The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation schools have doubled their budget to over Rs 1 lakh for each student, rivalling the fees charged by several private schools in the area. This has happened in the last 10 years, from 2012-2013. Last year alone, the BMC had spent almost Rs 85,000 on each child. However, the actual budget expenditure is lower than the estimate every year.
As per the ‘State of Municipal Education in Mumbai, 2022’ report published by the Praja Foundation, there was a 6 per cent increase in admissions in the BMC-run schools in the last three years. It showed that the admissions have improved by over 18,000 enrollment in the last four years. This was especially the case during the two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Even with this increased budget, the quality of education has not improved much. In fact, it is seen that the increase in education is seen in high classes, that is from grades 8 to 10. It showed that students only moved to BMC-run schools after their families suffered financial loss during the pandemic. The growth at entry-level education is still marginal.
According to Hindustan Times, the head dialogue programme of the Praja foundation, Yogesh Mishra said, “During the pandemic, health was one of the major concerns, however, no health check-ups were done for BMC students in 2020-21. Moreover, not all students were examined for health issues; in 2015-16, 49 per cent (1,89,809) students were examined out of the total 3,83,485. And in 2021-22, only 26 per cent of students were examined.”
Now that people are coping with the financial loss that happened during the pandemic, the foundation has mentioned that they expect BMC-run schools to see a drop in admissions. Only about 40 per cent of students who enrolled in grade I in 2012-13 have continued their education up to grade 10 in 2021-22. This shows a clear need for improvement in the standards of BMC-run school’s educations. It was also noted that the BMC did not utilize almost one-fourth of its education budget in the last 10 years.
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