The Prime Minister, Tshering Tobgay, said his government is not imposing closure of underutilised schools. He said it is just a recommendation from the government to boost education quality.
The Education Minister, Mingbo Dukpa agreed that the quality of education in the country is deteriorating.
A policy known as the ‘Rationalisation of Small Unsustainable Schools’, was formulated in 2010. The idea is to provide quality education by closing down some of the underutilised schools.
For example, in a remote setting, a school has just about 10 students and a teacher teaching them all the subjects.
The government, while initiating the policy, has also worked out some alternatives. One is to have about 150 schools to teach students from Pre-Primary to class 10. In this category, the government proposes to provide meals, stationary, clothes and other necessities to the students. The other is to have 20 schools for plus-2 students.
However, if the current policy works well, the government is ready to stick to it and not initiate any change.
Today, there are more than 1,74,000 students studying under 8,500 regular teachers across the country.
