Delhi: Divide and school to deal with lack of space

NEW DELHI: Delhi government has announced that it will build 10,000 more classrooms in schools run by it over the next year and a half. This, however, is little consolation to two schools that are coping with a severe lack of classroom space by operating in two shifts.

The Government Co-ed Sarvodaya Vidyalaya in Rohini’s Sector 2 in north-west Delhi and the RDJK Government Co-ed Senior Secondary School in Bhajanpura in north-east Delhi have been forced to ask the girls in classes VI to XII to attend school in the morning and the boys in the evening.

The school in Bhajanpura has 34 sections, but just 12 classrooms. The one in Rohini has 35 classrooms to accommodate 53 sections. In the former, around 1,400 girls come for classes in the morning and are followed by around 2,500 boys after that. The Rohini institution has 2,508 students on its rolls, and they are similarly divided into groups.

Ensuring optimal use of space by dividing the student groups into two shifts has helped, though the institutions still have a big problem ensuring the teachers are not overworked. While both schools have the sanctioned teaching staff, the drawback is twosome. One, the staff has been divided into those teaching the morning shift and those coming for the later one. But this has meant that the teachers have had to deal with a bigger number of students in the classrooms than if all teachers had handled the various sections.

Mansha Ram Dagur, head of the Bhajanpura school, admitted that the institution was suffering for lack of classrooms, but added, “The problem is that we have very little space for construction of additional classrooms. We don’t even have a playground.”

The situation is, fortunately, better in Rohini, where school head Ravinder Kumar disclosed that the institution’s proposal to add 104 new classrooms has been approved by the state government. “The demolition of the old building will start soon to facilitate the erection of new classroom,” Kumar said.

In 2016, a government school in Sonia Vihar was forced to have classes only on alternate days for different classes due to the constraints placed by a similar lack of classrooms. The Directorate of Education intervened and the practice was stopped. A year earlier, around five schools had to be asked to have classes in double shifts to ensure the classrooms were not overcrowded. According to official claims, around 8,000 classrooms were built in government schools in the last three years.