Botad Schools

The Gujarat government will start school admissions on June 26, but there are questions as to where these students will study, at least in one Botad school.

Classrooms in the government secondary school in Barania village of Botad district’s Ranpur taluka have sunk by about a foot into the ground less than 10 years after they were built. The walls weep with dark, mottled stains of water damage and the floor resembles a mosaic of shards of ceramic where the tiles have separated from the sunken concrete.

The Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA), launched in March 2009, aimed to enhance access to secondary education and to improve its quality. The scheme also provided important physical facilities such as additional classrooms. The school in Barania was built in 2015 under this project. 

Today, the school employs three teachers—one each for Mathematics, English and Social Science—for its roughly 50 students of Classes 9 and 10.

A person close to the situation told Gujarat Samachar Digital that the current six rooms—five classrooms and one spare—is inadequate for the needs of the students. Further, the roads to the school, which is almost half a kilometer away from the village, frequently flood in the monsoon, making approach a nightmare for both teachers and students. 

When Gujarat Samachar Digital raised the issue with Dr Jincy Roy, collector and district magistrate of Botad, she said she would look into the matter. On June 25, she dispatched an education officer, the taluka development officer and a project officer to visit Barania village, located about 30km from Botad district headquarters.