MADURAI: Smarting are the financial wounds being inflicted by the Covid-induced lockdown. At a time when the laymen are finding it difficult to buy smartphones to help their children’s education, a government-aided school in Madurai has come up with an offer the poor cannot refuse.
Welcome to Thiagarajar Higher Secondary School that is offering an android smartphone to each student who joins Class VI in the academic year 2020-21. The initiative, a brainchild of headmaster Ramanathan, has been receiving good response and 12 students have joined Class VI until now.
Ramanathan said that to buy the smartphones, all the employees (9 teaching and 3 non-teaching staff) have pooled in `8,000 each and decided to foot the students’ bill for buying data until the school reopens. “We have 52 seats for Class VI this year,” he said.
PG teacher S Krishnaveni said that as most of the students in the school are from financially poor families, they have been offering breakfast for those studying in Classes VI, VII and VIII. Meanwhile, Saravanan, who admitted his son S Shivasankar in class VI in the school said that it’s the offer of smartphone that attracted him the most. “This would help my son attend online classes and study better,” he added.