Learning in a school without walls

The ‘classrooms’ are tin sheds spread across the corner of an Eidgah in Quresh Nagar

NEW DELHI, 18/09/2017: A student in a tin sheds class at Qaumi Senior Secondary School, Shahi Eidgah.. Photo: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar

Propped up against a tree at the corner of an Eidgah in Quresh Nagar here is a notice board that has the allocation of “classrooms” listed on it for students studying in different grades. The “classrooms”, however, are tin sheds spread across the corner of a field, filled with rusty metal benches and desks that pass off as furniture. Exposed to the elements, these sheds are the only infrastructure that Qaumi Senior Secondary School has had for over 40 years.

Thousands of students have studied here and the current lot of teachers and students do not seem to mind that they are working out of a space that looks and feels nothing like a traditional classroom.

The Urdu-medium school that has over 700 students and 35 regular teachers is funded by the Delhi government and is an antithesis to the “education revolution” that the Aam Aadmi Party government is trying to bring about in the city.

Mohabbat Ali, principal of the school since 2005, though reluctant to speak since the matter is sub judice, has little hope that anything is going to change. “The matter is in court and we hope we are allotted land but other that that, the school is functioning properly with the resources we have and the students are even getting good marks,” says Mr. Ali.

The school that was established in 1948 originally operated out of a five-storey building in Sadar Bazaar and was built using funds arranged by Muslims who had decided to stay back in India post-Partition. During the Emergency, the Delhi government razed the building to make flats and promised to rebuild the school. The school immediately moved to temporary sheds on Eidgah land and has been there since as the Delhi government never fulfilled its promise to rebuild the school.

The Delhi High Court last week asked the AAP government and the authorities concerned to explore the possibility of allotting land for the school. A bench asked the Chief Secretary to coordinate and hold meetings with all the agencies, including the DDA and the municipal body, to find land.

The courts direction came after hearing of a PIL seeking reconstruction of the building of the school filed by civil activist Firoz Bakht Ahmed who had brought the "sad and pitiable" state of the school to the court.