Ten classes, but only 5 rooms

VIJAYAWADA: As part of his grand plan to revolutionise school education in the state, chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy will be in Vijayawada Tuesday to inaugurate a brand new school building at Idpugallu village. But a stone's throw from the city, a government school languishes in utter neglect.The Government High School in Yanamalakudur village has an interesting history.It was inaugurated by the late N T Rama Rao way back in 1958 when he was a film actor. The village had a sentimental attachment for him, because he had spent some time there.The school has five rooms.One is used as a staff room, and one to store mid-day meal rations. Primary school children from class I to class III are crammed into one room, fourth to sixth graders sit out in the veranda and the remaining four classes take the remaining four rooms.The room used by 10th class students doubles as the store room for the mid-day meal rice.Deputy divisional educational officer M V Krishna Reddy told Express that the school was given Rs 11 lakh two years ago to build a new building, but then the gram panchayat has been unable to provide the land need for it because the villagers have been reluctant to part with their land what with market values soaring to Rs 1 crore per acre.Two academic years passed by meanwhile. Finally, the panchayat scraped together 35 cents of land and construction of classrooms began during the summer vacation this year. But then the contractor stopped work, saying the soil at the site was loose and was not suitable for a school building. The village lets outs its drainage to this site.Amid all these problems, the students, a majority of them belonging to dalit, backward and minority communities, have been performing well. The school recorded 85.5 per cent pass in SSC last year.