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By Rashme Sehgal
The people of Chuttumail Doks village in Kargil decided that teaching was far too serious a matter to be left to schoolteachers at the government primary school. So they set up a Village Education Committee to monitor the school's activities. Since then the school has become the envy of the surrounding villages and has witnessed a dramatic increase in enrolments
The government primary school in Chuttumail Doks village in Kargil has been in the direct line of firing from across the Line of Control (LoC). But this has not stopped school children from braving the bullets and attending school, even at the height of the Kargil war. Rather, the villagers here, under the leadership of the Village Education Committee (VEC), took the unprecedented step of building an underground bunker where the children could scramble for shelter during the firing.
Mohammed Sadiq Khan, president of the 40-member VEC, says in his broken Hindi: “We lacked the means to relocate the school. And we did not want the education of our kids to suffer. So the villagers got together and dug an underground bunker. In the past, every time the shells started flying, the entire school huddled here till the firing ended.”
The problems of Chuttumail Doks reflect the problems of the entire region of Ladakh. The village has no access to irrigation, and, with the declining snowfall and general water shortage, 50,000 apricot and safada (willow) trees have withered in the last three years. Haj Mohammed Ali Barkal, a petty contractor whose house is situated close to the school, believes every one of the 450 families in this village has been affected by the loss. “Trees are an important source of revenue for us. I personally owned 300 trees; I’m now left with 120,” he says.
This winter, to the delight of the average Kargili, the region witnessed heavy snowfall. The students of Chuttumail Doks continue with their studies right through the winter. On a clear day, they gather in small groups to finish off their holiday homework; their proud parents sit around beaming as the kids read stories to each other.
Located at an altitude of over 11,000 feet, Chuttumail Doks’ young students are chubby, pink-cheeked and smartly turned out in red and grey uniforms. The rectangular school building, surrounded by apricot and willow trees, was built fairly close to a metalled track connecting Chuttumail Doks with neighbouring villages. It was built using a combination of stone, mud and wood, as is the norm with high-altitude construction.
Khan offers a simple explanation for the amazing involvement of the local people with happenings at the school. “Till four years ago, the school was simply falling apart. The teachers were not interested in teaching; the students were not interested in studying. The situation was so pathetic that the student population at the primary school, which is upto Class 7, was down to 18.”
Worried parents approached the nodal Kargil Development Project (KDP), under the chairmanship of ex-MP Ghulam Hasan Khan. “We are illiterate; we do not want our children to grow up and become like us. Nor can we afford to send our kids to private schools which charge high fees,” the parents told Khan.
Khan got the KDP to organise 10-day training sessions for the two government schoolteachers. They were exposed to informal teaching strategies for pre-primary-level children. He also suggested that parents begin playing a more pro-active supervisory role.
One hundred parents got together to chalk out a strategy. It was decided that teaching was far too serious a matter to be left to schoolteachers. And so the VEC was set up to monitor the school’s activities. It raised Rs 40,000, which was spent on buying carpets for the children to sit on. The school has no furniture except for a few tables that hold the teaching equipment. Following the culture of the region, all learning is done sitting on the floor.
The parents cleaned up the school building and performed shram sewa (voluntary work) by adding another classroom and helping build a kitchen.
The children spend an average of eight hours in school. Mothers take turns cooking, ensuring that the children are served hot food right there in the school.
The VEC also took the unprecedented decision of paying the monthly salaries of three additional teachers. As one parent pointed out: “We realised that children need individual attention and so we raised money every month for the additional staff. On our own initiative we hired three women teachers who are being paid Rs 1,200 per month.”
Mohammed Ibrahim Khan, who has been teaching here for the last three years, explains that the results of this individualised approach are there for everyone to see. Being a predominantly Muslim Shia area, parents were initially hesitant to send girls out of their homes to study. Now, the number of girl-children has outstripped boys, says Khan. He adds: “Girls are receiving additional incentives like scholarships, which can go up to Rs 30 per month. This helps them meet their stationery and other incidental expenses such as uniforms.”
The VEC decided to raise money to buy two computers, which were installed at the school with great aplomb. Overnight, school enrolments jumped to 85 children, with seven families living some distance away from Chuttumail Doks also insisting that their children be given admission here.
Haji Ahmed Hussain, the village sarpanch, says: “Everyone in our village, including the youth, must contribute Rs 10 per month towards the VEC. Our aim from the start was to improve the standard of the government school. If we had allowed it to deteriorate, the richer parents would have transferred their kids to private schools. This can prove very demoralising in a small community like ours. After all, what happens to those kids who cannot afford high fees? Where do they go? We launched this community effort to help everyone do better.”
Although the village women here cannot read or write, 20 of them were made members of the VEC and attend its weekly meetings. “With the mothers involved, they make sure the children attend school on time and complete their homework,” says Hussain.
“Grades here have improved 30% ever since the VEC came into the picture,” says Mohammad Hassan, Kargil’s district education planning officer. He points out that in all, Kargil has 12 higher secondary schools, 36 high schools, 86 middle schools and 245 primary schools, in which 22,000 children are currently studying.
Similar VEC committees are being formed in the neighbouring villages as well. According to Hassan, parents in Zanskar and Barsonala districts are coming forward to ensure that the quality of education for their children improves.
Feroz Kechu of Save the Children, UK, has played a catalytic role in these developments. “Parents are now sitting in with panchayats and school management teams. The idea is that wherever there is a lacuna, the VECs help fill them. So much so that these VECs are now playing a decisive role in the village electricity committees. They help ensure that there is less load-shedding to allow the children to use the computers and also to study in the evenings,” he explains.
The communities living in this harsh terrain have emerged as the biggest stakeholders in the educational process. The fallout of this effort has sent out a positive signal that’s being hailed throughout the state of Jammu and Kashmir. It has helped increase the confidence of both parents and children. No wonder Chuttumail Doks government school has Burke’s famous line painted across it: ‘Education is the chief defence of a nation’.
(Rashme Sehgal is a Delhi-based writer and journalist)
InfoChange News & Features, February 2005
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