Vijayawada: Education special chief secretary Rajasekhar said merger of classes at primary level is being taken up to provide a strong foundation to students. He ruled out any merger of schools.
Speaking to the media here on Monday, he criticised a section of the media for taking up a misinformation campaign –that merger of schools was being taken up — when “we are actually taking up merger of classes for the benefit of students.”
He said the government’s idea was to optimise use of infrastructure and human resources and provide a solid foundation to students at primary level. The pre-nursery classes meant for anganwadi children are being merged into Classes I and II and setting up PP-1 and PP-2 schools.
Similarly, students from Classes III to V are being merged into high schools in order to have subject teachers taking classes for them.
The senior education official said that in the 2021-22 academic year, 2,943 primary schools were merged into 2,800 high schools at 250 metres distance. In 2022-23, 620 foundation plus schools were merged into 4,954 schools in a one kilometre distance. So far, 5,870 schools were merged in the state.
“Local legislators raised some issues pertaining to 820 schools. In order to resolve such issues, we have set up district level committees with the joint collector as chairman. We will stop the merger in case it is found to be unviable.”
The education special chief secretary said, “We had taken the opinions of all the stakeholders before going ahead with this exercise of merger of classes. There will not be any cancellation of teacher posts. Some 8,232 SGTs were promoted as school assistants while a large number of posts of school heads are being sanctioned,” he said.
He ruled out any injustice to any teacher and added that the Nadu-Nedu programme was implemented in 15,715 schools in the last two-and-half-years and efforts to construct 32,000 additional class rooms are on this year.
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