Lack of students forces Maharashtra Govt to shut down 13, 817 schools

Officials from the state's directorate of primary education are working on derecognizing as many as 13, 817 schools, which have less than 20 students.

Nand Kumar, Principal Secretary, Department of School Education and Sports, said, “We are yet to take any decision on this matter. We have to chalk out a proper plan before closing down these schools”.      

The schools have been operating with government aides and the state government might be finding it burdensome in disbursing grants including the mid-day meal schemes and maintaining teacher-student ratio.

The government issued notices two years ago to shut down schools operating with less than 20 students but action was taken so far.

While the officials from the state's directorate of primary education are on the move to derecognise these schools, notices regarding the same have been sent to education officers.

The schools include English, Hindi, Urdu, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Sindhi, Tamil, and Telugu medium.