Theeducation departmenthas decided to merge schools having less than five students in the hills and less than 10 in the plains with the nearest larger ones across the state from the 2023-24 academic session to better utilise Resources and resolvestaff crunch.
Officials said block Education officers in every district have been tasked with identifying such primary and high schools and a final list will be compiled by January 2023. While the exact number of such schools was yet to be determined, the officials said, adding the figure could be around 3,000. According to theRTE rules, a primary school should exist at every km, a middle school every 3 km, high school every 5 km and intermediate at every 7 km.
Uttarakhand has around 16,500 schools, where over 11.5 lakh students are enrolled. The student teacher ratio is 16:1 that officials said they were working to improve.