BENGALURU: A bold experiment started last year by a group of Whitefield residents has now come to end. Fed up of shelling out exorbitant tuition fees for their children, a no-profit, no-loss school called The Citizens Gurukul was started by citizens to provide viable education. Unfortunately, since there were no admissions, the school had to shut down this year.
In 2017, Abhilash Matlapudi, a software engineer, got together with more people to start the Gurukul. With pre-schools charging up to Rs 3 lakh per child, the idea was to start a school where the fee would be linked to the operations of the school. In June last year, with much support on social media, the Citizens Gurukul started its first academic year with seven students and a managing committee of trustees comprised of parents.
It was a unique show of power. For many supporters, the idea of not having to bow down to the demands of bigger schools and cough up large sums was appealing. However, when it came to conversion, the response was not so good. “There are a few reasons why. We initially got delayed in starting the academic year and other schools had already started while we were still fixing the details. A lot of people were enthusiastic in the beginning but conversions were tough. The school did not have a track record and it was only a pre-school. There was the question of progression of the kids to further classes,” Dipankar Khasnabish, a trustee of the Gurukul, said.
Another issue was finding time to devote to the school. With most of those involved in the Gurukul having full time jobs, it was not possible to manage affairs the way professional educational institutions do. “We had opportunities to reach out to a lot more parents by going from apartment to apartment but on those days some people could not make it for various reasons. We could not focus full time,” Khasnabish added.