Damauli, August 22 As many as 54 community schools that were operating with negligible number of students have been closed in the past six years in Tanahun. All the schools were primary level schools and they were shut one after another due to low number of students since fiscal 2011-12, clarified District Education Office Tanahun. “Fifty-four community schools operating with less than 10 students were shut,” said section officer Rameshwor Lamichhane. Last year alone, 21 such schools were shut. “Though we launched a campaign to merge schools which enrolled less than 10 students with another schools in the vicinity until last year, we did not resume the campaign this year,” said Lamichhane. Meanwhile, District Education Officer Rudra Hari Bhandari said they were merging schools with less students as per the demand and availability of teachers. Infrastructure was managed accordingly. He said as private and boarding schools were attracting primary level students with various assurances, they dropped had dropped out of public schools of late. However, those public schools have lately started English medium classes besides other lucrative packages to retain them, he said. Meanwhile, the guardians expressed concern that all the primary schools might be shut due to student crunch if this trend continued.