Thursday, December 4, 2008

"How schools treat parents" series: School 2 - Venkat International Public School


Venkat International Public School is a CBSE school in Rajajinagar, Bangalore - about a kilometer away from National Public School. In the informal survey that my wife and I did, this school ranked somewhere in the middle of the shortlist (in terms of building, number of kids in a class, class room quality, etc.)

My wife and I had, sometime in Oct'08, registered our child's name for the first standard for Academic Year 2008-09.

This morning, my wife received a call from the school with the following instructions:
1. The child needs to be brought to the school on Saturday the 6th December (the day after tomorrow) at 10.00 AM for 'observation' (part of the admission process in most schools - the child is observed while playing and interacting with other kids.)
2. The parents must be ready to pay Rs. 40,000/- in cash immediately (on the same day) to the school. This is a non-refundable 'donation'.
3. The application form will also be issued on the same day, for Rs. 250/-.
4. They have not decided on the monthly fees yet, and will inform the parents of the monthly fees sometime after March'08.

I thought donation was legally prohibited by a supreme court judgement. Apparently the schools in Bangalore do not consider this a major impediment.

In any case, I am taking my daughter here just for the experience of an 'observation'.

9 comments:

Unknown said...

hi!
i am a parent of this school from the past 3 yrs..i think my child has shown tremendous improvement from his previous school in delhi..i think the school provides excellent faculty-very experienced and caring..i think the teachers are also well paid.
the procedure is the same like any other school..i think if we parents are looking for quality then we have to pay enough for the school otherwise we cant expect quality..i recently joined my second child in the same school..the amound they collected was not very high when compared to other international schools..i think it is worth the money because they make such grand scale annual day, sports day etc..
overall i am happy with this school..

manish said...

yes i agree the school is very good not camparble to any school, this is my own experience,i think u cant expect quality wd out shelling out sm money, i heard the school is rated 2nd best cbse school in india, as a parent of 2 kids, i joined my kids in 1st std i am also totally satisfied by the service, ofcourse it comes at a price, again nothing on earth cm for free.there r 10,ooo students and 1500 working staff,i think its not aeasy joke to maintain such a huge organisation, of couse every body born is there to make money,nobody works for free atleast till date i haven't met any body"working for free or withh out anymotive. i hink they r doing a fine job

Unknown said...

hi!!
i totally agree with prasad and manish..if we r looking for quality then we must be read to pay the price..i think itz the ame anywhere..overall i am happy with my childs growth..i tried other international schools like deccan,indus,saral birla and found this schools fees pretty nominal..when we look at it it near to the city..overall i think the school is a good one..thank u

Chiranjeevi said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Gubbi said...

Interesting remarks.

While I cannot comment on how good VIPS is, my irritation (as for a lot of other parents) is how there is no transparency or accountability in most schools when it comes to the admission process, and the totally disorganised manner in schools go about admissions. Dates are announced at the last minute; there is no response to emails or phone calls; websites are not updated; phone calls are not handled politely; parents have almost no visibility into the admission process; in fact, most schools treat parents as an irritant factor rather than as 'customers'. They believe that they are doing the parents a favour by admitting their child into the school, and they display this attitude at every level.

Why can't schools set up a parent helpline, to call during admissions and other critical times? What proactive measures are schools taking to make their operations 'parent-friendly'? Why can't the admission process be made so transparent, that a complete list of candidates is put up on the notice board with the parameters based on which children were admitted or rejected? If the schools are really concerned about the interest of the child, then why can't schools come together to decide on a specific month when admission tests will be done, and a single date by which all results will be declared?

The fact is, that most schools treat parents as 'money bags' at the time of admission. I have had schools tell me me the donation amount first, when asked about the fees.

All this is again because there are so few schools to cater to so many children, because of the lopsided 'language' policy of our State Government, which makes it so difficult for someone to open a school that existing schools become virtual monopolies in their areas.

Given all that my wife and I have been throug during my harrowing search for a good school for my daughter (we applied in no less than 16 schools), 'disgusting' would be an understatement for how we feel about the system.

To conclude this post, I finally put my daughter into Sindhi School Hebbal. Dates were clearly mentioned, the admission process was properly highlighted at each step, parents were treated well, there was no donation asked, and the annual fee is about Rs. 20,000/- (for primary school) and THAT's ALL. Sindhi School was like a god-send to my wife and me.

Unknown said...

Hello.When i made my kids to join this school i has absolutely no problem at all.The admission procedures were very transparent and easy.Since i had just moved from kolkata i found it tough to find a good school which my kids would get adjusted.i am glad i found venkat international public school.

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