People are willing to pay bribes to get their children admitted in Delhi”s government schools as the quality of education offered there has improved, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said on Wednesday.

Speaking at the ‘excellence in education awards’ ceremony at the Thyagaraj Stadium here, Sisodia said the Delhi government schools were “continuously outperforming” the city’s private schools in academics.

“There was a time when people used to look down upon the quality of education provided in government schools. But today, I can proudly say that parents are trying many ways including bribery in order to get their kids admitted in our schools,” Sisodia said.

“In a recent report issued by NITI Aayog, Delhi is ranked at the top in the field of education under the UT category. This is a moment of pride for our team as our efforts have finally paid off,” he added.

Five-six years ago, a topper from a Delhi government school would score around 80 percent marks in the board examinations but now that figure has jumped to more than 90 percent, the deputy chief minister said.

“The highest score of 96.2 percent marks was awarded by the CBSE board to one of our students. Government schools are continuously outperforming even private schools of Delhi,” he said.

Asserting that the AAP government’s mission is not to compete against private schools but to strive towards raising their own bar every day, Sisodia said, “Our focus is to shape a bright future for the 40 lakh students of Delhi hailing from both government and private schools”.

“We are continuously working to not just provide an excellent education to only a small fraction of these students, that is, a mere 5-10 percent of them, but we want to improve the quality of education for the rest 90 percent of the students who are exposed to only average and unsatisfactory levels of education. This is our ultimate goal and I am happy to see that we have achieved it to a major extent,” he said.

Awards and cash prize of Rs 50,000 each were given to Delhi government schools which recorded outstanding results.

Source: PTI