NE EDUCATION BUREAU
AHMEDABAD, DEC 17
Udgam School For Children (USFC) on Thursday announced that it is launching the second shift for primary school students from the academic year 2021-22. Ahmedabad’s premier school has received the necessary permissions from the CBSE as well as the state education board for the move. With this, USFC has become the first self-financed CBSE School in India to run two shifts at the same premise. The expansion will help the school to accommodate around 8,000 students in a single place, a senior official of the school said.
From the horse’s mouth
Speaking about the move, Manan Choksi, Executive Director, Udgam School For Children, said, “We are proud to announce the second shift for the primary students from the next academic year. We have been constantly getting requests from parents to have an option wherein they can choose from school time for their ward. This decision will finally allow a choice of time and more children to join the renowned Udgam family, many of whom we could not admit earlier due to limited seats. Since the capacity (students) of the school gets almost doubled, some of the fixed costs per child will remain the same, hence we will be able to pass on the benefits to the parents when this capacity gets filled. Moreover, the expansion will create more employment opportunities and we are aiming to add around 300 more teaching staff in the coming three years.”
Shift timings
The morning shift will work from 7:00 am to noon whereas the afternoon shift from 12:30 pm to 5:30 pm. The parents of the existing students will have to inform the school about their preferred shift by December 19, 2020, for the academic year starting April 2021. For both shifts, all Saturdays will be working on the same timings as weekdays, so there will be no reduction of teaching hours in an academic year. The biggest winners will be the parents who could not secure admission for their kids due to the non-availability of the seats and high admission fees. Moreover, before the FRC put a cap on the admission fees the school was charging Rs. 2,00,000 as admission fees; now with the revised norms, the admission fee will be in the range of around Rs. 5,000-Rs. 7,500 only. Hence, now more students would be able to afford to change school and join the Udgam school family.
USFC has put major thoughts on decreasing the duration of a school day. Now with the revised academic schedule, the students will have more free hours in hand. They will get more opportunities to use the extra time as they will which can be either to revise their lessons or draw in themselves in hobbies & activities to pursue their interests.
Before School Activity, a boon for working parents
In families where both the parents are working, they will have the alternative to enlist their child for Before School Activity, organized by Udgam Pro-Activity Club, timings for which will be 10:30 am-12:30 pm. In this case, after their BSA, the students can directly go to their classes. The main change which parents will encounter is that the students will spend an extra one hour in school, which works well in the favour of working parents. This facility will be presented at a nominal cost.
“We understand it will be an enormous change, but we assure that school management and staff will try their best to make this transition as smooth as possible. At the point when our ability will get doubled, the school can challenge inflation by economies of scale, which shows we will have the option to keep up a reasonable fee structure,” said Manan Choksi.
