Where have 12.5 lakh students enrolled in Haryana’s private schools gone?

Source: The Times of India

School enrolment numbers for the 2021-22 session in Haryana have set off alarm bells. More than 12 lakh students registered with private schools last year have disappeared from the radar. The sharp plunge showed up in data on the state government’s MIS portal, where all enrolled students are registered. There are just 17.31 lakh students enrolled at private schools this session, according to this data, which was released by the directorate of school education. This is a sheer 42% drop from 29.83 lakh in 2020-21. Enrolments in government schools have, meanwhile, gone up by 8% — from 21.78 lakh in 2020-21 to 23.6 lakh in 2021-22. Last year, around 1.4 lakh students of private schools had shifted to government schools amid a raging fee dispute as the lockdown eroded incomes and the current mode of education became unaffordable for them.

The school education directorate’s report highlights the trend of private school students shifting to government institutions, but no one quite knows how to explain the huge gap of 12 lakh students registered on the portal. A bureaucratic exercise has begun to find out, amid concerns that the pandemic had led to a staggering number of dropouts.

Education department officials and private school associations TOI spoke to pointed to several reasons behind the fall in enrolments — scores of private ‘budget’ schools shutting down, many migrant families returning to their home states and the digital divide that online classes created.
 

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