Teachers buy PCs with loans, school goes places

Today, the girls at the Vellanad Vocational Higher Secondary School, 20 kilometres from Thiruvananthapuram, proudly roll out power point presentations and computer-aided projects with a few confident clicks. And, the school is going places, virtually—it won a prize in 2003 for having the best computer laboratory in Kerala and recently bagged a computer literacy excellence award from the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.

It’s a sharp contrast from similar government-run Malayalam-medium institutions in the rest of Kerala, where computer lessons are taught without computers while teachers simply shrug and point their fingers at the lack of funds, the system and even the Asian Development Bank.

Says K S Vimalakumari, the proud principal of Vellanad school, ‘‘We had three choices before us for the installation of computers—having the school’s Parent-Teachers Association (PTA) install them, getting assistance from welfare groups, or involving government-empanelled agents.’’

The PTA was the first to be struck off that list. ‘‘We simply could not have raised much money from the parents,’’ admits D Mohanakumaran Nair, president of the association.

‘‘Inviting outside agencies would have meant that the schedule for using computers would be decided by them and the school would have no right over the machines after the contract period,’’ says Malini Devi, one of the teachers who chipped in for the laboratory. ‘‘We wanted the students to have unlimited access to computers, even after school hours and during holidays.’’

It was then that the teachers got into the act. V Rajasekharan Nair took Rs 2 lakh as loan from a service cooperative bank, for which five others stood surety. The other 80-odd teachers of the 3,200-student school combined to put in Rs 1.33 lakh—most of it from Provident Fund (PF) loans. ‘‘Malini Devi borrowed Rs 50,000 from a relative’s fixed deposit,’’ recalls the principal.

The school then invited quotations for installing the computers, before zeroing in on SoftQuest, which agreed to do the job for Rs 4 lakh.

‘‘If the teachers had approached the authorities for the scheme or waited for official clearance, they would have been caught in endless red-tape and never made it,’’ says Kuttappan, a local resident.

The students, meanwhile, were given a choice of projects to take on. ‘‘We prepared a project and made a power point presentation about the issues faced by farmers and the possible solutions, after we heard about the suicides by farmers,’’ says Kavya Jayan, a ninth standard student.

All the hardwork done, and 18 computers in place, it was payback time with Rs 2 lakh reaching the school as part of the best lab award, and Rs 1.5 lakh from the excellence award. ‘‘The awards will help the teachers repay most of their loans,’’ says Mohanakumaran Nair.

‘‘Once the debts on computers are cleared and the school owns them, it will prove to be a source of income too,’’ says Vimalakumari, adding that the school is in the process of setting up an independent computer laboratory for the higher secondary section.

‘‘We are happy that our students are not hampered simply because they come from poor families and are studying in a Malayalam-medium government school. It’s a collective effort, it’s a small beginning,’’she adds.