Teacher’s Take: Sunday Tutorials are Effective

	Mr M.P. Ganesh Head-master, Bharathiya Vidyanikethan High School, Devasandra, Krishnarajapura, Bangalore - 36
The performance of SSLC March 2006 and March 2007 of our school is given below. For March 2007 SSLC batch MRVTI has helped in conducting ‘Sunday Classes’ for 13 Sundays, each Sunday of 4 hours tutorials from 9.00 AM to 1.00 PM for all SSLC students of our school. I’ve found improvement in results - not only number of students passing SSLC increased, but in general, all students performed better and got better results.
Thanks to MRVTI for offering this service.
Subject 2005-06 (201 students) 2006-07(184 students) Mathematics 78% 87% Science 82% 89% Social Science 90% 92%
Key Issues & Challenges: Motivating students to come on Sunday for tutorials is a big challenge. Providing them snacks (milk & biscuits) and inspirational lectures and guidance by MRVTI has been a great help. Teachers usually want to spend Sundays with their family. It’s really demanding for them to take on any work on Sundays. We have successfully persuaded 4-6 teachers of my school to come on Sundays and take classes. Through MRVTI’s incentive scheme of Rs 100 per hour per teacher, We are compensating the teachers for the additional time and effort they are putting up. Total involvement with the students is essential for the success of our mission of shaping their futures. Since most of students belong to economically lower class, they don’t get appropriate environment at their home for study. So our objective has been to give them less of home-assignments and focus more on classroom-assignments. This approach not only provide students with supporting environment for their study, but they also work together with other students for a common goal. We’ve made study group of students comprising of brighter and weaker students. Teachers have identified 5-8 academically weakest students in the classes and are giving them personal attention. Teachers are also using past questions and exam blue-prints to give students practice test papers. One major problem that we are facing is, out of 160 students, only 85 are attending ‘Sunday Classes’. We need to find out ways to increase students involvements. Girls are, in general, doing better than boys.