All present,Ma’am

Officials of the education department were kept out of the three-day audit that was carried out in all schools across the state from October 3-5. That was because only last month,Nanded district made headlines when some education department officials were found to have been involved in a bogus attendance scam,when they allegedly reported inflated figures of student enrolments.

Eight-year-old Sakshi says she doesn’t miss a single day of school because she looks forward to her English classes. “I love reading stories more than anything else,” says Sakshi,one of the 27 students at the zilla parishad primary school in Botardi,in Junnar taluka.

Sakshi’s father Janardan Marbal is a farmer in Botardi,a tribal village that’s 110 km from Pune,and is proud of his daughter. “While I would be busy in the fields all day,my wife,who teaches in an anganwadi school,taught our children to read English. My wife is the only woman in our village to have cleared her class XII. But now,my children are already outsmarting her. We wanted to send Sakshi to an English medium school,but there were problems of transport. Next year we will send her to Pune,where she will stay at her uncle’s place and go to a better school.”

Marbal’s son lives with his elder brother’s family in Mumbai. But he and his wife plan to stay on in Botardi till she is transferred elsewhere. Midway through the conversation,Marbal looks at his watch and says he has to pick up his daughter from school. “The school is about a kilometre away from our home so my neighbour and I take turns to drop and pick up the kids from school,” he says.

B L Thorat,block education officer,Junnar,says the 100 per cent attendance didn’t come as a surprise to him—they had been working towards it all along. Among the many initiatives taken in Junnar schools to promote attendance are felicitating students who are present on the first day of school with an Alphonso mango,flowers or chocolates. Besides,the state government’s initiatives like giving Re 1 a day to every girl who comes to school have helped.

Thorat says the challenge now is to ensure quality teaching. “During the audits,while there were 150 schools in the block that had cent per cent attendance,there were about 70 others where about one student was absent. Our next aim is to ensure that more students get scholarships,” says Thorat.

Babu Soni Madke,57,has been a teacher for 38 years and will retire in December as headmaster of the zilla parishad primary school in Amboli,another village in

Junnar taluka. Madke says parents in Junnar are keen that their children do well in school. Amboli village has a primary school and a high school.

“On most days,we have 100 per cent attendance. In case a child is unwell,parents call and inform us. Parents even come to me and complain if the child is not studying at home. After high school,people send their children to the junior college in Junnar that has residential hostels for tribal students,” says Madke.

The Amboli primary school does not have a computer,but students of class V are busy reading from a chapter,Pakki Maitri (True Friend),that tells them how useful a computer is.

When Thorat gets to know of this,he instructs his juniors to make arrangements to provide a computer for the school. But there are other concerns: the school does not have a boundary wall and what if the computer gets stolen?