Cops turn walls into blackboards after tribal children miss school for over a year in Telangana

ADILABAD: Tribal children in Tiryani mandal of Kumrambheem—Asifabad district have not attended school for more than a year now, after the schools shut due to Covid. As a result, many of the younger ones were forgetting even the alphabets and numbers they had learnt. 

To rekindle their memories, the Tiryani police have come up with an innovative idea — they have converted walls of houses in the villages into blackboards, and have written alphabets, numbers and even tables in English and Telugu on the walls, hoping that the kids will look at the walls while they are playing outdoors. And the method appears to be working.

In addition to this, high school students in the mandal have taken it upon themselves to teach their younger counterparts, which is being monitored by the village heads. Alphabets and numbers have been written on the walls in around 30 tribal hamlets, including Mangi, Kolanguda, Rompelli, Mesramguda, Pangidimadhara, Morriguda and Talandi.

Since the imposition of the lockdown, the high school students teach the children during the relaxation hours of 6 am to 10 am.Tiryani sub inspector P Rama Rao termed the move a ‘small effort’ by the police to help the children. He said the police were organising many other programmes in the mandal to help people.