Increased allocation of funds by BMC on municipal schools do not reflect in results

Updated on: Thursday, December 20, 2012

The BMC spends over Rs 50,000 per student annually but all this money still doesn't help better the pass percentages in municipality schools, say findings by Praja Foundation, a non-profit organization. Released on Tuesday, the figures showed that while the budget allocation in municipal schools has increased by 165% in the last 5 years, student dropout rates are on the rise, while the pass percentage has been low.

The information sourced through a Right to Information (RTI) query, showed that the BMC spends Rs 53,335 per student every year while private aided schools in Mumbai charge an average of Rs 15,000 to Rs 36,000 as fees per year. Despite this, the average pass percentage of students over the past 5 years in private schools is 82% while that of BMC schools is only 58%. said Nitai Mehta, managing trustee of Praja Foundation. "Our white paper on the state of education in Mumbai's municipal schools reveals the sheer magnitude of apathy and mismanagement of education by the civic body. Clearly, money is not the issue here,"

The findings also revealed that most BMC schools have a good student-teacher ratio of around 35:1, and even though teachers are well-trained in most teaching attributes, the success rate in the schools has not improved.

"In the D ward (Malabar Hill, Grant Road, Nepean Sea Road), over 84% teachers received good to excellent reports on most teaching attributes including explaining subject matter, and use of teaching methods. Yet, not only is the success rate in these schools very low, they also have the highest drop-out rate at 11.5%," said Milind Mhaske, the NGO's project coordinator.

Mhaske also added that while the the civic body is utilizing all the funds for training its teachers and paying its staff, there is very little output in the form of education.

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