In Delhi’s Urdu-medium schools, learning, shadowed by neglect Premium

Explore the challenges faced by MCD-run Urdu-medium primary schools in Delhi, highlighting neglect and declining student enrolment.

On a fog-laden Delhi morning, the staff of a Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) school begins lining up students for assembly. The primary school is tucked into the by-lanes of Old Delhi, the Capital’s walled city. With more than 100 children, the open space is so small that when they’re asked to stretch their arms out, they get in each other’s way. Run out of a haveli abandoned during Partition, this Urdu-medium school is attended by children who live in the congested lanes around. This school, like many others, was started in the 1960s.

Soon after assembly, conducted in Hindi, students from nursery to class 2 are ushered into a classroom. Three empty classrooms remain locked. Children from classes 3 to 5 take their places on benches in three rows in the arched hallway outside the classroom, facing a blackboard. Some run around. Others chat, distracted by the noise spilling out from the classroom next door. The school has an enrolment of 120 students, 90 boys and 30 girls.

Armaan (name changed to protect privacy), hired as a teacher for children with special needs (CWSN), is conducting classes for the whole school through the day. The only other teacher is out on administrative work. There are only two CWSN students in the school, but Armaan moves between the hallway and the classroom, assigning work to different groups. He chooses a chapter on ‘family’.

“On days like this, or on days when attendance is good, I choose a lesson everyone can follow,” he says. “The senior students have studied it before, but they revise.” After assigning the lesson on the board, he steps into the classroom to help younger students form letters in their books. He comes back to the hallway and calls out roll numbers, to mark attendance.

Scenes like this play out daily across MCD-run Urdu-medium primary schools, which serve as the first point of formal education for children in several densely populated neighbourhoods of Old Delhi, Shahdara, and parts of Central Delhi. Of the 1,185 primary schools run by the civic body across the Capital, 40 have Urdu as their medium of instruction, meaning Science, Maths, and Social Studies, are taught in the language.

Together, MCD schools cater to over 6.4 lakh children, ages 3 to 11, as per MCD data. Out of these, more than 15,000 children, along with 275 children with special needs, are enrolled in Urdu-medium primary schools. These schools follow National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) framework, and are neither Madrasas nor minority schools.