PSBB Millennium School, Chennai

Promoted by education entrepreneur Shantanu Prakash and the legendary Dr. Y.G. Parthasarathy, this K-XII school, which blends latest ICT with Indian values and culture, has wowed the port city Sited in the heart of the port city of Chennai (pop. 4.1 million), but insulated from the noise and bustle of the busy metropolis, the recently promoted CBSE-affiliated PSBB Millennium School (estb.2005) has already set new paradigms for globally benchmarked, culturally rooted education at affordable prices. Promoted by the Learning Leadership Foundation (a not-for-profit trust constituted by the Delhi-based Educomp Solutions Ltd (ESL), founded by education entrepreneur Shantanu Prakash in 1994) in collaboration with the Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan (PSBB) group of schools headed by legendary educationist Dr. Y.G. Parthasarathy, PSBB Millennium is the fulfillment of the promoters vision to establish K-12 schools blending latest ICT (information communication technologies) with Indian values and culture, for which the PSBB group of schools has established an excellent reputation in Chennai. Housed in a leased 1.5 acre site, the modest single storey circular school building with a playground at its centre and a Ganesha temple contiguous to the entrance, has been constructed at a project cost of Rs.6 crore. Unsurpr-isingly this unique initiative has caught the fancy of the citys aspirational middle class, and PSBB Millennium which admitted its first batch of 684 pre-KG-class V students in June 2005, now boasts 2,000 students (upto class IX) supported by an 87-strong faculty on its muster rolls. Our institutional objective is to develop our students into global citizens with Indian values, and help them realise their true potential by shaping them into confident, responsible and balanced individuals with well-rounded personalities. Simultaneously we want to inculcate pride of our rich cultural heritage and value systems in them, so they mature into individuals with leadership qualities even as they strive for academic excellence, says Sita Umamaheshwaran, an alumna of Madras and Annamalai universities who served in various capacities in the PSBB group of schools for a decade before she was appointed principal of PSBB Millennium last year. True to its charter, ab initio PSBB Millennium has integrated ESLs highly acclaimed Smart Class hardware and pedagogy into its fully wired classrooms connected to a resource centre, to enhance the learning experience of students. Smart Class is a technology-driven program that provides tools and content for interactive self-paced learning by students, and equips teachers with digital multi-media based instruction materials. At PSBB Millennium, teachers consult with the schools resource coordinator (an ESL employee) and plan their lessons a week in advance. The visually rich content customised to the needs of students is streamed into classrooms via interactive white digi boards that serve both as black boards and screen projectors. The audio-visual appeal of the ready-made modules for different subjects enables students to understand and retain abstract concepts, says Umamaheshwaran. Another distinguishing feature of the teaching-learning pedagogy employed at PSBB Millennium is the use of ESLs O3 (one-on-one) Class Mate Personal Computer (CMPC) by students of classes III-IX, who learn interactively…