Schools in Pune need better infrastructure: Vikas Deshmukh

Although the level of teaching in various schools in Pune district is commendable, the schools themselves are lacking both in infrastructure and facilities. This was told to DNA by district collector Vikas Deshmukh in Pune.

He was speaking after the three-day students' audit, conducted in 6,000-odd schools in the district, was completed last week. This mammoth exercise was undertaken across the state by the government to ascertain the real number of students, as against the students' strength shown by the schools as of August 1.

The discovery of schools cooking up student strength in order to avail government grants had made the state government undertake this exercise. In Pune district, more than 1 lakh students were found to be 'absent' during the audit.

During the course of the three-day exercise, Deshmukh had personally travelled across the length and breadth of the district and visited various schools to personally supervise the process of students' audit.

Speaking about his experience Deshmukh said, "In many of the schools in the remote areas, I found the school infrastructure in terms of space and building to be far from satisfactory."
In particular he cited the examples of the ashramshalas (residential schools for tribals) where saw students using the classrooms as their sleeping quarters as well.

"When I visited these schools, I saw luggage of students in the classrooms and the teachers told me about the paucity of space they are facing," he said.

Also, in some of the schools visited by him, the school building was of inferior quality. Deshmukh also cited the case of mid-day meal at times not being served to the non-tribal students in some of the schools. "The teachers told me the grant for mid-day meals was exclusively for tribal students. So in many cases non-tribal students were excluded," he said.

Deshmukh directed the teachers to serve mid-day meals to everyone by using the funds allocated for the same. Also, he has promised to look into the question of paucity of space soon.
However, Deshmukh had words of praise for the quality of teaching in most of the schools. "The students were well-educated about most of the subjects, which is a good thing," he said.

During the audit, Pune district was found to have more than 14 lakh students in various schools.