Students adrift

What had originally seemed like a move to help the 357 primary school students enrolled at the Government Modern Model School located in the heart of Lahore’s Old City has backfired rather badly for these children. They were moved out of the school in May last year to make repairs to the building’s cracked structure. Initially they students were moved to a school in the same area, and then to another one nearly half a kilometre away in the Mochi Gate area. Their parents struggle to send them there, with their plight made harder by the fact that the school they now attend can accommodate them only during the second afternoon shift. Balancing this schedule with siblings who attend morning classes is arduous for families. As a result the enrollment has fallen from 357 to 241 in less than a year of displacement and continues to slide. It is unclear if these pupils have moved to other schools or simply dropped out. No one seems to have bothered to find out.
This fits in with a wider picture of negligence. Shockingly, more than ten months after the school was vacated, repairs to mend cracks have not begun. Neighbours say the dilapidated building presents a threat to their own welfare, and the school-less pupils can of course not move back. No one knows how long this situation will continue, and no one seems to care about their distress. This is especially ironic as the school falls in NA-119, a constituency from where Hamza Shahbaz won in 2013. But the Punjab government’s pledge to prioritise education seems to have led nowhere. This represents a true problem in a situation where we desperately need education and need to devote all the attention we can to those attempting to obtain it. The children forced out of their school deserve more support than they are presently receiving so that their of learning is not disrupted as a result of indifference.