Mangaluru: When a couple and their daughter had to shift to another place, they made sure a Kannada-medium school, which has just four students, wouldn’t shut down. The class 2 student and her mother, a daily wage labourer, travel almost 60km, including an hour’s walk, to the Kilpady Lower Primary School in Mulki.

“In October, class 2 student Nishmitha’s parents, who lived close to the school, built a house in Kudri Padavu, Karkala. When we told them that with Nishmitha leaving, the total number of students would go down and could lead to the school’s closure, they decided to travel to this school every day,” a school teacher told.

The school has one teacher and four children, including two class 5 students. “If they leave next year, the school will have only two students,” the teacher said.

The teacher explained that Nishmitha’s parents Vasudev Moolya and Laxmi are labourers. The girl and her mother walk almost an hour to reach the bus stand and then take two buses to reach Kilpady. Again, they walk about 12 minutes to reach the school.

“Whenever Laxmi gets work near school, she goes there and returns to take her daughter home. Otherwise, she leaves her daughter in the school and goes to a far-off place or home and comes back only in the evening. On an average, she spends about Rs 70 on bus rides. Despite all this, they continue to come to this school.”

The teacher, who is from Mangaluru, changes at least six buses to reach the school, about 35km away.

According to villagers, the school, which is about half a century old, was the only education institution in the vicinity. However, the mushrooming of English-medium schools around the place has left the Kannada-medium school in the lurch.

On several occasions, school teachers visited houses around and requested villagers to send their children to this school to save it from closure. However, there hasn’t been a positive response.