Rights and wrongs

Guwahati, June 1: The Assam chapter of Unicef and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan will set up feeder schools to cater to the riverine areas of the state where there are children who have never been to school or there is a high rate of dropouts.

“Feeder schools are the ones established in remote riverine areas under a provincialised school that acts as the nodal agency to monitor their functioning. These feeder schools, in fact, will be an extension of these nodal schools, in which students would be actually enrolled. The textbooks and academic calendar, too, would be similar to the ones being followed in the nodal school,” said Jeroo Master, chief of Unicef, Assam.

Children residing in riverine areas have been found to face difficulty in attending their classes mainly because of poor connectivity or the sheer distance of these schools from home.

During the monsoon, the rising water level of the Brahmaputra also makes the boat journey risky, which they need to undertake to reach some of the schools.

At present, feeder schools are in the process of being established in the riverine areas of North Lakhimpur and Dibrugarh districts, where the number of school dropouts has been found to be high at 392 and 276 respectively.

In such remote riverine areas, feeder schools act as a connection between children and the provincialised school they are enrolled in.

“Contrary to the popular belief, poverty is not the only reason behind children in riverine areas dropping out of schools. Today, even the poor want their children to be educated. Children drop out mainly because there is no school closer home, lack of transportation and natural calamities like floods that cut off a riverine area from the mainland. To tackle this problem, we need more schools and manpower in the form of trained teachers. The state government is doing its bit to establish more primary schools in remote areas,” said Master.

The responsibility of maintaining the feeder schools will be entrusted to the local community in the respective riverine areas to promote local participation.

The revenue will be generated from the minimal fee charged from the students of these schools.

“The feeder schools are being set up by the local communities and will be maintained by them. In its nascent stage, the local people usually arrange for a proper space with a thatched roof to conduct the classes. The teachers imparting lessons here are also being trained by the nodal school, which monitors the feeder schools functioning under it. These schools will play a pivotal role in facilitating access to quality elementary education in unreachable areas,” said Pramila Manoharan, education specialist of Unicef, Assam.

“We also plan to start the concept of feeder schools in riverine areas of Jorhat district. We have forwarded a proposal to the state government and are hopeful of it being sanctioned soon,” said Dibyalata Gohain, district mission coordinator of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Jorhat.