School on wheels

A mobile school in Hooghly brings the classroom to children who have never been to one.

On a hot afternoon,a bus drives into a desolate playground in the midst of the Bansberia municipality in Hooghly district,about 45 kilometres from Kolkata. As if from nowhere,the children emerge,many of them barefoot,and troop into the bus,called the Bhraymyaman Pathabhaban or the mobile school. These are children who have either never been to school or have dropped out after a few years of schooling.

About two years ago,nine-year-old Jamshed Alam was enrolled to class I of Millbazar primary school,but he soon dropped out. The teaching is good in this bus and nobody beats us, says Jamshed,who attends the mobile school with his seven-year-old sister Sakina. Their father works in Ganges Jute Mill in the municipality and they live in the jute mill colony.

The bus is parked at the ground for a couple of hours,during which teachers and volunteers from Don Bosco School in Bandel,Hooghly,interact with the children and teach them numbers and the alphabet. A TV screen inside the bus screens animation films. Outside,parents of these children throng the bus,some trying to peep in to catch a bit of the action inside.

The mobile school,which started in the last week of February,caters to about 40 children of the municipality. The children,mostly up to 10 years of age,have been identified on the basis of a survey the district administration conducted in the municipality.

First,we make sure the children are comfortable. Then,we teach them the basics because most of them do know how to read and write, says Father Raymond,dean of studies at the Don Bosco School in Bandel. Father Raymond,who is among a group of five teachers and volunteers,says the mobile school is a novel initiative to which the children and their parents are responding enthusiastically.

Though Hooghly fares better than the rest of the state on educational parameters,the districts industrial pockets are home to jute mills and a substantial number of migrant workers. The workers in these industrial units earn about Rs 100 a day and education is often not a priority. Also,since they are new to Bengali,most of the children opt out of government schools where Bengali is the medium of instruction. According to the 2010 Annual Status of Education Report ASER,compiled by Pratham,the out-of-school rate in Hooghly is 3.1 per cent,which is better than the state average of 4.6 per cent. But the district administration feels the figures for Hooghly would be better if more attention is paid to its industrial pockets.

So the district administration now plans to extend the services of these mobile schools to other municipalities like Champdani,Sreerampore,Rishra and Uttarpara and has identified a total of 600 children who will be introduced to the world of books through these schools. The project aims to train the children for about six months after which they will be enrolled in regular schools.

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After the district administration placed a proposal before the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan,they started looking for a bus. After a few months,they got a 15-year-old bus from the transport department of the state government which has been remodelled with white boards,teaching kits and other audio visual tools. The sides of the bus have white boards and classes can also be held outside the bus.

A lot of effort has gone into this initiative. It is an innovative concept that UNICEF has supported with teaching aids, says Lori Calvo,UNICEFs chief of field office in West Bengal.