Sharad Pawar school for NRI children soon

Sharad Pawar International School, founded by D Y Patil Educational Enterprises, plans to entice non-resident Indians as well as expatriate corporate executives in India with the promise of quality education and an international baccalaureate programme.

Ajeenkya Patil, director, D Y Patil Educational Enterprises, told mediapersons that the school, coming up at Charholi, about 30 km from Pune, will have residential facility and all the other infrastructure for educational and co-curricular development of the young generation.

Patil said that the school will enroll students for the academic year 2006-07 for all classes except the tenth and twelfth standards. The tenth and twelfth classes will be introduced when the students progress to that level, he said.

For boys from fourth grade onwards, the school will offer residential facilities this year itself, whereas for the girl students, the facility will me available from June 2007. The school will follow the international standards in terms of education and stress a lot on extracurricular activities, including sports and music, he said.

Patil informed that the students will be charged a fee ranging from Rs 1 lakh per year to Rs 4 lakh per year, depending on the age and grade.

"We have been communicating with parents of the Asian regions, especially those from the Indonesia, Vietnam and China areas, for enrolling their children with us, but have found extempore response from the non-resident Indians, which include even those from the Silicon Valley," Patil said.

The school's principal Michael Thomson said, the student-teacher ratio will be kept at one teacher for every 20 students, according to world standards. "We will initially have 34 teaching staff, about half of whom will be teachers coming from overseas, with international experience," he explained.