The Delhi government is set to convert its existing Girls’ and Boys’ Schools into co-ed ones and evening shift schools into general schools. The examination branch of the Directorate of Education (DoE) has instructed the officials to come up with detailed plans to implement the measures by July 2020.
This is to address the “decline in results of Class-X in its schools and increase enrollment”, a circular issued by the Education Department on Monday said. The government is likely to begin the process from the next academic session in schools which already hosts sufficient infrastructure for the planned conversion.
The move comes after the DoE analysed the Board exam results of the last several years of all its schools and found that the co-ed and general Shift schools had been consistently performing better. In a circular issued on Monday, Additional Director, Saroj Sain said a detailed analysis of results has shown that it can be improved with general shift schools, optimum enrollment, better pupil-teacher ratio and Delhi government’s “Mission Buniyaad” scheme, among others.
Binay Bushan, Director of DoE, said the government has been trying to increase the infrastructure, in terms of classrooms, in the existing schools to make them ready to become single shift and co-ed schools.
In Delhi, there are 401 Government Boys’ Schools and 421 Girls’ schools and only 173 co-ed schools. Some of these schools run double shifts – for girls in the morning and boys in the evening.
A senior DoE official, however, said that it will be a challenge for the department to encourage more parents to send their children to co-ed schools. “We will have to sensitise parents in overcoming their hesitation towards sending their children to co-ed schools. We will also have to sensitise the students who will be studying with the opposite sex for the first time, in order to avoid any untoward incident. Some principals are also apprehensive about the plan saying that some parents can stop sending their girls to schools if they will have to study with the boys,” said the official, who did not wished to be identified.
The prime reason behind Boys’ schools not performing as well as Girls’ schools is that most of them are running in the evening shifts, he said. “The evening shift schools are facing lots of challenges. There is a shortage of teachers in evening shift schools, especially those located in the outer areas of the city. The situation leads to poor learning outcome in many of these schools,” he explained.
The Principal of a Boys’ Senior Secondary School in Rohini said the move will help their students perform better and engage in co-curricular activities too. “Their shift does not allow them to even stay back in schools after classes,” he said.