Schools in Bangalore

Schools in Marathahalli/ Whitefield (with my thoughts) - ONLY schools less with fees than 100 K per annum.

• Vinbgyor High - ICSE. 70 K per annum. Student numbers are growing very fast. Not sure whether quality can be sustained. Very new to Bangalore to comment. Has a history of activity based education with strong emphasis on extra curricular activities.
• Gopalan National - CBSE. 30 K per annum. Was very good originally. But, recent comments are not so encouraging
• Gopalan International - ICSE. 100 K per annum. Just started. Fees is very high and does not have any historical benefits to justify. All benefits explained are on paper.
• Deens Academy - CBSE. 45 K per annum - Looks good at the outside. New school. But, has lots of good review for education based focus.
• Ryan International - CBSE. 30 K per annum. Looks like turning out to be a mass factory. Heard that it has nearly 30 sections with each section having 50 students.
• Vagdevi vilas - CBSE. 30 K per annum. Huge campus. Did not visit to get details.

Return to India - 100 Days

100 Days review (Apr 1 to July 10)

Status / base of my comments:

• Home to office - 3 KM
• Home to kids school - 2 KM
• type of residence: luxury apartment complex of 1200 apartment
• location of residence: Bangalore suburbs
• Social life for Family - abundant
• Car - yes
• Maid - yes

All positives with NO regrets

• Job has been funtastic, more dynamic, more challenging and lot more satisfying.
• Lots of interaction with relatives. Atleast 80 of past 100 days should have had atleast one relative at home.
• Lots of new friends
• Satisfaction to read a local newspaper with all local content and spicy bits
• Lots of local topics can be discussed and debated
• Since apartment complex takes care of all "initial connections" and "bill payments", I am not forced to spend much time running for other issues.

Small negative thoughts:

• Roads are really bad with speed breakers that are really bone breakers
• Traffic jam makes you think twice
• Expenses - You will never imagine how expensive your monthly expenses can be. Even for the money spent, you are not sure whether is it really worth it.

Return to India

01.04.2009

Finally, took the plunge to return to India.

It was a long pending dilema where we were evaluating a 100 reasons to return to India and another 100 reasons to Not to return to India.

Few Positives (as I saw) in India:

• Closer to Indian culture and everything Indian
• Closer to relatives. Family bonding improves.
• Participate in all family events/ festivals
• Be closer and try to contribute back to Indian society

Few Negatives (as I saw) in India:

• Bangalore specific: roads are bad, traffic is pathetic, public transport is non-existent and neighbourhood community life does not exist. Your family cannot step out without you driving around.
• Outside life does not exist in India for family. Of course, this can be overcome by staying in a self sustained apartment complex
• Things do not happen as seamless as abroad. 100% of time is spent between office work and personal life. In India, we spend a lot of additional time to push things (EB, phone...)
• Schools - Mid term Admission is a pain. Fees is exorbitant and quality is not guaranteed. U need to start in the same place from LKG to get into good schools.

Factors that helped me overcome/Ignore the negatives:

• Bangalore specific - Stay close to office (whitefield in my case), have a car for family and drive them around even for nearby shops.
• Schools - Pay the exorbitant fees and be satisfied with what you get
• Stay in an apartment complex where there are people to take care of anything and everything for which you normally will be spending lots of time shuttling to government agencies. Your family also will have lots of people to interact with.

Bangalore Schools - Categorization

Found the below mentioned useful categorization at a r2iclubforums link. Very good and useful.

School Categorization:
1) Govt. and public schools - govt. schools, Army schools, central schools

• Fee - Free or very nominal?
• Donation/Bldg fee/Admission fee - none

2) Neigborhood and private schools - Ryan, DPS, NPS, Josephs, Cottons, Freedom Intl, Frank Anthony's etc., etc. Tons of schools in this category.

• Patronized by the Indian middleclass, upper middleclass, NRIs etc.
• Fee - INR 30k to 50k
• Donation/Bldg fee/Admission fee - Some require yrly donations

3) Academy's and wannabe intl schools - Gear, Greenwood, VIBGYOR, Inventure, Vidyashilp, NAFL, etc.

• Patronized by the Indian upper middleclass, NRIs, etc.
• Fee - INR 60k to 100k (a new school like VIBGYOR are exceptions)
• Donation/Bldg fee/Admission fee - Most don't take yrly donations and bldg fees. They do take admission fee and some refund part or whole.

4) Intl school - TISB, Canadian, BLR Intl, Sarla Birla, JIRS, Deccan, Valley(?), et all

• Patronized by expats, NRIs and the wealthy
• Fee - Over 1 lakh
• Donation/Bldg fee/Admission fee - Most don't take yrly donations and bldg fees. They do take admission fee and some refund part or whole.

