PSBB Millennium School, Chennai

Promoted by education entrepreneur Shantanu Prakash and the legendary Dr. Y.G. Parthasarathy, this K-XII school, which blends latest ICT with Indian values and culture, has wowed the port city

Sited in the heart of the port city of Chennai (pop. 4.1 million), but insulated from the noise and bustle of the busy metropolis, the recently promoted CBSE-affiliated PSBB Millennium School (estb.2005) has already set new paradigms for globally benchmarked, culturally rooted education at affordable prices. Promoted by the Learning Leadership Foundation (a not-for-profit trust constituted by the Delhi-based Educomp Solutions Ltd (ESL), founded by education entrepreneur Shantanu Prakash in 1994) in collaboration with the Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan (PSBB) group of schools headed by legendary educationist Dr. Y.G. Parthasarathy, PSBB Millennium is the fulfillment of the promoters’ vision to establish K-12 schools blending latest ICT (information communication technologies) with Indian values and culture, for which the PSBB group of schools has established an excellent reputation in Chennai.

Housed in a leased 1.5 acre site, the modest single storey circular school building with a playground at its centre and a Ganesha temple contiguous to the entrance, has been constructed at a project cost of Rs.6 crore. Unsurpr-isingly this unique initiative has caught the fancy of the city’s aspirational middle class, and PSBB Millennium which admitted its first batch of 684 pre-KG-class V students in June 2005, now boasts 2,000 students (upto class IX) supported by an 87-strong faculty on its muster rolls.

“Our institutional objective is to develop our students into global citizens with Indian values, and help them realise their true potential by shaping them into confident, responsible and balanced individuals with well-rounded personalities. Simultaneously we want to inculcate pride of our rich cultural heritage and value systems in them, so they mature into individuals with leadership qualities even as they strive for academic excellence,” says Sita Umamaheshwaran, an alumna of Madras and Annamalai universities who served in various capacities in the PSBB group of schools for a decade before she was appointed principal of PSBB Millennium last year.

True to its charter, ab initio PSBB Millennium has integrated ESL’s highly acclaimed Smart Class hardware and pedagogy into its fully wired classrooms connected to a resource centre, to enhance the learning experience of students. Smart Class is a technology-driven program that provides tools and content for interactive self-paced learning by students, and equips teachers with digital multi-media based instruction materials. At PSBB Millennium, teachers consult with the school’s resource coordinator (an ESL employee) and plan their lessons a week in advance. The visually rich content customised to the needs of students is streamed into classrooms via interactive white digi boards that serve both as black boards and screen projectors. “The audio-visual appeal of the ready-made modules for different subjects enables students to understand and retain abstract concepts,” says Umamaheshwaran.

Another distinguishing feature of the teaching-learning pedagogy employed at PSBB Millennium is the use of ESL’s O3 (one-on-one) Class Mate Personal Computer (CMPC) by students of classes III-IX, who learn interactively via the laptop with the class teacher. The use of CMPCs saves teachers’ time, encourages children to design their own presentations, access lesson files transferred to their laptops by teachers and also complete homework stored in their laptops.

Yet the unique selling proposition of PSBB Millennium which has wowed the upwardly mobile in Chennai is the school’s infrastructure. It boasts 54 classrooms, an impressive library-cum-reading room with 6,000 volumes and over a dozen journal subscriptions in addition to a sizeable collection of animated movies. Moreover it offers discrete science and English language labs to encourage activity-based self learning. Sports and games are also accorded considerable importance despite the small-size high school playground, with nets facilities for aspiring cricketers and a basket ball court. Also on offer is specialised coaching by professionals for football, basketball, cricket, yoga, karate, table tennis, aerobics and chess.

High quality infrastructure apart, PSBB Millennium incorporates the umbrella group’s tradition of dispensing value-based education to students. Therefore art and crafts, music and dance, drama, quiz, cultural academy classes, Bhagavad Gita recitation, shlokas, study of the Vedas, yoga and festival celebrations are part of the school curriculum with students encouraged to attend lectures and seminars of spiritual leaders to enrich thought, action and behaviour.

Inevitably, given the Educomp connection, ICT (instructional communication technologies) — which ESL has developed and markets to almost 10,000 private and government schools countrywide — pre-service and in-service teacher training is a continuous activity at the school. Training sessions utilising technology oriented tools and techniques are conducted for all new teachers at the beginning of the year, and a series of interactive workshops are held every Saturday to update teachers on new pedagogies.

With the school’s gestation period over, the PSBB Millennium management has drawn up ambitious expansion plans for the future. A new branch of the school is under construction on a 2.5 acre campus at the DLF Garden City on the Old Mahabalipuram Road. It will be ready next year when it will admit nursery and primary pupils. Moreover, with the school’s teachers and students having adopted ESL’s advanced technologies, a great teaching-learning leap forward is envisaged.

“From the next academic year, we plan to progress from intranet to internet, enabling children to access classroom lessons at home. Introducing digi-text books, computerising office administration and starting Girl Guides, Boy Scouts and NCC programmes is also on the cards. On the co-curricular education front, a Bharatiya Sanskriti cultural programme will familiarise our children with India’s cultural heritage, music, drama and dance forms, and provide students opportunities to showcase their talents. We believe that every PSBB Millennium student is potentially a leader and we plan to equip all our children with the skills, learning and confidence to excel,” says Umamaheshwaran.

Quite evidently in Chennai’s newest 21st century school, the search for excellence is serious business.

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)