In June 2002 Bangalore-based Prabhu Jahagirdar quit a high-profile job in the IT industry to promote the Pupil Tree primary school in his hometown Bellary (pop.317,000), a small town in northern Karnataka, to fulfill his modest ambition to serve the community. Six years later this class I-XII CISCE/state board affiliated school, promoted by the Pupil Tree Foundation (estb. 2001), boasts an enrollment of 1,300 students instructed by 70 teachers, and has attracted excellent notices from the states academic community for pioneering innovative pedagogies and integrating information technology into education.Pupil Tree is the first internationally benchmarked school in Bellary. It was promoted with the objective of providing quality, affordable education and to set new standards in school education. Our specially designed ICT (information communication technologies) driven curriculum encourages student creativity and individuality, and our teacher training practices are acknowledged as among the best. Moreover we have implemented a unique scholarship scheme under which 25 percent of our students receive full tuition fee waiver, says Jahagirdar, an alumnus of Loyola College, Chennai, with a Masters in political science from Delhis show-piece Jawaharlal Nehru University, and an MBA from the University of Wollongong, Australia. Jahagirdar is currently managing trustee of the Pupil Tree Foundation.
According to him, there is massive latent demand for quality school education in small-town India, with parents ready, willing and able to pay top dollar for it. Informal surveys conducted by Pupil Tree Foundation indicate that all parents, cutting across occupational boundaries, are keen on providing best possible education to their children, subject to affordability constraints. For instance in Pupil Tree School, Bellary, our parents community includes farmers, masons, and plumbers, willing to pay the tuition fee of Rs.1,200 per month for high quality education. Parents in small towns are aware that English-medium school education is the passport to good jobs countrywide. Unfortunately there arent many options available to them. We want to change that, says Jahagirdar.
Encouraged by the success of Pupil Tree School, Jahagirdar has turned full-time education entrepreneur with a mission to introduce quality school education in small-town India. In 2007 he promoted the Bangalore-based Future Tree Learning Services Pvt. Ltd, with a mandate to establish composite K-12 schools providing prep to higher secondary education across Karnataka, and South India. Within a year of its operations, the company has promoted four prep schools under the brand name Pupil Tree — two in Bangalore, one each in Hubli and Belgaum — and has established a full-fledged Centre for Excellence in the garden city, to design and develop teacher training courses and technology-driven school curriculums.
Our four prep schools have been well received by parents and we are in the process of setting up Mentor Tree, which will develop e-learning products for improving teacher productivity in classrooms, says Jahagirdar, the promoter-director and chief executive of Future Tree Learning Services Pvt. Ltd, a subsidiary of Future Tree Holdings, a US$500 million (Rs.2,100 crore) company based in Singapore with interests in trading, manufacturing and mining across Asia, Middle East, Africa and Europe.
Within the next two years we plan to invest Rs.100 crore to promote prep schools in small towns in Karnataka. Our objective is to transform into a comprehensive school education services company offering quality prep to Plus Two education, and teacher training services driven by information communication technologies, he says.
Wind in your sails!
Summiya Yasmeen (Bangalore)