`Schools in malls'

JUSTICE K. SAMPATH, head of the Inquiry Commission, inspecting the kitchen at the Municipal Elementary and Higher Secondary School in Thanjavur in January 2005. - R. SHIVAJI RAO

A valuable byproduct of the Justice K. Sampath Commission's inquiry into the Kumbakonam school fire is its startling expose of the deplorable conditions in many schools, thanks to its extensive spot inspection of educational institutions across Tamil Nadu. The inspection, which was in accordance with its second term of reference ("To suggest all reforms needed to ensure that such incidents [as the Kumbakonam fire] do not recur"), covered 2,661 schools, both government-run and private, identified as "vulnerable" by Chief Educational Officers in the State's 30 districts.

The Commission in Part II of its report lists suggestions to prevent accidents in schools. In 18 months the Commission and its inspection panel, comprising educationists, advocates and others, visited 80 schools on an average in each of the 30 districts "to gain firsthand knowledge of the shortcomings which could trigger an accident".

"The Kumbakonam tragedy is only symptomatic of the greater malaise," observed the Commission. Elaborating, it said, "There is total disregard for safety considerations, particularly concerning children, that range from rash driving of school vans to scolding, chiding, punishment in classrooms and unsafe buildings."

The team visited "schools within schools" and schools belonging to all categories, "recognised, unrecognised, permitted, not permitted, approved and unapproved". Despite the government's "marathon efforts" to provide infrastructure and basic needs such as drinking water and toilet facilities, "there do exist many government high and higher secondary schools which require basic infrastructure facilities in view of the increasing student strength". A programme to correct this situation has been put in place with assistance from the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development and other agencies.

The team also saw "schools being run in malls and marketplaces with stalls in the first floor and schools in the ground floor and vice versa". These schools, the report says, are "virtual tinderboxes waiting to explode". In several places, the team found schools being run in residential buildings "situated in narrow lanes through which service vehicles cannot ply".

"The whole problem is," the Commission says, "the indifference of the management in taking care of the basic amenities inside and outside school." In many schools the inspection team found high-tension and low-tension cables running across. "These can snap and result in serious accidents," the report cautioned and asserted, "The erring schools, most of them are [an] apology for schools, have to be shown the door unless safety standards are strictly adhered to."

The Commission has also noted that many of the nursery schools that have proliferated in the past few decades have not obtained the mandatory recognition from the government and are run in "derelict structures" with a single entrance, narrow staircases, unclean toilets, unhygienic noon meal kitchens, and no safe drinking water. The Commission also found that many schools had not obtained licences for their buildings and that municipal authorities had issued sanitary certificates without visiting the buildings.

"Many matriculation schools and primary schools run pre-KG, LKG and UKG schools on the sly, without approval/permission/recognition from the Education Department," the report notes. "When the Commission visited such schools and put the specific question to the school authorities, they lied through their teeth, but when actually confronted with indisputable evidence available on site, such as the presence of children below primary class age in the classrooms where LKG and UKG boards were displayed on the door frames, they had no plausible answer," the report says. The Commission also made a startling disclosure that it saw "in several schools children of pre-school group being confined in locked rooms so as to conceal the improper and illegal activity of the management from the knowledge of the Commission".

The "conditions of municipal schools are appalling," the report says. In rural schools, the situation appears to be far worse. Private schools lure away not only children but also teachers from schools run by panchayat unions. Instances of panchayat union schoolteachers in the pay of the government serving private schools illicitly have also come to the Commission's notice.

S. Viswanathan