Nestled amid towing pine trees in Sangrarwani’s Chaichi Mohalla in Pulwama district is a school for around 80 students of six classes which has just two rooms for teaching them.
Consequently, in this Government Primary School educationfor the students belonging to the disadvantaged Gujjar community obviouslysuffers a huge deal.
“More than 80 children from kindergarten to fifthstandard are crammed into two classrooms owing to which their education badlysuffers,” said Mohammad Hussain, a local resident and member of VillageCommittee(VC).
Hussain said that they brought the matter to the notice ofconcerned authorities umpteen times but to no avail.
“From last more than two years, we have been visitingthe authorities at both zonal as well as district level but barring a fewassurances nothing has been done so far,” Hussain said.
The school was established in 2009 and enrollment ofstudents swiftly went up over the first two to three years.
“But both the space and strength of teachers remained thesame. The school has just three teachers to teach more than 80 students”Hussaid added.
Mohammad Iqbal, another local resident said that there wasalso a threat of soil erosion from the rear side of the school building and authoritieswere many times requested to construct a bund, but that too has not happenedendagering safety of the children.
“There is also a single toilet for both the male and femalestudents,” Iqbal complained.
Another resident said the students belonged to economicallyweaker section of society and they could hardly afford to send their childrento nearby private institutions.
Aqib Yaqoob, a student of standard five told Greater Kashmirthat the school children sometimes attended their classes under the openskies.
Another student complained that multiple grades weresqueezed into a single classroom which made it impossible for the children toconcentrate on learning.
“There is always a mess in our classroom. Some trylearning lessons aloud, some do maths, while some disc uss general knowledge atthe same time.”
Chief Education Officer Pulwama, Nasim Ul Gani told GreaterKashmir that the construction of two additional rooms had been kept in the nextyear’s plan.
“Meantime we will make some temporary arrangement forthe students,” Gani said.