survey at village school
Answers
The education survey was conducted with a view to finding out the adequacy or otherwise of the schools in the sending villages. Many children of migrant workers migrate with their parents while many do not. We have seen that the overall ratio of their respective numbers is 60:40 i.e. 60% of the children in the 1-14 year age group migrate and 40% do not. We have also noted that this ratio falls from 90:10 in the 1-4 year age group to 70:30 in the 5-6 year or balwadi age group and to 48:52 in the 7-14 or primary school age group. In fact, in the 11-14 age group 60% of the children do not migrate. This points to the effort on the part of the parents to continue their children’s schooling as far as possible. As we have also seen, the foremost reason given for some members of families not migrating with the rest of the family was ‘education’. Regarding problems faced with respect to education of the children the main problem has been that of access to a school whether in the village or at the factory sites. This was the problem mentioned by all groups of respondents - parents, teachers and mukadams. Although, as we have noted, few of the respondents have expressed any dissatisfaction about the quality of schools and schooling offered, this is likely to be because their focus is first on the availability of the facility and secondly because many of the respondents may have no standards with which to compare the facilities available to them.
The Village School is a for-profit school that has one of the few boarding school programs in Houston. It is convenient for those located in Houston’s “energy corridor”, and its involvement with the Nord Anglia Education School program allows interaction with its partner schools across the globe. The Village School began as an Early Childhood education facility in 1966 and expanded to include PreK-4th grade students by 1983. During the ten years that followed, The Village School moved to its current location in West Houston and introduced 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grades to its curriculum. In 2006, the school joined the Meritas Family of Schools, a for-profit company of ten college preparatory schools across the globe. Dr. Jonathan Silver, the current Head of School, introduced the high school program in 2008.
While The Village School is primarily a day school, it does offer boarding opportunities through the Meritas Elite Boarding Program