Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation school board budget: Out of Rs 660 cr, Board to spend only Rs 7.78 cr on student development

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Other similar ‘school beautification’ items proposed by board members include podium (Rs 25 lakh), soft board (Rs 15 lakh), health kit (Rs 15 lakh), stationery kit (Rs 15 lakh) and bulletin board (Rs 10 lakh).

With an addition of Rs 14 crore by the AMC school board chairman Pankajsinh Chauhan on Thursday to the proposed budget of Rs 646 crore by Administrative Officer L D Desai, the draft school board budget stands at Rs 660 crore.

In 2014-15, student development fund received a share of 2.44 per cent which was reduced by one percent to 1.49 per cent in 2016-17 and further reduced to 1.2 per cent in 2017-18.

Out of Rs 646 crore, the highest share of the budget i.e. 93.56 per cent or Rs 604.43 crore has been allocated for the maintenance cost (establishment expenses) while 2 per cent or Rs 12.85 crore goes to teachers and 1.2 per cent or Rs 7.78 crore for students. While the number of students in 455 AMC schools is 1.31 lakh against a total of 4,426 teachers, including 153 school heads of upper primary schools, 3931 primary teachers and 342 vidyasahayaks.

Admitting a decline in number of schools and teachers, chairman Pankajsinh Chauhan said, “There has been a preference for private English medium schools. To counter this, we have proposed 5 new English-medium public schools in addition to existing 5 already running across the city.”

These five English medium schools have been proposed as ‘Public Schools’ in five areas – Sabarmati (Sabarmati Public School), Lilanagar, Saijpur, Odhav and Vasana. These are in addition to seven Gujarati and Hindi medium schools to be opened in the financial year 2017-18.