This rural school saw enrolment go up 30 times in five years

Award winning teacher convinces parents to send children to government school

Much before ‘Nadu Nedu’ was conceived, this single-teacher school in a nondescript village registered a quantum jump of over 30 times in enrolment in five years, for which it even got a sanction of three additional teaching positions. Welcome to Mandal Parishat Primary School, Pittigunta, in Kasinayana mandal of Kadapa district, which has set the bar high for other schools to emulate. Staring at a blank future over its very existence in 2016 with just three students, it registered a student strength of 23 in 2017, 62 in 2018, 83 in 2019 and finally breached the three-digit mark to get 103 students in 2020. Poaching became a thing of the past and ‘reverse poaching’ started four years back, leading to ‘en masse migration’ from the private school situated half a kilometre away.