School for hearing impaired sans basic facilities

Lekhnath, May 22:

Deaf students are being denied proper education due to limited resources and fund crunches in the secondary school for them at Arghau in Lekhnath Municipality.

The headmaster of the school, Bishwa Banstola, said the school is unable to take in all the students seeking admissions from different districts due to lack of funds. He said only 10 children could be admitted out of the 26 applicants this academic session.

The students are charged a fee of Rs 2,000 a month as hostel charges. The school does not take tuition fees. “We were compelled to dismiss some students after they failed to pay the hostel charges as the school is not in a position to provide them free education,” Banstola said.

According to him, out of the 16 teachers of the school, only four of them are paid by the government. The school itself pays the rest of the teachers.

“The government-appointed teachers here lack facilities given to other government teachers in accordance with the Education Act,” he said.

The government does not provide grants to the school because of which many poor deaf children of the region are deprived of their right to education.

The school’s hostel is also in a bad shape. Currently there are 57 students in the hostel, while it is actually meant for only 30 students. “Ten students out of them sleep in the classrooms,” Banstola said. He added that the students come from different places of the country, including Dhulabari in Jhapa and Gotametole in Rukum. The school was established in 1997 and was upgraded to a secondary one in 2001. Fifteen students have passed the School Leaving Certificate exams from the school so far. Ten deaf students have appeared in the SLC this year. However, education for most of the deaf students is limited to SLC as there aren’t facilities for them to pursue higher studies.

The school management also said that the examination system of the country is faulty as the deaf students are also made to sit for oral tests.