Gujarat's Annual School Inspection: Will another round change the reality?

GANDHINAGAR: Senior bureaucrats will visit and assess government schools across Gujarat for three days from November 20 as part of Gunotsav, even as the annual exercise over the past few years does not appear to have changed the ground reality of more than 12,000 of the 34,177 total schools in the state continuing to operate from just one room each.

The dismal figures had come to light recently during the assembly session when the state minister for education Bhupendrasinh Chudasma answered a question raised by Congress MLA Tejashreeben Patel. As per the figures provided by the minister, there are 12,125 such schools, with 1,002 concentrated in the worst-affected coastal district of Jamnagar.

“These figures are simply shocking,” Patel told ET, adding that there were also instances where a teacher wanted to quit a school because there was no student to study in the school. “There is an acute shortfall in the number of maths and science teachers in such schools and very little has been done to better the situation,” she said.

Within Ahmedabad city, there are 17 such schools while the number for the entire Ahmedabad district is 251. At the bottom of the list is Surat city, with only four such schools, while Kheda fares best among the districts with 72 such schools.

Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel had on Thursday announced that this year the exercise will be linked to the Centre’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. “While we shall visit the schools, before entering the schools, we shall clean the surroundings of the schools for ten minutes,” Patel said, addressing a seminar on urban development in Gandhinagar.

Meanwhile, former leader of opposition Shaktisinh Gohil launched a scathing attack on the state government over deaths of two children in Surendranagar district on Wednesday after they were administered vaccines and demanded compensation of Rs 5 lakh each for the next of kin.