A Maharashtra minister said on Monday that the state’s education department is considering dividing textbooks into three parts and attaching blank pages to fill them up. School Education Minister Deepak Kesarkar said that his department is working to reduce the weight of the bags of school children.
The minister informed that the textbooks will be divided into three parts, but this will not reduce the weight of the bags as the notebooks will still have to be carried, he said, adding, “We are considering the textbooks that we are dividing into three parts. If we add pages to write and link them to the textbook, it will be very convenient. They (students) can refer to it and take notes and repetition is avoided. This will help in reducing the weight of the bags.” The minister further informed that the education department is in the process of taking a decision in this regard.
Meanwhile, in another development, the office of the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi on Monday wrote to the Chief Secretary seeking an explanation for the “decline in enrollment and increase in absenteeism” in government schools despite an increase in expenditure on education from 2014-15. The letter comes days after Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena flagged off the delay by the AAP government in action on the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) report on construction of classrooms in Delhi government schools. PTI report good.
The LG office has cited data from the Delhi government’s Economic Survey 2021-2022, which details a drop in student enrollment in its schools and significant student absenteeism despite increased spending on the education sector. 6,145 crore in 2014-15 11,081 crore in 2019-20. Even the expenditure incurred by the government per student per year has increased From 42,806 in 2015-16 According to the letter, the number of students enrolled in 66,593, Delhi government schools in 2019-20 decreased from 15.42 lakh in 2014-15 to 15.19 lakh in 2019-20.
“Despite a substantial increase in investment by the State Government in the education sector as a whole and as a part of the total budget, it is observed that during the same period, the enrollment in Delhi’s government schools declined from 15.42 lakh in 2014-15. 15.42 lakh. 15.19 lakh in 2019-20,” the letter read.
(with inputs from PTI)
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