PUNE: When Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister, he penned a poem — School Chale Hum. The Union government's
Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan followed in 2001.
Garmalvasti in Maval taluka became a ZP school around the same time when the idea of taking education to the remotest village was a hit. Seventeen years down the line, Maharashtra has decided to axe Garmalvasti school. Soon, its six students will have to trek along a kachha road for 6-7km to reach the new school assigned to them.
"This school was opened with the idea that no matter how remote the village is, there will be a school. If it shuts down, students will stop going to school as nobody wants to send their six-year-old walking 12 km away to another school," a villager said.
Amol Kale, one of the two teachers, said, "The school was established in 2001. Six years ago, Rs 10lakh was spent on renovating the building. If this school is shut, the next school is on the other side of the mountain. So even if the areal distance is 6km, there is a kuccha road and it will be a longer distance to walk to the new school."
Another villager said it is a heavy rainfall region which means the access road will be out-of-bound for four months. It will be slushy and slippery. "Do the authorities expect these young children to walk for 6km in heavy rain just to reach school? Already, there is a huge dropout of students once they complete their standard X because no remote villages in Maharashtra has a junior college. Now, our students, especially girls will drop out even before they set foot in school,"
Sandeep Mhaskar said. His house was the makeshift school before the new building was approved in 2001.
Kale is also worried about the 10 children between 3 and 6 years of age coming to the school just to sit in the classroom.
"In cities there are preschools and many villages have anganwadis. The kids here have no other source of getting acclimatized to the atmosphere of a school. If this school closes down, their parents will not travel across a mountain just to have their kids sit in a classroom for some time," Kale added.
Villagers are not opposed to the idea of closing down schools. "There is a school in
Chavasar which had just one student which closed down. It is because of schools like Garmalvasti, that whenever a child is born here , we can be assured that he will get primary education even if his parents don't send him or her for higher education. If they close down schools that are close by, parents would rather put their kids to work on farms than send them to faraway schools," Mhaskar said.
