Schools open on a dull note

A Majority of the government schools in Kolar City had low turnout of students on Monday, the first day of the academic year.

Though the Department of Education instructed teachers to hold a festival - ‘Prarambhotsava’ - with pomp to attract the students back to school, in several government schools, the only few students who had come after their summer vacation, were assigned the task of cleaning the school premises.

The scene was no different at the Government Higher Primary School situated on the premises of the Block Education Officer’s office. A couple of students were sweeping and cleaning the premises while there was clearly no sign of celebrations. The BEO, who was busy for the past 15 days sending circulation to other schools to celebrate ‘prarambhotsava’ was in the dark over dull day at the school adjacent to his office.

Some other schools had not yet all opened even at 11 am and they seemed to still have not come out of the holiday mood.

In some schools, the teachers were sitting idle as none of the students had come. Neither the parents nor the presidents of School Development Monitoring Committees (SDMCs) had come to celebrate the re-opening of the school.

To the envy of these schools, a few others in the City decked up their schools with floral garlands and set up pendals, as per the directions of the BEO. Presidents of the SDMCs were invited to distribute textbooks to students.

At the Government Higher Primary School in Kurubarapete, SDMC Ratnamma distributed the textbooks in the presence of the enthusiastic headmaster  C K Pillirappa and lecturers Shashikala, Venkatachalamurthy, Narayanamma and Lavanya.
To their neighbour’s envy, the private schools had started admissions and preparatory works a week earlier and on Monday, they religiously commenced the classes.

Unlike their counterparts in the government schools, the students clad in neat uniforms in these private schools didn’t have to bother about cleaning the premises.
BEO K S Nagarajagowda at a press meet on April 30 had said that action would be taken against the private schools which start admission process before the scheduled time and collect capitatation fee. However, he said, so far the department has not received any complaints.