An unapologetically legacy boarding school with a strong emphasis on pomp, circumstance and conservative values, Good Shepherd International School, Ooty has set its sights on competing with the best residential schools worldwide On October 15-16, Good Shepherd International School (GSIS, estb.1977), Ootacamund (aka Ooty, pop. 100,000) celebrated its 38th Founders Day (the birthday of Dr. P.C. Thomas, founder principal) with extraordinary pomp and circumstance, probably unmatched in K-12 education countrywide. The chief guest of the two-day celebrations of this grade I-XII fully residential school, affiliated with the Delhi-based CISCE, the UK-based CIE and Geneva-based IBO examination boards, was Lt. Gen. Sunil Kumar Gadeock, AVSM — commandant, Defence Services Staff College, Wellington (and Mrs. Sonalika Gadeock) — who witnessed a variety of indoor entertainment programmes in the school’s massive 1000-seat auditorium on October 15. The next day, Gen. Gaedock in full ceremonial uniform reviewed an all-school parade by open jeep and later took the salute of a march past presented by the horse contingent, sea cadet corps, flag contingent, four houses of the school, and the school’s two brass and two pipe bands. According to monitors of the education scene in Ooty — a well-known hub of K-12 education which hosts over 35 schools of all types — such pomp, style and circumstance are normative in Good Shepherd International School, Ooty, a legacy boarding school which provides its 725 students, including 225 girls, excellent globally benchmarked academic, co-curricular and sports education. Good Shepherd International School, Ooty sprawls over two green campuses — Fernhill (40 acres), built around the fully-refurbished summer palace of the former Maharajah of Baroda which hosts primary (grade I-VI) students, and the Palada campus (140 acres) for middle, high and higher secondary students. Since it was started in 1977 by Dr. P.C. Thomas and his wife Elsamma with an initial batch of 54 children, Good Shepherd International School has been developed into one of India’s most respected new genre international schools, routinely ranked among the Top 10 countrywide. In the EducationWorld India School Rankings 2014, GSIS was ranked #5 in India in the category of international co-ed wholly residential schools below a handful of foreign missionary schools established more than a century ago. However, Dr. Thomas a science, education, and English postgraduate of Kerala University with a doctorate in education management from Pacific Columbia University, California, who began his career as an English teacher, is unfazed by GSIS’ rank in the EW league tables and is resolute in his belief that the school is the country’s premier fully residential international co-ed school. “There are several unique differentiating features of GSIS which are perhaps insufficiently known or appreciated. First, Good Shepherd International School, Ooty is an uncompromisingly residential school with even children of staff residing in our dormitories. Secondly, GSIS is an entirely self-sufficient institution with all vegetables, poultry, eggs and milk supplied from our own organic farms. Third, it’s highly improbable that any other school countrywide offers matching enabling infrastructure and learning environments — two green campuses spread…
