In the dense and stagnating heat associated with the monsoon season I made my 1st visit to Chitrakoot, a remote district of Uttar Pradesh straddling the Madhya Pradesh border. The project being supported here is an initiative aimed at promoting inclusive education for all children through the delivery of innovative learning approaches and methodologies. Coming into the visit I was firmly focused on assessing the experience of children with disabilities who were accessing (or on most occasions, not accessing) mainstream primary education services. However upon making a visit to the 1st school site on the itinerary for the day I began to realise that attempting to access an education is a huge hurdle even for children without disabilities.
The local Partner engaged in the area I was visiting focuses on re-establishing and strengthening existing School Management Committees which are made up of teachers and parents and aim to act as a collective accountability mechanism to Government & a functioning governance body for the daily management and efficiency of individual schools. On this occasion I was lucky enough to attend a monthly meeting in which parents and teachers alike were raising their grievances and planning for the future development of the school. What struck me almost immediately was the massive variation in terms of the proportion of students in attendance versus the number of teachers present. At this time there were 94 students of varying ages between the range of 4-12 years to only 2 teachers. To add to this there was simply 1 functioning classroom. The 2nd building allocated to classroom duties was in such a bad dilapidated condition that it had been abandoned in fear for the safety of those inside it. It’s needless to say that neither of these buildings were accessible or had toilet facilities available for students on the premises.
In addition to this, the parents present were identifying that teacher absenteeism was a huge concern and that learning outcomes were not being promoted for those enrolled. One parent even expressed in dismay that her child had been attending this school for the past 3 years and yet was not even able to recite the alphabet during that time. We were also informed that due to unforeseen reasons the midday school meal, which research has shown to be linked to higher enrolment and retention figures, had not been served in over 2 and half months. I remember thinking that if this was the circumstance for those children without disabilities in terms of the difficulty involved in simply learning, then what would the circumstance be for children with disabilities within surrounding communities?
My dismay that day was compounded upon a home visit to a young boy with multiple disabilities who had been identified and since that time was now enrolled and attending a local school. His story initially was of course uplifting in the sense that prior to a few months ago he had been at home during the day even though he was of school going age. The local partner after having identified him worked with his family and counselled them on the benefits of accessing an education. However the unseen side of his story centred around his family’s background. This particular family was a female headed single parent household in which the mother worked as a daily wage labourer in order to feed, house and educate her 7 children. It was conveyed that at the most she would be earning 150-200 Indian Rupees per day, a measly amount of about 3-4 Australian Dollars. There right in front of me was a perennial example of hand to mouth existence.
The hope of course for this family and many others like them is that through increased awareness, linkages with existing Government pensions, schemes and programs and targeted vocational training that they will be able to raise themselves out of the endemic poverty cycle that currently traps them. For me on that day however it was yet another reminder of the stark inequalities that continue to exist within our modern day world. Thus being the exact reason of my life long pursuit for attempting to eradicate poverty from the face of our beautiful but utterly flawed planet.
Sx
I blog for Change. 