A coaching centre that started a month ago from the ground floor of a Patuli apartment block has enrolled close to 50 children whose right to education has been robbed by the pandemic.
The students of Rokeya Siksha Kendra live mostly in slums in and around Patuli, off EM Bypass. Their religions are different but lives similar. Their parents are masons, drivers, domestic help or from some other unorganised sector.
On paper, all of them are students of government schools. But virtual education is uncharted terrain for most of them.
If there is a smartphone at home, there is no data. Some children have older siblings preparing for bigger exams and they get priority when it comes to using the smartphone. With earnings going down and prices going up, the parents are bogged down with survival, not education of their wards.
But since February 9, when the centre started, their children have been spending at least a couple of hours in a “classroom” every day. The centre has around 20 teachers, offering lessons on all subjects to students of Classes I to X and only English and Bengali to students of Classes XI and XII.
On Friday, Metro visited the centre, a five-minute drive from Patuli fire station, in the evening. The 5pm-to-6pm slot was for a “drawing class”, attended by around 20 students of various age groups sitting on a mat and scribbling on their drawing books. The teacher sat in the middle.
It was followed by a session on English grammar, this time for students of Classes V to VIII. Three students, each taller than the previous one, were made to stand as another teacher explained “degrees of comparison”.
The centre has two rooms and a mini library. The monthly fee for students under Class VIII is Rs 50 and for those above, Rs 100.
Named after Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932), Bengal’s pioneering Muslim feminist writer, educationist and activist, the centre has been set up by a group called the Humans of Patuli, formed in 2019 to resist the Centre’s citizenship thrust at the grassroots level. Covid-19 stalled the campaign in Patuli, as it did in the rest of the country.
During the lockdown, Humans of Patuli had supported hundreds of poor families with dry ration. A campaign to provide new saris to women from the families of unorganised workers in and around Patuli before the Puja had become very popular.
“Our aim is to live together along with our neighbours. Education and health are two inseparable parts of that shared living. We had been in constant touch with families who were struggling to survive during the lockdown.The students (of Rokeya Siksha Kendra) are from such families. So far, it has been an organic growth for us, with one thing leading to another,” said Dwaipayan Banerjee, one of the founder-members of Humans of Patuli.
Since January 24, the group has also been running a free health check-up centre. Named after Kadambini Ganguly, the first Indian woman to become a practising doctor, the clinic is held every Sunday.
“The school is getting word-of-mouth publicity. We can take around 100 students. We do not want to compromise on the quality of education....We also plan to have book reading sessions and screen films,” said Banerjee.
On Friday evening, this correspondent met a homemaker who lives nearby. She had gone to the centre to enrol her daughter, a student of Class VIII. Her husband is a priest, whose income “has taken a substantial hit” over the past year. “A friend of my daughter already studies here,” said the woman.
“This is the only formal education that my daughter is getting,” said another woman. Her 14-year-old daughter is a student at the centre.
“Many of the students are first-generation learners. They are keen to learn,” said Manas Bose, 59, who teaches mathematics at the centre.