while goas changing sociological and cultural scenario are keeping the education system in constantimprovization mode the resultant changes have thrown up new challenges as well as dilemmas for schools students and parentsofficial sources say that the state is feeling the heat as the number of students in governmentrun schools have been dwindling since the last decade to keep up with facilities offered by private institutes therefore there is no alternative but to improve they addso in the year 2005 the central governments sarva shiksha abhiyan programme for an improvement in elementary education was introduced in goa the state also signed a memorandum of understanding mou with the bharatiya jain sangathana to survey and weigh the positives and negatives of the education system and draw a road map for school education in goafurther the directorate of education doe collaborated with the goa state infrastructure development corporation gsidc to design interactionfriendly classrooms and computer activity rooms for 56 government schools in the first phase and the council of boards of secondary education cbse introduced a pilot project that will introduce continuous and comprehensive internal evaluation from the year 200910finally several private organisations ventured into education while sethu launched a programme in rural schools to introduce methods to make learning maths easy nirmala institute of education introduced a pilot project in a merces school to provide every child with a laptopeducationists say the pressure is mounting because parents in cities have been queuing up for admissions in private schools while their counterparts in rural goa prefer to send their children to governmentaided schools in citiesin fact a 200708 survey by the national university for educational planning and administration nuepa found that while in other states the highest number of enrolments were in government schools in goa 6411 of students at the primary and middleschool levelsthe highest such percentage in the countrysought enrolment in schools run by private managements and aided by the state government moreover while enrolment in government schools last year was 3493 enrolment in private unaided managements was only 096 these findings pushed the doe to bring out a circular last month asking schools to give preference to students residing within 10km of their locationmeanwhile the parental preference of schools has changed several other equations ramesh gauns a teacher activist and part of the ssa says there is economic development so parents from rural areas want their children to be admitted in city schools while parents in cities eye elite schools the schools that children study in are today viewed as a status symbol parents think that schools that charge more money for admissions are better they also have the money to payhowever he adds this has also led to middle class students studying in elite city schools trying to imitate the culture of students coming from the higher stratas of society who study with them and students from rural areas who study in city schools trying to adopt a city cultureaccording to gauns over the last few years development has