A school with no sports equipment is not a scandal. That is precisely the problem.
In a village primary school in Bahraich, there was nothing to play with. Not a ball, not a bat, nothing to organise a game around at the end of a lesson. Set against a broken roof or a missing teacher it looks like a small thing, and small things are what get left off every list.
The children put it on a list. The village had a Child Parliament and a Village-Level Child Protection Committee, and in the fifth monthly meeting of the committee the children brought it up in front of the adults with responsibility for their village.
They did not ask for a treat. They argued that playing was part of growing up and part of what school was supposed to be, and that its absence was a gap in their right to develop, not a luxury they had not earned.
The principal was in the room. There was no line in the school budget for it. He committed to provide the equipment anyway.
What the children got out of that meeting was worth more than the equipment. They watched a concern travel: from a complaint among themselves, into a representative body, onto an agenda, in front of an official, and back out as a commitment. Every adult in the room learned something too, which is that children’s views are not ceremonial. They are about the ordinary quality of the services adults are running.
School improvement is usually counted in enrolment and buildings. This is another way to count it: can the children shape the place they spend their day in?
They did not ask for a treat. They argued that playing was part of growing up.
Give Children the Room to Ask
A Child Parliament is a monthly meeting, a register and an adult willing to sit and listen. It is the simplest way a village will ever have of hearing its own children.