Isha has been for the past few weeks humming All Izz Well. When we had initially asked her, the reply was – Rosy Ma’am hums it. Needless, to say, the first year, was very much spent very well.
What exactly would we like from school? Is it just the teaching of ABC & 123 ? Or it is something more than that? If its just these, then I understand that these could be learnt anytime at any place. But fortunately times are changing, and so also the outlook of society towards education. Even the way education is imparted is taking a drastic shift – for the better. The good thing is that children are being looked at as a ‘personality’ – and the focus is on its development.
Usually we would read about the innovative ways of imparting pre-school education in bigger cities like Bangalore etc. It is a good thing that with expansion of economy, places (which are still categorised B-cities) are getting to have exposure to those innovative things which usually would not be available till some years back. Moreover, entrepreneurs have entered the field of education to provide quality and innovative education. In the pre-school arena, there are plethora of such ‘brands’.
Of-course, Isha has some of the good luck with her. So by the time, her time came for going to school, a branch of Kangaroo Kids had opened at Jabalpur.
When I had gone for her admission, the only things I had asked was – whether there is tests & grading, and whether there is any punishment system. The answer to both these were negative, and that was a good start.
Having motivated her for quite sometime regarding her having to attend school, it was good that she was positive regarding her attending school. She did not cry, and even got remark from her teachers as being cool. That attitude has remained – of course, it also needed quite some prodding and motivation from our end at home as well.
I had initially thought that I would write about her school times on a regular basis. However, the school was better than me in conducting its events. There was so many events conducted at school – that I preferred to keep to only a few very basic issues. Infact, in the one year of play group, that Isha has attended, the school conducted so many events, that so many number of events would not be found in whole of the schooling period during our time!
Obviously, it would not be possible to recount all of them, except to say, that a big bundle of file has come into existence with all the circulars, handouts, event notices, invitations, and paintings by Isha at class, etc that has been handed over in the year.
The school celebrated various events of its own, as well as various festivals of India. And there were various ‘days’ when something was the focus – a colour or an animal etc.
At a personal level, initially when Isha had been started to go to school – in the initial days, the teachers would say that she speaks in Bengali and cannot communicate in Hindi. And after one year, the situation is such that at home, she speaks in Hindi. I would have really preferred that if the focus were English and not Hindi. But living in the ‘heart’ of India, nothing can be done about this issue. Hopefully, the focus of conversation in the next year at Nursery should be English.
As such, with every event, there is the issue of making of this thing or that – a hump of tortoise, trees at forest etc. This thing, again requires time and effort on part of parents and others at home. These things off course require skill to do – and I would admit that not everyone (including us) have such skills – and that is apart from considerable time spent on searching for the right colour of items from the market to make these things or the right kind of dress to wear. So, in such things we only plod along somehow!
But apart from that a good thing available at school is extra-curricular activities like skating, yoga etc. This happens also as part of summer events. I would really like to put Isha through at least one of such things. As such training is imparted during school hours – that makes it convenient.
I also heard that the school is extending itself to the senior sections through the Billabong School franchisee. It would be an interesting thing to see how it develops.
Jabalpur as such is developing as an education hub – plethora of schools and colleges – at one count engineering colleges more than 25 in number! So, even the ‘competition’ at the pre-school level is equally intense – with more and more parents wanting a better education for their children. Perhaps free market is a good thing in education – till quality is preserved, and the system does not become ‘commercialised’ in the sense that there should be reasonableness in fee structure.
At present fee at Kangroo Kids is around Rs 2500 per month on average. And this is apart from expenses on various events that parents have to do. Quality does have a cost attached to it. The only concern is that ‘brand’ should not become important for pricing. Yet, the only way to look to such issues is to be nonchalant and see it as investment.
