TAXILA: Students at the government high school in the Thatta Khalil union council attend classes sitting in a graveyard, which also serves as a play ground for them in recess time.

The school was set up in 1905 as a primary school and caters to the children of 14 nearby villages, but only has 12 classrooms to house its 650 students. Most of the senior classes are held in the open, with the students having to sit between graves since they do not have furniture. Classes are not held if it rains and most of the teachers’ posts are vacant.

The school is located in what the Punjab government has declared a “hard area”- 10 kilometres from the Taxila GT Road and three kilometres from the Islamabad-Peshawar Motorway, just behind the stone crushers in the Margalla Hills.

According to the official records of the education department, the school which was upgraded to middle school in 1987 and to a high school in 2007, is no more than just a structure in an ancient graveyard and presents the image of a “ghost house”.

“We do not have classrooms or washrooms. We go to the fields to answer the call of nature,” says Mohammad Nawaz, a third grade student.

He says he does play in the graveyard with his friends but admitted that the place does scare him at times.

A first grade student, Saeed Ahmed told Dawn he was scared to come to school in foggy weather or when there is thunder and lightning.

The headmaster of the school, Basheer Ahmed says officials of the district and provincial education department know of the lack of staff and facilities at the institute.

“We have asked them to visit and see for themselves the conditions under which we work,” he said.

Mr Ahmed added that the education department has approved the construction of three classrooms on which work has begun, but three more classrooms are needed to accommodate all the students studying in the open.

Students attend practical classes in a nearby girls’ school, he said as the school has never had facilities for conducting practical classes.

“Female teachers are reluctant to work here as the school is located in a hard and remote area,” he said.

A social worker, Nasir Malik said the school was providing education to the fourth generation of the area but still lacks basic facilities. He said the school’s condition has been brought to the notice of public representatives, parliamentarians and politicians, all of whom have turned a blind eye to the problem.

Mr Malik said most of the residents of the area are poor and work as farmers or labourers in the nearby stone crushing plants and cannot afford to send their children to better schools.

When asked, District Education Officer Qazi Tariq said there are over 423 high schools in the district and that the facilities they are missing are provided via various funds and grants.

He said the respective MPA and MNA of an area can also execute development work via the funds at their discretion through the district planning and development office.

The school is situated in the hometown of former federal minister and local Pakistan Tehreek-i-Inisaf MNA Ghulam Sarwar Khan, former tehsil nazim MPA Saddique Khan, MPA Shafeeq Khan and also falls under the constituency of Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan.

Published in Dawn December 27th, 2016