<p>The junior high school in Sateli has stood for years as a modest fixture in the region - functional, if increasingly forgotten. Over time, families drifted out of the area in search of work, better infrastructure, or simply because the city kept moving farther away. What's left now is a two-room building shaded by sal trees, with a classroom that echoes more than it speaks.</p> — The junior high school in Sateli has stood for years as a modest fixture in the region – functional, if increasingly forgotten. Over time, families drifted out of the area in search of work, better infrastructure, or simply because the city kept moving farther away. What’s left now is a two-room building shaded by sal trees, with a classroom that echoes more than it speaks.

DEHRADUN: In a school tucked into the forested fringes of Dehradun, two teachers remain posted at a campus with only one student, a quiet eighth-grader who walks nearly 2km from the neighbouring Tehri district each morning. The arrangement, strained and unlikely, will unravel when the student moves on to Class 9 and the school has no pupils left.The junior high school in Sateli has stood for years as a modest fixture in the region – functional, if increasingly forgotten. Over time, families drifted out of the area in search of work, better infrastructure, or simply because the city kept moving farther away. What’s left now is a two-room building shaded by sal trees, with a classroom that echoes more than it speaks.

Recent report listed 1,149 schools with no teachers
Arun Rawat, the only teacher on campus, said he remembers when the corridor buzzed with voices.

“Since last year, we have only one student who is now in class 8. The other teacher has been on medical leave since last month.” Rawat has spent 22 years in the profession, most of it in schools like this—rural, steady, and slowly emptying. Though appointed as a maths and science teacher, he now teaches all eight subjects to the lone student.

Each weekend, Rawat returns to Thano, where his family lives. On weekdays, he stays in school quarters and keeps a hockey stick by the door—an informal precaution against the wildlife that occasionally strays near the school premises. “It’s not a regular threat,” he said, “but you don’t wait to find out.”

The student, whose name TOI has withheld, is from a farming family. “He has to walk 2km through a forest to attend class. We worry about his safety,” a family member said.

“Now that he has to shift to Class 9 anyway, we are thinking of sending him elsewhere.” If that happens — and most signs suggest it will — Rawat and his colleague will be teachers without students.

A recent migration commission report counted 1,149 schools across Uttarakhand with no teachers at all. Sateli, it appears, is caught at the other end of the imbalance. Officials in the educa- tion department said ef- forts were ongoing to en- courage enrollment among students.

“The cluster school identification exer- cise has been completed for secondary schools and is ongoing for primary ones. Resource allocation will improve drastically with cluster schools,” said Mu- kul Kumar Sati, director, secondary education.