Books are soggy, desks broken, classrooms home to displaced families ? Sri Lanka improvised as children went back to school yesterday, with some classes even dished out in the canteen.

At Vidyaloka College near Sri Lanka?s historic 17th century Dutch fort in the southern, tsunami-ravaged town of Galle, hundreds of pupils and their parents mingled with teachers, ready to start a new term ? and a massive cleanup. ?Twenty of the 68 classrooms are damaged and we can?t use them at the moment,? said schoolteacher R.V. Ranan. ?We are using other rooms temporarily, such as the dining hall and teachers? staff room, and we are having to double up classes.?

The sprawling two-storey school, just 100 metres (110 yards) from the beach, was engulfed by seawater on Dec. 26 and most of the windows and doors were blown out by the force of the waves, which killed more than 30,000 people in coastal Sri Lanka. Broken desks and chairs still lie tumbled about in the classrooms. Books and other teaching materials have been reduced to a sodden mess.

?Lesson one for today: How to clean up after a tsunami,? joked parent V.J Wickramsinghe, who said he and other parents had volunteered to help get the school back into shape. But there was also a serious side. ?We have lost at least five pupils,? said Ranan. ?We don?t know how many in total. We will only know after we have done roll call. Some children won?t be coming back because perhaps their parents are dead.?

At Sanghamitta girls? school, pupils in crisp white pinafores said prayers for tsunami victims before classes began and sang a special tsunami hymn composed by the music teacher. The principal said 10 girls were unaccounted for. The Centre for National Operations, which is coordinating relief and reconstruction efforts in tsunami-hit areas, told Reuters many schools along the ravaged coastal belt are still out of bounds for students.

?The few schools that are not being used as shelters for the displaced are open but reports said attendance was low,? said volunteer K. Yoganaadan. The United Nations Children?s Fund (UNICEF) says it is paramount for authorities to reopen the schools because education and the normal school routine can help children get over stress and trauma.

?Nobody is saying the displaced people should go to make the schools happen ... but it is important to ensure that their childhood is not interrupted and their future is not affected more than it has already been,? said Martin Dawes, regional spokesman for UNICEF. The situation was a little different at Isipathana College, a leading boys schools in the Indian Ocean island?s capital Colombo ? which was barely affected by Sri Lanka?s worst natural disaster.

Students in bright white uniforms, enthusiastic and chirpy, gathered in the school grounds for the morning assembly, where the headmaster asked pupils to observe a silence in honour of the dead. ?We will have to instil a sense of patriotism in the kids and teach them how to think positive ... we need to be positive to rebuild the nation,? said first grade teacher Renuka Edirisinghe.

<B>David Fox</B>