Bjena Primary School in Wangdue Phodrang is seeing low enrolment of students over the years. The School, currently, has less than a hundred students from PP till Class VI. The Dzongkhag Education Office is now considering downgrading the School to an Extended Classroom (ECR).
The School administration, however, wants to continue as a primary school and has been talking to the Gewog administration and villagers.
“We have shared with parents in the village that if we do not have enough students in the school, the Dzongkhag education will downgrade it to ECR.
“We told them that if the School is downgraded, it will be difficult to reinstate as a primary school, so parents did appear to understand the problem. This year, we have seen better enrolment,” said Namkha Gelwang, a Teacher of the school.
Staff from the School have even been going out to the villages requesting farmers to send their children to school but they are confronted by another problem: that of rural-urban migration. The staff found that most children are living with relatives and studying in urban schools.
“This appears to be a national problem. We do see school children moving to urban areas and living with relatives everywhere. When parents are farmers, they do not have a lot of time for their children so they prefer to send their children off to urban schools,” said the School’s Principal, Tshering Wangdi.
A solution to the problem appears to be mid-day school meals. The villagers believe that local enrolment would be greater if the government could provide incentives like a meal a day. “If a mid-day meal could be provided by the government, it is possible that students would enroll in the hundreds. If such meals could be provided, we would be very grateful,” said one of the parents, Wangchuk.
At present, Bjena Primary School has seven teachers and 95 students. The school was built in 2004.
