Kuyilappalayam High School

Update on Kuyilappalayam School Trust, June 2002

Kuyilappalayam 1993

A rural, backward village of 2,700 people, 8 kms north of Pondicherry town in Tamil Nadu, south India. It is also the village most affected by the Auroville project at that moment. Out of 900 children aged between 4 and 16, only a dozen complete high school. Most adults are illiterate and keep their children at home to work. The alternatives are:

send your child for free to the local Government primary school (180 kids in 3 small rooms, with teachers who can do what they want, because they can't be fired);
send them to New Creation school, free, English medium, 130 students, with noon meal, but not Government recognised;
or send them (walking) to Pondicherry.

The same situation is existing in the surrounding villages of Chinna- and Periya-mudaliarchavadi, Bommayarpalayam, Kottakarai and Edayanchavadi. In this year, 1993, the Kuyilappalayam School Trust is founded.

Education for the next generation

The trustees of Aurelec Trust had long held the view that one of the keys to the future of Auroville lay in its relationship with the surrounding villages, and that central to this was the quality and level of education of the local people. Although little could be done for students already well advanced in their studies, they determined to do something to help the next generation of young children, by starting a privately funded, privately run school under a trust. The aims of this school would be to impart a sound education in the literary, scientific, physical and moral fields, while also giving the students a sense of cleanliness, punctuality, duty and respect for all people around them i.e. not just their own family members.

A plot of 4 acres is leased, almost for free, from the main regional temple of Mailam. The present group of trustees of the school consists of 3 Aurovilians and the 2 main teachers.

Kuyilappalayam village in 2001

Over the last 3 years, all 10th standard students of the new Kuyilappalayam High School have passed their 10th standard Tamil Nadu Government exams, and with good marks too. 500 children come to the new Kuyilappalayam high school daily from all surrounding villages, even though they have to pay some fees and pay for their books, the school uniforms and their food. There are lower and upper kindergarten classes also now. The atmosphere in the school is one of concentration, regularity and also of joy to be there.

4 blocks of 4 solid classrooms have been constructed from donations: 1 block from Aurelec, 1 from the German Government via AVI-Germany, 1 from DIK/Palmyra and 1 from Gateway. A sub-school is being built in Bommayarpayalam right now, with private Dutch money. Most important of all, a core team of dedicated, idealistic and competent teachers and administrators has stayed together, despite low salaries (1/3 of Government school teachers) and much red tape, etc.

Challenge

Here we touch an on-going source of difficulty: how to pay the teachers? It is a private school (so poorly performing teachers can be fired, and politics and corruption stay outside) that neither gets money from the State Government nor falls under Auroville's SAIIER umbrella. One third of the required sum is collected in the form of student's fees (their original imposition caused quite a number of parents to take their children out of the school); the balance comes from Palmyra at Aurobrindavan and a few individual Aurovilians.

The school enjoys a good reputation.

New school in Bommayapalayam

Being encouraged by the above described experience, the wheel has been set in motion for a new branch of our school. It will come in Bommayapalayam, the village directly adjacent to Auroville at the north-east side. A beautiful design for the first classrooms has been made, we already planted about 300 indigenous trees and scrubs on the surrounding land and the Development Group gave its permission to build