158 schools in Karnataka have no students

GULBARGA: It is strange but true. For the 158 schools in Karnataka which have not seen a single student enrolment, there are 196 teachers and 261 classrooms.The records available with Express reveal this shocking state. The Education Department sought information from the offices of Deputy Directors of Public Instructions (DDPI) about schools having 10 or less number of students. All the DDPIs sent the details to the Education Department in the last week of September.As per the details sent by the Deputy Directors of Public Instructions, there are 158 schools in the state where there are no student enrolment. These schools have 261 classrooms and a combined working teachers’ strength of 196.Tumkur has the highest number of schools with no student enrolment - 44 schools having 77 classrooms and 38 teachers.Davangere comes next with 33 schools having 31 classrooms and 40 teachers, followed by Chikmagalore with 23 schools having 43 classrooms and 27 teachers.The other districts in the list are: Ramanagar (18 schools with 23 teachers), Mysore (10 schools with 15 teachers) Chamarajnagar (9 schools with 16 teachers), Chitradurga (6 schools with 10 teachers), Bangalore-North (5 schools having 8 teachers), Dakshina-Kannada (2 schools with 1 teacher), Bangalore-Rural (2 schools with 4 teachers) and Udupi (1 school with 1 teacher).Uttara Kannada has one school with three  classrooms and two teachers. Kodagu has one single-classroom school without enrolment for which a teacher is posted. The 14 other districts have no schools without student enrolment.Strangely, a seven-classroom school in Yellamapalli village of Chikballapur, where there was no student enrolment, there were nine teachers. In GHPS Boys School in Chamrajnagar, where there were no students, four teachers have been posted.As per a rough estimates, the state is spending more than `1 crore every year towards the salaries of the teachers in the schools where there were no students.When contacted, Commissioner of Department of Public Instruction Tushar Giri Nath told Express, “These schools would be brought under the category of schools with less than five students. They will be merged with schools within a radius of 1 km.”