The Southern Railway administration has directed the head of Railway School at Golden Rock in Tiruchi and those functioning at other places in its jurisdiction to stop fresh intake from the academic year 2018-19.
The directive requires school heads to advise the parents of Railway and non-railway wards to shift their children to other schools in the next academic year 2019-20 meaning that the institution would be closed.
This has come as a rude shock to parents and teachers alike. Railway sources said the Railway Mixed School functioning at Golden Rock in Tiruchi is a high school with about 325 students and 22 teachers.
The school's correspondent is the Workshop Personal Officer of the Golden Rock Railway Workshop here.
Functioning for several years now, it was originally in the Anglo-Indian Board stream before being brought in under the Samacheer Kalvi (uniform syllabus) introduced by the State government a few years ago.
The directive from the Southern Railway headquarters has come at a time when a few new students have already been admitted to the school at Golden Rock this year and when the authorities had initiated the process of converting the school into a CBSE institution.
Teachers to be redeployed
The teachers of the institutions as per the directive would be redeployed in different cadre at the same station.
The principal of the school at Golden Rock, however, said that he was yet to receive any official communication in this regard. Railway schools are also functioning at Villupuram, Madurai and Palakkad in Southern Railway zone.
Meanwhile, the Southern Railway Mazdoor Union (SRMU) has planned to take up this issue with the railway administration in the wake of the directive. The union assistant general secretary, area in-charge, Golden Rock and Tiruchi division S. Veerasekaran said the Golden Rock school has a rich heritage functioning for several years and any attempt to close it down would affect the parents severely.
Securing admission for students especially those moving from ninth to 10th standard and from eighth to ninth standard to nearby schools would be extremely difficult, he added. The Golden Rock Railway School had a very good strength earlier when it was under Anglo-Indian Board stream. However, the strength consistently dropped due to various reasons, though it produced centum results consecutively, sources said.
There was another railway school exclusively for the Tamil medium which was closed down about five years ago.
The newly-started Kendriya Vidyalaya has been housed at that building now.
