Bengaluru: Citizens' Gurukul hopeful of more enrolments in 2018

Bengaluru: Finding affordable, quality education in a fast developing city like Bengaluru is not easy and this made a group of parents come up with an unique initiative-launch a school of their own. The school is now set to enter its second academic year and the promoters are looking forward to more enrolments.

For instance, Vinay Kumar Kayyur who moved from Jigani to Whitefield last year, had a tough time finding an affordable nursery for his daughter Suvyaktha. He then came to know through social media about Citizens' Gurukul, a non-profit, parent-run school taking shape in the area. ““While most schools in the city encourage parents to compete to pay more donations to get an admission even at the nursery level, this initiative aims at avoiding rapid commercialisation of education. With most other schools demand a sum ranging from Rs 60,000 to Rs. 1.75 lakh then, I felt it was not worth it,” said Mr Kayyur who is a software 
developer.

As the first academic year comes to a close, he is hopeful that more enrolments will happen in the upcoming year. Reiterating his decision to continue his daughter’s education at the same institution, he added, “My daughter has been getting individual attention at the school, she has been trained to gain an overall perspective which makes everyone happy.”

But there are various challenges the school administration is facing, mainly monetary problems, says Keshav Joshi, one of the founder trustees who has a child enrolled in the school. “Gaining the trust of parents to get more enrolments is another challenge along with finding a centre head to handle the administration. Even though we have taken the losses on ourselves, we are really determined to run this school. With at least 35 students on our rolls next year, we are hopeful of bringing down losses with more contributions from friends, family and like-minded citizen groups,” he said.