Article by Linah Baliga

  Juhu residents supervise municipal school

Linah Baliga TNN 

Posted On: Friday, December 24, 2010

Mumbai: The upscale residents of Juhu are serious about imparting quality education to children from slums in their area. Ward number 63 under the chairmanship of their local corporator Adolf DSouza in Juhu has formed a committee with active Juhu residents under the government’s Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan scheme to monitor municipal schools in their ward.

They have successfully started a pilot project of monitoring Gandhigram municipal school opposite Iskcon temple in Juhu. As of December 2010, this committee has managed to register 415 students. It is now a thriving English medium municipal school showing a remarkable rise in demand for admissions.

The committee comprising members from Juhu Welfare Citizens Trust include Sherley Singh, Anand Desai, Gulu Gadekar, Jenny Baptista and Anjali Bose, headed by local corporator Adolf Dsouza. The committee observed that there was a high dropout rate in municipal schools because parents wanted children to be educated in English. “We realised our challenges were quite significant. English teachers were not present in BMC schools. Basic resources weren’t available,” said Desai.

The committee went house-to-house and started the registration process. The teachers are volunteers from Teach for India and Podar Education Trust, experienced retired teachers from the Juhu locality and a couple of municipal teachers. The administrative responsibility is looked after by Gulu Gadekar, who has 30 years of Montessori education experience. The first day, 80 children enrolled and now there are 415, said Anjali Bose, member, managing committee of the school, on Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.