Kendrapada: As many as 214 students of an upgraded upper primary school in the remote seaside village of Julusanagar in Rajnagar block of Kendrapada have been studying under the open sky for the past four years.Locals say that repeated requests to the district education officer and the administrations to repair the ramshackle Julusanagar Upgraded Upper Primary School building has only met with silence.The six-room school building was built in 1992. By 2014, the authorities had declared it unsafe. The walls now have wide cracks, the iron rods of the ceiling are exposed."The walls are damp and the pillars may collapse at any time. We have shifted the classes to the verandah at any time," said headmaster Rajendra Ram . The number of students in the school has dropped significantly since the classes were shifted, he said.With the school exams for Classes I and VIII having begun on Friday, students are once more left to the mercy of the weather."It is difficult to write answers to questions while sitting under the sky in the examination," said Sabitri Pal, a Class VI student of the school on Tuesday. When contacted, block education officer Ananta Behera said the 214 students who study between Classes I and VIII in the school have indeed been suffering. "The education department will soon grant money to repair the school building," he said.

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