The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Over 300 bridge schools in slums

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 12, 2005

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Over 300 bridge schools in slums

Staff Reporter

Plan to reduce school-habitation distance

HYDERABAD: The district administration is to set up 300 to 400 bridge schools to be located in slums from the current academic year to accommodate about 10,000 children being brought back into the education fold.

"Our objective is to have a school in every slum. Though the Centre's guidelines are to establish a school within one km of children's houses, we want to reduce the distance further because in cities even that distance could be a hurdle for parents to sending their wards," said Madhusudan, Additional Project Coordinator, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan - programme for universalisation of primary education.

Talking to newsmen on the concluding day of the Badi Bata (enrolment) programme of Hyderabad district at the Government High School in Musheerabad here on Saturday, he said there were about 100 schools in the 796 notified slums in the district while there were 300 more non-notified slums which needed to be covered.

He said many parents living in the slums were reluctant to send their children to schools if it meant crossing a single busy road. Hence the enrolment was low even if the schools were located within 1 km radius. The proposed bridge schools could be either residential or non-residential and some of them could also serve as alternative schools.

It was estimated that there were about 34,000 children out of school but among them 14,000 were already in residential or non-residential bridge schools. As part of the Badi Bata, 24 teams went house to house for identifying the children outside the education fold.

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