Passang Dorji was in class nine when he dropped out of Laya Lower Secondary School in 2015. However, Passang was neither the first nor the last student to have quit school in Laya.
In the last five years, some 36 students have dropped out of school for various reasons.
11 students dropped out in 2015, the highest in the recent years. Last year too saw ten students leave and this year, seven students haven’t showed up yet.
Some leave to become monks, while others stay home to help their parents with farm works.
Passang Dorji decided that he would be better off being home and helping his parents. “First of all, I thought I could be of great help to my parents and also, nowadays even with a university degree, jobs are hard to come by,” he said.
“What’s the use of studying when it’s quite certain that I might not get a job later?”
Passang’s father Sangay Dorji was heartbroken when his son left school to be with them. He had hoped his son would study and go on to lead a different and better life.
“When we get on a bus, we can’t even locate our seat numbers, so my wish was for my son to do better than me,” he said.
“I and his mother have raised him well but they do not listen to us.”
Like Passang Dorji, Leki Om too left school in 2013, two years before Passang, to help her parents.
But in Leki’s case though, it was her parents who wanted her out of school. “I had to leave because there was no one at home to help my parents,” Leki Om said.
“Even if we had a helping hand at home, we would have anyway needed another person to herd the yaks.”
With a hope that it would help in student retention, the school management encourages parents to keep the children in the school’s hostel. “But parents tell us that students do not want to stay in hostels,” Principal Khendrupla said.
“I told the parents that they can keep their children in hostels for few days and few days as day scholars, but they are not for it. I want the children to adapt to boarding life.”
At present, the school has 150 students. Some of them joined only after Gasa tshechu holidays.
“During the cordyceps season, the children are taken with parents. They think the elderly family members cannot take care of the children, so they take the children with them to collect cordyceps.”
Laya’s school dropout crisis, which has worsened by the year, has the school authorities scrambling for solutions.
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