VOLUNTEERS CHIP IN TO RUN KALAHANDI SCHOOLS
Tuesday, 12 December 2017 | AJIT PANDA | NUAPADA | in Bhubaneswar
The Education Volunteer (EV) concept of the Karrtabya, a NGO, is working well to enhance the attendance of students as well as teachers and quality of education in some primary schools of Thuamul Rampur block in Kalahandi district.
The EVs are local boys trained by the NGO in education pedagogy. They have been allowed by the Government to teach in primary schools. Their presence in schools has forced the Government teachers to come to schools regularly.
"Initially the Government teachers were very much reactive, but support of the administration and later by the concerned villagers created pressure on them to change their attitude," said Khirendra, a volunteer.
"The endeavour has been taken under South Odisha Initiatives under the Odisha Livelihood Mission, funded by the Tata Trust. Through the initiatives, it is sought to intervene in three sectors like health, livelihood and education and improve the scenario," says Santosh Kumar Dash of Karrtabya.
"The school in our village is properly running since last two and a half years after Khirendra came here," say the people of Suksan village under Birikot panchayat. They also add that the assistant teacher of the school is very sincere. "However, the headmistress was very non-cooperative, when Khirendra started teaching the children near a tree but she subsequently she has been cooperating in all matters," they add. How Khirendra made the school run is a very interesting story.
The school had been closed for a long time. Khirendra first motivated the people of Budes village to send there children to the school. As the school remained locked they sat under a tree. It created a ripple at Government level and the Block Education Officer (BEO) finally took steps. He instructed the HM to open the school and provide MDM.
Children of Sukhsan and all other villages also started coming. But the problem was that since the children never attended the school, their learning level was nil, but they used to be promoted to higher classes regularly.
Mansing, Dhananjaya and Dhanesti of Ghumer village are a few such students, who have been promoted to class V, but they sit either in class I or II. They even don't know that they are class V students. Khirendra on his own pursuit taught the children regularly and some of them could achieve learning ability of higher standard.
Mentioning about fake enrollment, Khirendra says that the attendance registers showed the names of 45 children when it started running two years back and it came down to 35, after the classes became regular. "All others were duplicates," says he. By duplicate, Khirendra means those who are reading in other schools but their names are still in this school’s registers.
"There are still some duplicate names. Chuluka Naik is one such child who is reading in Chhatrang Ashram School in class VI, but his name has not been deleted from the register here in last five years. There are five other such names in this school," adds Khirendra.
It is learnt that such a practice is there in most other primary schools of interior pockets of Thuamul Rampur block. In Balangi Primary School of Birikot panchayat, six out of 48 enrolled are not reading here. Most of them are reading in English Medium schools in Bhawanipatna.
"We concentrate on developing quality of education in addition to ensure attendance," says a staff of Karrtabya.
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