Monday 22 December 2014

What to look for in a school

1. Discipline is one of the primary or may be the most essential parameters in selecting a school for your child. A child needs to understand the value of discipline at a very early age and the school can develop this discipline early on in an individual's life. So do check out what's the level of discipline inside the school by making a couple of visits to the school.

2. Great leadership at school matters a lot.. Schools which has a great disciplinarian at the helm have been seen to produce extraordinary results.

3. High Expectations from Students. This is a definite sign of a good school - a school which wants to do well for itself has high expectations from their students. There is a culture of Expectation and Growth. This helps motivate the students to perform at their best and achieve great results for them as well as for their schools.

4. How much engaged the students are? The more the school keeps the student engaged in different aspects of learning - academic as well as non-academic the more the students get to learn. So the school need to have a good engagement plan for the students. Engaged students tend to learn more as they happen to utilize every minute of the time they have in hand.

5. Look for a school which has an active and positively contributing PTA (Parents Teacher Association) - A school that encourages parent participation in their kids schooling. Parents who actively involve themselves and participate in the schools activities help the school achieve great results. They become a single most important source of feedback to the schools on their teaching and also on the students - and this helps the schools in keeping themselves accountable for achieving strong results.

6. Schools which have a rigorous curriculum lets students challenge themselves and bring out the best in them which lays equal importance on academics as well as non-academics and helps in all-round development of a child.   

- A contribution from a parent of one of our schools.

Friday 5 December 2014

Vibgyor High Parent-Teacher Participation

Parent's involvement in a child's education is very critical for the success of the child. When parents get involved in their children's education and in the schooling process, children tend to better in their performance at school, they become more responsible, display better behavioural traits, show positive attitude towards their school, and grow up into successful adults.

Parents association like the PTA plays a vital part in the success of our school programs. The PTA Executive Council meets at regular intervals and the annual general body meets and 'open - houses’ offer venues of sharing and interaction. The various feedback that we receive in those meet are openly discussed for timely improvement and correction. 

We would like to share a feedback from one of our PTA Vice Chairman Sripriya Mathur right here:

As written by Ms Sripriya Mathur on an email to the Vice Principal of a Vibgyor Bangalore School:

I would like to congratulate you and your staff for the excellent performance on November 13th towards the VIVA annual day. This is my third year attending this function and I can say this has been the BEST so far. 

we could see the effort and hard work put in by the children and the TEAM at VIBGYOR towards this. Getting 190 Kids to perform on the stage within a short time frame is a no easy task. Your teachers’ rock!

Parent involvement is one of the most important factors in the success of a school. Thank you for listening to us and we did see some of our feedback incorporated into this year’s performance. As a PTA member, would like to work together to strengthen this partnership and offer our children the best learning experience.

Suggestions:
When the exit rules were announced for the pickup of the students after the show, the following would be helpful in the future
1. Requesting Parents turn off/switch their phones to vibration mode
2. Some parents were recording the performance in their smart phones/cell phones.  I would think this would be a disturbance to the Kids who are performing. Since an official video recording is being done and the DVDs being distributed, they could really enjoy the show LIVE!"

We look forward to such participation from our PTA.

Monday 1 December 2014

Vibgyor High Parents Review

We believe in finding out newer ways in strengthening our collaborative partnership with the parents.

Whatever we have achieved, today, is largely due to the parents contribution in terms of their time, talents and resources. In this way our parents help strengthen the Vibgyor High team and keep its colours flying high. This is why we continuously try and maintain an environment which fosters active participation from the parents and e always look forward to feedback, suggestions and advice from our parents to help us better our efforts towards bringing up honorable citizens of tomorrow. 

Today we would like to showcase one of the several e-mails we have been receiving from our parents as a feedback to our annual concert This is one such email received from Ms. Marion Heinicke-Sinha in appreciation of our annual concert. We are reproducing this mail, with her permission:

Dear Mr. Roshan D'Souza,

Unfortunately I didn't have the opportunity to thank you in person, hence this mail to extend a BIG thank you to you, other members of the Vibgyor management, the coordinators, teachers and all other staff, who turned this edition of the annual concert into such a wonderful experience! We appreciate all the efforts and hard work that everybody has put into it!

As I have two children in different grades, we got to see the primary show twice and both the times we thoroughly enjoyed it. It's very nice to see that all kids get a chance to perform and to see their happy and proud faces. Personally I feel it's nice that both last year and this year it's a show/play that shows the cultural richness and diversity of Indian culture and traditions as well as highlighting some social issues. Apart from that I must admit that, being a Dutch citizen, it was nice that it had a Dutch touch too with the song 'Una paloma blanca', which was written and composed by the singer of the Dutch band George Baker Selection and was a big hit in the early seventies, when I was still a small child. My mother, who is over for a visit from Holland, also enjoyed it very much. In our native place there are no such grand shows put up by school children.

Thank you very much for improving the entry into the auditorium. It was great that this time one could get inside right away, without having to wait for a long time in a long queue and thus also avoiding any pushing to get inside first. Like this it was very relaxed and everybody could find their seats in peace.

I hope you can convey our thanks and gratitude to everybody who contributed to this wonderful annual concert.

Best regards,

Marion Heinicke-Sinha