Sited on a ten-acre ultra-modern campus off the Delhi-Meerut Expressway in the national capital region is the avant-garde Gurukul The School, Ghaziabad (GTS). Promoted by eminent educationist Sachin Vats, the school admitted its first batch of 50 students in 2002. Since then, this co-ed K-12 institution has developed into a progressive 21st century school providing its 2,400 students a “stimulating learning environment to nurture creative and critical thinkers, problem solvers and contributors to social change”. In the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings 2022-23, GTS is ranked #1 co-ed day school of Ghaziabad.
Affiliated with the Delhi-based CBSE, this 20-year-old school provides its students state-of-the-art infrastructure, tech-enabled pedagogies, rich sports and co-curricular education and excellent student learning outcomes enabled by an enviable teacher-student ratio of 1:15. Moreover, GTS has set excellent benchmarks in home-school partnership and continuous professional development of teachers.
“At Gurukul The School, we believe that education should not only follow but also contribute to social change and this belief permeates the school culture and all our initiatives. Our goal is to educate the child and influence the home and we empower the young learners with an international outlook and traditional Indian values,” says Sachin Vats, founder-director, GTS.
An engineering alumnus of Pune University, with a Masters qualification in Human Resource and Education Management, Sachin Vats has been a speaker and a panelist in many international and national conferences and seminars. He also serves as the president of District Kurash Association and senior vice president of District Hockey Association. He is a recipient of the ‘Emerging Leader in Education’ award of AsiaOne magazine and Modern Leader Preserving Indian Tradition award of Mind Mingle. A major donor to The Rotary Foundation, Vats believes that children are uniquely blessed and education must be channelised to bring out the best of their ingenuity.
Contemporary infrastructure to enable 21st century learning
To ensure holistic student development, GTS has generously invested in contemporary academic, co-curricular and sports education facilities. The thematically designed ten-acre campus houses a fully air-conditioned building with 93 ICT-enabled classrooms, two libraries with 45,010 print volumes and 1,000 digital resources and nine state-of-the-art laboratories to enable hands-on STEM and robotics learning. Other campus highlights include a 500-seats auditorium, sound-proof recording studio, medical, yoga and meditation rooms.
GTS’ equally impressive sports infrastructure includes facilities for several outdoor sports including football, cricket, hockey, skating, archery, horse riding, taekwondo, volleyball, basketball, netball and swimming. Indoor sports include a badminton court, rooms for table tennis, chess, yoga, judo and kurash. Students also get to choose from a rich menu of co-curricular activities including visual arts, dance, drama, music, photography, culinary skills, sculpture, computer coding, debates, leadership development and community service projects.
Student-centred curriculum and strong home-school partnership
GTS is committed to nurture future-ready global citizens through a well-balanced blend of internationally benchmarked pedagogies and pioneering initiatives. The school’s age-appropriate curriculum and low teacher-student ratio ensure excellent student learning outcomes.
Some of the distinguishing features of education at GTS include:
Gurukul Progressive Education Program (GPEP)
Customised for students of various age-groups, personality types and learning abilities, GPEP comprises a scientifically designed activity based curriculum covering scholastic and co-scholastic domains. The objective of this programme is to make learning engaging and joyful. Moreover, several student interest clubs such as STEM Club F1 in Schools, Interact Club, Editorial Club, Tech-No-Logic Club and Generation Global enable learning beyond the classroom.
Academic Support Plan (ASP)
ASP classes are conducted for the students who require additional academic support. Conducted by the subject teachers as well as a special educator according to the learner’s needs, the ASP classes offer an inclusive and nurturing environment that enables improved student learning outcomes.
Democratic Classrooms
At Gurukul, students are encouraged to take charge of their learning. Students play a key role in defining the learning procedures via peer empowerment and handholding, follow ups and feed forwards through buddy groups, guidance and moderation of class representatives, round table discussions and democratic thought pooling.
Visible Thinking Routines
With the objective of honing their reasoning and analytical abilities and encouraging creative thinking, Gurukul learners are sequentially guided to scaffold and support thinking and engage in reflection-based progress and process improvements. Ample opportunities are provided in the classroom by making students claim, support and question, dig deeper into ideas, form perspectives and explore analogies and possibilities.
Bonhomie over Buddy Groups
Under this unique initiative, ‘Be a Study Buddy’ groups have been created to foster interaction, hand holding and collaboration among students. Buddies serve as motivators and facilitators to draw out and nurture the talents of their peers in non-judgemental group settings.
Curated content enrichment
To nurture pre and post reading practices, differentiated handouts containing comic strips, flowcharts, dialogue, tabular and pictorial representations, mind maps, video links, and Google Form assignments are uploaded for each sub-topic.
Mental wellness with and via wEvolve
With high importance accorded to the mental wellbeing of students, the school has introduced a peer educator programme to empower the young learners with a sense of empathy, and serve as a strong support system for their peers. Under this initiative, CBSE certified and endorsed students help their peers cope with day-to-day challenges and stress to ensure their mental wellbeing and holistic development.
High-definition Hybrid Learning Models
Keeping pace with the latest technological advancements, all GTS classrooms are ICT enabled to make learning a joyous and engaging experience for the students. The school is also in the process of implementing the SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition) Model created by Dr. Ruben Puentedura that benefits teachers by providing a framework from which they can assess how they are using technology in teaching, and how technology can enhance instruction.
Continuous Assessments
GTS teachers use assessments as diagnostic tools to ascertain the effectiveness of the teaching-learning process and reflect, re-draft and re-strategise teaching-learning approach rather than a biannual performance synopsis meant to label learners.
Moreover, to help sharpen students’ acumen for a highly competitive world, the school provides its students a slew of mock/practice and skill assessment tests including GMAT-Inter-Section Mental Ability Test, GAEST (Gurukul Anveshika Experimental Skill Test), GSAT (Gurukul Scholastic Aptitude Test) and viva voce/oral assessments, among others.
“A great vision is the starting point of a great mission; to be holistic in outcome we have to be holistic in our intent and approach. That’s what enables us to implement inquiry-based, discovery-driven, analytically enriched and value-embedded learning models to transform Gurukulites into global humans,” says Sachin Vats.
Awards and Encomiums
GTS was certified as a ‘Leading School of India 2019-21′ by Leading Schools Corporation, Newark, Delaware (USA) for the provision of holistic education.
Ranked India #2, UP #1 and Ghaziabad #1 for Extraordinary Leadership in Academics & Overall Development of the students by an EducationWorld Grand Jury in 2020.
Received Letter of Appreciation from the CBSE Regional Office for its excellent performance in the class X & XII CBSE board exams. In the class X board exam, seven GTS students were among the top 10 rank holders in India.
GTS won the National Level Science Exhibition for four years successively .
Recipient of Best Leader and Best Brand Award at ‘The World’s Greatest Brands & Leaders 2015–16’ award ceremony hosted in Abu Dhabi by Asia One and URS Media Consulting.
Conferred with the Excellence in Education Award for Innovative Practices of Elets Technomedia.
Recipient of the British Council International School Award since 2012 for promoting international dimension in the curriculum.
Winner of World Education Awards 2019 under the category “The Destination School” for nurturing responsible and empowered global citizens.
Received the Best Project Award for TERI’s S.E.A.R.C.H project.
Saviours Green School Award in recognition of its commendable contribution to the cause of the environment.
