Bhubaneswar: Even though a slew of measures have been undertaken to motivate parents/children towards government-run schools, enrolment in these schools continues to take a nosedive each passing year.
The state-run primary schools have failed to enrol a large number of students in the past few years whereas the admission rate is higher in private and English-medium schools. This was revealed from a written reply given by School & Mass Education (S&ME) Minister Samir Ranjan Dash in the Assembly, Monday.
As per data given by the minister, altogether 65,43,973 students were enrolled in government schools across the state in the year 2014-15 which came down to 63,91,248 in 2015-16. The enrolment further went southwards from 62,30,310 in 2016-17 to 59,43,448 in 2017-18.
The minister’s reply also revealed that the enrolment further declined to 57,42,649 in 2018-19 and 55,47,116 the next year.
In total, the student strength in government-run schools has come down by 9,96,857 between 2014-15 and 2019-20 academic sessions.
However, enrolment in private schools has increased by 3,02,212 during the same period. The number of students enrolled in all privates schools of the state in 2014-15 was 10,68,069. However, this has increased to a whopping 13,70,281 in 2019-20.
Interestingly, the total number of students in both government and private schools in Odisha is also showing a decreasing trend. The number of students in both private and government schools in the year 2014-15 was 76,12,042 which declined to 69,17,394 in the year 2019-20.
Similarly, the enrolment of SC and ST students also decreased each year during the period. The number of SC students has come down to 13,17,369 in 2019-20 from 14,58,553 in 2014-15 whereas the number of ST students has declined by 2,35,612 during the period.