Oashe had good grades and was among the top five in her class. I was always confident that she would get admission in a good institution without any fuss. But, I was in for some major heart stopping moments.
I realized that school education is not at all about a students grade but more about her parent's salary and designation. Most schools ignored my daughter's grade card ( She scored about 92% in the 1st term in Class 8.) and instead looked more interested in what I earn, how I earn and from where I earn.
I approached about 7 schools in Bangalore. ( Note, all these schools are well known and reputed.) These schools conducted a perfunctory written test. When my daughter answers the test, I would sit in the office of the school administrator. The administrator would let out the "mandatory" fee that I should pay before the test result. This is a six figure amount. This amount could vary depending upon how my daughter fares in the written test. Which meant that this amount would reduce marginally if she scores exceptionally well or it may increase manifold in case she flounders. I wasn't overtly worried about Oashe's performance. I later realized that this performance test is a wonderful tool that is cleverly manipulated to extract a huge capitation fee.
(She was selected in all these schools. The only school where she was rejected was St. Thomas and that's because she had deliberately messed up her test. The reason she gave was lack of playground and basic girls washroom. Will write on this school experience too. Stay tuned. )
I did not send my daughter to any of these reputed schools in the first few months of our move. I chose a lesser known school, Lowry Memorial High School to complete her 8th grade. ( I will elaborate more on why and how I came across Lowry Memorial High School later.)
She is now in the 9th grade. But very happy in her present school, Sri Sri RaviShankar Vidya Mandir.
I realized that school education is not at all about a students grade but more about her parent's salary and designation. Most schools ignored my daughter's grade card ( She scored about 92% in the 1st term in Class 8.) and instead looked more interested in what I earn, how I earn and from where I earn.
I approached about 7 schools in Bangalore. ( Note, all these schools are well known and reputed.) These schools conducted a perfunctory written test. When my daughter answers the test, I would sit in the office of the school administrator. The administrator would let out the "mandatory" fee that I should pay before the test result. This is a six figure amount. This amount could vary depending upon how my daughter fares in the written test. Which meant that this amount would reduce marginally if she scores exceptionally well or it may increase manifold in case she flounders. I wasn't overtly worried about Oashe's performance. I later realized that this performance test is a wonderful tool that is cleverly manipulated to extract a huge capitation fee.
(She was selected in all these schools. The only school where she was rejected was St. Thomas and that's because she had deliberately messed up her test. The reason she gave was lack of playground and basic girls washroom. Will write on this school experience too. Stay tuned. )
I did not send my daughter to any of these reputed schools in the first few months of our move. I chose a lesser known school, Lowry Memorial High School to complete her 8th grade. ( I will elaborate more on why and how I came across Lowry Memorial High School later.)
She is now in the 9th grade. But very happy in her present school, Sri Sri RaviShankar Vidya Mandir.
I was feeling miserable the whole day today, after having failed to submit a school admission form online successfully. The last time I had a similar experience was probably half a decade earlier, when I was to make a railway ticket reservation. All ready to shoot with the keyboard at sharp 8 am three months before the travel date, when the booking for that date opened. I was at least able to get an RAC ticket then. Little did I know applying to ("Indian Public") schools would be exponentially more dreadful.
ReplyDeleteJust to provide a prelude to the above, I had already talked with and got my ward introduced to the principal of another school - Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Vidya Mandir, Kanakpura Road (the backup plan) - the only school which did not make me feel like a dirt bag or cattle bereft of any human dignity. The reason I had wanted to apply to the above school which was reveling in wanton display of it's application of modern technology was because it is a walk-able distance to the place where we are about to shift. After having undergone some very nervewreckingly tiresome and humiliating experiences, I was so clear that I would not want to look back at schools that act up strange or smart or insidiously prompt me to jump back into the rat race black hole - however, the greed of a nearby school got the better of me.
In any case having been handed over a befitting lesson via providence, I was a bit worried about the lack of any exhaustive and level headed online review of SSRVM schools in Bangalore. Just like for so many days till now, today also was mechanically spent mostly browsing websites like Parenttree, Thinkvidya, Zeeshiksha for any thoughtful review of SSRVM - not that I had previously left out anything that could bear even a remote resemblance to a review or for that matter - English; all the links google threw at me for "review SSRVM" were already colored read. On Parentree's home page, however, something caught the attention of my weary eyes - two words - "Garrulous Farts." I just wanted to kill some time before hitting bed, but my eyes, which, by now, were tired trying to make sense out of printed words, sometimes malformed, mostly put together haphazardly, latched on to the profoundly coherent flow of thoughts coming out from the blog words - my mind was woken up suddenly, as if by a bolt of electricity, and the blog commanded an undivided attentive subservience. I read halfway through "Monologues" - about the scarily similar house hunting experiences, and was curious to find out as to who could be the source of such cogent and articulate reasoning - just to stumble upon another blog to devour "Relocating to Bangalore". I could immediately empathize with the suffering of a parent on a ("Indian Public") school hunting mission. And then finally, as if I had found proof of God itself, I read "She is now in the 9th grade. But very happy in her present school, Sri Sri RaviShankar Vidya Mandir."
Thank You Very Much !!! Not that these words can convey fully the sense of relief and consequently the gratitude I feel. First thing tomorrow morning, I will present the admission fee cheque to the ever smiling, painfully humble and unbelievably polite Mr. Anand - Administrator SSRVM Kanakpura Road.