While there are a number of villages in Punjab without a single government school, Khatkarkalan - the ancestral village of Bhagat Singh - has five such schools. The problem, however, is that four of these schools have poor student strength and the government could easily shift them to other schools, while comfortably adjusting the surplus teachers in nearby schools that have an acute staff shortage. Among the five schools, only the Adarsh Senior Secondary School, that caters to students of classes VI-XII, has sizeable strength with 502 students on its rolls. On the other hand, the Government High School has just just 77 students with only 6, 7, 8 students in classes VI, VII and VII respectively; the middle school here has 16 students with four students in class VI, five in class VII and nine in class VII. In the two primary schools, there are 33 students in the boys school and 28 students in the girls schools. As for the teachers, there are eight teachers for the 77 students in the high school, four in the middle school for 16 students, two in one primary school while another primary school has no teacher. With the required teacher-pupil ratio expected to be around 1:35, the high and middle schools have a surplus of teachers. A senior officer in the state education department said that at least two primary schools could be closed by shifting the students of these schools to the middle school, which can be converted into the elementary school catering to classes I to VIII. He said that that around half of the population of Khatkarkalna resides abroad and there are not much number of students who can be admitted in these four schools from here. Punjab Education Minister Daljeet Singh Cheema could not be contacted while District Education officer (DEO) Nawanshahr Dinesh Kumar confirmed that there are five government schools running in Khatkarkalan.
