The class is full again

Students at Green Valley School

In October, despite the schools being shut for three months already, annual exams were held as per schedule.

Now, 15 days in, Mohammed Younis Malik, Director, School Education, Kashmir, says attendance is almost full. “Over the winter months, we conducted tutorials, attended by almost two lakh students, and remedial classes if needed. We also provided assignments to teachers, and sent these to students,” he says.

Also Read: BSNL broadband restored in Valley

International Islamic School Principal Mutahir Khan says their staff have been coming to school since September, and parents came once a week to collect the material they prepared.

The decorations the school put up to welcome its 1,400 students back are still hanging. Pointing to the grounds bustling with children, Shafi admits “everyone is happy with the return of students”, but “getting back on track will be tough.”

At Srinagar’s International Islamic School, Suzain Shakeel, a Class 10 student, looks anxiously at the blackboard as maths teacher Asif Altaf explains linear equations, starting first with last year’s lessons. Thankful to be back in school, Suzain says, “I got so stressed at home… One thought kept running through my mind, what would happen to my future… I had to consult a psychiatrist.” But, the 15-year-old who wants to become a “business tycoon”, fears the long break may have set her back permanently. “Ninth class is considered the base for the next classes.”

As a working woman, mother Safeena says, she had to constantly juggle, including dropping and picking up Suzain from tuitions.

Delhi Public School, Srinagar, is holding “bridge” classes, to clear students’ doubts. “Only then will normal syllabus resume,” says management official Ehsan Quddusi.

Kids playing cricket in a school in Pulwama district.

He talks of the “mammoth” exercise the school undertook to transfer content to parents’ devices during the long shutdown, including flying to Delhi to arrange pen drives. “Around 95,000 GB of data was transferred. It was followed by content development, where we recorded around 12 hours of video per day, followed by editing and adding of graphics. At its peak, we were taking prints of 1 lakh pages per day.”

It’s more than just picking up and restarting, points out Radifa Nazir, academic in-charge for junior classes at DPS. “The students’ concentration span has gone down, they keep fidgeting. We are working on these issues.”

There is also anger. Areeba Rashid of International Islamic School can’t get over how the exams were held. “We got question papers home and wrote the answers and delivered them back to school. Is this how an exam is conducted?… It was a joke,” she says.

Humera Rashid, who topped the Class 12 Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education exams in science stream with 98% marks, talks of how in the absence of any contact with school, “books were my teachers”. She is now preparing for medical entrance.

Students at Delhi Public School in Srinagar.

Azim Sajad, just in Class 8 of Green Valley School, laughs about his three “promotions”. “When I was in Class 2 (2014), there were floods, so we were promoted to the next class. In 2016 (following the shutdown after Burhan Wani’s killing), I got another promotion, to Class 5. And then last year, there were home examinations… You can understand how we study in Kashmir. It is just a formality.”

Schools say it is hard to convince students the lockdown won’t happen again. Mudasir Bashir, a social science teacher at Government Central High School Pulwama, says, “Students ask questions like how long the school will stay open, what happened to Kashmir’s special status, talk of a loss of identity.” He had never got such queries before, he adds.

Rouf Ahmad Mir, a teacher of International Islamic School, says his students are agitated, particularly about “how media is portraying Kashmir”. “Instead of asking questions on the subject being taught, they want to know about Kashmir politics,” he says.

Many, like Qazi Inam, a student from Baramulla in North Kashmir, have shelved future plans. “The forms for JEE (engineering) exams are out, but I am not going to appear for them because I am not prepared,” Inam says, adding that any future road will take him outside the state. “My parents don’t want me to continue in Kashmir. At the same time, they fear Kashmiris are not safe outside the state.”

Afroz Ahmad Mir, a computer professional, moved to Delhi last year from Srinagar to ensure his two children could get a good education. “One of them was then in Class 4 and another was yet to join school,” says Mir.

Principal Khan admits a lot of his students have started citing a desire to leave the Valley as the reason for shifting out of International Islamic School.

Zain Khan, a Class 10 DPS student who wants to become a lawyer, says his parents have a “backup plan” ready. “They will send me to Jammu if something happens again.”

Many parents who couldn’t send their children to other states packed them off to Srinagar’s Parraypora during the winter months, an educational hub that is otherwise a coaching destination. Raqib Sultan, a Class 12 student, and his friends are here from Shopian in South Kashmir.

A 17-year-old Class 10 student from Samboora village, known for intense stone-pelting, says that just a couple of days ago, he couldn’t make it to his computer tuitions as his village was cordoned off by the Army for a search operation. He dreams to be famous one day, maybe as a motivational speaker. “I spend most of my time at school or tuitions, I am taking English and computer training lessons, I study every day as if it is my last day. No one knows what is going to happen tomorrow.”

Regretting how “education has been choked over the last 70 years”, Vijay Dhar, who runs Srinagar DPS, says, “We need to find ways to keep education going in Kashmir, to stop succumbing to situations around. Students and teachers have to find a way because education can’t be ignored… We need to know our faults and solve the problems. Discussing the conflict and all is not going to help.”

Praying that things will remain peaceful, Farzana Shah of Green Valley says, “If teachers are putting in effort, I would say students are making double the effort. If god forbid, something happens again, their confidence will be shattered. Last year, if someone lost completely, it was the students. Their loss can’t be compensated.”