STATE OF SCHOOLS Naina Mishra Chandigarh, July 13 A boy was spotted tiptoeing on the bricks placed in the verandah for entering a classroom. He was wearing ‘chappals’ instead of shoes due to the accumulated rainwater. The fag end of his trouser was tainted with the mud. Such is the situation of students at Government Middle School in Kishangarh nowadays. The onset of monsoon has nonetheless brought misery for pupils of the school so much so that the attendance has started dropping. Courtesy: poor drainage system in the school. A 30-minute downpour results in waterlogged verandah and exteriors of the school, leaving students stuck to the classrooms until the water flows back. “We have to wade through dirty water almost every day. Students of other schools attend classes with ease, but we have to bear with the pitiable conditions of school,” said a student of Class II. With strength of over 900 students, the school operates in double shifts from a makeshift building. However, these days, not more than 150 students attend classes, said a teacher. “We have to merge classes. Two classrooms are in a very bad condition and rainwater seeps through the rooftop. There is no passage to step outside classrooms if water gets accumulated,” said a teacher on the condition of anonymity. More affected are students of Class I who have to sit at a dharamshala’s verandah. The road outside the dharamshala has developed cracks. “Students have to sit in the clothes stained with mud and filth while studying. Every year, students face the same problem,” said another teacher. While a new building, a few kilometres from the existing structure, was constructed in 2015, but owing to a court case pertaining to ownership of the land, students could not be shifted there. School Principal Gurpreet Singh said: “We are trying to fix a meeting with the land owner and cluster head so that the problems being faced by students can be put forth.”

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