The Story:
In March 2011 the Ranpur Sarvajanik Education Society commissioned us to help them to realize their dream of creating high quality schooling for Ranpur, a small town in the heart of rural Gujarat. This dream was borne out of years of deprivation wherein families were separated in order to better educate their children in far away towns.
Over the following three months, led by Kavita, we worked alongside the Trust’s management committee to create the Society’s vision for its new high quality reasonably priced English medium school. We implemented a pre-operational action plan to prepare the school for the opening of the school which included:
• Deciding the age range, school roll and medium of the school.
• The creation of its child-centred, NCERT and CBSE compatible curriculum.
• Recruitment of staff
• Designing and running an intensive training programme for teachers
• Engaging the local community and potential parents in the project and enrolment
• Advising on the design and construction of the new all-age school and the refurbishment of the temporary buildings
In July 2011, the Shri Manubhai A Sheth English School opened its doors to 140 local children who enrolled from pre-primary to Standard 5.
The School’s curriculum concentrates on literacy and numeracy yet offers a broad and rich curriculum that engages the multiple intelligences of the children and benefits from digital learning and enriching activities beyond the school.
The walls of the school are filled with exciting and vibrant learning displays of children’s curriculum studies and achievement. Today teachers are increasingly fluent English speakers while their students are now able to read and write and importantly, speak in English.
We continue to support the development of the school and the training of its teachers. Now that the school is established and growing we have begun to monitor the quality of the school’s provision. We have trained the school team in how to undertake school self-review using the Adhyayan Quality standard.
The construction of the new school is underway and will be inaugurated by the end of this year…