Classes between carnage and quake

Climbing the class ladder is easy if you are a municipal school student in Ahmedabad. For, there are no exams. For the past two years, munic...

Climbing the class ladder is easy if you are a municipal school student in Ahmedabad. For, there are no exams. For the past two years, municipal school students from Class I to VII here have been promoted en masse 8212; last year, there was the quake, this year the riots. Now, things have got worse: There are no classes being held.

Many relief camps are being run in municipal schools and parents are too scared to send their small children to class.

So while Municipal School Board authorities are conducting classes till April 30 in areas that are not disturbed, these are being held just in name.

Relief camps are being run in 11 of the total 226 school buildings of the Municipal School Board. And, according to the board, just 1.25 lakh of the total 2.2 lakh students have been attending school since February 28.

Most of those coming belong to schools lying in the incident-free western areas or the peaceful eastern areas.

8216;8216;Parents are afraid to send their children to school. Many are living in relief camps and cannot attend classes,8217;8217; admits Ratnaben Parmar, Principal of Behrampura School. Barring a few days when curfew was relaxed, the school has been closed since February 28.

Hanif Saiyyed, father of Sana, a Class VII student of Shahibaug Municipal School, is angry: 8216;8216;What about my daughter8217;s education? First the school was closed for repairs and now a relief camp has been set up there.8221; Afzal Shah, whose son Moin studies in Class IV of the same school, says while the standard of education has always been low in municipal schools, it has taken a new dip now.

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8216;8216;The riots came as a shock. The quake hit education hard and just when we thought that we were getting on the right track, the riots began,8217;8217; says Municipal School Board Deputy Chairman Jagdish Bhavsar. He adds that this forced them to promote all students for the second consecutive year.

School Board Administrative Officer AO N.N. Qureshi says examination papers had even been set: 8216;8216;But all plans to conduct examinations went haywire. The board also tried to trace students in relief camps so that they could be taught there.8221;