Bhopal: Child panel finds Jawaharlal Nehru School ‘utterly mismanaged’

Bhopal(Madhya Pradesh): A team of MP Commission for Protection of Child Rights (MPCPCR) found absence of basic facilities for the students in Jawaharlal Nehru Senior Secondary School, BHEL in the city on Tuesday during inspection.

There is no proper arrangement of drinking water, fans in classrooms are not working, window panes are broken and toilets are filthy. The team also found that the buses for ferrying students to and from the school routinely run late. The school is run by the BHEL Shiksha Mandal and is affiliated to the CBSE. The co-educational school has around 2,500 students and 70-plus staff.

Commission member Brajesh Chouhan told the Free Press that the inspection was conducted following complaints by parents. “The school is completely mismanaged,” he said.

According to Chouhan, the buses reach the school an hour or more after the classes have started. The medicines etc. in the first-aid boxes in the buses are expired.

The team found that the fans in many classrooms are non-functional. As the panes of many widows are broken, hot air blows through the rooms, discomforting the students. The arrangements for drinking water are poor. The toilets are dirty and the doors of many girls’ toilets are broken, Chouhan said.

He said that the junior students showed him the vulgar and abusive words scribbled on their desks by their seniors.

Besides, Chouhan said that they found that neither the students nor the teachers knew the Child Helpline number. They were also unaware of child rights.

According to Chouhan, the school principal told him that the infrastructure had deteriorated during the two-year closure of the school due to the Covid pandemic. “Now that the school has reopened, necessary repairs will be done,” the principal told Chouhan.

Free Press Tried to contact the principal of the school for his comment.However, the calls and SMS remained unanswered till the filing of the report