The two-room Salpara Lower Primary School has been the landmark of Rongsai village since 1994. But the centre of attention has been a shed the villagers built on the school’s compound 23 months ago.
The shed is where Karishma Rabha helped Rajmahanta and Utpal – two of more than a dozen COVID lockdown-induced dropouts – relearn their basics and more to be promoted to Class 6 at the Bodahapur High School nearby.
The two Government-run schools in western Assam’s Goalpara district are about 140 km west of Guwahati.
Karishma Rabha is an education facilitator, one of 45 engaged by the non-profit Centre for Microfinance and Livelihood (CML) across four districts since September 2019. The other districts are Bongaigaon, Baksa and Nalbari.
She is currently teaching numerical and fundamental literacy to 12 dropouts and slow learners of Classes 1-5 at Salpara’s makeshift classroom three alternate days a week. She devotes the other three days to a similar set-up at the Bodahapur school for students from Classes 6-8.
It took weeks for her to make Class 4 student Bitupan Jyoti write his name and other words in English, although he finds the lower cases a tad difficult. The rate of progress in the Assamese language has been similar for his friend Rikiraj.
“From his inability to read the alphabets a few months ago to managing words and sentences has been a marked improvement,” school management committee president and Rikiraj’s father, Sukhdhan Rabha said.
At the Kongkera LP School a few kilometres away, education facilitator Kabita Sangma has had a tough time bringing Chuname back to school after a long gap since March 2020. She had to start from scratch with the girl who had dropped out of Class 5.
Chuname’s ability to calculate and frame sentences have been ranging from levels 1 to 3, but her talents in music, sports and creativity such as origami have come to the fore.
“Our three-year project covers 2,363 children of 90 schools across six education blocks of four districts catering to 122 villages. The objective is to reduce and prevent dropout at the elementary level,” Kandarpa Kalita, CML’s area manager told The Hindu.
“We found that one of the main reasons for children dropping out of school is their inability to catch up with the faster learners, who the schools tend to focus attention on,” he said.
No online access
Barely had the project taken off when COVID struck. “Our field workers visited the homes of the project children who had no access to online learning. Schools reopened in October 2021 but some children continued to skip classes,” said Kuldeep Das, CML’s programme associate for Goalpara district.
The organisation identified 236 children who did not attend school from October 19 to November 11 and began Mission Sanjog for them. Only about 10% of these children are yet to be back to school.
