Tauseef Ahmad
BANDIPORA, Oct 12: Situated at a distance of 86 kilometers from North Kashmir’s Bandipora district, Gurez valley reflects a grim picture of the education department.
According to official data from the education department 14 schools are being run in wooden rented houses in both Gurez and Tulail tehsil of North Kashmir’s Bandipora district.
Speaking to the Kashmir Dispatch one of the local students, Tufail who is enrolled in Government Middle School Sikenderpora Gurez said: “Sometimes it becomes tough for teachers to teach us as rain water enters our classrooms.”
“As the government is making tall claims about quality education to students especially in border areas we lack proper accommodation to sit. Some schools have only three rooms for eight classes,” Aasiya, a 7th class student, told Kashmir Despatch.
She added that the schools here speak volumes about the much neglected government education system in Gurez. “We are being compelled to take classes in the open air. The temperature touches minus scale. It becomes tough for teachers to teach us in the open air. We have to manage three classes in one room,” she added.
“Government middle school Sikenderpora Tulail is being run in a Wooden house, and there are 13 other such schools in Gurez and Tulail that operate from dilapidated rooms in wooden houses. Besides lack of drinking water, toilet and electricity facilities, there are no benches in the classrooms for the students who are assembled in different groups in one room,” Irshad Samoon, a social activist from Gurez valley added while talking to Kashmir Despatch.
Besides other facilities, most of the educational institutions lack ground facilities depriving the students of extracurricular activities. The buildings hired by the department to accommodate schools have either broken windows or the rooftop is partly shattered and the walls are worn out. These rented buildings have nothing in them to be called a school. However, the government seems to be in deep slumber to chalk out measures for providing better accommodation for students which will have all basic facilities.
He also said that the government has failed to provide adequate accommodation to the students in rural schools forcing them to attend classes under open sky. At times the students of more than one class are crammed in one room by teachers leaving no scope for students to grasp what they are taught.
The schools are deprived of proper classrooms and adequate staff at a time when the government is making tall claims of imparting quality education and having equipped schools with other facilities.
“Most of the times it becomes a headache for the teachers to assemble students of different classes and teach them simultaneously in one congested room which also makes learning difficult for them,” added a local teacher while talking to Kashmir Despatch
“Obviously there is chaos in rooms when two teachers give lectures to students of two different classes in a single room,” said a teacher who wished not to be named.
Meanwhile, talking to the Kashmir Despatch Zonal Education Officer Gurez Ishtiyaq Ahmad said that the land has been identified for six rented school buildings. “We will try to complete it next year. If land is given for other such schools we will try to complete and construct the proper school buildings as soon as possible.”
