Pune: The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) during a general body meeting on Monday decided to merge 12 civic schools because of poor attendance. The schools fall within the agency’s periphery. Opposition parties raised concerns, saying the decision should not be taken till the next session starts, as the number of students attending the civic schools might go up after they reopen.
The municipal corporation runs over 180 schools across the civic area imparting education to nearly 80,000 students. The PMC operates Marathi, English, Hindi and Urdu medium schools.
“Financial condition of several parents have taken a major hit because of the pandemic. They have now decided to shift their children from private to government-run schools. This is a new trend, which the PMC can tap. Thus, the decision should be taken accordingly,” said one of the corporators opposing the move.
BJP corporators, however, supported the merger of the schools saying it is necessary for better management of the available manpower. “Some PMC schools have excess teachers, while other institutions do not have enough teaching staff. This disparity can be resolved by merging the schools witnessing poor attendance with the nearby ones,” said leader of House Ganesh Bidkar.
Civic officials said a teacher can be assigned to a classroom with minimum 30 students, but there are around 12 PMC schools, which have only five to 17 students per class. These are slated to be merged. PMC runs 265 schools from 180 buildings.