Mangaluru: A total of 90 schools, both primary and secondary, across the district received zero admissions in the last five academic years in Dakshina Kannada. Among them, the majority are aided, followed by unaided, and only 18 of them are govt schools, data revealed.Those schools unable to get admission even after three years of recording zero admissions have decided to shut down permanently. This academic year alone, to date, 20 schools have been recorded with zero admissions. Among them, eight are govt schools, two are unaided, and the rest are aided.GS Shashidhar, DDPI, Dakshina Kannada, said, “After a school receives zero admissions, we have a waiting period of three years. Even after that, if it fails to get admissions, it is considered closed,” he said.On the govt’s plan for the merger of schools that have poor admissions, Shashidhar said that they have not received any direction from the govt.As per the data, several lower primary schools in Sullia, Moodbidri, and Puttur have recorded zero admissions, while Mangaluru South, Bantwal, and Mangaluru North BEO limits account for the highest number of zero-enrollment aided schools.The officials added that aided schools are the worst hit as they do not receive any funding from the govt. The managements are not interested in running the Kannada medium schools as it is not profitable, and they look to change to English medium or CBSE. “In the case of unaided schools, it is mostly due to management, legal, and financial issues that they decide to shut down,” the official said.
