Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) in its budget this year has proposed to revive 35 schools under Public-Private Partnership (PPP), and get them affiliated to central and international boards. These schools were shut down last year as they did not even get a single student. The scheme will be implemented under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds.
The BMC on Friday presented its budget where it has allocated Rs 2,569.23 crore for civic education, which is Rs 257 crore more than the Rs 2,311.66 crore allocated last year. Another highlight of the budget is the provision of Rs 5 crore for installing 4,064 CCTV cameras in 381 civic schools to improve security of students.
Shubhada Gudekar from the BMC education committee said, “Nowadays, even a domestic servant dreams of sending his/her child to an English medium school. Hence, as per parents’ requirements, we have put more focus on English medium schools.”
For the academic year 2018-19, the civic body has proposed 649 bi-lingual schools, considering the demand for English language schools. Through these schools, children will get familiar with both English and their mother tongue. Also, from the next academic year onward, BMC school children will be able to play football through the “Road to Germany” programme that will acknowledge the football curriculum of Germany.
Three-hundred-and-eighty-one sanitary napkin vending machines will be added to the existing 172 machines in 345 school buildings for girl students from class 6 to 8. A budgetary provision of Rs 2 crore and 50 lakh has been made for the same. The civic body has also allocated Rs 27.38 crore for nutritive supplementary meals to be provided along with the existing mid-day meals.
Mahesh Palkar, education officer of the BMC education department, said that the focus of the upcoming academic year was implementation of all ongoing and past projects. “We are satisfied with the budget as we aim to focus more on implementing all the projects,” he said.
