Bhubaneswar, Sept. 2: Years ago when schools were being named after certain castes, the state government failed to fathom its consequences.
Caste-tagged schools such as the "Harijan Sahi Prathamika Vidyalay" have not only been discriminating, but also affecting the children. They were an embarrassment for both students and teachers.
"While teachers and students are hesitant to admit that they go to some harijan school, especially for the social stigma attached to it, students belonging to the general category are not willing to enrol to such institutes for the fear of being mistaken as harijans," said Pramila Pujari, a schoolteacher.
Although the state government had ordered to rename the cast-tagged schools, nothing substantial has been achieved. The then school and mass education secretary, Usha Padhee, had issued an order in November 2014 to remove the caste tag from school names. She had also ordered to declare all school premises as "discrimination-free zone".
A-year-and-a-half later, the department is yet to have a proper database on such schools.
Barring some blocks of Angul, Bargarh and Ganjam districts, the department has taken no significant steps. At Athamalik of Angul district, the names of two schools have been changed. The schools named Papasara Kisan Sahi Primary School and Angapada Harijan Sahi Primary School at Kishornagar have changed to Papasara Primary School and Angapada Primary School. Also, names of such institutes at Attabira in Bargarh district and Chatrapur in Ganjam have been changed.
Since the department had no database of such schools, it had forwarded the letter to the Odisha Primary Education Programme Authority for information.
The authority, in turn, forwarded the letter to all the district project offices under the Sarva Siksha Abhiyaan, and it subsequently reached their respective block education officers. The same was repeated for the direction for writing "discrimination-free zone" on the school walls.
Educators pointed hot how the dropout rates of SC/ST students had remained high as compared to general students in the past five years. While the dropout rate for general students dropped to 6.02 per cent in 2015-16 from 18.72 per cent in 2012-13, the dropout for SC/ST students, which was 15 per cent in 2012-13, dropped only to 13 per cent in 2015-16.
"The state government must make efforts to address the issue. In case of schools that have a particular caste name attached, the government should initiate a drive to sensitise the communities and train the teachers on how to make the school premises discrimination free for the larger interest of the students," said Right to Education activist Ghasiram Panda.
Authorities said they had not been getting adequate requests from the school management committees. "If the school management committee writes to us and requests a name change, we will do it. Unless they feel the need for it, we cannot do anything," said authority director Mahandra Mallick.
