COMMUNITY ACTION LEADS TO IMPROVEMENT OF LP SCHOOL FUNCTIONING

Around 78 Lower Primary (LP) school students from Digligre village, West Garo Hills District, Meghalaya were at the mercy of only one teacher who was teaching right from Nursery to standard V. It was difficult for only teacher to give away education to the children. The teachers seemed to be rather enjoying the situation and became very irregular. Slowly she started coming to the school for only two hours a day.

Digligre LP School

These days even the poorest of a man wants his child to be educated & so was the case of parents from Digligre village. They were very much concerned with the poor quality of education that their children were receiving. Having been made aware by BAKDIL about how best the community can help themselves, the villagers decided to sit for a meeting during February 2015 with an agenda to discuss the issue. “We decided in the meeting that we would approach the authorities in the Department of Education to find a solution to our problem” said Ledison Sangma.

The villagers now approached the Deputy Inspector (DI) of Schools, Government of Meghalaya & shared their problem with a request to appoint more teachers and also to enhance the school timing from 7 am to 12 pm. The community submitted an application formally to the Officer. "Our written representation to the DI did not work fully as he expressed his inability to appoint any extra teacher, however he agreed to our request of enhancing the school timings" said Apendro Marak.   

Today, one can see the children attending the school from 7 am to 12 pm. Combined efforts of the community have almost brought them close to achieving results & its just the beginning for them. "Although we have achieved results by bringing about changes in the school timings but our endeavour would continue and we would work together towards bringing more teachers to the LP school, thus giving quality education our children" said Ms. Sinje Marak.  

Contributed by: Rajesh Marak, BAKDIL

Edited by: Prabal Sen, Caritas India