Southern States - Karnataka

Villagers bring errant teachers back to school

By Our Staff Correspondent

GULBARGA June 28. In a rare exhibition of unity and resilience, the people of a tiny village, Tarnalli, near the industrial township of Shahabad, have shown how to mend the ways of errant teachers of a government primary school in their village and make them to attend classes regularly. Most of the families in the village either work in agriculture fields or in stone quarries in Shahabad.

The primary school in Tarnalli seldom operated regularly and functioned as per the whims and fancy of the three teachers working there. One of the two anganwadi kendras established in the village is also not functioning.

A junior resource person in a voluntary organisation, Mahila Samukya, Rasheeda Sheikh, who is involved in implementing literacy programmes and also those to bring down the dropout rate in schools, discovered the malady in Tarnalli during her chance visit to the village.According to Ms. Sheikh, the dropout rate in the school was one of the highest in the region, as the school remained closed most of the days. She said that complaints by villagers to higher-ups in the Education Department about the primary school were of no help. Though the teachers lived in nearby Shahabad, they seldom conducted classes.

Ms. Sheikh took the initiative to bring the people of the village together with the help of Jagruti Jyoti Swasahaya Samukhya Sangha, a self-help group, to organise a gram sabha to effectively put an end to the problem. In the gram sabha it was decided to lock the school and not to allow teachers to open it till they gave it in writing that the school would be run regularly.

On June 25, the villagers marched to the school and locked it and kept a vigil there. However, the issue was resolved amicably the next day after two of the three teachers promised the villagers that the school would be run regularly henceforth.

The Chairman of the School Development Management Committee and village elders were present when the lock was opened. Jagruti Jyoti Swasahaya Samukhya Sangha has now turned its attention to the errant anganwadi.

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