The Uttar Pradesh government’s recent decision to merge government schools with low enrolment has drawn flak from the opposition. Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra attacked the BJP government in the state, saying school mergers will make it difficult for children from poor and marginalised sections, particularly girls, to access education.The move has prompted protests from teachers and parents in the state. Since then, the Allahabad High Court has either dismissed petitions against the move or upheld the government decision. Here is what to know.In June, the UP Basic Education Department asked district-level officials to prepare a database of schools with low enrolment, along with mapping the nearest school where better infrastructure and resources are available, with the intention of ‘pairing’ the two schools. Officials have been mapping schools with enrolment below 50.The state’s reasoning was the better utilisation of resources and teachers. The infrastructure that remains after the merger will be used to set up Balvatikas, or pre-primary classes.School mergers, seen as contentious, have been carried out in the past in UP and other states. A NITI Aayog project launched in 2017 in Odisha, MP and Jharkhand sought to introduce reforms in school education in these states. As part of the project, 4,600 schools with low enrolment were merged in Jharkhand, around 36,000 schools were reorganised into 16,000 schools in MP, and 1,800 schools were reorganised in Odisha.Also Read | Dhan-Dhaanya Krishi Yojana, the new scheme to develop 100 agri districts across the countryWith the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 calling for the setup of school complexes or clusters and sharing resources for their effective utilisation, states have been merging schools with low enrolment in recent years.Over the past two years, the Education Ministry has also alerted the states about the declining enrolment at the primary and upper-primary levels in government schools.Story continues below this adConsequently, the number of government schools has fallen across several states/UTs. In UP, for instance, data from the Unified District Information System for Education portal UDISE+ shows that the number of government schools fell from 1.63 lakh in 2018-19 to 1.37 lakh in 2023-24. Over this period, the state also saw a rise in private schools from 87,433 to 96,635. Similarly, in MP, government schools fell from 1.22 lakh to 92,439 over this period, while Odisha saw a drop from 55,483 to 48,671.Why were the government schools set up?Previous national policies and schemes on education have focused on ensuring universal elementary education (up to class 8). These have drawn on a mention of providing free and compulsory education to all children up to the age of 14 in the Directive Principles of the Constitution, and then Article 21A of the Constitution, which inserted this as a fundamental right in 2002.The 1986 National Policy on Education said that it gives “unqualified priority to universalization of elementary education”. The Centre’s Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) was launched in 2000-01 with this aim, and SSA funds were used to set up elementary schools. Nearly a decade later, the Right to Education Act (RTE) of 2009 guaranteed the right of 6- to 14-year-old children (class 1 to 8) to free and compulsory education in a ‘neighbourhood’ school.The RTE Act specifies that the appropriate government shall establish a school within the limits of each neighbourhood within three years of the Act’s commencement. Subsequently, the RTE rules framed by the Centre in 2010, to implement the Act, specified the limits of a neighbourhood within which schools are to be set up – for classes 1 to 5, a school was to be established within 1 km of the neighbourhood, and for classes 6 to 8, a school was to be established within 3 km of the neighbourhood.Story continues below this adIn turn, when the states framed their RTE rules, they reiterated this and added specifications in some cases. The RTE rules for UP, for instance, say that for classes 1 to 5, a school shall be established within 1 km of a habitation which has a population of at least 300. For classes 6 to 8, this was a population of at least 800.In guidelines issued in 2011, the Centre said that the rationale behind establishing neighbourhood schools was to ensure universal access to elementary education, which requires schooling facilities within reasonable reach of all children. If schools are not located in or near the neighbourhood, children may not complete schooling even if they are formally enrolled in school, the Centre had reasoned.The need for ‘neighbourhood’ schools was noted by the Kothari Commission in its 1968 report. The Centre set up a commission headed by scientist and former University Grants Commission chairman, DS Kothari, that looked into all aspects of education from 1964 to 1966. Observing that only 85% students transferred from class 4 to 5, the report identified the non-availability of higher primary schools in the neighbourhood as one of the reasons for drop-out at this stage.The ‘neighbourhood’ school was also meant to serve another purpose. The commission noted that the neighbourhood school plan should be adopted as a step towards eliminating the segregation that now takes place “between the schools for the poor and the underprivileged classes, and those for the rich and privileged ones.”Story continues below this ad“The neighbourhood school concept implies that each school should be attended by all children in the neighbourhood irrespective of caste, creed, community, religion, economic condition or social status, so that there would be no segregation in schools,” the commission said.What has changed in the years since?The focus on elementary school enrolment, with the RTE Act and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, meant that several primary and upper primary schools have been set up with the aim of universal enrolment at that level.NEP 2020, however, also points to a resultant problem. While these efforts have “helped to ensure near-universal access to primary schools, it has also led to the development of numerous very small schools,” it says.Also Read | How AI may be behind drop in student visas issued by Canada to IndiansIt referred to UDISE 2016-17 data, which showed that 28% of government primary schools and 14.8% of upper primary schools have less than 30 students. In 2023-24, UDISE+ data showed that 12,954 schools had zero enrolment, while 1,10,971 schools had only a single teacher. In 2016-17, a lower number of 1,08,017 schools had a single teacher.Story continues below this ad“These small school sizes have rendered it economically suboptimal and operationally complex to run good schools, in terms of deployment of teachers as well as the provision of critical physical resources. Teachers often teach multiple grades at a time, and teach multiple subjects, including subjects in which they may have no prior background; key areas such as music, arts, and sports are too often simply not taught; and physical resources, such as lab and sports equipment and library books, are simply not available across schools,” the NEP states.Pointing out that the “isolation” of small schools affects education, the NEP called for states/UTs to address these challenges by 2025 by grouping or rationalising schools, along with setting up school complexes or clusters to share resources. The concept of a ‘school complex’ was also part of the Kothari Commission Report of 1968.Why is the merger of schools contentious?Teachers’ groups, politicians in the Opposition, and petitions in the Allahabad HC have opposed the mergers, saying students would have to go longer distances to get to school if the neighbourhood one is merged with another, making access more difficult, particularly for girls, and increasing the likelihood of drop-outs.A petition in the HC by parents of students in UP’s Sitapur refers to the merger as a violation of the UP RTE Rules, which state that schools shall be within a distance of 1 km for children in classes 1-5. The HC dismissed the petition after pointing out that a literal interpretation of the Rules would result in absurdity since there are limitations on land and resources.Story continues below this adElementary school enrolment, meanwhile, is not yet universal. UDISE+ 2023-24 shows that the gross enrolment ratio (GER — enrolment at a level of education compared to the population of the age-group which is appropriate for that level of education), at the elementary level (classes 1 to 8) is 91.7%.