Innovative practices in the offing in TSWREIS schools

Dr R S Praveen Kumar, Secretary, TSWREIS (Telangana Social Welfare Residential Educations Institutions Society) and senior IPS officer who has introduced many a novel initiative in state-run residential schools in the last few years is contemplating one more new concept from the coming academic year. Plans are afoot to start Freedom Schools, one or two each, at each of the 31 districts from coming academic year.

Praveen Kumar shared a few details of this Freedom Schools concept while taking part in the 9th Higher Education-Human Resources Conclave hosted in the city. Freedom School will be a school where students will learn among themselves with the meritorious and stand-out ones taking classes for their fellow students or those one year junior to them. Teachers will be present, but their duties will be confined to just guides and to see that classes go on smoothly without disturbances, he said.

Initially this concept is likely to be confined to Classes 8 and 9 grades and Principals of 200-odd TSWREIS schools were asked to state their preparedness for this project, views and inputs. Freedom Schools objective is to encourage self-learning, managerial skills and leadership qualities in students.In one-of-its-kind sessions - Fire Side Chat Round - Sudhakar Rao, Director-Branding, ICFAI Group, interacted with the senior IPS officer the various initiatives in social welfare schools and colleges to provide quality education to girls and boys from marginalised sections of the society.

Dr Kumar said that in order to enlighten students about pains in life, they invite farmers, domestic helpers, sanitation workers, sexual assault victims to conduct classes for school students and also take students to market yards to explain about farmers issues such as what is MSP, why farmers are not getting enough value of their produce etc.Replying to one of the questions from Sudhakar Rao, Dr Kumar said that they follow 'Love or Leave Concept' for staff including teachers in residential schools. "It means if you cannot love the students, please leave as it is a must to nurture and look after students as your own children," Dr Kumar explained.

The senior IPS officer stated that delegations from six to seven states have come and met them to study best practices in the running of government residential schools to replicate them in their respective states.This innovative talk session between RS Praveen Kumar and Sudhakar Rao got a thunderous applause and a standing ovation from the audience.