Food for thought from a school for fishermen’s kids

Food for thought from a school for fishermen’s kids
Published Date: 1/27/2009 - (NIE)

G Saravanan

Chennai, January 26: FOR Vinoth Kumar, an eighth standard student at Sacred Heart High School in Paramankeni Kuppam, his school is the second home as it provides him with breakfast and lunch, which his fishermen parents cannnot afford to give him everyday.

The not-so-rich private school, founded specially to impart education for the children of the fishing community, is providing noon-meal and breakfast for its students from its own funds. This is because the school’s plea for a noon-meal centre is still pending for the last six years.

Not only for Vinoth, but for the 100-odd school-going children from the sleepy fishing hamlet Paramankeni Kuppam, tucked between sandy beaches of ECR and TTDC-run Mudaliyarkuppam Boat House near Kalpakkam, the school is the only hope to continue their education. The next available school is 13 kms away from there.

It was founded in 1993 as a primary school and in 2002, it received recognition from the government as a high school. Nearly 270 students, mainly from the nearby fishermen community study here. “During the initial days, we were able to hold students till noon only, as all of them were first generation learners and showed least interest in education. Moreover, their parents never cared about their children’s education and spent most of their time outside home either in the sea or at fish markets,” one of the teachers of the school told Express.

The main problem these children face is the absence of their fishermen parents at home. They will not be at home to prepare food or to advice them on studies. Then the teachers in the school started donating a portion of their salary to make a sustainable fund to run their own noon-meal centre here. Once the food was assured, students started staying till evening and now they even attend tuition till late hours, she added.

With the noon-meal centre demand pending indefinitely with the government, teachers are now uncertain how long they could continue their arrangement for food to themildren. When contacted, an official of the Education Department said that since the Sacred Heart High School in Paramankeni Kuppam was an unaided one, they could not extend the noon meal scheme to them technically and only the government and government-aided schools were eligible for it.

Though the government has its own rules for the noon-meal scheme, the parents and children have appealed to the authorities to consider the plea of the school as as special case, “as a rare of the rarest case.”