With a strong perseverance, the Vijayapura Zilla Panchayat has helped weed out dual admissions in government primary and high schools in the district, which has saved Rs. 30 crore to the government.
Umesh Kolkur, panchayat president, who is the man behind the efforts, decided to curb the illegal practice when he came to know about it.
Speaking to The Hindu , Mr. Kolkur said that during one of his inspection-rounds of schools, the authorities noticed that many students who had taken admission in government schools were actually studying in private English-medium schools.
“A study revealed that their parents got them illegally admitted in two schools using forged documents to get rural quota for their children, as those studying in government schools in rural areas get benefits,” he said.
To remove all such false admissions, a campaign was launched in August last year by involving 700 officials of the Education Department.
“In less than three months, once the entire process was completed, the Public Instruction Department here identified 32,000 dual admissions in schools between classes one and eight,” he said.
Mr. Kolkur said that they also identified 265 teachers who were in excess to the number of students prescribed for each school.
S.S. Biradar, Deputy Director of Public Instruction Department, who also took part in the process, said that dual admissions were also giving an inflated figure of the number of school dropouts in the district. “These 32,000 students are already studying in private schools. But since they do not attend classes in government schools, we used to include them in the list of dropouts,” Mr. Biradar said.
Loss to government
He said that the government spends money on each student for textbooks, uniforms and other things, because of which dual admissions have caused losses. “The government supplies material based on the number of students. Since dual admission gives a false picture, the government is spending money on students who ‘do not exist’ at all,” he said.
According to him, if a similar drive is launched in all districts in the State, then the government can save at least Rs. 500 crore every year.
To a question, Mr. Kolkur and Mr. Biradar said that effective guidelines such as directing the headmasters to keep a record of students in their schools could avoid dual admission. “If a student remains absent for five days, then the headmaster should find out the reason, and if such student is found to have take admission in another school, then his name can be removed from the government school,” he said.
