Schools are chalking out plans to help parents who are struggling to get uniforms made for their children amid the pandemic, which robbed many of their livelihoods and forced the campuses to remain shut for two years.
Many students at government schools who have grown taller by a few inches in two years are turning up in casuals as they no longer fit into their old uniforms and their parents cannot buy them age-appropriate uniforms at this juncture because of financial constraints.
The state government had last month issued an SOP, saying uniforms for students from the pre-primary level to Class VIII at government and aided schools would be delivered by the micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) department by mid-June.
As the uniforms are yet to be delivered, a school has requested parents to give the old uniforms of their children so they can be distributed to students of lower levels.
Another school is collecting data of the parents who are struggling to make uniforms for their children so they can be helped.
Papia Singha Mahapatra, headmistress of Sakhawat Memorial Government Girls’ High School, said they had appealed to parents to donate old uniforms of their children.
“Uniforms were given to the students in February 2020. Schools remained shut from March 2020 to February 15 this year. The uniforms have remained unused and the students have outgrown them in the two years the schools remained shut. We have requested parents to return the unused ones to the schools,” she said.
“There are families who have encountered severe financial distress during the pandemic and cannot afford to make fresh uniforms.”
The state government had allowed reopening of schools for students from the pre-primary level to Class VII from February 16.
The government this year will get ready-made uniforms delivered through the MSME department, instead of transferring funds to the schools to procure them – a system that existed till 2020.
A teacher of the school said they did not have funds to support these families and so issued the appeal for old uniforms. “In government schools, students are not charged anything. We don’t have any unspent amount, from the funds the government had sent in the 2019-20 academic year, with which we can buy uniforms,” she said.
An official of the education department told Metro last month that since delivering uniforms would take time, school heads could use unspent money from the funds sent in 2019-20 to help parents buy uniforms.
The headmaster of a government school said guar-dians had been raising the issue of uniforms since the reopening.
The SOP says delivery of uniforms to the schools will start from mid-April and be completed by mid-June.
Debabrata Mukherjee, headmaster of Sanskrit Collegiate School, said they had begun collecting data about the parents who were struggling to buy uniforms for their children. “We will meet those parents to find out about the extent of the hardships they are encountering. After a screening, we will decide how they can be helped. Several students from underprivileged families study at our school and the pandemic has worsened their condition,” said Mukherjee.
This newspaper reported on February 21 that a school in Dum Dum had set up a corpus to help students from underprivileged families buy reference books.
