No school will be closed in Uttar Pradesh: Yogi
He announced that the schools that remain after pairing will be running Bal Vatika and pre-primary classes for children between three and six years, in which LKG, UKG and nursery will be taught.
Along with this, a special package of ₹100 crore has been approved for the CM Nutrition Mission here, so that a special diet can be given to children suffering from malnutrition and anaemia. 'I want to make it clear that the state government is not going to close any school,' the chief minister said.
Adityanath made the point after leader of Opposition Mata Prasad Pandey mentioned in the House: 'The UP government has reduced education instead of expanding it.'' Yogi said Pandey should not have said so and asked him to visit Atal Residential Schools.
'In your time, the liquor mafia used to decide how the nutrition should be done, we stopped that. You had no vision and no time, because your own children study abroad,' said Yogi Adityanath.
'Schools are not being closed, but they are being paired within 1-km distance to improve facilities,' he said.
They are being merged into a large and well-equipped campus so that the student-teacher ratio can be maintained at 22:1 and the quality of education can be improved, he said. Pandey had alleged that the UP govt merged 29,000 schools and closed 10,000 of them. 'When we run PDA Pathshala, you get angry, after all, where will these children study?' he said.
The CM said, 'Before 2017, the condition of 1.56 lakh basic and affiliated schools in the state was very bad. The teacher-student ratio was imbalanced and school dropout rate was highest in the country.'' He said under the School Chalo Abhiyan and Operation Kayakalp, which started in July 2017, a call for change was made, and the picture seems to have changed as a result of that.
'Children under CM Poshan Mission will get a nutritious diet of millet from the produce of farmers. You are worried that if kids become healthy, you will not be able to exploit them,' he said. Adityanath said since 2017, dropout rate has decreased drastically, and 40 lakh additional kids are connected to schools.
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