School nurturing big dreams with little means

In Bhoewali, a small, quaint village close to the India-Pakistan border, runs a middle school with 63 students and four teachers. While the numbers might sound small, the school has won big by bagging the state award for Best School in the middle schools category for 2024-25. The school has won a cash prize of Rs 5 lakh from the Education Department.

What won the school this award? It has built a kitchen garden, a makeshift science lab (most middle schools in the rural border belt do not have science labs) and separate toilets for girls and boys. Constructing separate toilets is an achievement considering the infrastructural challenges government schools in the border belt face.

The school has been sending four students for INSPIRE awards and the National Science Congress. It also runs a community science club led by science teacher Pankaj Kumar at the school. The club has found a mention in Commendable Club List released by Vigyan Prasar, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, in 2022.

The community science club has been established in rural belt by the government school teachers and is affiliated to the Centre’s VIPNET programme. Pankaj Kumar, who has been teaching in the school for last eight years, says that he has focused on encouraging and nurturing scientific temperament among the youth and community. “There are several infrastructural challenges that we have overcome in the school over the years. We built the kitchen garden with the support of our students and parents who are villagers. The school also implemented the IT initiative effectively by establishing smart classrooms with efforts directed towards getting funding from the Education Department. We now have 18 students getting education in English medium,” said Pankaj.

School head Rajesh Kumar, who is also Social Science teacher, and his team have been putting their efforts in building a community around the school. Despite facing staff crunch — as the school does not have a Hindi teacher and all four teachers are teaching additional subjects — the teachers also ensured that there are no dropouts. “The biggest challenge for middle schools in the border belt is to retain students, especially girls. Most students and their families in the border villages only focus on earning a living, which means earning money comes before completing education,” said Pankaj who also teaches Maths.

In 2021, Arshdeep, a Class VIII student from the school, along with his younger brother Amandeep, had developed a prototype of a low-cost air purifying system that won him recognition at INSPIRE awards helmed by the Central Government. His father Harpreet Singh was a combine driver.

The school teachers reach out to parents to engage in school activities, whether it was to check the mid-day meal preparations or build the community kitchen with organic farming methods. “The CBSE had recently directed all schools to build kitchen gardens in schools to make students familiar with the ‘grow-your-own-food’ concept. However, we had been doing this for the last 10 years. We are now targeting to increase our enrolments and also using Rs 5 lakh cash prize to build an activity room for students and a science laboratory in the school,” said Pankaj.

Amritsar