Schools and All that

Once again writing about my favorite topic – Schools and Education. You tend to think a lot about subjects/areas that fascinate you the most and that naturally reflects in your writing. You cannot write about something that you are not kicked about. So, I can’t sit down and write on topics like “The best way to decorate your home” or “The best car to drive”!

Coming back to school now! Just take a walk every morning at around 7:30 am and you would find school kids all geared up and waiting for their school bus, their mom’s by their side giving some advise or the other. (To be honest not all of them are geared in the literal sense. You still find some young ones extremely sleepy! Now why do primary schools have to start so early in the morning and subject the poor ones to the torture of waking up so early is another topic – which I hope to address sometime later). Just wait there for sometime and check out the types of buses. You would find a marked difference; from the normal vanilla buses to ones that are Air-Conditioned, each catering to different segments of the society. While the former signifies the mere continuation of the type of school/education that existed a couple of decades back the later is the new breed called “International Schools”. These schools with international affiliations help your kids develop into “global citizens”.
To start with the child travels in an A/C bus with very few kids (handful) to the school.
The class size is much smaller; around 15 to 20.
Kids are exposed to “all round” development – along with studies there are a whole host of activities after school like swimming, clay modeling, horse riding and what not…
No tiffin boxes please! Future global citizens need to be exposed to global cuisines from an early age – So the meals would be Chinese one day, Indian the next and Continental the day after.
Kids would go on globe trotting tours as part of their learning process. This would help them to get a better understanding of the global culture.
Birthday parties would be arranged in the nearby mall – It would include watching the latest Harry Potter flick followed by celebrations at the McDonald outlet.

Not all schools offer all of these; but net-net most of these things are on offer and hence the premium fees charged. Fees would go to a couple of lakhs per annum (8 times of what I paid for my engineering!). Now to think of this a decade back was impossible; there was no market for it; atleast in the suburbs. There were only the state schools or the odd CBSE School to which parents living in the suburbs used to send their kids to. Today with the growth in income an increasing number of people feel they can afford these new schools and this segment is actually growing at a very rapid pace. I guess it is more to do with the demand/supply mismatch in the state/central run schools/colleges. With a demand for quality schools increasing at a scorching pace on one hand and absolutely no growth the supply of quality schools/colleges where do people go to?

With this new concept of IB schools there is a definite roadmap. Kids go to these schools till Class XII and then take the SAT or similar tests for education in the US/Europe/Singapore. They then move there, complete their PG and then continue working there or make a transition to India once they have completed their education. Helps them avoid the grind/tension/trauma of having to go through the series of Board Exams/Entrance Exams at various stages. Some might say it is an easy escape route – and that kids from these schools can’t compete in competitive exams like the JEE; but the other argument is why do they need to? When their roadmap is already clear!

Do I prefer the IB Schools to the State/CBSE/ICSE boards? Not sure – Would be handled in a separate discussion. This purpose of this article was to just observe a rising trend in major metros in India and think about the rationale behind it. It wasn’t meant to pass any value judgments on which form of education is better!