It’s always been the long cherished wish of all parents to provide best possible education to their children. However, many of them aren’t able to do so due to financial constraints or non-availability of quality schools in their areas.

There is good news for such parents.

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The Himachal Pradesh government has decided to open model schools in each assembly constituency of the state that will be equipped with state of the art infrastructural and teaching facilities.

The model schools are being opened in all parts of the state to enhance learning levels of students and bring in qualitative changes.

The step would also address the issue of migration of students and their families to towns and cities to provide better education to their wards in private schools.

The state Higher Education department has notified 136 schools (2 each in 68 assembly constituencies of the state) and the process to develop them as model schools has been started.

“We have invited suggestions and proposals from the heads of these schools for developing facilities for the students to bring in qualitative changes,” B L Vinta, Director, Higher Education told The Statesman.

Vinta said each school would be provided with funds worth Rs. 42 lakh for setting up computer labs, smart classrooms, modern libraries and developing sports infrastructure.

The medium of instruction in the model schools would be changed from Hindi to English to make them compete with private schools and adequate strength of teachers would also be ensured.

In these schools, the government aims to provide students with congenial atmosphere for proper growth. Further, the strength of students in a particular class will be limited to 50 to ensure that teacher is able to pay more attention to weak students in a class.

The government’s decision is inspired by the success of existing model schools in Shimla wherein significant improvement has been noticed in the learning levels of students.

It is worthwhile to mention here that the enrolment rate in government schools has dropped to 55 percent in 2015-16 from 89 percent in 2003-04. Whereas the enrolment rate in private schools has increased to 45 percent from mere 11 percent in the same period.

Himachal Pradesh has a total student strength of 14,44,260 students both at the elementary level and senior secondary level. There were 18,039 schools in state in 2015-16 of which about 85 percent (15, 327) schools were government institutions and the remaining 2712 schools were private institutions.