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Mothering a foster school
A PROPOSAL I welcome was one I heard about recently. It calls for the affluent, better-run schools in Madras to `mother' the less fortunate government schools in the city and suburbs that suffer from being understaffed, ill-equipped and lacking in infrastructure. If each `mother' school adopts a `foster' school, it will not only upgrade the latter but will also provide the children attending these schools a better education, suggests the proposal by the Union Christian Association.
The Association has set the ball rolling by having its Union Christian Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Nowroji Road, near Pachaiyappa's College, `adopt' the Corporation Middle School in Kutty Street, Jayalakshmipuram, Nungambakkam. The 140 children in the Corporation school occupy a dilapidated, leaky old building that has no fans or tube lights, and furniture for only half its strength. The school has to depend on a borewell for water and has no laboratory or library facilities. It offers education from Class I to VIII but has only four teachers, including the headmistress. With a part-time ayah and sweeper and no scavenger, the children clean the toilets and the premises. And there are many schools like this in and around the city that could benefit greatly from the help of students, parents, teachers and managements of the more fortunate schools in the city, suggests the UCA.
The UCA's and the mother school's plans for this foster school are divided into three parts. Immediate needs to be met include, among other things, good furniture for every student, fans and lights for all the existing facilities, uniforms for all, and schoolbags, slates, instrument boxes and fountain pens as required by the students. The UCA teachers will also help out with teaching whenever required. In the long term, the UCA hopes to build a model school building with space for 400 students and library and labs, a project on which Benny Kuriakose, an architect who specialises in low-cost housing and who recently won the Best Designer Award of Inside-Outside magazine, is helping. Playground facilities are planned. And such student requirements as textbooks, notebooks, slates, instrument boxes, schoolbags and uniforms will be met on an ongoing basis.
The third part is a commitment from the Corporation to appoint the required number of teachers, with the required qualifications, as well as sub-staff, and maintain and manage the school to a standard that will make it a model school attracting other potential mother schools to the scheme.
Particularly noteworthy is the appeal to the students of the UCA School. They are urged to pass on to the foster school programme clothes and textbooks they no longer need, contribute part of their pocket to the programme and urge their parents to do more, and visit the foster school from time to time to interact with the students there.
All this is part of an appeal for the Rs. 40 lakhs the programme needs in the short-and long-term. But the most appealing part of the appeal, apart from the thought that "Wealth is a double blessing if it is used for helping others", is the active participation sought from everyone connected with the mother school - and the commitment to ensure a long-term relationship with the foster school. It's something other well-managed schools should think of.
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