What makes a great school?
It is a question we devote books, league tables, open nights, and many hours reading the advice of so-called “educational gurus” to in the quest to definitively answer. Some argue that a great school is defined by how much it invests into quality infrastructure and amenities. Others argue for the level of academic attainment its students achieve. Many similarly contend that great schools are not marked by facilities or results, but by how embedded they are in the local community. How do these criteria we so dearly covet hold up, however, when seeking to answer this question in rural Tamil Nadu?
In the sweltering midday heat, our sweaty, ragtag group was a sore sight compared to the party of neatly-dressed students who welcomed us with perfect English to Isha Vidhya Matriculation School. As they lead us down the open-air hallways, decked out in a neutral white with pastel coloured doors and shutters, I couldn’t help but notice how incredibly vibrant everything seemed. On the walls were full-length murals depicting famous historical figures, human organs, folk art, English tongue twisters, scientific diagrams of plant cells, and measuring charts for new entrants. If you looked up at the roof, you could catch the whole solar system midway through its celestial cycle, alongside a few stray stars emerging to say hello. On the floor were dozens of colourful Rangoli prepared in art class, alongside a giant protractor painted on the floor, which—perhaps most ingeniously of all—aligns with the classroom door to help teach angles. We often like to talk about the importance of creating learning environments in New Zealand schools that empower our students to succeed, but how often do we consider the ceiling and floor as being equally important for achieving this?
We had the privilege on our tour to meet the art teacher responsible for all of this (making, unsurprisingly, a life-size paper machê tree for the school’s central courtyard) who politely rejected our many praises and insisted that it was the students, in fact, who design, paint and look after the school murals regularly changed throughout the year. The look on the students’ faces, and the intelligence with which our guides spoke on their classrooms and hallways made it evidently clear that this was indeed true.
We often convince ourselves in New Zealand that good learning is only possible with state-of-the-art technology, sophisticated school infrastructure and school rolls which predominately feature students from wealthy socio-economic backgrounds. Although Isha Vidhya does have access to modern technology in its own “digital lab”, it was the school’s effort to transform even the most mundane of surfaces into a site of learning that inspired me most. In much the same way, many of the 15-year-old students we talked to weren’t willing to let their schooling in rural Tamil Nadu limit them. They were going to be the doctors, engineers, police woman, teachers, fashion designers, and archaeologists of tomorrow. And having seen the way they acted, I don’t doubt their abilities to achieve this either.
As we wrapped up our visit to Isha Vidhya by playing Kho kho (which I can only poorly describe as akin to Duck-Duck-Goose in a straight line) and singing Happy Birthday to a very embarrassed schoolgirl, I couldn’t help but return to one of the quotes I saw painted on a classroom wall:
“Curiosity, creativity, imagination. The real skills of the future.”
It appears New Zealand can learn a lot from India on the path towards achieving this.