NALBARI, April 3 – When the Central and State governments have been trying to make the ongoing Sarba Siksha Mission Abhijan a grand success in each district of the State, the primary education system of insurgency-infested Nalbari district continues to be in deplorable condition. In the district, at least 13 primary school are running without own building and the building of other 50 schools are in a very deplorable state having no atmosphere for imparting lessons to primary level students. Similarly, 188 primary schools are running with single teacher making the students a disadvantaged lot.
Talking to reporters, District Elementary Education Officer (DEEO) Nagen Boro, head of the district Sarba Siksha Mission Abhijan, said that the SSMA in the pre-project survey conducted in 834 villages by the 5,364 village volunteers, found that at least 15 villages of the district do not have a single primary school. He further added that the condition of school buildings of Barkshetri and Baska education blocks are very poor while most of the buildingless schools belong to this block. Boro added that the Sarba Siksha Mission Abhijan has given top priority to 63 schools of the district and each school will get Rs 2.5 lakh as building grant while other 1700 LP and MV schools will receive repairing grant for their existing buildings. For that, the district has already received Rs 2.30 crore in the plan head of 2001-02 from the State Mission director, Boro said, adding that each school of the district has already received Rs 7,000 for the preliminary repairing of desk-bench, blackboard, signboard, etc.
Boro again stated that Nalbari district has 2,38,779 children between the age group 6 to 14. Of them, at least 43,634 children have no enrolment in any schools. This figure also includes 8,855 school dropouts, 2015 disabled and 5024 child labourers, he added. The Mission has decided to provide Rs 16,000 to each venture school of those areas where no provincialised school exists in the distance of 1.5 km. In case of absence of any venture school too, the Mission will open Education Guaranteed Scheme (EGS) centre in those villages, Boro said.
Elaborating on the activities of the Sarba Siksha Abhijan Boro said that in the pre-project survey at least 525 persons were appointed as district resource person and block resource person. Under them at least 5364 village volunteers were engaged for which the department spent Rs 18,23,391. It was followed by the training of all headmasters of 1763 LP and MV Schools of the district at a costof Rs 79,900. Then, a survey of almost all schools were also conducted spending Rs 2,16,000. During the survey, they also took three photographs of all schools which were later stored in computer. Now, anybody can know the present condition and other data of all schools sitting in the district office itself. On the other hand, to create an awareness in the grassroots level about the ongoing Sarba Siksha Mission, the district Mission imparted training to 35,000 members of school managing committee, gaon panchayat samiti, among others. For that, the district has spent Rs 13 lakh so far.
The DEEO has further admitted that about 30 per cent students of the district are yet to receive the textbooks. He hoped that the remaining students of the district will get the textbooks within this month. About 32000 students of the district have newly enrolled in class-I this year, the DEEO added.