India-Forums.TV

[huma]

NAGPUR: What is your idea of a classroom in a school? If you are thinking 50 students listening to a teacher in a huge classroom, think again.

Mahatma Phule Prathmik Shala at Vijay Nagar is something different. Here, 60 students pack into a small 10x10 foot room and struggle to listen to the teacher.

The school has four rooms like this one and students literally fight with each other to get a seat. Their agony doesn’t stop here. The school lacks basic facilities like drinking water, toilets, power connection, and furniture. To run classes from I to IV standard, the school management reportedly divided one class room into two by constructing a two feet wall down the middle. “Running two classes in a single room creates confusion among the students as two different subjects are taught simultaneously,” admitted a teacher requesting anonymity.

The school runs in two shifts, one from 7 am to 12 noon and another from 12.30 pm to 5 pm. In morning shift, class I to IV are held with around 320 students (all residents of Vijay Nagar and Laxmi Nagar slums). In afternoon, around 60 students in Class V to VII attend the school.“The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan schemes may have improved the funding and infrastructure for government schools but schools such as the one in Vijay Nagar continue to be neglected,” said Razabhai Pathan, a social activist in the area. Moreover, the education department had also failed to check whether private unaided schools were providing all basic facilities.

This could be gauged with the example of this school. Students also complained that the nearby slum dwellers used the huge open space adjoining the school as toilets.