NITI Aayog seeks large-scale school mergers, teacher training overhaul

NITI Aayog has also suggested that states undertake decentralisation of powers to principals, district and block officers for self-improving governance

India should merge small, sub-scale, and low-enrolment schools with nearby ones and rationalise teacher recruitment to optimise its learning outcomes, the NITI Aayog said in its outcome report on the Sustainable Action for Transforming Human Capital in Education (SATH-E) on Tuesday.

According to the report, which contains broad-based suggestions based on the SATH-E implementation in three states, India continues to have five times the number of schools than China for the same enrolment and more than 50 per cent of primary schools across many states have an enrolment of less than 60.

“The cost of such subscale schools in the form of extensive multi-grade teaching, lack of a student and parent community that can demand accountability, poor infrastructure, the same 1-2 teachers also handling all administrative responsibilities in the absence of headmasters/ principals, etc. is very high,” the NITI Aayog said.

It added: “Thoughtfully executed school mergers is one path forward. This has been executed across SATH-E states with favourable results.”

In collaboration with the NITI Aayog, Jharkhand merged 4,380 schools, resulting in savings of Rs 400 crore.

In Madhya Pradesh, roughly 35,000 schools were identified for merger with nearby educational institutions. Only 20 per cent of these schools had a headmaster or a principal. Post-merger, 55 per cent of the schools had a headmaster because the number had been reduced to 16,000.

In Odisha, 2,000 schools were merged by the state government into same-campus schools.

The NITI Aayog has suggested states decentralise powers to principals, and district and block officers for improving governance. This includes giving them greater financial powers and autonomy to make decisions.

Merger of schools has been mulled as policy intervention for a while, but there has been concern about its impact on access to education, especially in areas with limited or remote connectivity.

The central think tank said these could be got round through thoughtfully executed mergers. Alongside doing mergers, states should develop a set of large schools (10-20 per cent spread across the state) as integrated K-12 schools, and provide transport so that all students can equitably access them, the body said.

The NITI Aayog has highlighted the stark gap between the number of teachers required and those recruited.

“India has a shortage of more than a million teachers and several states have anywhere (between 30 and 50 per cent) teacher vacancies. In addition, available teachers are not distributed equitably with more teachers available than required in urban areas and disproportionately higher vacancies in rural areas.”

“(The education systems) of states cannot practically transform and deliver much higher outcomes with such high teacher vacancies,” it added.

It has called for rationalising teacher recruitment to ensure equitable access. The concentration of teachers continues to be much higher in urban areas.

Other measures highlighted by the think tank include tightening teacher accreditation standards for pre-service training institutes, and an overhaul in teacher-training curricula.