Every summer, when the snow begins to retreat from Kashmir’s higher reaches, another journey begins. Gujjar and Bakarwal families move with their livestock towards alpine pastures, setting up temporary camps in remote meadows. For their children, this seasonal migration could mean months away from a conventional school. But in Kashmir’s mountains, the classroom has learned to move.

Across Jammu and Kashmir, nearly 2,200 Seasonal Educational Volunteers (SEVs), engaged under the Samagra Shiksha programme, follow these migrating families and provide education to nearly 42,000 children every summer. Their work represents a remarkable effort to take education beyond fixed buildings and ensure that nomadic children remain connected to learning despite the challenges of geography and lifestyle.

At the heart of this effort are the Seasonal Educational Volunteers (SEVs), temporary teachers engaged by the School Education Department to keep children of nomadic families connected with learning during their annual migration. Their work is part of the wider Samagra Shiksha programme, the Government of India’s integrated school education initiative aimed at ensuring equitable access and quality education from the foundational years through Class 12. In Jammu and Kashmir, the programme supports seasonal centres in high altitude pastures where nomadic families spend the summer months. The centres are opened for the migration period, with volunteers teaching children at or near their temporary settlements, using basic teaching learning material and adapting lessons to multi-grade groups. In this way, Samagra Shiksha takes the principle of inclusive education beyond permanent school buildings and into the remote landscapes where these children live during the summer.

In places such as the high-altitude meadows near Dubjan in Shopian, the journey to a classroom begins with a difficult trek. A teacher may leave the main road carrying textbooks, registers, chalk and a portable blackboard/ whiteboard. The destination is often a cluster of tents beside a mountain stream. There is no permanent school building, no conventional classroom and sometimes not even a reliable mobile signal. Yet, when the teacher arrives, the school begins.

“Masterji has come,” a child may announce, bringing children out of their tents and morning chores. Within minutes, notebooks appear, a plastic sheet is spread on the grass and the blackboard is tied to a tree. A six-year-old may be learning the alphabet while older students work on multiplication, Science or Social Science nearby. The teacher moves between groups, effectively managing several classrooms at once.

This model is shaped by the annual migration of nomadic families. As winter snow melts, families travel with their sheep, goats and other livestock towards higher grazing grounds. Their camps may shift again as grazing conditions change. For teachers, this means that locating students can be as important as teaching them. A meadow visited one morning may be empty a few days later, requiring the teacher to shoulder the school material and begin the search again.

The mountains themselves present another layer of difficulty. Slippery trails, swollen streams, landslides, sudden storms and cloudbursts can disrupt routes and force families to relocate. Teachers have to protect books, registers and teaching material from rain and moisture while navigating difficult terrain. Some routes also pass through forests where encounters with wildlife are a known risk. These challenges make seasonal teaching a demanding form of educational outreach.

Yet the importance of these temporary classrooms extends far beyond textbooks. Many of the children are first-generation learners. Their aspirations are no different from those of children studying in towns and villages. Some dream of becoming doctors, teachers or police officers. Teachers also point to former students who have gone on to qualify for competitive examinations such as the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), become teachers or enter other professions.

The initiative is therefore not merely about keeping children occupied during the migration season. It is about preserving continuity in education and ensuring that geography, occupation and mobility do not become permanent barriers to opportunity. For nomadic communities, access to education has to be flexible enough to adapt to their way of life. Seasonal schools provide precisely that bridge.

The initiative also reflects a wider understanding of inclusive education in Kashmir. Inclusion is not achieved only by building schools; it also requires reaching children who cannot easily reach those schools. By taking classrooms into remote mountain pastures, Seasonal Educational Volunteers bring nomadic children into the wider educational ecosystem while respecting the realities of their families’ traditional livelihood.

There are limitations. Unlike regular government schools, these seasonal classrooms may not have permanent buildings, laboratories or playgrounds and facilities such as the mid-day meal programme may not reach these remote locations. Seasonal Educational Volunteers also work for only the migration period and receive a monthly honorarium while many continue to seek better remuneration, insurance coverage and service benefits. These concerns underline the need to strengthen the system even as its achievements are recognised.

By afternoon, the lesson is over. The blackboard is untied from the tree, notebooks return to backpacks and the temporary classroom disappears into the landscape. By the time the next lesson is due, the camp may have moved several kilometres away. The teacher will have to find it again. Because in Kashmir’s mountains, children cannot always reach the school. So, every summer, the school walks to them.