Sports is just carroms & chess in multi-storeyed schools

Childhood is generally synonymous with playing games, and children always like to play. But students from the temple town of Tirupati hardly get the chance as more than 70 per cent of the 5,295 government schools in the district do not have a playground.

The situation in the government schools is no different from private schools which operate from multi-storied buildings without playgrounds.

A visit to the Sarvepalli Radhakrishna Municipal High School and the primary school at Korlagunta shows a clear picture. The teachers in primary school and high school, with a student strength of 250 and 350 respectively, are finding it difficult to make students play as the school hardly has any place for a playground.

There was a small piece of land, but the local municipal staff are using it for keeping dustbins and push carts.

Though the school teachers have complained to authorities many  times, no action has been initiated to remove the bins.

Though children are able to play indoor games like carrom and chess, lack of sufficient kits makes it possible only for a few students to play during the games period everyday.

A V class student of the school told Express that she gets her turn only once in a fortnight. "I have played carroms only twice after commencement of the school this year," she lamented.

This is a story of not only Korlagunta school as 70 per cent of the municipal schools in the town do not have proper playgrounds.

Another upper primary municipal school located at Sanjay Gandhi Colony also has no place to play.

Children, who earlier played in a small land belonging to the Tirupati Municipal Corporation behind the school, have no opportunity to play this year as the gates of the ground have remained closed ever since the school re-opened on June 13 this year.