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school in the area. It has at present around 400 students and 13 teachers, but the building has a capacity
to accommodate more teachers and students. The medium of instruction is Bengali and they follow the curriculum
of West Bengal Board of Secondary Education.
Student strength has been decreasing over the years since the school is not affiliated to the West Bengal
government. As a consequence, the students have to register themselves to a government affiliated school,
paying the additional fee to that school to take the grade X examinations conducted by the education
board of the government.
Since most of the students belong to families of farmers and daily wage laborers of the villages
around Langalberia, paying the additional fee to the government affiliated school is a huge burden. The
fee is currently Rs 30 per month (less than $1) per student and most of the students find it very difficult to
pay even this small amount of money. Thus, the school authority is accepting whatever the students offer,
otherwise it could lead to drop-outs. Another major issue is that some of the students have stopped coming
to the school and have started helping their parents in their work. Sometimes they have to take care of
their younger siblings while their parents are away. Owing to financial constraints, many students are even
unable to buy textbooks. Further, absence of good transportation compels most of the students to walk
more than 40 minutes to reach school.
The Head Mistress of the school, Mrs. Nilanjana Ghosh discussed many other difficulties they are
facing. Most teachers are highly qualified and their good work is reflected in the results of the students
from this school in grade X board examination. However, since the students are appearing through a different
school for the examination, the teachers of Langalberia are not getting the due recognition for their
good work. Even though the teachers’ salaries are well below government norms, they seldom get their
salaries on time. The school authority has been trying to arrange for parent-teacher meetings during each
session. Most of the time parents don’t show up as they have to escape a few hours of work which means
loss of invaluable amount of money for them.
Another major problem other than drop-out is the building maintenance. The presence of a pond on one
side of the building is posing to be a problem because it is resulting in the corrosion of the foundation of
the building. Some temporary measures to overcome this have proved to be futile. A permanent solution
would be to make a guard-wall which again requires a lot of money (nearly $2,500). The president of
the school, Mr Ranajit Ghosh, told us that they are depending on Asha-Cornell for this.
Earlier our project stewards had found that the school authority was concentrating mainly on getting the
government affiliation rather than looking for funding sources like Asha-Cornell. It seems that their initial
idea was to get the government affiliation which would have increased the student strength. They thought
that the monthly fee could be a good source of funding for them. The only problem for not getting the affiliation
yet is that according to the recent government rules, they need to construct one more staircase as
a safety precaution and they have to pay a one-time deposit to the fire department to get a no-objection
certificate from them (total of $2000 approximately). Therefore, now they are desperately looking for the
money as getting the affiliation will give them motivation to look forward as the current situation is depressing
and demoralizing.
Langalberia 21