The Himachal Pradesh Education Department has adopted cluster school system for optimum utilisation of manpower and infrastructure to achieve the goal of quality education and notified 1023 clusters with enrolment of 4, 97,631.

Key Points:

• Based on area and accessibility, cluster schools (middle, senior secondary and high) notified by the Higher Education Department included 1,878 Government Senior Secondary School (GSSS), 931 Government High Schools (GHS) and 1895 Government Middle Schools.
• The maximum number of 182 clusters has been notified in Shimla followed by 161 in Mandi, 134 in Kangra, 121 in Chamba, 109 in Sirmaur, 84 in Solan, 63 in Hamirpur, 58 in Kullu, 42 in Bilaspur, 37 in Una, 23 in Kinnaur and 21 in Lahaul and Spiti.
• The initiative, a component of New Education Policy (NEP), 2020 would go a long way in sharing facilities of all the schools in a cluster as all standalone schools do not have 100 per cent facilities in respect to sports, playgrounds, auditoriums, laboratories and human resource.
• It would be very useful for children in rural areas as the facilities not available in small size standalone schools would be accessible in cluster schools and it would also help in providing more exposure to the students, encourage health competition and provide equal opportunities to all.
• The cluster system would help in decentralized planning and decision making at the cluster level, availability and sharing of physical and human resources within the cluster and there would be no isolation of schools.
• It would also ensure integration of art, sport, story-telling and information and communication technology in the teaching-learning process, availability of counselors and implementation of vocational education in all schools.