Open-air education, literally

Any attempt to explain or even begin to understand why it is that a government school in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) is conducted in the open air for the last 28 years falls at the first hurdle. The education minister for AJK lives close to Kotli Battal village where the Government Primary School has been without a building — or boundary wall or toilets or any other facility associated with a government school — but is seemingly oblivious to the plight of the children being taught under the sky almost on his doorstep. There are no desks, chairs or any other equipment or teaching aids beyond an ancient blackboard. When it rains, children and teachers take shelter under a tree, and they roast in the fierce summer sun without fans of a ceiling to shield them. There is no road between the village and the school, with pupils and staff threading their way across the fields. The children sit on rugs on the stony ground and despite the passage of almost three decades the education department has yet to authorise the construction of a school building.

For the most part, the children attending the school come from poor families who cannot afford the expensive private education that many can avail. Those that have jobs in the Gulf, America and the UK can fund their children well; those that till the fields or have no job at all have to make do with the school under the sky. Since 1986, there have been a number of representatives elected from the Khui Ratta constituency in which the school is located, some of them achieving ministerial rank, but not one ever took the school under their wings. It is yet another example — there are countless others countrywide — of the failure to invest in education for all which is now a constitutional right. It may be argued that at least some education is being provided to this marginal community, but that is not the point. Twenty-eight years is decades too long to be waiting, and the AJK education minister needs to attend to matters close to home.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 22^nd, 2014.

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