A school under a flyover at one of the busiest traffic junctions in Thane has created rare opportunities for their students and alumni, all children from migrant families
Mansi Bhaktwani
Primary students settling down after their lunch break in the oldest shipping container classroom at the Signal School under a flyover in Thane. Mansi Bhaktwani/ The Migration Story
Thane/Mumbai, Maharashtra: Twenty five-year-old Mohan Kale is a junior engineer at a civil engineering firm in Thane. His job involves structural audit of buildings, in addition to soil, water and metal testing. A diploma in electrical engineering, Kale earns Rs 22,000 per month.. For someone who grew up on the street and often migrated, Kale has come a long way.
With a stable job and a rented accommodation in hand, he now aspires to study further.
“Electricity is here to stay. I want to become a graduate in electrical engineering,” Kale told The Migration Story, sitting at his former school in Teen Haath Naka, a bustling locality in Mumbai’s suburb.
Kale was 15 when he ran away from his home in Latur district of Maharashtra.
“I stayed under the flyover here and earned a living out of daily wage at construction sites. I would earn Rs 500 per day, so I worked for 10 days and that helped me last a month. Sometimes, I also sold toys, books and flowers for a living,” Kale recounted.
It was here that he saw a shipping container in 2016 that turned his life around. “I first thought a government office operated from here. But when I went to check, I found a school. I was tired of living on the street. This school was my opportunity to pursue education,” said Kale.
Mohan Kale, an alumni of the Signal School at Teen Hath Naka in Thane, poses for a picture inside the Robotics lab of the school. Mansi Bhaktwani/ The Migration Story
The school that Kale discovered was just three months old then. Aptly named Signal Shala, it is located right next to the Teen Haath Naka traffic signal - Thane’s busiest junction where 22 approach roads from Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Thane meet. From one shipping container to many classrooms, canteen, a robotics and a computer lab, a vocational training centre and even a playground ensconced in between, the school has grown in these nine years, container by container.
Signal Shala started with 18 students, all children of the migrants living in the vicinity. It now has 57 students from play school to Grade 10. Eight students have passed Grade 10 from the school while it helped transition 65 students to mainstream education, Kale being one of them.
Frequent migration for livelihood, especially for those staying on streets, makes it difficult for children from migrant families to access quality education, resulting in a spiral of illiteracy and poverty with malnutrition, substance abuse and gambling for side effects. Signal Shala intervened to break this spiral and propel these children to live a dignified life, said Bhatu Sawant, Kale’s first teacher and the Chief Executive Officer of Samarth Bharat Vyaspeeth, the non-profit that runs the Signal Shala.
“When circumstances make it difficult for some children to go to school, the school should go to them, understand their challenges and try to mainstream them,” Sawant told The Migration Story.
Bringing school to children
Kale’s family migrated from the drought-prone Latur district when he was around four-years-old. They lived under the same flyover that now houses the Signal Shala and Kale began his education here. “This place was empty then. A few volunteers would come to teach us here only,” he said.
When Kale’s family saved some money, they moved back to Latur, 430 kms from Mumbai where his parents worked as agricultural labourers. But things were never easy.
Students play kho-kho during their lunch break at the Signal School in Thane. Mansi Bhaktwani/ The Migration Story
“I changed schools six times in Latur and Osmanabad, depending on where my parents found work. I even went to a residential school for some time but continuing studies increasingly became difficult due to migration,” he reminisced. In 2013, he ran away and came back to Thane to work. “If it was not for Signal Shala, I would still be working as a daily wage labour or selling knick-knacks on the roadside,” said Kale.
In February 2015, Sawant, a former journalist, attended a budget meeting of the Thane Municipal Corporation, wherein the Corporation planned to mainstream children from marginalised communities. The idea for Signal Shala was born there and in 2016, it became the first makeshift school registered by a municipal body in India.
“When I joined Signal Shala, Bhatu Sir encouraged me to skip Grade 9 and appear directly for Grade 10 examinations. I had a hard time initially but he arranged tuitions for me and I managed to scrape through,” he said.
Kale, supported by the school, went on to study at Rustomjee Academy for Global Careers, a vocational training institute in Thane. And has now moved base from the Teen Haath Naka flyover to a rented accommodation in Kapurbawdi, five kms away.
Beginning with seven teachers, of whom five were volunteers, the Signal school now has 17 permanent teachers. Two students visited the Indian Space Research Organisation after winning an interstate competition and six students are soon going to visit Kazakhstan for the International Robotics Festival. The non-profit has also collaborated with Pune University to help their students who want to pursue research.
The biggest challenge in setting up the school was convincing parents. “We surveyed street-dwelling children and found their last two generations were uneducated. To convince them that begging or selling wares at the signal was not dignified life was the hardest part,” said Sawant. The second step was learning the Pardhi dialect. “All our teachers spent the first 4-5 months learning Pardhi to bridge the gap between students and us before introducing Marathi to them so that they could catch the curriculum,” he added.
23-year-old Dashrath Pawar is also from Latur. He stayed with his grandmother in the village while his parents and sister lived in Thane. “I used to stay with my grandmother in the village. My sister, six years-old then, used to sell flowers at the Teen Haath Naka signal. When she started going to the Signal School, my father wanted me to join as well so I came here in 2017,” he said.
“Initially, I felt very uncomfortable here because the village environment was calm and here we were surrounded by traffic all the time. The noise made it hard to focus and even teachers found it difficult to teach as they had to literally shout for us to understand anything,” he remembered.
After matriculation, Pawar pursued Economics at a Government College in Thane and is now preparing for competitive exams in the police and civil services. “I am inspired by Vishwas Nangre Patil, Mumbai’s Joint Commissioner of Police who is known for his work in Marathwada and Latur,” said Pawar who has now moved to a rented accommodation in Kalwa, five kms from Teen Haath Naka but still comes back to assist the teachers at the Signal School. “We are constructing our house slowly as and when some money comes in,” he said.
