HYDERABAD: More dropouts will be from budget private schools in Telangana, suggests an independent survey - jointly conducted by the Hyderabad based - ‘Inquilab Foundation’ (a science foundation that works for children) along with local groups of school leaders and civil society organisations. Around 200 school headmasters, parents and teachers from budget private schools across Telangana participated in the survey that was conducted during the lockdown, to study its impact. The survey revealed that 54 per cent of schools in Telangana are private, and a large number of these are budget private schools wherein children from poor families study.
“Since majority of the parents work as daily wage workers it would be difficult for them to pay the fees. These schools, which charge fees between `300 for nursery to `2,000 per month for Class X, are badly hit by the lockdown,” said Vivek a representative of Inqalaab Foundation. “The survey suggests that there would be at least 10-12 dropout rate in these schools this academic year. Plus, there is no tool as such or monitoring system by the government to know how many students have dropped out,” said Sai Promod, who conducts training programmes for teachers from social welfare residential schools and budget private schools across the State.
“Conversations with close to 100 school leaders in Hyderabad revealed that generally 60 to 70 per cent parents pay their last term fees for January to April in the last week of March, so that their children can appear for annual examinations. As government has passed an order directing schools to promote students till Class IX without any exams, most of the schools have large dues. This means that each school is losing between `10 lakh and `30 lakh,” he said.
Kishore Kumar, Principal of Chaitanya Bharathi School in Hyderabad, is expecting that 10 to 20 per cent of students from his school may drop out permanently as parents used to struggle to pay fees even in normal years. Since there is no government school in the nearby area, parents may have no option but to withdraw their children.