Enrolment campaigns

Part of our project is to increase enrolment in our schools through working with the local implementing partner, for us here in Rupandehi, the Dalit Welfare Organisation. They lead activities like the enrolment campaign and arrange bridge classes for students who have not been attending school with the aim of a transition to the appropriate class after nine months. At 7am over the last few days I’ve joined the walks through villages around three schools. Each has been very different – students with tie and belt and orderly marching in one, a more casual stroll with teachers gathering students as we went in the other two. Taking the school to the village and talking close to home about what’s going on in school seems to make a lot of sense. In a school close to the Indian border the numbers in school could be doubled it appeared from four to eight hundred students if enrolment and attendance was improved. In other locations the drift to private schools appears to be significant. Teachers speak of families enrolling their children in the first year of school in the government system but immediately a private school provides bus travel – class 1 – parents move them on. 

In fact, due to my poor ICT skills probably (and maybe poor internet options in Bhairahawa) this post was written in April and is only now finding its way on-line ...... with luck there will be another post soon bringing a more up-to-date bulletin.