Against the background of the recently enacted Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE Act), which directs all private unaided schools to provide free education upto 25 percent of class strength to underprivileged children from classes I-VIII, it is important for the future of private schools that they accept this provision of the Act in the interests of nation building, and observe it in letter and spirit.Alternatively, s.12 of the RTE Act offers private unaided schools an opportunity to exercise the option of providing Equal Opportunity Schools. The Indus Trust has already established an internationally benchmarked Equal Opportunity School on its Indus International School campus in Bangalore, and is in the process of promoting similar schools contiguous to Indus International schools in Hyderabad and Pune. We believe in inclusive and equal opportunity schooling because the purpose of education must be to address the challenges of sustainability such as climate change, sharing of dwindling resources, poverty, illiteracy, religious fundamentalism, and rising greed and corruption. Apart from being centres of academic excellence, schools should equip students emoti-onally and spiritually to become agents of change for transformation of society. For this, development of English, science and math, computer literacy and leadership skills is absolutely necessary. Our neighborhood Equal Opportunity School has been promoted on the premise that in a world that is getting flatter by the day, theres no place for different sets of curriculum and technology for the privileged and underprivileged. They have to be equal and affordable for the underprivileged as well. Therefore, the purpose and rationale of Indus Equal Opportunity schools is to provide the same quality education as high-end mainstream schools at a fraction of the cost. Through sharing of land area and other costs with the parent school, K-12 education whose cost varies between $10-$40 (Rs.450-1,800) per day in mainstream schools, is provided in our Equal Opportunity School at 15-30 cents (Rs.7-14) per day! Sharing of overheads apart, this has been made possible by using low-cost building materials, reducing capital expenditure, number of teachers employed and slashing operating expenses by 70 percent. Indus Equal Opportunity schools provide education from class I-XII and follow the state board and/or CBSE syllabus. However, delivery of the chosen curriculum is based on international systems, processes, benchmarks and best practices tried and tested in the neighbouring parent school to enable Equal Opportunity students to compete for admission into the best colleges and universities in India and abroad. The enrolment ceiling of Indus Equal Opportunity schools is 600 students and classes are conducted in two shifts, to slash infrastructure and teacher costs. Moreover, we ensure that empathetic teachers are selected from the same socio-economic milieu as students, but they are trained in international practices and subject knowledge at our in-house Indus Training and Research Institute. As in the parent school, the entire campus of our Equal Opportunity schools is wifi enabled, with all children from class I onwards being provided with laptops, to enable them to become IT literate, lifelong learners. As…
