Baramulla: Poor infrastructure and partial fencing in the Government High School Najibhat Wagoora in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district is becoming a big hurdle in the enrolment drive started by the department of education recently.
Three classrooms for a government run high school with 64 students on roll is making no sense for the locals here to enrol their wards in the school, said the villagers.
“A good infrastructure attracts students,” said Tariq Ahmad a local resident. “But, here in this school students do not have the space to sit properly and read comfortably which worries every parent whose wards are enrolled in the school,” added Tariq Ahmad.
Struggling with the space, the school administration has made partition of two class rooms by dividing it with the help of cardboard. However, it is extremely difficult for the school authorities to conduct two classes simultaneously as noise emanating from one of the divided portion of the class room disturbs the class proceedings of the other.
The other class room divided into two parts, is used for holding class as well as storing electric batteries meant for ICT lab and other purposes. However, the biggest concern for the students is that if any mishap happens in the battery storage room, it will pose a huge threat to the students.
“In fact the battery storage room and the class room is a single room divided by a cardboard like material. If God forbid any of the battery explodes, it could prove disastrous,” said a local resident, Muhammad Ashraf.
Ironically, there has been no advantage of the well equipped Information and Communication Technology (ITC) lab to the students. As poor mobile network in the school area makes the initiative of e-learning or ‘one stop education portal’ a strange thing for the students.
The parents here are also worried over partial fencing of the school. They said one side of the school ground is without the fence besides there is no main gate and through this space people trespass with their live stock and even use the school ground as passage to their orchards.The school atmosphere sometimes gets disturbed because of it.
Haji Mukhtar Ahmad, a local resident while expressing his displeasure over the poor infrastructure of the school said that this is the only high school in their village. However, the lone high school too is without proper infrastructure.
He said they have been repeatedly voicing their concern over the need to upgrade the infrastructure. However, there has been no effort so far in this direction with the result, most of the parents prefer to enrol their wards in the neighbouring village.
“The school infrastructure once improved, the parents will prefer to send their wards in this school. Otherwise employment drive started recently wont fetch the desired result,” added Haji Mukhtar Ahmad.
The chief education officer Baramulla, Balbeer Singh while commenting on the issue said that a six room building will be soon constructed to overcome the accommodation issue.
“We have decided to construct a six room new building for the high school. The other issues of the school will be resolved soon,” he said.