Schooling may face interruptions in cold season

It is the warm season on the Qinghai Plateau, but at any moment the scorching sun could be concealed behind severe winds, sleet, snow and hail. As familiar as this drastic climate has long been to the 100,000 students of Chenduo County, without temporary provisions like winterized tents schooling is not currently possible. And without long-term solutions and support, they may miss out on even more education.

Neighboring Yushu County, epicenter of the April 14 7.1-magnitude earthquake, is Chenduo County, where almost all schoolhouses and dormitories have been damaged beyond use. Though it is the second hardest hit after Yushu, still little assistance has reached the area.

In the days following the earthquake, UNICEF rushed 150 winterized school tents to nine school districts, enabling 7,500 students to return to school.

"The school was closed the second day after the earthquake. On April 20, we returned to school and moved into the tents," said Gasong Cuomao, aged 13. "I am still unused to studying in tents. I miss our classrooms, but there are now cracks in the walls, so we can't study there."

Though the students have resumed classes, headmasters and local education authorities are challenged by the much tougher work ahead - keeping schools running in the cold season which falls by end of August and lasts eight months.

The region suffers from frequent snow storms and extreme coldness in the cold season. Temperatures drop to as low as minus 43 degrees Celsius. Construction of new schoolhouses is urgent since it can only be done in the four months of the warm season and all construction materials have to be transported from outside the Plateau.

"We don't have prefabricated classrooms, and permanent schoolhouses will take three to five years to build," said Gama Qiuwen, principal of Qingshuihe Township Central Boarding School. "If we don't receive further assistance, we have no choice but to send the children home after August and set up tent schools again next April."  This could mean that more than 1,300 children in this school alone, most of who are from nomadic families, will have no education for more than seven months.

"It's a very tough time for the children, but they are so keen to be back in school. This is an area with a high degree of poverty and the children desperately want education," said David McLoughlin, Deputy Representative of UNICEF Office for China.

UNICEF is in discussion with the Ministry of Education and local counterparts to provide more sustainable, transitional school facilities and a package of interventions to support the provision of continuous and quality education for all the children affected by the earthquake.