Preparatory schools as an offshoot of the privatization of education in Kashmir Valley are intermittently drawing bad press for being the ‘clueless cradles’ run by ‘amateurish educators’.
By Bisma Bhat
July 15, 2019 was the first and the last day for 2-year-old Muhammad Ibn-i-Umar in a pre-school.
On this day he was admitted in Delhi Public Wonder World, a kindergarten located in Barzulla Baghat, Srinagar. He was left unattended by the day-care teachers, for none could deal with his first-day school estrangement which is a normal thing to happen to anybody on his or her first day in school.
Teachers became annoyed, and secluded him alone in a room.
Away from his mother’s lap, facing strange faces and the place that he had never seen before, the kid was freaking out, his tiny heart filled with fear and anxiousness.
His uncle, Aaqib Preezada, recalled the horrors of the day with a glowering face: “We called school authorities many times in a day to learn about our child’s wellbeing. We told them, if he was crying we would take him back home. But they assured us that he is comfortable there.”
Not being convinced with this assurance, Muhammad’s aunt visited the campus to see him in the afternoon. But she was surprised to see that his face was still wet with tears; and worse still: no one in the room was paying any attention towards him.
“My sister saw that a teacher had come out of the room and Muhammad followed her but she turned back and locked him back in an empty room,” Peerzada, seething with anger, said. “Noticing this, my sister immediately rushed towards the room and unlocked her wailing nephew.”
Later, the child’s parents demanded to see the CCTV footage of the day activities of their whimpering ward at the school. They were surprised to see that the teacher had abandoned their ‘cry baby’ for the whole day and had not even provided him with his lunch.
“All other children in the room were provided with lunch but my nephew’s lunch box was not even touched because he was crying continuously,” Muhammad’s uncle continued to narrate what he termed as the family torment.
Soon, the family filed a complaint in the nearby police station against the owner of the school. He was kept behind bars for a day.
But shortly, as the owner and his family apologized, Muhammad’s parents withdrew their complaint. But the family cancelled his admission.
Further recounting the ‘dreadful day’, the family did affirm that the teachers in preparatory school were well-qualified but lacked childcare and development skills and training.
“They don’t have the patience to deal with kids,” Muhammad’s uncle said.
It is the duty of a preparatory school teacher to console the child and divert its attention in the school, Peerzada added. “They must understand that parents pay them to take care of their kids and teach them how to socialize.”
Primarily, parents send their kids to the pre-schools to acquire social skills, creative mind setup, language, emotional self-regulation and interactive skills.
And for that, teachers in these schools should be trained with motor skills, creativity and child psychology.
But what happened to a kid like Muhammad Ibn-i-Umar makes many believe that the day-care system in Kashmir is unregulated.
The fact that the schools in Kashmir not only lack pre-school trained teachers and are largely oblivious of child development makes this mess even more miserable for parents.
“Child development is a separate field of specialization,” said Bashir Ahmad Dar, a noted educationist of the valley. “Every teacher who is employed in pre-schools must know different domains of child development. But when your teacher doesn’t know anything about the field then they will be a disaster for the society.”
Dar explained that only when there is a skillful and well-trained teacher, a child would receive motherly treatment and become emotionally comfortable. “Also,” the educationist said, “such treatment will ensure that your child will feel secure and grow healthy.”
Equally, the purpose of these pre-schools is to train the children with social skills.
And for that, reckons Dr. Aftab, a sociologist, there should be certain parameters framed before establishing these schools.
“First of all, teachers in these schools should be patient to handle the kids,” the sociologist said. “But, usually, we see the university pass-outs recruited in these schools, who don’t qualify for the job and don’t have the proper training and patience to deal with these kids. They often use harsh behaviour with these toddlers and impair their learning abilities and proper grooming.”
And therefore, Dr. Aftab continued, only teachers with good communication—both verbal and nonverbal—skills should be recruited for this job.
“Teacher have to also use a sympathetic approach to control and comfort children,” he said. “Creative methods should be adopted by the teacher to make the teaching-learning process playful and attractive so that children will never get bored and love to come to school.”
But all this looks possible when the system in place applies standard requirements of a pre-school. In absence of such professional handling, however, many of these preparatory schools draw flak over their way of work.
For example, in the name of ‘compulsive-cum-competitive’ preparatory schools, school vans are visibly overloaded with 11-12 children, whereas according to the seating capacity, 6-7 children can be seated comfortably. Such instances, experts opine, only defeats the purpose of preparatory schooling.
Traffic and transport regulatory authorities in Kashmir have not taken any action or initiative in this regard. Challenging school vans and buses for overloading is hardly witnessed anywhere.
In June 2019, the district administration Srinagar directed all the government and private schools operating in Srinagar to strictly follow the Supreme Court (SC) guidelines on ferrying children in vans and buses or face action.
But the assiduous violation is only denting its make-believe image.
“Playschools are unregulated institutions,” said G N Var, chairman private school association in Kashmir. “Government has not made any monitory body for them and that is why they run like unbridled horse.”
These schools get permission under the Shops And Establishment Act, Var added. There are no rules and regulations for these schools, and therefore, he said, anybody can open it anywhere and no one is there to stop them.
“We have many times asked the government to frame certain regulations for these schools to make them accountable,” Var said. “They frame curriculum and charge fee according to their will and wish. Nobody is there to ask them.”
Regulation of day-care school, said Shahid Iqbal Choudhary, District Commissioner, Srinagar, has to be supervised by the education department.
“It is their mandate,” he said. “They should take the responsibility.”
Both Director School Education and pre-school managers did not respond to the repeated calls and messages for this story.
The conspicuous absence of the other side for this story perhaps points out the larger sense of immunity enjoyed by certain sections of the society—especially the private education consortium, which apparently believes that it takes money and connections to run something fashionable in the society.
But the hard fact is, there’re kids like Muhammad Ibn-i-Umar and their anxious family who suffer at the hand of this ‘trendy and tactless venture’.
“Being man of means and a school owner is not enough,” believes Bilkiss Mirza, a mother of three-year-old child, who was forced to cancel her son’s admission in one of Srinagar’s premier preparatory schools last year over the campus ineptitude.
“This discord-dented society needs professionals and experts who know their job, and not these new riches who seem to have no idea of what to do with their money, before one day they come up with the idea of starting a school, which is a fashionable thing in the society these days. There is nothing bad in it, unless you engage amateurs in your endeavor. And once you do that, you’re only breeding mediocrity and bogus merit in the society, rather than helping it grow.”
