Bhubaneswar: The condition of an oldest Odia medium schools in undivided Odisha, Bihar and Bengal is dilapidated, thanks to the apathy of the Jharkhand government which has allegedly turned a blind eye to its condition since 2019.
The matter pertains to Middle School Kera Oriya in West Singhbhum district’s Chakradharpur. The school imparts education to students from Std I to Std VIII, in two classrooms and an open verandah, according to sources.
At least six classrooms of the school were declared dilapidated in 2019 and were demolished. This has forced the children to study in the open in a ‘heritage’ school which was started in 1912, the sources added.
“We do not have new admissions because the classrooms have not been constructed after the demolition in 2019. Students are studying in the verandah facing lot of difficulty, especially during the monsoon,” a teacher at Kera’s Odia medium school said.
The erstwhile royal family of Kera had donated the land for establishing the school for supporting the Odia students residing in the bordering districts.
According to reports, the Jharkhand government had identified 4481 school buildings which were not in good shape and directed demolition of 3428 such buildings for safety of students. The Kera school was one among them.
Sources added the number of Odia schools in Jharkhand have been dropping at a faster rate due to lack of Odia language teachers and Odia textbooks in schools.
Odia is being studied as a second language in Jharkhand as a second language in Jharkhand as around 20 lakh Odia-speaking people reside in 10 districts of the state. In the three bordering districts of East and West Singhbhum, Sareikela-Kharsuan, around 30% of the population are Odia.
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