By Sara D Benedicta Josna

Bengaluru: Nearly 13,800 government schools are on the verge of as the strength is less than 25 students. All these schools are in rural areas and around 1,800 schools have less than 10 students.

Meanwhile the department of school education and literacy says there is no question of closure, the plan to upgrade one school in every hobli as a ‘model school’ has raised questions.

Experts said that the department will divert students from low admission to model schools in the name of merger.

“Merger is just a word. Technically schools will be closed, and the students will be shifted to nearby schools” said one academic.

Although School Education and Literacy Minister B C Nagesh said the government would not close any schools. “There is no proposal to close any school. Instead, we are running the schools which have less than 10 students,” he said during an interaction.

However, the minister has come to terms that the admissions in rural government schools have drastically decreased because of quality issues. “The expectations among parents regarding quality of education have gone up high. Admissions are going down due to quality issues” he added.

Nagesh said that there are schools with no teachers. “There are schools with single students and there are even schools without teachers. There are about 16 schools in Chamarajanagar and 30 in Raichur where there are no teachers at all” he said.

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