Education department officials said that the concentration of schools in one area and inclination of parents towards aided schools were top factors for the poor enrolment.
Regional director of education (Pune) Rajendra Ahire said, “If the U-DISE shows zero enrolment against schools, the state performance in the overall rankings goes down. For the past two years, it has been noticed that these schools are struggling to get enrolments. The schools are merely buildings without students yet very much there on official records. Hence, they have been told to shut down and withdraw their registration from U-DISE.”
The schools are spread in the city and rural regions including Daund, Pimpri, Akurdi, Aundh, Haveli, Mulshi, Hadapsar, Velhe and other areas.
Most schools were run on a self-financed basis and are private, unaided schools. The records of 2022-23 and 2023-24 academic years were considered before shortlisting the schools based on poor enrolment, Ahire added.
He said, “In the case of government-aided schools, the staff of such schools is usually deployed in other schools where there is a need. However, in the case of private schools, the decision is up to the management on how the staff could be utilised or shifted.”
Ahire added, “The fear of COVID infection also led to inter and intra-state migrations which resulted in many students dropping out of the system.”
India’s goal of universal schools enrolment by 2030 may have hit a stumbling block, with a steady decline in enrolment resulting in 3.3 million fewer children in school in 2019-20 than a decade before that, a TOI report in 2021 said.