Retaining students remains a challenge for government schools

Many children in Karimnagar belong to nomadic communities and schools find it hard to provide quality education as kids drop out
Children at the school in Karimnagar | SATHYA KEERTHI
Children at the school in Karimnagar | SATHYA KEERTHI

KARIMNAGAR/HYDERABAD: Radhika is 13-years-old. She dreams of becoming an engineer. She is also a fifth grader who should be in the eighth grade. However, as a member of the Beda Budaga Jangalu caste, a community of nomadic astrologers who travel across the country, sometimes even as far as Nepal, Radhika has lost many years of schooling.

Every year she finds herself packing her bags to leave with her family to Tamil Nadu or West Bengal. Apart from Telugu, she speaks fluent Bengali and Tamil that she has picked up over time. But the frequent travel has hampered her education. As her astrologer parents are presently in Kolkata, she lives with her two sisters and three brothers in RK colony. All of her siblings have followed their traditional occupation of astrology. None of them have completed their education either.

13-year-old Radhika who is studying class 5
13-year-old Radhika who is studying class 5

“I am now an A+ student, only English is very hard for me to study. Someday I will become an engineer, I want to continue studying,” said Radhika, “My elder sister takes care of me, I miss my parents and think of them everyday. We used to be together and I hope we all will be back together again.”

In 2017, Radhika will miss school again when she leaves to West Bengal to be with her parents. The Mandal Parishad Upper Primary (MPUP) School at Karama Krishna Colony in Karimnagar, where Radhika studies, mainly comprises of children from the nomadic astrologers’ community. The school management community and its headmaster, have actively tried to enrol all children from the community into the school.

“But our greatest problem is retaining them,” said K Ram Chandra Reddy, headmaster at MPUP School. Some of the children are older and when they come back, they have to repeat their classes but as they are older they don’t learn or know anything. If there was a hostel it would have helped but that is beyond our scope, he added.

Ajay, is a shy 12-year-old in the third grade. The teachers pay him special attention as he is still learning alphabets. He has been in and out of school travelling with his astrologer parents to Nepal, every year. Ajay rejoined school in August this year. “I know I am behind in studies,” said Ajay. “I didn’t write anything in the exam paper, but the teachers are giving me special classes. My friends write the normal exam but I just write alphabets, I know the Telugu alphabets though,” he said.

Ajay is the youngest of four children. His oldest brother is with his father in Nepal and does not attend school. He lives with his mother, also an astrologer, but who now works as a daily wage labourer.
“We had to put him in the third grade even though the third grade classes are too advanced for him and we give him special attention,” said Ram Chandra Reddy. He is too old to study with lower classes, the headmaster added.

Digital classrooms initiative
V Geetha is a field officer with Save The Children (STC), an international Non-governmental Organisation (NGO). She has been working closely with the community for nearly three years trying to fill the gaps in the education of the children from the Beda Budaga Jangalu community.
In 2014, STC initiated a pilot programme in coordination with the District Institute of Education and Training (DIET) to set up ‘Digital Class Rooms’ at the school through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funding. The project is aimed at educating the children using digital lessons created by using videos, pictures with voiceover’s recorded by the teachers.
Karimnagar’s DIET has trained 40 teachers from 20 schools in Karimnagar and have set up a dedicated “digital hub”.This is a lab for the trained teachers to record content and customise it for their digital class rooms.

“We have been able to keep the children engaged and the attendance rate has improved a lot after this programme. The children want high quality education and most of them want this class. The government schools have poor facilities but this programme has helped improve general perception of government schools in the locality,” said Geetha. The teachers have been trained to teach environmental sciences using this method as it’s the subject that needs most detailing for the children to learn better, added Geetha.
From November 14, the Telangana State government plans to implement the digital classrooms in more schools in the state. On Radhika, who aspires to be an engineer, Geetha said, “She may never be able to finish her schooling. She will get married off when she turns 18. If she is lucky she will reach Intermediate or finish high school.”

Mid-day meal is a great incentive but children come to school hungry

Most of these children have been left behind by their parents in the care of their grandparents or relatives and by urban, middle class standards not enough attention is paid to them. The headmaster says the mid-day meal scheme has been a huge incentive that has helped draw the students to school. But when a class of 28 fifth graders were asked how many did not have breakfast that morning, as many as 23 raised their hands.
“The children come to school hungry and stay that way till lunch. There are students who faint in the morning during prayer time, so we stock some biscuits for such situations,” said M Uma Kumari, an environmental science teacher with the school. We tell their parents or relatives to feed them before they come to school but the situation remains the same, she added.
“The parents usually take the younger children with them when they travel and the younger ones are left behind as the relatives find the older children easier to manage,” said Uma Kumari.

Rohit said his parents earn a living by working as daily wage labourers while they are in Karimnagar, “They leave early morning and come late. So my brothers and I play till they come back. My father’s brother helps me with my studies sometimes,” said Rohit. He has a 14-year-old sister who works as a maid in Nepal and two younger brothers, both of whom have missed years of schooling and are in classes lower than what is appropriate for their age. No care is given to these children at homes, the parents struggle between feeding them and finding work, says the headmaster.

The school officials had taken effort to set up a hostel for the children, hoping to stop the children from missing school.The Dictrict Education Officer had given them assurance to look into their request. The school officials had even tried to get a hostel erected through CSR funding, both attempts have not yielded any results.

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