Dashrath Pawar posing outside the science laboratory made of a shipping container in the Signal School.
Mansi Bhaktwani/ The Migration Story
Pawar and Kale were classmates back in 2017-18 and cherish their time together. “With just one container initially, we often had to sit outside, except on rainy days. We would play together, participate in Kabaddi and even went on a class trip to Satara,” said Kale. “ When I was in Grade 8, my team won the second prize in the district level Inter-school Kabaddi competition” he reminisced. He regretted not being able to participate further due to lack of identity documents.
Besides education, the school provided them multiple meals, medical care, overnight shelter in school for boys and facilitated their transition to colleges and stable jobs. “I found it difficult to understand concepts in English when I moved to college. The teachers from school helped me translate difficult concepts and keep up with my studies,” said Kale.
“When I was scared about my Grade 10 exams, Bhatu Sir told me I had to work hard because the school’s reputation was at stake and the junior students were looking up to us. Teachers would conduct special classes in their house so that we could study in peace away from the traffic noise,” said Pawar.
While Pawar went on to pursue higher studies, his sister was married off when she was 14 years old. “Early marriages are common in the community. In 2017-18, four girls dropped out of Signal School due to early marriage. To encourage parents to keep sending their daughters to school, we introduced a scheme in 2021, whereby Rs 3000 were deposited in the bank account of girls and Rs 2000 in that of boys from single-parent families,” Sawant said. The gender ratio in the school is now balanced, he claimed.
Besides studies, girls at the Signal school still support their families as they continue to sell wares at the Signal and in domestic chores. 13-year-old Gauri Pathkar sells Gajra at the signal by the evening. “My mother sells Gajras and my father is a bus driver. I help out in the house too,” she said. Attending the Goa Robotics festival with her team is Pathkar’s latest achievement apart from many awards in inter-school sports competitions. “We won a gold medal for our presentation,” said Pathkar, sharing her aspiration to become an artist.
11-year-old Nilam Devale is looking forward to this year’s Robotics festival now that will be held in Pune. “I love skating, kho-kho, welding and robotics. I won awards in stick-fighting and long jump in inter-school competitions,” said Devale.
Devale’s mother works with a dry waste management project that is run by Samarth Bharat Vyaspeeth. The non-profit also runs initiatives on compost production and biomass briquette manufacturing to provide employment opportunities for the parents of students at Signal Shala.
The need to mainstream
Thane has a migrant population of 20,000 of whom 40% are children. The migrants are mostly from the Pardhi community of Latur and Osmanabad. “Near Teen Haath Naka itself, there are some 125 adults and 62 children from the Pardhi community,” informed Sawant. Migrants here earn a livelihood by selling flowers, books, toys, vegetables at the signal and at roadside stalls.
A classroom session at the Signal School in Thane. Mansi Bhaktwani/ The Migration Story
Mainly from Maharashtra and Karnataka, the Pardhi community was once glorified for their hunting skills. But after the British declared them a ‘criminal’ tribe, they have faced consistent discrimination. In 1952, the criminal tag was removed when they were categorised as a 'De-notified' Tribes (DNT), only to be reclassified under the Habitual Offenders Act in 1959. The historical neglect pushed them to the margins. The nomadic nature of the community also meant that the Pardhis do not own land or domicile certificates which further restricts their access to Government Health and education schemes- in their place of stay as well as where they migrate for livelihood.
“The Pardhis are still blamed for any crimes that happen in the city. But education and peer influence can help these children break free from their stereotypical image,” Sachin Nachnekar, program lead at Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action, a non-profit working with marginalised youth in Maharashtra, told The Migration Story.
“A boy from Ambojwadi reached the position of an Assistant Public Information Officer (PIO). His success motivated many children in the community to work for a better life,” highlighted Nachnekar. Ambojwadi, a slum cluster in Mumbai, has a predominantly Pardhi population.
As per the 2011 Census, India has over 450 million migrants, of which 20% are children. According to a 2020 study, 40% of the children of migrant workers were absent from schools. The study found more boys out of school (47%) than girls (35%). 75% per cent of the children who stayed back in their native villages attended school compared to 55% per cent who migrated to cities with their parents, it says.
The study recommends the establishment of flexible school systems for migrant children across the country and effective on-ground implementation of the National Education Policy 2020.“We have already implemented what the NEP aims to do, like we made the school flexible according to them, teaching in their language and gradually adding more languages and vocational training are some of the things,” said Sawant.
The Signal School library has a wide collection of books, ranging from academics to poetry and novels.
Mansi Bhaktwani/ The Migration Story
Despite government initiatives like the Right to Education Act and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, migrant children struggle to access schooling. “They are registered in schools when enrolment drives happen but frequent relocation keeps them out of classrooms. Flexible schooling models like the Education Guarantee Scheme (EGS) and Alternative & Innovative Education (AIE) exist but remain inadequate. There’s a lack of mother-tongue instruction, residential schools, and mobile schools in migration hubs,” said Nachnekar. “While Anganwadis support young children, adolescents lack resources like career guidance, confidence-building programs, resume-building support and skill training,” he added.
Sawant feels that concepts like the Signal school should only act as a bridge. “Schools like these should not exist forever. The idea is to mainstream the children who are deprived of basic education. Once that is done, the Signal school should shut down and the infrastructure we have created should only act as a support system. Infact, the day we inaugurated the school, we already had a plan for its closure too. I guess we are working fine with the plan,” said Sawant.
Edited by Ravleen Kaur
Mansi Bhaktwani is a journalist with The Migration Story
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