It is a government high school in Hamirpur Siddar village under Sainth gram panchayat. Hamirpur Siddar is a border village over two hours’ drive from Jammu. There is no headmaster, nine posts of teachers are lying vacant out of the 13 sanctioned posts. The school has a number of computers provided by the Department of Education and the Army, but there is no computer teacher.
There are 200 students, 70 of them girls, but no toilet or sanitation facilities. The girls have no other choice but to step into a dilapidated structure littered with dirt and soiled pieces of cloth to relieve themselves. The only female teacher in the school, who comes all the way from Jammu, says despite repeated pleas, nothing has been done. The children and the staff bring water from their homes because there is no facility for potable water. The school is spread over almost three acres.
Not very far from this school is the government middle school at Garar village. Out of the nine sanctioned posts, five are lying vacant. For over a year, there was no Mathematics teacher; so if the children of Class VI are unable to do simple sums of division, they cannot be blamed.
The primary school at Sainth has only seven students. The school building is dilapidated; so Kuldeep, one of the teachers, got another room constructed, because he couldn’t risk the life of the children. Kuldeep, who studied in the same school, says that the strength of students used to vary between 100 and 200. But now with private schools around the village, no one wants to send their children to this school.
There are ten sanctioned posts of teachers in Larokar high school, eight of which are lying vacant. Munir Hussain, a teacher in this border village, says that the Army had constructed four classrooms, a playground and a computer lab. It also provided with nine computers. However, there is no one to teach or operate computers in this school too.
The sarpanch of Sawni gram panchayat says that the government high school in Sawni village has a computer teacher but the school with 250 odd students does not have any computer. Five schools fall under his panchayat: three primary schools, one middle and one high school. Furniture, library, hand pumps as well as toilets have all been set up by the Army here. Being a water scarce area, the schools have no facility for drinking water.
The list of schools in the border area in Jammu region which are short of teaching staff and lack proper infrastructure facilities is long. S.K. Gandotra, Jammu’s Joint Director of Education, says that 600 teachers have been promoted to master grade and the process of selection to fill vacant posts of teachers is in progress. He points out that the problem of staffing new primary schools under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan has reached such an extent that it is being resolved through a scheme under which educated local persons are appointed as Rehbar e Taleem .
Another problem is that outsiders find it difficult to work in schools in border areas because of lack of transport and housing facilities. Instead of getting extra remuneration, the teachers get reduced HRA and on top of it they have to spend money on private transport. They not only lose financially but also in terms of energy and time consumed in reaching the remote villages.
The Army under its Sadbhavana programme has tried to fill the gap by opening schools in the area and also providing infrastructure. It has opened seven schools and nearly 17,000 students are studying in them. The Army has also sponsored the education of 600 students belonging to BPL families in the area. But then there are limits to which the Army can extend help.
With no industries and hardly any other avenue of employment because of lack of skilled man power, cultivation is the only source of income in this region; most parents can’t afford to send their children to boarding schools away from their villages.
Incentives for teachers who come from far-off places and improved infrastructure could perhaps help in providing quality education to students living in Jammu’s border villages.
