Click to play videoMumbai: Shabina doesn't like to attend school these days. A student of Class 4, Shabina not only have to share a classroom space with the students of Class 5 and 6, but often she has to learn the same subjects too.
This is exactly how the Urdu-medium schools are functioning in Mumbai today. These schools have students who are willing to learn and a budget of Rs 400 crores granted by the Mumbai municipal authorities. But they have no teachers.
The acute shortage of teachers has compelled many of these schools — like Shabina's school in Parel — to combine classes for different standards with just one teacher to teach them. At times, there is no teacher at all.
"Humein problem hoti hai. Jab doosri classes ko padhate hai, tab hum kuch aur karte hain (We face a lot of problems. When the teachers teach other classes, we spend time doing something else)," Shabina Aslam says.
The situation is similar in almost all Urdu-medium schools in the city. And this has further aggravated the dropout rate of students in these schools. Today, the annual dropout rate at Urdu civic schools is as high as 12 per cent.
There are over 300 vacancies for Urdu teachers in various municipal corporation schools, but in its last recruitment drive, the municipal authorities could hire only 10. One factor hampering the recruitment drive is the fact that most of these posts fall under the reserved category.
What this implies is that till the time the education department wakes up to the crisis and begins a fresh recruitment drive for Urdu teachers, the young kids of Urdu-medium schools will continue to lose out on quality education.
On their part, the civic authorities seem oblivious of the real problem. They are busy making promises as usual. "In the last six months, we are ensuring that every classroom has at least one teacher," S Shinde, deputy municipal commissioner, claims.
But with one teacher juggling three classes at a time — teaching everything from maths, geography to even poetry — it is the students who suffer. "Is wajah se bacchon ka dhyan bhi nahin lagta, hum theek se portion nahin paadha sakte, (Because of such juggling of classes, we can't pay proper attention to the kids)," a Urdu teacher with one such school admits.
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