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EDUCATION: SCHOOLS
The Brand Name Doon Sells
What
makes Dehradun such a centre for schools? Traditional answers like a conducive
climate and that wives of officers posted at the Indian Military Academy
and the Forest Research Institute formed a catchment area for teachers
can only be a partial explanation. Today, the single most important propelling
factor is the brand recall of "Rajiv Gandhi's school". Parents
from as far away as Bihar, Assam, Nepal, east Africa, North America send
their children to Dehradun and boast that their child "studies at
Doon". "There is often an inability or a reluctance," explains
a local teacher, "to distinguish between Doon the valley and Doon
the school."
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BLACKBOARD TO BILLBOARD: The school industry has well-honed
promotional skills
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In admission season, parents alighting at the
railway station are surrounded by touts who offer to take them to "Doon
School".
That alluringly simple promise actually leads to a whole menu of options-Doon
Global School, Doon Presidency School, Doon International School, Doon
Preparatory School, Doon Cambridge School, Doon Girls School, Doon Public
School. There's even a Doon College of Spoken English. As Jayanth Lal,
old boy of and now housemaster at the (real) Doon, jokes, "A new
arrival could spend the rest of the year telling the difference between
one Doon school and the next."
The fixation with Doon-or the (almost) equally
famous all-girls Welham-runs deep. There are junior schools, says Brar,
the USP of which is that "our children get into Doon or Welham".
Former teachers from the big two are often the pivots around whom new
schools are created. Asian's Sumer and Devpriya Lahiri, headmaster-designate
of SelaQui, both taught at Doon. When Madhuri Mathur retired after 40
fulfilling years as teacher and, finally, vice-principal at Welham, she
was offered the job of principal at Hope Town. Among those who joined
her were the bursar and caterer of her former school, as well as the art,
science and music teachers.
The new schools draw more than just human talent
from Doon (see box). When Indian Public School published its daily schedule
in a city newspaper, at least one Class XII boy at Doon raised his eyebrows,
"It seemed so much like ours." Terms like STA (spare time activity)
and schools-the Dosco term for periods-had been borrowed. Perhaps uniquely
among Indian schools, Doon uses the word "Toye" for prep. Well,
now so does Indian Public School.
It would be unfair, however, to dismiss every
new school as a poseur and just another poor clone of an established institution.
Hope Town, for instance, is an honest effort in its own right and has
fairly quickly carved a niche for itself as among the best schools in
Dehradun.
The scale, geographical or financial, of the
"21st-century schools" also indicates a departure from the past.
To quote Gupta, "Schools were a cottage industry in Dehradun. If
I had five rooms, I set up a school. Now the concept has changed to an
organised school. Everything from a staff room to a swimming pool is necessary."
The upshot: schools are becoming big business and, at some stage, "the
small school may just die".
While not one of the businessmen behind the
recent or upcoming schools says profit is a motive, the fact is the economics
of the sector is scarcely bleak. Take Asian School. When completed in
2005-the year Class XII begins-it would have cost Rs 15 crore to set up
a 20-acre campus. Yet from its first year-2000, when three sections of
30-35 children each in every class from nursery to VI went functional-it
had started covering its operational costs. The smaller Aryan-which began
classes on April 8 with a Rs 3-crore capital investment and a principal
who, according to promoter Gupta, is the "best English tuition teacher
in Dehradun"-will "break even by 2002-03". The mega-sized,
65-acre Indian Public School-"Investment over the next 10 years could
be over Rs 100 crore," says Sinha-will be self-sustaining by its
fourth year.
The rosy projections are, of course, based on
well-structured revenue models. Doon charges its pupils Rs 95,000 per
year. Indian Public School and SelaQui will exceed that from the first
year itself, with probable premia for overseas Indians paying in dollars
and for those who choose the British GCSE or the Geneva-based International
Baccalaureate rather than the plain vanilla Indian School Certificate.
All that comes later, of course. Initially the
schools open merely up to Classes VI or VII. Only when they reach Class
X do they need a board affiliation. Should they seek to tie up with an
examining authority located outside the state, they require a no-objection
certificate (NOC) from the government. Since the school is already established
by then, the NOC becomes a bit of a fait accompli, complains a bureaucrat.
A marriage of commerce and philanthropy aside,
a Dehradun school is also a social cachet and a possible power statement.
Chief Minister Swami, for instance, is keen to introduce legislation to
"regulate the fees, facilities and minimum salaries". His mini-war
with "public schools", the bush telegraph has it, began in winter
2000, when Doon expelled one of its boys on grounds of indiscipline. The
delinquent lad, it appears, had Swami for a local guardian and a "request"
was made that the "decision be reviewed". Subsequently, there
was talk of "water and power being disrupted". A few phone calls,
a prime ministerial intervention and all was well.
Since then, they say, two sets of people in
Dehradun have developed contrasting aspirations. Swami wants to teach
Doon a lesson. On their part, the new school barons want to be taught
a lesson too-on how to become the next Doon.
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