Priyanka Sharma attends a class at one of the night schools in Delhi and finds that students here are as eager to learn as in any other school.
At 9:30 pm, shops in Delhi’s bustling INA market are closing for the day. After unloading a shopper's groceries into the car, 20-year-old Shiv Kumar, who works as a shop attendant, collects his daily wage of Rs 120 from his employer. He checks his polybag lying under the shop counter for contents — pencils, an eraser and a tattered notebook. He locks the shop and heads to the night school at the government-run Navyug School.
Run by Delhi-based voluntary organisation Ritinjali, the night school is one of the few in the city. While Kolkata and Bangalore have evening colleges for students who wish to work during the day, night schools offering elementary learning are scarce. In Mumbai, there are close to 150 night schools run by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. For Ritinjali, finding space was the most difficult task. Fortunately, the New Delhi Municipal Council provided one at one of its schools in INA market. However, because of the late hour, the female attendance dwindled. The school only caters to boys.
Volunteers from the organisation encouraged rag-pickers, delivery boys and canteen workers to attend two-hour classes after 9 pm. News travelled and workers from nearby markets also signed up. Today, the school has an attendance sheet with 75 names. However, Only 50 turn up regularly. “Their employers make them work for longer hours for extra money,” informs Ashish Alex, progammes coordinator at Ritinjali.
Though Ritanjali aimed to enroll students between the ages of 12 and 20, the oldest one is 35-year-old Neebhu Lal, a green grocer. Having never attended a school in his life, Lal has been coming here since 2004. “I learnt how to calculate to avoid getting duped by wholesalers,” he says. Lal can now read and write in Hindi and recite multiplication tables till 15. He also tries to converse in broken English with some of his buyers, he says.
Inside the classroom, space is evidently a constraint, forcing three boys to huddle up on a bench for two. On the blackboard, there are division sums in increasing order of difficulty, along with names of colours in English. Though the organisation has a prescribed curriculum that includes “basic” Maths, English and Science, sticking to a rigid syllabus isn't possible, confesses Nand Kishore, a teacher at the night school. “Each of them has a different level of education, while some are illiterate,” he says. Kishore works here for a monthly income of Rs 6,000. Though he has a day job, he has been teaching at the school since 2005. Kishore goes from bench to bench, correcting “silly mistakes”, praising their handwriting and at times, scolding the “naughty ones”.
Though the pace to grasp elementary concepts at a later stage in life is “extremely slow”, the students have made considerable progress, believes Kishore. He points to his “best student” — seated at the front bench is Sitendra Maurya, 19, who has been attending the school for four years. Not knowing the English or Hindi alphabet till he was 16, he reads aloud with confidence, “green, yellow, orange”. The words are then patiently copied in his notebook. “I can read road signs too,” he beams. His acquired skills got him a job in a garments store in Sarojini Nagar for Rs 4,500 in a month. His employer has promised to double his salary, if he can speak to customers in fluent English.
Binesh Kumar, 19, attended the night school for two years. A “quick learner” according to Alex, he was enrolled in to the Second Chance school in Delhi — a residential progamme started by Ritinjali that provides vocational training to school drop-outs. Kumar now works in Indian fashion designer Tarun Tahiliani's workshop in Gurgaon, stitching garments. Some are working as clerks in government offices, others have appeared for class X and XII examinations, conducted by the National Institute of Open Schooling.
Like any other classroom, this one has its share of latecomers. Kishore scolds one, who has come30 minutes late. “Once they acquire basic education , most of them stop coming. They need the money." But better late than never, feels Kishore.
