School children staged a sit-in at the Mandal Education Office, and sat on dharna in front of their respective schools at various places in Anantapur and Sri Sathya Sai districts on Wednesday, instead of merging their schools into high schools, in the same buildings in their villages. asked to run. About one kilometer away.
Ironically, the state government has decided to close several primary schools, in which they spent lakhs of rupees under the Mana Badi-Nadu Nedu scheme, to build new classrooms and toilets. Still, they are being let go, said Communist Party of India (Marxist) district secretary V. Rambhupal. “The government has identified 711 government schools for children studying in classes 3 to 5 to be closed and merged with the nearest high school, which will lead to a huge increase in the dropout rate,” he said.
The district already has a low literacy rate of 63.6% compared to the state average of 67.4% and female literacy is still less than 54%. Literacy among scheduled castes is 56.3% and female literacy is only 47.7% among them. This merger will remove girls and boys from schools as many of them at that age can no longer attend schools about 2 km away.
Children were also emotionally sitting in front of their schools at various places in Sri Sathya Sai district as they were being sent to schools mapped for them by teachers and in Thimmasamudram, near Penukonda and in Madakasira Mandal Education Office. Traffic stopped for the time being. School children sat on dharna.