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How safe are our schools?
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Are ill-trained teachers forcing children to sing we don't need no education, asks SERISH NANISETTI
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PHOTO: S. SIVA SARAVANAN
CHILD'S PLAY The treatment children get in the initial stages can make or mar their career.
Within three days' of school's reopening, Sunitha's daughter studying UKG in the neighbourhood school in Kukatpally returned home with tears in her eyes. The teacher whacked her on the head with a duster. After a few hours, the child started vomiting, developed fever and had to be rushed to a hospital. The doctor said the beating had aggravated her tonsillitis.
At the other end of city in Tarnaka, Radhika's son who was a bundle of energy before going to his nursery class, clammed up and refused to talk anything about school.
Only a little older classmate ferreted out the nugget of information: the teacher had whacked him for being boisterous.
Between these two stories of corporal punishment, there are countless others that are going unreported as parents keep silent thinking about the long term impact on the child and helplessness in getting admission.
As parents factor in proximity to send children to gully-ka-schools or factor visibility factor to send their children to upscale schools, what is given the go by is the training level of teachers. As the number of schools have multiplied the number of teacher training facilities have stayed constant creating a chasm.
Every year, between 50 and 60 trained teachers are passing out of the Montessori Research and Training facility in Hyderabad, which is one of the three in the country. While the specialised nursery and primary schools cater to a niche segment of the society a majority of the children have to make do with undertrained or indifferent teachers.
Some of the children are taking the tele-counselling route to get their grievance redressed. A few days back, a student and his parents called up the child rights helpline to complain about the harassment by teachers and the peons of the school.
"Most of the calls we are getting are related to corporal punishment, syllabus and heavy homework," says a counsellor manning the child rights helpline. "This helpline is an attempt to create space for children within the system. And we are getting complaints, suggestions and participation," says Isidore Phillips, Director of Divya Disha, which is running the interface between children and the government. "The number of calls in no index of the problem as our helpline number's visibility has to go up," says Phillips. "Earlier, we were getting 50-60 calls everyday but now our toll-free number has been changed and it cannot be accessed except from BSNL lines," he says.
Once a call is received, the counsellor tries to help out the child or the parent and the complaint is then forwarded to District Education Officer, who then tries to thrash out a solution.
(Some names have been changed on request)
Helpline: 18004252933 and 23230194
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