Sufficient number of schools, good hospitals and public transport and housing – these are priority areas that K. Roopa will focus on, when she becomes District Collector.
Currently studying at the Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV) residential centre here, the little girl, who is barely 10, dreams of solving many problems she currently faces, after she grows up and heads the district one day.
The KGBV scheme is a Central government initiative that seeks to provide residential, elementary-level education for girls belonging predominantly to the SC, ST, OBC and minorities in educationally backward blocks. Most students are either dropouts or those who have never enrolled in schools.
“We give them an intensive bridge course so that they can be mainstreamed to regular schools very soon,” explains K. Saraswathi, English teacher at the centre. Not enrolling or dropping out soon after is not uncommon in the area.
For many children like Roopa, who are from the tribal communities inhabiting Natrampalayam, Sivapuram, Jodukarai and Sarandapalli in Thally block, there are not enough schools in the hilly regions they live.
Without a school nearby, some children have never had the opportunity to join any school. Thirteen-year-old Y. Mariamma, who began her formal schooling at the KGBV centre some months ago, is delighted about having learnt the Tamil alphabet. “I can write ka..nga..cha..nya now,” she says timidly, adding: “Many children in our village don't go to school. They help out their parents at work or simply stay at home.”
The KGBV centre plays a significant role in training such students, but unless there are long-term solutions to address the educational needs of tribal children, there is no assurance that that they will complete schooling, say teachers.
Thally has as many as 216 primary and middle schools, but all of them are government or local body schools. Setting up Government Tribal Residential (GTR) schools here would help, say teachers.
Following the bifurcation of Dharmapuri district to form Krishnagiri and Dharmapuri districts in 2004, Aroor, now in Dharmapuri, retained many of the GTR schools and Thally, which also has a considerable tribal population, did not .
Teacher vacancies
Government or local body schools have their own constraints, with teacher vacancies topping the list. There are about 170 vacancies in the block, according to a School Education Department official.
“The Panchayat Union Middle School in Kodakarai has one headmaster and one teacher handling 225 students,” said an official.
In an attempt to address the issue of inadequate subject teachers, a few teaching mathematics and science have organised themselves into groups and visit one school after another on a rotational basis to cover subjects in these lessons. School Education Department officials in the district said they have forwarded a proposal to the State government asking for more schools to be set up under the Rastriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) scheme and are waiting for a response.
