Now, exclusive Navodayas for budding artistes and players….Chinki Sinha
There will be exclusive schools not just for students excelling in science but also for those who want to dance, sing and paint. Or for those who want to excel at a particular sport.
After science magnet schools, the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti now plans such specialist schools for three more disciplines: arts and cultures, sports and vocational training.
Navodaya Vidyalayas offer classes from VI to XII, with 75 per cent seats reserved for meritorious children from rural areas. The magnet schools will select students from classes IX to XII and groom them in a specific direction.
The 10 science magnet schools, approved by the HRD Ministry, are expected to come up soon. The ministry will take the proposal to the cabinet and the science schools are expected to start in two to three years.
For each of the other three specialties, four schools are being planned. The arts and culture magnet schools will come up in locations where there is an arts institution so that students can be mentored. Chandigarh and Allahabad are possible locations.
The cultural Navodayas will teach dance, music or painting. Each class will have two sections of around 60 students, expected to include the best talent of the country. Two sites have been selected for these schools, Navodaya Vidayalaya Samiti sources said.
At the sports schools, archery, javelin, hockey and football are among the games students will be groomed in. Cricket is not on the list because the sport already has many academies across the country. Sports like swimming are not being planned either as the required infrastructure is absent.
One of the reason these elite schools have been planned for Class IX is to get around the no-screening provision of the Right to Education Act. This provision bars screening of students for admission up to VIII but the HRD Ministry has now proposed extending it up to X. Making a case for exception under the specified schools category, the Navodayas are waiting for a Law Ministry notification allowing this.
We will seek the governments opinion but for now we are on with this, a Navodaya official said. The Navodayas, meanwhile, have announced selection examinations for Class VI.
For the science magnet schools, the official said, we are talking with the CBSE and others to figure out a screening examination. Preference will be given to children studying in the Navodaya schools but others can apply, too. We have a National Science Talent examination and we could use that (as a basis of selection for the science schools). There are other tests, too.
We are still in the planning stages, said M S Khanna, joint director of the Navodaya Samiti. For science magnet schools, there are selection examinations we could use. For the other magnet schools, we will have to figure (something out).
The need to set up science magnet schools was felt because fewer and fewer students have been taking up the pure sciences. We want to wean them away from engineering colleges. We want them to study science and come up with interesting research, a senior official said.
Sites for these magnet schools will be selected near science hubs such as BARC, IISc and the IITs, which have agreed to help mentor the students. A few countries are trying this concept and we hope this will work for us, too, an official said. The Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti had looked at Thailands schools as a model. Thai officials had visited the country and made presentations on their model schools for gifted children.
The NVS, headed by HRD Minister Kapil Sibal, runs a chain of over 590 residential schools in most districts except those in Tamil Nadu, which has stayed out of the movement.
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