It's the same
story in MP
N D Sharma
So much about the state of
school education in the
National Capital Region
(NCR) in the recent past.
What about education in
the the state of Madhya
Pradesh today ? Teachers kept
engaged in non-teaching activities and
the government more interested in
gimmicks than in serious work. That, in
nutshell, should give an idea of the
conditions of schools in Madhya
Pradesh.
No wonder that the schools in the
State, both private and governmentrun,
are a very unsafe place for
children, to put it mildly. When
something untoward takes place in a
school and it is highlighted in the
media, the standard response of the
government is to repeat instructions
on the safety of children, sometimes
by changing the language here and
there. When a serious offence like rape
or death of a student is reported, the
government just leaves it to the police
as if it were a routine crime.
Early in September a teacher of a
government school in Singrauli district
blackened the faces of five students of
class 6th with coal and then paraded
them through the streets of the village.
Their fault? They had not attended the
classes for two days. The parents of
the children complained to the
principal but in vain. They then went to
the district headquarters and lodged their complaint with Collector Anurag
Chaudhary who promised action after
an inquiry against the teacher and was
said to have observed that nobody
could be allowed to humiliate the
students publicly.
MP teacher blackens students' faces, parades them on street
The blackening of faces of students
in a faraway place like Singrauli district
will appear a minor incident in
comparison to what is happening in
the places near the State Capital. In
Sehore, hardly 20 kms away from
Bhopal, the 45-year-old principal of a
government school was said to have molested an eighth class girl on the
school campus. It was only after the
parents of the 14-year old girl created
ruckus that the police sprang into
action and booked the principal under
Section 354 IPC (use of criminal force
on woman with the intent to outrage
her modesty) and the relevant
provisions of Protection of Children
from Sexual Offences (POSCO) Act.
The principal had reportedly claimed
that he had only scolded the girl after he had found a love letter in her book.
In August, a nursery student of a
private primary school in Gwalior
complained of pain in lower part of her
body after returning from school.
Her
medical examination showed that a
rape attempt was made on her. As
many schools in the city remained
closed as a protest, the police took up
the case. From the photographs of the
school staff, the girl identified the
offender who was the school bus
driver. He was booked under relevant
sections of POSCO Act and IPC. Only
after five days, the director of the
school and the school's PRO were also
booked under the provisions of
POSCO Act for not cooperating with
the parents when they had first
approached the school with the
complaint and not informing the
police about the incident.
A 16-year-old boy, studying in a
prominent private school in Indore, was electrocuted on the school
premises. He was playing football with
friends on the school grounds on a
Sunday afternoon in September. As
the ball went out of the campus, he
climbed on an iron bench kept along
the boundary wall to ask someone
outside to throw the ball in. as soon as
he touched the mesh, he was
electrocuted. It was found during the
investigation that electricity had
spread to the iron mesh on the wall through the water cooler kept near it.
The students informed the warden
who rushed the boy to hospital where
he was declared 'brought dead'. The
police were immediately informed but
in view of the high profile of the school
management, they were in no hurry to
register a case
A class fifth student of a public
school in Chhindwara had a tiff with
some classmate on September 8. His
teacher reportedly thrashed him and
threatened to call the police. The boy
was so upset that he went home and
set himself afire. He died in a Nagpur
hospital a week later. Four days after
that, the principal, director and a
teacher of the school were booked for
abetment to suicide.
A public school in Shyopur expelled
mid-session in September two First
Standard students, both brothers,
because of non-payment of fees, even
though they were exempted from
payment of fee under the Below
Poverty Line (BPL) quota. The fee
demanded was Rs 30,000 for two
years. The Collector and the District
Education Officer (DEO) had taken
cognisance of the matter and were
investigating. The children had
revealed that they were told by the
school authorities that they did not
deserve to study as they were too poor
and did not even bring their own
lunch.
While the government-run schools
suffer from their own malady, most of
the private schools are run more like
shops than institutions imparting
education. The teachers there are illpaid
and work under uncertainty
about their service. Ill-treatment of
children, particularly of girls, in school
bus are not uncommon. The usual
response of the government is to issue
an order making it mandatory for
school management to have at least
one female attendant in every school
bus. The schools manage to depute a
female in the bus for some time. When
an incident of molestation or some
other infraction in a school bus is
reported again, the 'mandatory' order
is re-issued.
Perhaps a major reason of sad state of affairs in government-run schools is
the treatment of teachers who are
considered no more than pegs on
which to hang any linen. For instance,
some time back Chief Minister Shivraj
Singh Chouhan presided over a
government-organised mass
marriages programme under the
scheme known as 'Mukhyamantri
Kanyadaan Yojana' in Singrauli where
2400 girls were married off. Teachers
of schools in the vicinity were given
duties as 'waiters' with specific
assignments spelled out in the government order as to who would
serve vegetables, who would serve
rice, who would serve water, who
would serve salad, who would serve
sweet dish so on and so on.
While the government-run
schools suffer from their
own malady, most of the
private schools are run
more like shops than
institutions imparting
education. The teachers
there are ill-paid and work
under uncertainty about
their service. Ill-treatment of
children, particularly of girls,
in school bus are not
uncommon. The usual
response of the government
is to issue an order making
it mandatory for school
management to have at
least one female attendant
in every school bus.
At other times the teachers had
been given whistles with which to
warn those going out for defecation.
On other occasions, their duties
consisted of keeping a watch on shoes
and chappals outside temples. More
recently, the district education officer
of Tikamgarh had issued an order
directing teachers to dig holes for toilets in rural area as part of the
Centre's 'Swachhata hi Seva'
(Cleanliness Is The Service)
programme.
Following the nation-wide uproar as
a seven-year-old child was killed by the
bus driver in Gurugram and the rape
of a five-year-old girl allegedly by the
peon of a Delhi school, MP's Minister
of School Education Kunwar Vijay Shah
seemed to have become aware that
school children needed safety also.
Promptly, he issued a slew of
instructions: the State government will
recommend cancellation of
recognition of school in case of
negligence of students' safety; the
State government will cancel the
recognition of schools if they don't
appoint female attendant in school
buses; teachers should carry out
inspection of the schools in their areas
(that apparently is, in addition to
various non-teaching duties assigned
to them from time to time); there
should be monthly health check of
students in schools.
It's not that Shah was sitting idle
earlier. In order to strengthen
'nationalistic approach' (as he put it)
among students, he has instructed
that all students in Satna district
should answer the roll call with 'Jai
Hind' instead of 'Yes Sir and Yes
Madam'. He said this mission would be
implemented all over the State both in
government and private schools later
on. His department has also issued an
order directing all the schools to
purchase radio sets so that the
teachers and students could hear
Chief Minister Chouhan's radio
address 'Dil Se'. (Chouhan has recently
started this radio address on the lines
of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's
'Mann ki Baat').
Another notification issued by the
department says: 'all employees ---
teaching and non-teaching staff
working in State-run and private
schools – will have to take a pledge
that they do not have any criminal
record under POCSO Act and Juvenile
Justice Act and also have to declare
that they have never been convicted of
sexually harming any child'.