HYDERABAD: A teacher has put up an unusual notice at the government primary school at Adavidevulapalli in Chityal of Nalgonda district in Telangana.
A 4 ft by 4 ft flex put up in front of the school premises informs people that he will not be late for school even a single minute and will never leave school even a minute before the school closes for the day. He has even said in the notice that he if did not stick to this, he would not accept his salary and that salary could be used by the gram panchayat for the development of the school itself.
“It was not what I decided on the spur of the moment. A lot of thinking went into it before I put up the flex in March this year,” the primary school headmaster G Satish told TOI.
Last year itself he had put himself through a rigorous plan and succeeded. He went late to school by a few minutes only twice in the entire year and that too because he had to get labour and a cement bag in a bus to get some work done at the school.
Satish had joined the school eight years ago when it had only 21 students. Now there are 63 students. There are three private schools in the vicinity and Satish wondered why students should not join a government school when there was access to it. He spoke to villages and got students to join the government school assuring them that he would be responsible for their studies.
Spending from his own pocket, he got toilets constructed in the school. “But the appearance of the school building attracts the villagers who choose private schools. I challenged some of the parents to compare the education a student got in the government school and in the other private schools. Our students were better in every respect. Of course, the appearance of our school should also be better,” Satish said.
Satish who has done his M Sc in mathematics and also B Ed, travels every day to school on his two-wheeler. Last year, he had to ride in all 110 km which is up and down to school from the village he lived in. But this year, he has moved to Miryalaguda which is slightly closer and would have to ride 82 km every day. He gets no travel allowance but that is not something that he is bothered about. All he is interested in is ensuring that he is at school by 9 am and will stay there till 4 pm. “Actually, I reach the school at least an hour before to be able to receive the children,” he said. There are, however, needs that the school has. Children need clean drinking water, note books, pencils and stationery.