Page 50 - Education World November 2022

Cover Story

St. John's High's Kavita Das: alumni connect advantage Sangita Chima: positive response
respond to two written questions re- that since then, primarily because year. Currently, we have 300 children
lated to IIT-B’s relatively successful of pressure from state governments of our total enrolment of 2,000 who
fundraising record. which have licensed the promotion of are provided free-of-charge education.
T HIS EXCESSIVE CAUTION cation is a concurrent subject under ing funding from our alumni and have
a spate of private universities — edu-
We have been quite successful in rais-
the Constitution — the attitude of BJP
built a sizeable corpus managed by the
in sharing information for
the benefit of the country’s
educators community and governments at the Centre and in 17 governing board through which we are
able to award generous scholarships
states in which it is the ruling party,
public, is not entirely unwarranted. has mellowed. Consequently, the fun- to EWS children. Our alumni asso-
The all-powerful and omniscient neta- draising for institutional growth and ciation maintains an excellent, up-to-
babu brotherhood which controls the development has also spread to the date database of members and when-
purse-strings of heavily-subsidised K-12 education sector. Several pro- ever we require project finance, we
higher education institutions, espe- gressive school managements have inform the association which always
cially the IITs, doesn’t appreciate successfully tapped their alumni and responds positively. For instance in
financial autonomy and reduced de- parents and local communities to pay 2018, they funded constructed a fully-
pendency on the education ministry, for the education of children from equipped VET (vocational education
Way back in 2004 when Dr. Murli neighbouring EWS (economically training) centre maintained at a cost
Manohar Joshi was Union HRD (ed- weaker sections) admitted in the in- of Rs.22 lakh per year. Moreover in
ucation) minister in the Vajpayee-led terests of ensuring diversity on school 2021-22, the school’s alumni gifted
BJP government, he issued an order campuses. the school a fully-equipped pistol and
to reduce annual tuition fees of IIMs Among primary-secondaries that rifle shooting range. I believe excel-
to Rs.30,000 (from Rs.1.75 lakh) and have learned the art of fundraising is lent relationship with our alumni and
introduced a programme under which St. John’s High School, Chandigarh parents communities is the outcome
all alumni and other donations to the (SJHS, estb.1969) ranked the coun- of the values of compassion, sharing
IITs would have to be routed through try’s #1 boys day school in EWISR and inclusivity that we have inte-
a Bharat Shiksha Khoj trust controlled 2022-23. “Although as a minority- grated into the school’s curriculum,”
K
by the education ministry. promoted school, we are exempted says a v ita D a s , an alumna of Delhi
Similarly when Smriti Irani was ap- from s. 12 (1) (c) of the RTE Act which University and principal of St. John’s
pointed the first HRD minister of the requires all schools to allocate 25 High since 2007.
Modi-led BJP which swept to power percent of seats in classes I-VIII, we Fundraising success stories in pri-
at the Centre in 2014, she made a de- voluntarily admit a large number of mary-secondary schools on the lines
termined effort to pack the governing children from EWS households every of the SJHS experience, are not a rari-
boards of the IIMs with party acolytes ty. It’s well-known that the top-ranked
to acquire control of their endowment Fundraising for institutional vintage legacy schools including
corpuses. It took a massive media up- Woodstock, Mussoorie, Daly College,
roar led by EducationWorld to reverse growth and development Indore, The Doon School, Dehradun
this coup and Irani’s ouster from the has also spread to the K-12 have accumulated impressive endow-
HRD/education ministry in 2016. education sector ment corpuses estimated at Rs.80-100
Nevertheless, there’s no denying crore on which they draw to provide

50 EDUCATIONWORLD NOVEMBER 2022