1st offsite classes for Hills students begin in Nepal

Jhimli Mukherjee Pandey | TNN | Aug 6, 2017, KOLKATA: The first offsite classes to help students of Darjeeling schools, which have shut down indefinitely following the unrest in the Hills, have started in another country, Nepal.

Jesuit priests of Nepal have thrown their arms around 100-odd children from these schools, holding special classes for them so that they do not miss out on their studies, making this the first group of students from the agitation-hit area to attend an alternative school.

The kids are from classes V to IX and are all residents of Nepal who are boarders in Hills schools, now forced to stay at home because of the agitation. The indefinite shutdown completed 50 days on Thursday and the children have lost nearly two months of precious academic time.

The special coaching classes have started in St Xavier's, Kathmandu, a Jesuit school that belongs to the same missionary order as Kolkata's St Xavier's Collegiate School. The school in Nepal is over 80 years old and known for its high academic standard.

There are over 50 Jesuit priests in Nepal who are engaged in different activities related to social uplift, who have been roped in by Father A P George, principal of the school, to take these special coaching classes.

Five senior priests and some teachers have gone through the textbooks that are taught in the Darjeeling schools to prepare the routine that is being followed in the coaching classes.

"This school in Nepal has showed us the way. We have now taken the cue and and are coaching final-year boys and girls in Siliguri and Kolkata," said Father Kinley Tshering, provincial of all Jesuit schools in Darjeeling, the northeast and Nepal.

(Source & Cotesy: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/1st-offsite-classes-for-hills-students-begin-in-nepal/articleshow/59936471.cms)