Jaykrishna Kayal founded a primary and secondary school in his home village near Kolkata. If the young people have no prospects, they migrate to the city and become badly paid day wage workers. The Schöck-Familein-Stiftung support him in paying better teachers’ salaries to motivate and improve the quality of teaching.
Jaykrishna Kayal grew up poor in a village in southern West Bengal. With the help of scholarships and diligence, he managed to get a good education and a job with the West Bengal government. Even as a student, he started to set up an evening school in his village and taught at the weekends himself. In the beginning there was only a straw hut, today there is a two-story building with sanitary facilities and a well.
Mr. Kayal retired in 2013 and is selflessly striving to improve the curriculum and teaching methods.
He says: “The school had to contend with many obstacles from the beginning, mainly the lack of educational awareness. We often had to go door to door to convince the parents.”
The school follows the state curriculum. In addition, other courses such as painting, dancing, music and Bratachari (Indian dance) take place regularly during the lesson times. This should make the school hours as pleasant as possible and also get the students interested in other areas. You can also take part in extracurricular courses such as writing, storytelling, debating, cultural activities and much more.
The school enjoys a very good reputation and now has 20 teachers and around 400 students. But the teachers can only be paid so little with the parents’ school fees that they leave the school as soon as something better offers itself.
Project partners: Gramonnayan Milan Samity
Funding year: since 2013
Project no.: 16-13 sa