Quality education comes to town

SNS | Siliguri | 19 April, 2016:Narayana Schools, Asia’s largest group of educational institutions, opened its new branch in Siliguri on Monday. The branch at 3rd Mile, Sevoke Road, will be another feather in the Narayana crown, school officials said, as Inspector General of the BSF, Kamal Nayan Choubey, formally declared the school open by lighting the traditional lamp. Also present on the occasion were Deputy Commandant, BSF, Priya Darshi, Senior DGM of Narayana Schools, Anil Saxena, Dean of Narayana Schools Ajay Kumar Saha, social activist and advocate GS Hora, and a host of other dignitaries. Another guest at the event, Senior Vice-President (Operations) of The Statesman newspaper, KK Choudhary, was not able to make it due to unavoidable circumstances.

He, however, sent a message that was read out to the gathering there. Thanking the organisers for inviting him, Choudhary, in his message, assured the Narayana Group of his “whole-hearted cooperation and moral support in your noble endeavour.” Senior DGM, Saxena, said Narayana Schools does not want its students to leave the schools with only the certificates in hand. “We want our students to become engineers, doctors, chartered accountants, and IAS and IPS officers etc, but most of all we want them to be good human beings and good professionals,” Saxena said.

“Narayana Schools is known for career-oriented teaching and outstanding performance in competitive examinations,” Principal, Narayana Schools, Siliguri, Rajiv Ghosh Roy, told the august gathering. Later, Ghosh Roy told journalists that the group has 549 schools across India, and that 2600 students have enrolled in the Siliguri branch of the CBSE school from the nursery class onwards so far.

“The school boasts infrastructure like other school in the region, with all the modern facilities and equipment required for imparting valuebased education to our students,” he said. He added that the students in the school include those from far flung areas in north Bengal and neighbouring states, and also as far as Bangladesh. Asked how he plans to go ahead as there are already so many private English medium schools in the region and as the competition is tough, Ghosh Roy said: “We go by loving and respecting all other schools and education institutions around us. While we have recruited some local teachers, most of the teachers are from outside north Bengal.” Meanwhile, addressing the occasion, Choubey said education was his primary passion, “the thing that I love the most.”

“I look at education in a much larger context, on a much bigger platform,” he said. “As the nation decides to build itself as a powerful country, a country that is respected and hounoured by other nations in the globe … education is going to be the single most important factor,” he said. Speaking of his meeting once with noble laureate Amartya Sen, Choubey said: “I asked him what is one thing India should do to develop it at a pace that it comes out of the tag of developing nation or a third world country, and his answer was very simple. He said ‘primary and secondary education.’” “If you are able to give quality primary and secondary education, India has every reason to cheer in the next two-three decades,” he said, quoting Amartya Sen. He also complimented Narayana Schools, “the pioneers in the field of modern education,” for coming to Siliguri.