Classes on holidays, free textbooks, missing labs: After the floods, a Gujarat learning curve

The visuals from Nepal have been unsettling for schools in Gujarat, which have been trying to make up for lost time and resources due to the floods that swept the state in late July. On August 15, as other schools opened briefly only to celebrate Independence Day, a private school in Parvat Patiya, Surat, ran regular classes – as it has been doing so on every recent holiday.

Located on the banks of the Mithi creek, MP Liliyawala Vidyabhavan was among the 200-odd schools in the districts of South Gujarat which lost up to a week of classes on account of the flooding caused by heavy rains on July 22-23. In a first, the Gujarat government has allowed schools – spread across the six districts of Surat, Valsad, Navsari, Tapi, Dang and Bharuch – to remain open on public holidays, so as to meet the mandatory 120 working days of the first semester that began in June.

The government has also despatched around 1.45 lakh textbooks to schools in nine districts across the state that reported damage. A waterlogged road outside Shri Saraswati Hindi Vidyalaya in Surat following heavy rainfall. (Special Arrangement) The state saw two spells of unusually heavy rains in July.