Annual Celebrations 2011

SPEECH BY THE PRINCIPAL MS. MEENA KANE ON THE OCCASION OF ANNUAL CELEBRATIONS ON 26TH & 27TH NOVEMBER 2011

On behalf of our patron Shri R K Trivedi, Former Chief Election Commissioner of India and Governor of Gujarat and on behalf of Dr. Nityanand, eminent scientist, Former Chairman of the school’s Advisory Committee, and Hon. Justice D K Trivedi ji, retired senior most judge of UP High Court, and current Chairman of the school’s Advisory Council, and on behalf of our Founder Shri Rakesh Kapoor and his family, I welcome our Chief Guest, Dr. R K Sharma, Director, Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, and the august gathering here of the parents, grandparents, and family members of teachers.
Before I read my annual report I take this opportunity to mention our school’s history.

HISTORY AND VISION
The school was established and constructed during 1979-1985. Shri Manohar Lal Kapoor and Shrimati Kailash Kapoor had donated a large sum of money to their son, Shri Rakesh Kapoor, for founding this spiritual and charitable mission. They were inspired by Shri Jiddu Krishnamurti, the Zen Buddhist philosopher. The school not only aims to impart the acquisition of learning but also assimilation of values and transformation of children into self-confident, resilient, happy, caring and creative human beings for their life long well-being.

STANDARDS OF EDUCATION – INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL
A school is part of the educational system of a nation, and especially a day school is a part of the educational system of a city.
Generally schools give education at three levels. The lowest level is acquiring basic information. All schools as per the affiliation board, whether ICSE, CBSE or intermediate, all are required to do this.
The slightly higher level of education is assimilative. At this level many schools make children imbibe values and some basic positive attitudes.
The highest level of education is transformative education, which seeks to change the hearts and minds of children through developing their teachers and a transformative curriculum. Our Vidyatree curriculum combined with IB & CIE, aims to do that.
Our school educates children not only at the basic, informational level as required by the Council for ICSE, and at assimilative level for skills and good citizenship habits, but also at the highest international level of transformative education through its unique KQES Vidyatree Curriculum, to make children self-confident, open-minded, caring, principled and independent learners.
For nursery and primary education, the school has International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Program (PYP), Geneva, curriculum, which is transformative, and has appropriate curriculum and teacher training program for making children independent learners, open-minded, knowledgeable, thinkers, principled, caring, etc.
For the school as a whole, the school has the KQES Vidyatree transformative curriculum, which additionally makes children more intelligent, flexible, confident, empathetic, courageous and creative.
For classes 6th to 8th, to raise academic standards the school is also implementing Cambridge International Examination (CIE) program – governed by Cambridge University, one of the best universities in the world.
The two above mentioned transformative curricula are one of the best in the world. The best and most renowned schools of India are implementing IB and CIE. About 3000 of the best schools worldwide in Asia, Europe, Americas, Australia and Africa are implementing IB curriculum from Geneva, Switzerland, including methods of teacher development and teaching through individual attention in classes with small number of children.

INDIVIDUAL ATTENTION – SMALL CLASS GROUPS
In an individual attention school like ours, the teacher is trained to pay attention to each child’s total development, and number of children in a classroom is kept small, so that proper transformative educational work can be done through individual attention.
In schools where transformative education is not given, number of children per classroom can go up to 50 to 60. But to implement a transformative curriculum the lower the age of the children, the smaller the number of children per classroom is a necessity. Our school has about 20 to 25 children in a classroom, from classes Nursery to 5th and approx. 30 to 35 children for classes 6th to 8th, so that individualized attention can be given to each child’s transformation and academic excellence.
An individual attention school requires greater effort, greater attention by teachers and management, and continuous development of the whole staff.
The Modern School is known all over the world and it is among a few schools which has an intensive in-house continuous teacher training program.

CONTINUOUS IN-SERVICE TEACHER TRAINING & COACHING OF INTERNATIONAL STANDARD
In fact our school is the proud recipient of the Golden Peacock National Training Award. Some of the recent training programs that our teachers have gone through are:

a. Empathy in the classroom
b. Inculcating self-confidence in children
c. Inculcating self-knowledge and self-awareness in children
d. Formative and summative assessments
e. Higher order thinking skills
f. Use of technology in the classroom like projectors, whiteboards, starboards
g. Inculcating the IB PYP and the Vidyatree attributes among children
Our leadership team has been trained for IB in Singapore and Mumbai. Recently three staff members of the school, and I underwent a rigorous 3 days training at the IB workshops at Mumbai. Countless Principals, school directors and teachers from IB schools in Japan, Hong Kong, China, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Indonesia and of course India participated. We learnt so many new things from our trainers and other workshop participants. We can’t wait to train the teachers to implement all that we learnt and improve student learning further.

OUR COMMITMENT TO THE BEST QUALITY EDUCATION IN THE WORLD – INTERNATIONAL BACCALAUREATE, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND / SINGAPORE (CLASSES NUR TO 5); CAMBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL EXAMINATION, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY, ENGLAND (CLASSES 6 TO 8 )

One might ask ‘why an international curriculum?’ Well the answer is that, the world has become one global village. The world economically and socially is more interdependent and integrated than any other time in our history. People are constantly settling down in different parts of the world for work, livelihood and pursuing their passions. Even our own alumni have shifted to cities like Cupertino, San Francisco, London, Sydney, Melbourne and even places like Cyprus. We can hardly imagine what it would be like 5, 10, 15 years from now, when our children will go out into the larger world to make a place for themselves.
We are committed to give and do the best available internationally for our children. Anything less than that is not enough anymore.

