Mobile school project fails to provide education to Himachal Tribals

SHIMLA - A mobile school project initiated by the Himachal Pradesh Government to provide education to tribals has failed to take off due to lack of trained teaching staff.

Tribals spend six months of winter in the plains and the remaining six months in the mountains.

“All our children are illiterate. We are also illiterate. Even our forefathers did not receive any education. No teacher is provided to us for education. All our life has been spent like that. All our children are uneducated. Neither the government provided us with any education facility nor any teacher came here to teach us,” said Kasim, a tribal nomad.

The launch of the mobile schools, a few years ago, had raised hopes for tribals to get an education for their children. But, according to them, there are no such schools operating now.

“Nobody comes here to teach us. We stay in the forests here. No teacher comes here to teach us. The government officials say that we have sent many teachers to educate us but no teacher has come till now,” said Irshad, another tribal nomad.

State Education Minister I. D. Dhiman said mobile schools have been closed temporarily, as there is a need to introduce trained teachers as per the Right to Education Act.

“We considered rethinking this issue because, as per the Right to Education Bill, we can only use trained teachers for teaching. So, the people included for teaching under the Education Guarantee Scheme were almost untrained. They may have been graduates and a few may be post-graduates as well but they were not trained. So now it’s difficult to use them under the new Right to Education Bill,” said Dhiman.

There were over 330 mobile schools introduced under the EGS (Education Guarantee Scheme) for over nomadic 6,000 children of the state, but most of them have been closed.

These mobile schools were introduced to educate and bring tribals into the mainstream. By Hemant Chauhan (ANI)