Rockwell International School, Hyderabad

Promoted by a trio of US-returned engineers in 2008, RIS which celebrated its third anniversary last December, is earning plaudits from the city’s parent and academic communities

Sited in Hyderabad’s tony suburb of Jubilee Hills, a stone’s throw from HITEC (Hyderabad Infor-mation Technology & Engineering Consultancy) City, Rockwell International School (RIS) celebrated its third anniversary last December with a spate of celebratory cultural programmes. A co-ed day school which admitted its first batch of six children in June 2009, RIS now hosts 300 students in kindergarten-class VII mentored by 50 teachers, and is affiliated with the Cambridge Inter-national Examinations (CIE), UK. A new entrant in the booming international schools scenario in Hyderabad, RIS is earning plaudits from the academic and parents’ communities for its progressive in-service teacher training programmes, experiential curriculum, ICT-enabled learning, and state-of-the-art infra-structure.

“The objective of RIS is to provide our students world-class ICT-driven educ-ation delivered through experiential, exploratory and interactive pedagogies, with strong focus on personality development and multiple intelligences. Through our dedicated faculty — most of whom have international teaching experience — we are committed to producing caring, tolerant, and enter-prising 21st century global leaders,” says Manija Subrahmanyam, principal of RIS. An alumna of Mumbai University and the Institute of Advanced Studies in Education (Rajasthan), Subrahm-anyam acquired professional experience in the city’s reputed DRS International School, prior to signing up as founder-principal of RIS in 2009.

RIS is promoted by the Rockwell Educational Society, an education trust constituted in 2008 by social entre-preneurs Subash Boda, Srikanth Ramaraju and Murali Bukkapatnam — all professional engineers with Masters degrees from American universities who gave up their 15-year NRI status and returned to India in 2008. “On my return I began working with Jayaprakash Rao, former principal of Rishi Valley, Chittoor — India’s top-ranked boarding school according to EducationWorld — who helped me develop a curriculum which allows children the creative freedom to explore and think deeply,” says Boda, an alumnus of Manipal and West Virginia universities. “Modern facilities apart, our focus is on recruiting excellent teachers and providing them with continuous in-service training in contemporary pedagogies and best teaching-learning practices,” he adds.

To provide well-grounded education to preschool and primary students, the RIS management has invested generously in academic and sports facilities. The school’s wi-fi enabled three-storeyed academic building hosts the pre-primary, primary and secondary blocks spread over 30,000 sq. ft, and offers 20 ICT-enabled air-conditioned classrooms; computer, science, math and language laboratories; multimedia, music, art and yoga rooms. While class libraries are also encouraged, the main school library hosts 4,000 volumes with 20 journal subscriptions. A fleet of 14 air-conditioned buses equipped with safety and speed tracking systems transport children to and from school.

According to Subrahmanyam, there’s a strategic focus on sports education  for which the school has roped in the Bangalore-based EduSports Pvt. Ltd to design and deliver structured physical education and sports programmes. This is supplemented by specialised coaching in tennis, basketball, cricket, gymnastics, karate and taekwondo. RIS’ sports infrastructure spread across a 3-acre plot, a km from the academic building, comprises basketball and tennis courts, a cricket pitch, an athletics track, and outdoor play areas designated for physical education, water games, and adventure. Indoor facilities for table tennis, badminton, taekwondo, karate and gymnastics have also been provided.

Performing arts is given adequate importance with opportunities for western and classical dance, art and crafts, vocal and instrumental music, dramatics, and community service read-ily available. “We recently organised a first-of-its-kind exhibition in the city’s popular State Gallery of Art which showcased our students’ artwork. Community service is also an important thrust area with the school organising field trips to orphanages and schools or autistic children. An education experience   which integrates acade-mics with sports, co-curricular and community service activities helps develop children into healthy and level-headed individuals,” says Subrahmanyam.

With RIS having got off to a good start and steadily attracting student enrol-ments (installed capacity: 550), the management is drawing up expansion plans. “The encouraging response we’ve received from Hyder-abad’s parents’ community has encour-aged us to roll out the Rockwell model. Our intent is to promote our second campus in the city next year, and open two preschools within a 15-km radius of the exist-ing RIS campus in the academic year 2013-14. Given the high impor-tance we accord to teacher training, we have also finalised plans to establish an independent teacher training institute which will offer conti-nuous training and certi-ficate programmes,” enthuses Boda.

Quite obviously this well-engineered school has got off to a smooth start. 

 Paromita Sengupta