By Asim Khan,
Bangalore: There is a garbage dump here, a kiosk selling tobacco there, and children playing cricket around. A look at the building is enough to know the status of Government Urdu Primary School that we visited as part of our Educational Awareness Campaign. This is located in the Valmikinagar, Bangalore.
The School started in 1959, used to function in a rented building that collapsed by itself leaving the school with no choice but to shift to the Corporation building from where it functions today. The dropout rate in this school is alarming. “We had 600 children in the school in 1997 and today there are only 144 children left,” says Shakeela, one of the teachers serving in the school since 25 years. There could be many reasons for this dropout, one of the main reasons is that the Muslim community itself has lost confidence in Urdu Schools “All our teachers are well trained and qualified, the government is spending around Rs 800 per child. But the input of children that we get form the community is the worst compared to others,” says Rehana, Head Mistress of the School. Most of the children who get admitted to Urdu schools are from the poorest of people from the community; among them not surprisingly many are girls or those boys who are educationally too weak to study in English Medium Schools. “The mentality of the Muslim Community is such that they think that only the poorest people who cannot afford private English schools go to Urdu Schools” added the Head Mistress.
Today the School is marred with many problems. There are no sufficient teachers, the class rooms are too small and lack proper benches and boards. The students cannot afford notebooks, there is no play ground, no computer and the place is very unhygienic with garbage trolleys placed in the ground floor “It’s a challenge to keep the School premises clean, every night the dogs come in and dirty the floor as there is no gate” said the lady in charge of cleaning.
The involvement of the Muslim Community is pathetic with respect to Urdu Schools. Many of the local leaders do not care how the school functions. There is no youth involvement at all. Why would even the government support a school that has a high dropout rate. “Most of the parents in the School Development & Management Committee (SDMC) are very poor and illiterate, they cannot contribute anything to the School and I find it very difficult to make the locals attend the School SDMC,” said the Head Mistress.
Urdu Schools have also undergone some reforms. The Government has introduced English language from the first standard. The text books are supplied free. A few competitions and interactive programs are conducted annually for the students. There can be more reforms coming in if the community collectively builds pressure and demands improvement. Most of the issues in the school can be solved by Community involvement alone and if the professionally qualified youth of the community take the lead, slowly but surely the School can easily be brought at par with the private schools, or else it doesn’t seem far that this school will also close down the same way as many other Urdu Schools closed down in Karnataka.
(This is an observation report by SIO Activists during their visit to this School as part of the Educational Awareness Campaign. First published at KaranatakaMuslims.com )