Many students fail to read words

Footwear neatly placed outside the classrooms,sparkling clean premises,classrooms full of children,and teachers at their attentive best as government official breathed down their necks; this marked the first day of the Gunotsav drive in the city schools. Though the schools were given the test booklet in advance,poor performance by some of the students gave away the lack of seriousness in readying them for facing the scrutiny. Most astonishing was the extremely poor reading skills of some students,even those belonging to Class V. To their surprise,the officials found that a few of the students could not even read a couple of words,leave alone some lines. Writing was a bit better and maths was surprisingly much better. When Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation Assistant Manager Hiren Shah,who was assigned to check the students at Gautamnagar,quizzed the teachers about this,the reply was that since there are no exams in Class I and II,teachers are compelled to teach alphabets to the students in Class III. Incidentally,the “bright” students were seated in the front seats,but to the misfortune of the teachers,officials called the children at random. At the Kankaria Gujarati Shala 7-8 near pilot dairy,which will undergo scrutiny on Tuesday,the teachers were busy drilling the pre-distributed test material in the minds of the children. Some mixed the idea of preparedness with physical preparedness and decked up the school as though some public function was going to be held there. At one such school complex,the AMC staff was busy plugging the leaks in the basic facilities. The main gate was detached to such an extent from the wall that it could fall apart at any time. Officials panicked when their attention was drawn to this.