A group of 16 government teachers have come together and voluntarily begun painting school classrooms on holidays and Sundays in order to make government schools more children-friendly and draw more students to classrooms.
The group of 16 like-minded government teachers called Teachers Volunteer Team (TVT) have so far, painted classrooms of more than 200 schools.
“Actually, our idea is to beautify the government schools at a very low cost to attract students and parents,” says Nongmaithem Gautam Singh, a member of TVT and teacher at Eastern Ideal High School in Manipur’s Imphal East district.
“We did the first painting at Senjam Chirang Primary school in Imphal West district in 2017.”
When asked how teachers came together, L Robindro, headmaster in charge of Haoreibi Junior High School and another team member said most of the newly recruited teachers were disappointed after seeing the poor infrastructure and buildings of the government schools.
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“After being recruited as government teachers, we thought of doing something by maintaining the professional work culture,” he said.
“After taking part in the master trainers training on green school campaign and school culture in 2016, we formed the TVT in 2017 to take up this voluntary venture.”
Under the TVT, the teacher takes up campaigns voluntarily in schools by painting the classroom walls of pre-primary classes.
The TVT also took up another initiative called ‘Building as Learning Aid’ (BALA) across 40 government schools when the state government launched ‘School Fagathansi Mission (SFM)’- a government initiative for improving school education in the state to cover 60 schools under 60 assembly constituencies in the state in 2019.
BALA is about developing the school’s building as a learning aid and it allows children to learn all the time in the school environment and make learning fun and child centric.
“Now the voluntary work of the TVT was also expanded after some like-minded teachers from Thoubal district started taking up the initiative in their district,” Gautam, a 49-year-old national award winner government primary teacher added.
When asked about the target of TVT, Gautam informed, “We’ve no such target as of now.”
Echoing similar sentiments, Pushparani Laishram, another Eastern ideal high school teacher who is also an active member of TVT said, earlier enrolment of students was few in almost all the government schools but after the introduction of BALA, students became more attentive in the teaching learning process apart from increasing the enrolment of students in some of the government schools, Pushparani said.
After TVT’s painting campaign in more than 200 government schools, so far, more than 50 government schools have improved their conditions in terms of enrolment.
Putting that in perspective, Wangkhei High School, a co-education government high school in Manipur’s Imphal East district, has a record enrolment of 1,000 in 2023 against a mere 395 in 2019.
Even though the state has lowest school enrolment percentage among the north-eastern states, the Annual Status of Education Report, 2022, which was released in January this year, noted an improvement in enrolment figures in government schools of Manipur which has as many as 1,030 schools including 384 government schools and 643 private schools.