Methodology: Most schools under category 3 and 4 seem to follow the western style of teaching up to grade 5 (i.e smaller class sizes, smaller units within a classroom, no tests and exams(?), one does not even prescribe homework. Each school seems to follow its own methodology. There doesn't appear to be any standard or benchmark.

Kannada exposure (at least as a third language) is a must for all schools (except Central/Army schools)? And that 3rd lang. requirement starts 6th std. onwards?

• In most category 1 - Severe Kannada "pain" for sure
• Category 2 - mild to moderate - Can be substituted w/ Hindi or Sanskrit pain
• Category 3 - mild
• Category 4 - Students can opt for Spanish or French pain instead?

Security?

• Category 2 - usually boasts of an old man in blue uniform sitting by the gate.
• Category 3 - could have restricted entry and an younger guy in full (shoes and all) blue uniform. (Some like Gear is very strict - Prospective parents are not even allowed inside to inquire, prior to admitting their ward. They are strict and I'm sure they have their reason for it...)
• Category 4 - Security rivals that of any large multinational S/W firm since they are residential schools as well.

Kids presence for admission:

• Kids presence and admission tests are dependent of school policies. Most require a test for higher grades.
• In the lower grades, one could get a child admitted w/o making the trip -we did.

Bangalore Schools

So, you want to admit your kids to schools in Bangalore and are searching for information on good schools within Bangalore.

Please do refer to my other thread on categories of Schools in Bangalore.
Please do also refer to the below mentioned links which has got an ocean of information on Schools in Bangalore.

• http://bangaloreschools.net/
• http://www.r2iclubforums.com/forums/f30/mt-schools-bangalore-259/
• http://www.r2iclubforums.com/forums/f30/housing-where-stay-how-close-school-work-please-advise-2773/
• http://www.indusladies.com/forums/bangalore-schools/?daysprune=-1&order=desc&sort=replycount

Singapore Primary Education

Few crisp words

competitive

activity based

Excellent

• Stressful (not fully caused by school. partly caused by school and majority caused by anxious kiasu parents)
• Starts slow from P1 to P3 when kids get accustomed and zooms fast through P4 to P6 when kids are put to real stress test

Positives:

• Amazing is the ONE word that I have got for the Singapore Primary Education.
• Focuses to create well rounded individuals and not mere academic bookworms.
• We pay 10 SGD. The government spends nearly 1 K per kid per month.
• School infrastructure is excellent and is always being upgraded.
• The entire curriculum is activity based and is improved every few years. The kids live through it, enjoy it, cherish it and learn it.
• Kids who are open and can speak will shine. Of course, it is difficult for average kids and kids who are introvert.
• The kids have an opportunity to excel as an individual.
• Kids are encouraged to speak out, to present topics, to lead classes, to play, to experiment.

Negatives:

• Yes. it is stressful since the kids have to face streaming at very young age
• Yes. Kids who do not start at very young age gets lost and it becomes very difficult to catch up later. this also leads to parents imposing more stress on the kids and the vicious cycle continues.

Singapore Primary school admissions

Primary school admissions is Singapore is very simple and transparent (find the category under which you are going to get admitted, find the distance between your house and school and roughly you will have an idea). It is also very tough to get into top schools. It is always good to apply for schools within 1 KM of your house. The government also encourages schools to be closer to home.

All details required for primary admissions is available on the government website at:

• http://www.moe.gov.sg/education/primary/
• http://www.moe.gov.sg/education/admissions/primary-one-registration/

Even though, I would say that all primary schools in Singapore are good, there is some differences that leads to some excellent schools and some "not so excelling schools". The government is used to award the top schools in various categories and the ratings can be found at http://app.sis.moe.gov.sg/schinfo/ (School achievements)
There are a few private websites as well like http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/content/singapores-top-primary-schools

Further Learning avenues..........HAPPY LEARNING

I list below a few non-SAP topics that I recently came across and that I feel will be a good value addition to our coporate career, to our deliverables and also useful when we engage our customers:

1. PMP (project Management Professional): www.pmi.org. This is mandatory as long as we pursue our career within field operations. PMI is an American Institute. UK has its own version called PRINCE2. Singapore also has its own version. SAP's ASAP methodology is based on this
2. ITIL (IT Infrastruture Library): http://www.itil-officialsite.com/home/home.asp. This will be a good value addition for people who are engaged in supporting Operations (Incident management, service desk management, issue resolution, change request management,) and goes much beyond. SAP's RUNSAP methodology is based on this.
3. CISA (Certified Information systems auditor): http://isaca.org/. This is an certification for audit of Information Systems. The audits that we deliver are similar to this, but this certification goes much beyond.
4. CGEIT (Certified in Governence of Enterprise IT): http://isaca.org/.

If any of the topics are of interst to you and you would like to get more information, please do contact me.