The State government has asserted that 6.8 lakh students have newly joined public schools in the State from 2017 onwards.
In a statement here on Saturday, Minister for General Education C. Ravindranath said 1.57 lakh students joined government and aided schools in 2017. The next year, the figure shows a total of about 1.96 lakh students.
In 2019-20 and 2020-21, this came to 1.64 lakh and 1.77 lakh, respectively, taking the total in the four years from 2017 to 6.8 lakh.
The statement said that with around 4 lakh students clearing the SSLC examinations each year and nearly 2.5 lakh students taking admission to Class 1 next year, the total strength was not what determined the number of students joining public schools.
Instead, the number of students in a class in excess of the number promoted from the lower grade was the number of new students as per the Statistics wing in the Directorate of General Education.
Assuming a difference of 1.5 lakh students between the total count in Class 1 and Class 10 each year, only an increase in students above 1.5 lakh would be seen as an increase.
The statement claimed that for the first time in 25 years, there was increase in the total number of students by 32,349 in 2018-19. The next two years, this was 27,183 and 50,556, respectively.
The figures for the number of students newly joining schools were also being published by the Director of General Education for each year. This was not the total strength of students but the number of new students.
The statement alleged a deliberate bid to rake up a controversy.
However, the Save Education Committee, in a statement, again alleged a government bid to inflate the number of students in public schools.
As per the latest statistics uploaded on Sametham portal for 2020-21, the total student strength in government and aided schools was 33,77,594.
As compared to the total strength in 2015-16, this was only an increase of 9,862. Compared to 2018-19, it was 50,556 more.
However, these numbers could not show an increase of 6.8 lakh, Save Education Committee said.
