It looks like most Marathi medium schools in the city would soon close shop as people in general are in awe of English medium schools and prefer sending their children to those schools.
A case in point is the unaided Ganesh Vidya Mandir that was started particularly with schedule caste students in Dharavi in mind. It's now struggling to attract funds and is left with only 137 students in its primary section; eight years ago there were 900. The school's secondary section is however aided.
This school was started 40 years ago by Sant Kakkaya Vikas Sanstha. It was one of the first Marathi medium unaided primary schools for SC students in the area. The state social welfare dept used to provide each student of the school Rs 400 per month.
Before 2007, the school had 20 staff members, including 14 teachers, 2 clerks and 2 peons. But now there are only 4 teachers, one clerk and a peon.
The Nimaya Foundation that started raising funds for the school from last year, is giving Rs 8,000 per student a year, and the school has to pay its staff salary from this. The Nimaya Foundation buys books and uniforms for the students. The Foundation in fact works for women empowerment, but from last year decided to nurture education of children also.
One of the peons in the school, who has been working here for the last 25 years, said: "The other schools never used to enrol SC students and those from Dharavi. That is the reason Kakkaya Sanstha decided to start this school."
A teacher, Bhavna Vhatkar, said: "Our school stopped getting funds from the social welfare dept from 2007. From then on the number of students enrolling came down as students could not bear the burden of fees. Moreover, many other schools came up in the area. Teachers' salary also came down considerably. We don't get as much as teachers in other private schools."
Rajeshri Kadam, a senior teacher of the school, said: "After Nimaya Foundation came into the picture last year, we started getting Rs 10,000 a month as salary. The founder of Nimaya, Samyak Chakraborty, began raising funds for us after one of our alumni approached him."
To donate to Ganesh Vidya Mandir you can log on to www.ketto.org.
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