New Delhi: About 126 districts have been identified in the country where schools have recorded less than 60 per cent retention rate in 2011-12 academic season,
Government said on Wednesday.
"The Department of School Education and Literacy has
identified 126 districts with retention rate below 60 per cent
(in schools) for the year 2011-12 under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan
(SSA)," Minister of State for Human Resource Development D
Purandeswari said in a written reply to Lok Sabha.
Such districts, also known as Special Focus Districts,
are identified on the basis of massive classroom gap, number
of school drop-outs, huge gender gap and low retention rate,
the Minister noted.
Districts with more than 25 per cent Schedule Caste and
Schedule Tribe population or those affected by Left Wing
extremism and border area districts are also treated as
Special Focus Districts, Purandeswari said.
Replying to another question, the Minister said that out
of the total 13,622,86 schools, only 158866 are English medium
institutions compared to 7,19,387 where Hindi is the medium of
education. There are 4,84,033 other language schools in the
country, she added.
She also informed that the government has launched a
scheme to set up 6,000 model schools, with objective to have
at least one good quality senior secondary school in every
block of the country.
"Of them, 3,500 schools are to be set up in educationally
backward blocks in Kendriya Vidyalaya (KV) template through
state/UT governments," Purandeswari added.
PTI
