The Charchare primary school in Tinau rural municipality-5 has been running with the help of only one teacher. The teacher also doubles as the headteacher of the school.
The school however has only six students. One student in Grade one, two in Grade two and three students in Grade three. Of them, four are from the same family. All the students are put in a single class room for teaching and learning activities.
The classes however run only for 10 days or less in a month. The students do not come to school regularly, says the lone teacher and head teacher of the school Krishna Prasad Dhakal. The settlements are declining, with only the poor families left and they are reluctant to send their kids to school.
The children in the surrounding instead go to the jungle in search of firewood, which they sell in hotels along the Siddhartha highway for meeting their family expenses.
The school is run by teacher Dhakal all by himself after the then headteacher Damodar Ghimire resigned three months ago. Dhakal too is thinking of resigning. "If the relocation process does not begin, I will also have to resign," he said.
Dhakal has an office assistant to help him in the school. There are four class rooms in the school. Hence, infrastructure is not a problem. However, it must be translocated to bring in more students, says Dhakal.
The school had three teachers last year. However, they resigned for lack of work in the school. Last academic year, 10 students had been enrolled. But the increasing trend of migration is making it difficult for community schools to retain their students, said information officer at the Education Development and Coordination Unit, Palpa Mahendra Subedi. There could be a possibility of translocation or merger of schools with low number of students.
-Sushila Regmi
