Campus K School (The Next Generation School) – Sholinganallur – Review

Hi All,

sharing a review of a school which we visited recently. We came to know about the school from another parent, as we never considered this in first place due to the distance from home. If you are a middle class (upper/lower/side upper/side lower,etc..), the cost of travel to and from school is one of the key factors in deciding a school. Also in case of an emergency, how quickly as a parent you can make it to the school matters the most. But considering the demand and supply scenario and covid crisis, we kept an open mind to consider schools that are bit of stretch from our house, say 5kms and above. When making the basic online research about the school came to know that they were having an ” Open Day” on 30th Jan 2021, which was about to happen in 2 days from the date we heard about the school. We did not knew much the school, but went ahead to Open Day early as we had other appointments on that day. It looked like we were the first to arrive that day. We met with the admission co-ordinator, we were taken to a bigger hall where we sat on the children school furniture for the discussion. Honestly, it was totally uncomfortable for me to be seated without fidgeting considering my weight and structure, but managed to do so. Later had a campus tour as well.

Below are the relevant information:

• Is it an Inclusive School?

I would say they are not, if they are, they would have definitely bragged about it during the conversation time, it did not happen. Also in the school website, FAQ Section (https://campusk.in/faqs/), they clearly mentioned they can only support children with specific Dyslexia issues and they will not be able to support kids with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Handling one particular disability/special need shall not be considered as Inclusive Education.

• They follow IGCSE (Cambridge) curriculum. Like every school they have their own terminologies to classify the primary, middle and higher, i.e. Kplay, K Discover and KLead. This school offers programs from Pre-Kg to Grade 6. They are having plans to open another school nearby to its current location for the higher grades.

• They have some thing called as PLP i.e. Personalized Learning Plans, where a special educator makes an assessment for a child and decides on his curriculum. They have a class teacher as well.

• But the classroom teaching concept which they explained, was something new to us i.e. In a day, say for a Grade 2 child, the school timings are 8:30 am to 3.00 pm i.e. 6:30 hours is spent at school. Of the 6:30 hours, 5:30 hours will be a combined/Group/Project based learning done among the students with mere supervision from the class teacher and for the remaining 1 hour there will be a one to one interaction between teacher and student. I am not sure if i understood their explanation correctly or not, this was a confusing part as we never heard something like this from anyone before.

• School does not have a proper playground, they have a lawn and some unused space within the compound. It is located between the ECR and OMR link road, very easy to locate.

• They did not have a typical classroom setting, no containment for the children. Each floor is for each level. i.e. Ground floor is for primary, First floor is for Grade 1 and 2 i think, we were not much interested in proceeding to the second floor.

• The staff were extremely polite during their communication, everyone had the mask on at all times and insisted us to keep the mask on as well.

• They shared few toys, puzzles to keep the children occupied during the discussion with parents, which is much appreciated. (I had a unpleasant experience with another IB school, which again invited parents for open day but they had caretakers follow us like an accused to ensure that my children did not use any of the play equipment’s kept in the school.)

• The fee structure was not a surprising factor, as i have now been to few IB schools in the city, no fee structure can shock me at this point of time. They have an admission fee of 50,000 rs, which will be waived off only for this academic year i.e. 2021-22. For Grade 2, they have an yearly fee of around 1.5 lacs i guess, because they did not give us any handouts. They had a folder with fee structure inside, it was kept for our Darshan for few seconds. (Lord Venkatachapathy might have offered his darshan for few more seconds than that).

• They do not have text books as such, it would be sheets/workbooks specific to the skill, project based learning as such.

• One of the subject teachers have discussed with us on how the classes are taken actually, she had a book which belonged to student. The book was incomplete, it did not give us the clarity and confidence on how productive they would occupy a child.

• Looks like teachers have a complete freedom on what to and how to teach, as there is no fixed, pre-decided, printed curriculum being made, just like an IB model.

• Yoga is part of curriculum which is not surprising, most schools began to embrace Yoga which is an obvious and cheap choice for physical education. It makes up for the lack of proper school ground facility.

• There are other spaces like dance, yoga, canteen/cafeteria, etc…

• There was a tree house, swing etc. kept within in the outdoors but within the compound area around the school.

• I do not recollect seeing a swimming pool

• I think they have Spanish as a language

• Infrastructure looked spacious and neatly designed.

My Personal Feedback

In my opinion, they should have prepared a handout to be given to every parent who made the effort to visit the school for inquiry, as their curriculum and approach is very different or made a presentation at a fixed time to explain about their model. As it is not an inclusive school, my son cannot be admitted here. Even for my daughter who is a neurotypical, I would still not consider this school, because of their model/ curriculum. It would be extremely difficult for any child to transition in to a different model at a later point of time and will create a dependency to continue in the school till the end. There seems to be voluntary compulsion that every international school should be different and unique, and in the name of being unique the schools are experimenting with the students future, not the healthy approach. Sim portability between Airtel to Reliance which was once considered as impossible was made possible now, but transfer of students to different schools during or end of the academic year, which happened seamlessly earlier has become impossible due to different setup/model/approach followed by every other school. The model followed by Campus K may be the best, the only reason why I would not opt them is they are the only one who are currently doing it.

Regards,

Saranya and Karthikeyan

karthiksaranyaparents@gmail.com