would benefit the students as there is lack of over 470 teachers even after extending the contract period of over 1,500 adhoc teachers,’ said Rekha Gupta, Chairperson of Eduction Committee in East Delhi [EDMC]. 

However, she could not give exact number of such schools but hoped that the move would contain the problem of shortage of teachers in the current session up to some extent. ‘We would redistribute those teachers in nearby schools,’ added Gupta.

The corporation has, at  present, shortage of 470 teachers in its schools. The situation becomes worse when teachers are engaged for pulse polio, census, survey and other government schemes. 

‘We also face a unique problem as over 70 per cent teachers in the schools are women and they go on long maternity leaves sometimes for entire session. The students have to suffer for this,’ added Gupta.

In another move to improve the situation of schools, the Education Committee has decided to rope in the services of an NGO to run library in its 70 primary schools under Ghyan Dhara scheme. The NGO has entered in an agreement to provide over 3,000 books and a teacher along with furniture for students. The corporation has decided to upgrade 30 hand picked schools from five each from its six zones to upgrade it at par with private public schools.