No child would be deprived of education: Himachal CM Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu

NEW DELHI: No child would be deprived of education and a boarding school would be opened soon in Spiti in tribal Lahaul and Spiti district, Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu said in the state assembly on Tuesday. Intervening in the reply on a calling attention motion, Sukhu said the government is bringing reforms to improve quality of education as Himachal has slipped to 18th position.

He said that the government could consider shifting students to district headquarters and would bear their expenses to ensure that no child is deprived of education.

Replying to the motion of Anuradha Rana (Congress) regarding reconsidering merger of schools with less students in view of tough topography of the area (Lahaul and Spiti), Education Minister Rohit Thakur said merger of schools with less number of students was a bold decision.

There has been a decline of 5.13 lakh in enrolment in government schools during the past two decades and merger of schools was not being done only in Himachal but across the country and 76,000 schools have already been merged, he said. The highest number of 26,000 schools were merged in Uttar Pradesh, followed by 18,000 in Madhya Pradesh, 13,000 in Maharashtra, 2,918 in Chhattisgarh, 2,135 in Rajasthan, 1,671 in Uttarakhand and 623 in Haryana.

Thakur said 12 primary schools and one middle school have been merged in Lahaul and Spiti assembly constituency while 19 schools have been merged in his own Jubbal and Kotkhai constituency.

He pointed out that there are only two students in Senior Secondary School Hansa in Lahaul and Spiti while the number of teachers was eight and 750 teachers are posted for 2,100 students in Lahaul and Spiti constituency. However, the government would sympathetically consider the merger of schools in the constituency, keeping in view the harsh and tough geographical conditions, he said.