came saw and satisfied but problems remain as it was !

Children of a town based school wished the visit of the school and mass education minister to their school on a regular basis. Reason: they would get good and qualitative food. The children made the wish after they get qualitative food on Monday as the mass education minister Pratap Jena visited their school and opened a school building under DPEP.    

 minister is tasting MDM in Sambalpur

During his visit to Sambalpur on Monday, the school and mass education minister Pratap Jena tested the food prepared for the school children under MDM programme in a school located in town’s Motijharan area and appreciated the quality of the food. But he was perhaps unaware that the food that was prepared on Monday was quite different from the food serve to the children regularly.

“We get rice and dal every day. But today was special one. There was vegetable in the Dal and it was tasty. Every day we get Dal that was fool of water. So we wish minister would visit on a regular basis so that we will able to get good and qualitative food”, a student of Veer Surendra Sai UGME school located at Motijharan area said.

“The students wanted to request the minister about their wish, but they could do so because fear to their teachers. We have been asked to not to move from the seats and to keep quit until the minister leaves the school campus. So we could not speak to the minister” another student of the school said.

On the other hand, the minister visited few schools of the district and engaged in inaugurating few school buildings under DPEP programme. He also expressed satisfaction over quality of education imparted in the schools. The minister also visited the Training school where he inaugurated the advance teacher’s training centre (digital equalizer programme) that has been developed by the mass education department with the technical support from American India Foundation (AIF).

“He came and visited the district. But the real problem of the district was remained unattained. Neither the minister enquired about the situation, nor any one raised the issue before him”, a retied teacher said. According to him, the primary education of the district has been totally in distress as there is serious shortage of teachers in several schools located in the rural areas. There are schools in the district which run with only one teacher.

Sources said, Sambalpur revenue district is comprised of 3 education districts namely Sambalpur, Rairakhol and Kuchinda. Reports say the teacher student ratio is quite high in urban area it is drastically low in rural area. There are as many as 156 schools in the district where the school is running with a single teacher.