How a derelict school in Gurugram is keeping 7 students from dropping out

Past the unkempt front yard with brown plastic chairs, seepage stains mar the roof and walls of the school. Barring one, its three other classrooms are locked. A peek inside the only open classroom reveals a sad state of affairs: there’s broken furniture, some kitchen utensils, a lawn mower, a carrom board, trunks and a chunky television.

The school’s only two toilets for students are filthy and the kitchen partially damaged. The midday meal is cooked and served by an agency hired by the Haryana government. Located under the Garhi Harsaru cluster in the Municipal Corporation of Manesar area, the Gopalpur Khera school was established in 1985. Locals say it fell into a state of neglect over the last few years after the transfer of one of its two teachers.

Sitting cross-legged on a dusty red-black mat in the verandah, his back towards the blackboard with triple-digit Maths problems scrawled all over, Divesh, 11, a student of Class 5, is reading his English textbook. Children of migrant labourers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, all seven students are forced to study in the school’s verandah due to the lack of an active power connection.

Despite moving to Gurugram and this school from Uttar Pradesh’s Kannauj just a year ago with his migrant parents, Divesh is the only student who wears a uniform, can multiply and divide three-digit numbers, and also read sentences in English. Sitting next to him, besides his five other schoolmates, is a shy six-year-old staring at his textbook.

With the school’s lone tutor — Lalita Chawla, a guest teacher who joined in July on a 45-day contract — on leave, substitute teacher Anil Kumar from the nearest primary school, around 2 km away, is covering for her. Using one hand to swat the flies or brush off the ants swarming the “classroom”, the children sit with their books in the other. The teacher sits away from them, making himself available when the need arises.

Divesh tells The Indian Express, “Earlier, two classrooms were open and we would sit there. There were more children in school then. Now, since there is no power, we can’t sit inside.”

Though the student register for the current academic year is missing, one from last year shows that over 25 children studied in the school till March 2024.

In 2011, the Haryana government had said it would undertake a rationalisation exercise at primary and upper primary schools before each academic year to decide on appropriate action — merge or close schools depending on enrollment. An Education Department official told The Indian Express that government schools are required to have at least two teachers even if the strength is just 25 children.

According to an annual report on school education for 2022-2023 by the Ministry of Education, Haryana has 11.46 lakh primary students enrolled in 8,688 primary institutions. Gurugram has 222 attached primary schools and 141 independent ones.

Substitute teacher Kumar says, “These children’s parents are labourers. They send them to study here because the school is close to their houses. If the children are shifted to Garhi Harsaru Primary School (around 2 km away) due to low enrollment numbers, the parents will make them sit at home rather than sending them to a school that is far away. While a merger will not affect teachers, the sweeper, cook (who now serves the meal) and the guard will be out of jobs.”

Jal Singh, the Drawing and Disbursing Officer (DDO) at the Garhi Harsaru cluster, says attempts to merge schools with low enrollment numbers has led to protests in the past. “Around 2022, we realised the strength of students at the Gopalpur Khera school had started falling. We discovered there were very few children in Gopalpur Khera settlement and most were going to private schools. To slow the dropout rates, the then teacher offered to pay for the education of the children at the Gopalpur Khera school,” he says.

“After that teacher left this April 2024, seven others from schools in the cluster took turns to teach the remaining students. We did try to move these children to another primary school (Garhi Harsaru school) this year, but they simply stopped going to school. So we decided against the move,” he says, adding that Garhi Harsaru Primary School, a co-ed school, has 278 students across nine classes and 10 teachers.

DDO Singh says a girl’s school was merged with Garhi Harsaru Senior Secondary School in 2022 due to inadequate infrastructure, but many locals protested against the move saying they did not want to send their girls to a co-ed school.

The issue with Gopalpur Khera school, says Muni Ram, the District Elementary Education Officer (DEEO), is that it has very few residents and even fewer children. “Though the district has no single-teacher schools, we have not received any orders from higher authorities to close this one,” he says.

Meanwhile, villagers say the Gopalpur Khera school was once popular. Rajesh Chauhan, 60, a housewife, says all three of her children studied at the Gopalpur Khera school in the 2000s. “It was a good school back then and even had teachers. Everyone’s children studied there,” she says.

Parvesh Kadiyan, 35, a tailor who has been living in the village for five years, sends her four-year-old to a private school a few hundred metres away.

“The Gopalpur Khera school neither has teachers, nor children,” says Parvesh, leading to her surprised friend asking: “Isn’t that school closed?”

Parvesh recalls, “I remember the old teacher from the school who lived here. He would pitch in each time the school needed funds. But no one sends their children to government schools anymore. Even if the fee is high, we all feel that private schools are better.”

DEEO Ram says, “In case of a promotion or transfer, we usually get vacancies filled. However, in the case of this school, the vacancies exist due to the school’s strength.” As per the DDO, it did not receive any demand for funds from the Gopalpur Khera school in April 2024. “The fund is shown as nil,” DDO Singh says.

Lalita, the current teacher at the school, says she has been facing multiple challenges since July, given her multiple roles, including attending training sessions, Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) activities, meetings, etc. “The children need separate classes and attention. If they keep sitting together, we will not know how much they are lagging behind their peers. These are children from slums and won’t be able to afford going to a school in another village if this closes,” she says.