This Kerala school has classrooms on the first floor, but no stairs to reach there

Here's the story of a school that poses a gravity-defying challenge for students who study there. The Chokkad Upper Primary School at Maliyekkal in the Malappuram district of Kerala was intended to support the unprivileged children. The lower primary school is two-storeyed, but no student, teacher or school staff has set foot on the second floor yet. Reason? There is no staircase.

At the moment, to reach the second floor, one needs to climb the school boundary wall, walk over the school toilet structure and then trapeze over a plank of wood. That is why, perhaps, two years since the building was constructed, the classrooms remain unutilised.

The first floor of the school building was constructed using public funds worth Rs 4 lakh generated through local football tournaments and Rs 5 lakh from the panchayat. The mistake was spotted after the construction was completed. Locals then questioned the contractor, who reportedly admitted that constructing the staircase was not part of the plan.

However, the school's Parent-Teacher Association has a different take on this. "Do you really think we will open the school without a staircase? Just as a toilet inside a house cannot be used without a commode, we would never have opened the school building without the staircase," a PTA member told Asianet News. The PTA members said that the staircase could not be made due to a lack of funds. They further justified the absence of the stairs, stating that the plan was to build one just before the formal inauguration. However, that plan could not materialise as the Covid pandemic shut down everything.

Meanwhile, after the news of the school without a staircase spread, the local panchayat has now allocated Rs 1 lakh to build the staircase. The route to reach the upper floor, though, remains the same -- over the school toilet.