The Modern School has implemented two new international curricula in recent times. For the first time in the city of Lucknow, the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program in classes Nursery to Fifth, and the Cambridge International Examinations in classes 6th to 8th. Both are international curricula, making The Modern School the only truly international school in the city of Lucknow.

HIGH VALUE INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION AT LOCAL COST
Common schools give the least intensive and diluted mass education, in classrooms which have 50 to 70 children. In such schools with large number of children per classroom, the school is not accountable for development of each child. The teacher treats teaching as a nine-pins game and because of the large class size cannot ensure that every child is properly educated. In such big classrooms only cramming takes place, and assimilative and transformative education is impossible. Our school’s commitment is to serve each child with limited number of children per classroom .
The international and individual attention standard requires not only appointment of more teachers with intensive and high training costs, but also requires less number of students per class for individual attention and extensive new facilities, like a new IB PYP library, new furniture, more classrooms, latest technology in the classroom, specialized teacher training. This makes the running of an international school three times costlier than schools which are merely teaching information.

COLLEGE SECTION ACHIEVEMENTS
And finally we come to the ICSE and ISC curricula in classes 9th to 12th. Our teachers continue to excel year after year in delivering outstanding board exam results. This year:

Indian School Certificate Examinations (ISC) 2011 Highlights
19 students scored 90+ in E.ED.
99 Highest marks scored in Biotechnology and Accounts.
98 Highest marks scored in Mathematics, Computer Science, Hindi.
14 students out of 49 scored 90+ in computer science.
12 students out of 53 scored 90+ in Commerce.

Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) 2011 Highlights
Every 4th child has scored above 90% aggregate.
9 students scored 100 in E.ED.
99 Highest marks scored in Computer Applications.
98 Highest marks scored in Commercial Studies.
53 students out of 97 scored 90+ marks in E.ED.
40 students out of 75 scored 90+ marks in Computer Applications.
13 students out of 31 scored 90+ marks in Commercial studies.

TOPPERS
CLASS XII (ISC) Aggregates
Divyum Rastogi 96.75%
Anuruddh Mishra 95.5%
Ishita Agarwal 94.25%
Sankalp Singh 93.75%
Avani Jain 93.25%
Divanshi Rastogi 93.25%
Akansha Kapur 92.75%
Akansha Singh 91.5%
Shreya Agarwal 91.5%
Stuti Rastogi 91.25%
Nihar Naveen 91%

CLASS X (ICSE) Aggregates
Devanshi Nagar 95.2%
Natasha Srivastava 95.2%
Vikas Mishra 94.2%
Maimoona Riaz 92.4%
Shubhangini Gupta 92.4%
Vishal Singh 92.2%
Anant Anand 92%
Karishma Rastogi 92%
Diksha Srivastava 91.8%
Palak Tandon 91.6%
Shubham Agarwal 91.6%
Ayush Goel 91.4%
Manas Tyagi 91.4%
Pooja Bhagwani 91.4%
Ayushi Marhia 91.2%
Rakshit Jaiswal 91%
Aman Srivastava 90.6%
Krishna Saxena 90.6%
Meghna 90.4%
Sakshi Singhal 90.4%
Ayush Agarwal 90%
Shraddha Sriv’tava 90%
Ayush Agarwal 90%

IIT SUCCESSES –
AS USUAL
As expected, Aniruddha Mishra and Biranch Tandon of The Modern School have excelled at the IIT entrance exams and got through to the Indian Institute of Technology in their first attempt.
Here I would like to remark on a recent development in the city. Some schools have started outsourcing student learning of classes 9th to 12th to outside coaching companies who prepare students for IIT and competitive exams along with preparation for board exams. The interesting thing is that the IIT success rate of such schools is same or inferior to schools like ours. This year we have had two students out of a class of about 70 science students, getting through to IIT. Similarly we have been having IIT successes every year.
But more importantly schools which outsource its ISC teaching along with an IIT coaching program deprive their students of all round development, and transformative student learning, which is more important for life long success.

LEADING QUALITY SCHOOL OF INDIA
In the end I take an opportunity to reiterate the achievements of the school, all aimed at the best possible student development.
1. The Modern School is the first school in the country to be certified for ISO9001 for its excellence quality management system, since 1997
2. The Modern School is the first school in the country to be accredited to Quality Council of India for excellence in quality school governance, since 2009
3. The Modern School is the first school of Lucknow to introduce the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program and also the Cambridge International Examinations for classes 6th to 8th.
4. The school has setup excellent new infrastructure for its IB PYP section:
a. new IB PYP library; b. music room; c. a/v room or audio/visual room; d. theatre and dance room; e. projectors and whiteboards in every classroom; f. Six special interactive starboards
5. The school has implemented national fire safety standards. The school has periodic fire drills and training for use of fire safety equipment for all its staff, bus drivers, and security guards.

Thank you.