RTI reveals two-thirds of Delhi government schools do not teach science in classes 11-12.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in its 2015 Delhi Assembly election manifesto promised to build 500 new schools in the city and opened just 63 new schools between February 2015 and May 2022, according to the RTI.

The Education Department of the Delhi government gave the information in response to an application filed under the Right To Information (RTI) Act on behalf of PTI.

The RTI sought information on the number of Delhi government schools teaching science and commerce subjects in classes 11 and 12 as well as the number of new schools opened by the government between February 2015 and May 2022 in the city.

While the information related to 326 schools was obtained through the RTI application, the data of other schools was collected from the website of the Directorate of Education.

A total of 838 higher secondary schools have data available, out of which only 279 schools teach science subjects and 674 schools offer commerce subjects to students of classes 11 and 12.

That is, about 66 percent of the government schools in the city do not teach science subjects while about 19 percent do not teach commerce subjects in the two classes.

According to the reply, the condition of schools in the central district in the national capital is the worst, with only four of the 31 higher secondary schools teaching science and 10 schools teaching commerce subjects.

A Public Interest Litigation was filed in the Delhi High Court in 2017 over the non-availability of science and commerce subjects in Delhi government schools, which said that the allocation of subjects of science and commerce has been done in an “unequal manner”, which cannot be justified and it is unfair to the students of the area.

Advocate Yusuf Naki, who filed the petition, said, “On my petition, the Delhi High Court had issued notice to the Delhi government, in response to which the government had filed an affidavit, saying that it would start teaching science and commerce subjects in about 50 schools. Thereafter, the court disposed of the petition.” According to Naki, the government had then said in its reply that science subjects were taught in 291 government schools.