Global Public School (GPS) Review - Ongoing Update: R2I - Schooling for Kids

Our kids completed seven years at Global Public School (GPS), Chottanikkara (Kerala, India) at the end of March 2017. We considered changing schools after the second year with the idea that the kids will probably be ready to grow out of the NRI oriented Global Public School (GPS). Ultimately decided to stay put as there was no clear winner with respect to choosing a better school - Global Public School (GPS) is by no means perfect, but the alternatives just did not seem to guaranty enough of an edge to warranty another major change for the kids. Last year, we again considered our options as our older one had completed Grade 10. We once more opted to stay put as our overwhelming belief was that schools in general could only provide very limited help in covering the CBSE curriculum.

Below are things that the kids and us like about Global Public School (GPS):

1. The staff in general are fairly accommodative of student and parent requests/needs. The service levels have gone down compared to the time when our kids joined, but they are still satisfactory. 
2. Parent volunteering is thankfully still a foreign concept at Global Public School (GPS). There was a minor scare in this regard at the start of the 2012 school year, but it died down quickly, possibly due to lack of parent response. 
3. Global Public School (GPS) continues to have individual teachers for each subject. The school suffers from substantial turnover and it is not unusual for a Science teacher to end up teaching Hindi in lower grades. Even so, the approach is much better overall compared to having the same teacher for all subjects. 
4. Covering the curriculum in the classroom is still a priority at Global Public School (GPS). With certain subjects, the teachers end-up rushing through chapters in the final months, but it is still better than not covering portions at all.
5. For high school, the expertise of teachers are woefully low. The only viable option is to go with tuition. For that, there are options as retired college professors who have deep knowledge and interest in the subject are available.  The only downside is the multiple chauffeuring that comes with that. 

Below are things we came across over the last seven years that can be considered as downsides with GPS:

1. Quality of teaching at the highschool level is a concern as teachers lack expertise in the subject matter. The vast majority of the students get by with tuition support.  Note: This is not a GPS specific problem as many schools have the issue.
2. Favoritism is a constant issue - kids of highly successful businessmen, well-known politicians, movie/sports personalities, and GPS staff receive favored treatment for competitive school activities including academics. It is not uncommon for a kid to come home and say they were placed first for a certain competition only to be displaced by favored kids for the first three positions when the official results are announced and prizes distributed. The same thing happens with class tests, although the despicable activity is more subtle. Note: This again is not a GPS specific problem. All schools have this issue, although the level of such abuse varies. Money, time, and influence can buy most anything in our society and schools are no exception. One way to look at this is that our kids get exposure to what they will see in real-life and so they will be more equipped to deal with it. 
3. The choice of textbooks are a concern. With CBSE, through Grade 8, the school has a choice of choosing the books to use in the classroom as long as they adhere to CBSE guidelines. For higher grades, there is a defined set from which the school can choose. GPS changes textbook vendors every year for grades below 9. The books used in the 2010 school year were pretty good but for 2011 they switched to using Exceed. There was some marketing hype surrounding that, but the books were horrible - many of the pages were verbatim copies of Wiki pages from the Internet. Thankfully they changed text books for the 2012 school year - while those textbooks were not perfect, they were fairly adequate. The pattern has continued. With each change, the price of the book package for the school year goes up substantially - 30% has been the average per year. It seems the school goes on changing books based on which publisher spins the best story for a particular year. 
4. Door-to-door transportation was advertised as a great convenience when we joined in 2010. The service level has gone down substantially with this. Currently, our kids are picked up in front of our housing-community (a public road) and dropped off there as well. That means, they need an escort back and forth for safety reasons. At the start of the 2012 school year, they had asked us to wait at a junction 500 meters away, which was even worse, but after complaining a few times, they agreed to alter the route a little bit. 
5. Fees have gone up at double the rate of inflation in the last eight years. The pattern is a little disconcerting. Please see below for a comparative spreadsheet of Global Public School (GPS) fees for the eight years covering 2010-11 through 2017-18 school years.
6. Swimming is still part of the curriculum. Breakfast/Lunch is also provided as needed. Service levels for both of these have gone down - the number of swimming classes per year goes down in some years due to various avoidable reasons and the quality of the menu for breakfast and lunch has gone down as well. The children also find it irritating that portions given for students are strictly controlled and any wastage is not tolerated while the chechees ignore all kinds of abuses by teachers (gross food wastage, taking a lot more than their share of pappads, meat, fish, desserts, etc). 
7. The two-hour optional extra-curricular activity is somewhat less useful than it sounds. Our children went for the program only in their first year. The reason had to do with the fact that the sessions are focused on giving an introductory level of training in the activities - so, to get to the next level, outside training is still necessary. 

Below is a look at fee increases at Global Public School (GPS) over the years. For the sample, middle school fees and the lowest transportation fees (up to 15KM) were used. Lower grades have marginally lower fees while higher grades have substantially higher fees:

Notes: Registration, Admission, Caution Deposit, Security Deposit, etc are additional one-time fees when a student is admitted. Please see our previous update with 2010 data for an idea. Also, for Grades 10, 11 and 12, for a day scholar, fees are quite a bit more as day boarding is compulsory for those grades.


Related Posts:

1. Global Public School (GPS) Review - Ongoing Update (this post).
2. Global Public School (GPS) vs Bay Farm Elementary - Comparative Review.

Last Updated: 06/2017.

Global Public School (GPS) vs Bay Farm Elementary - Comparative Review: R2I - Schooling For Kids

Bay Farm Elementary School in Alameda was the school our children were enrolled at the time of our relocation in May 2010. It was considered among the best public schools in its category in California in terms of API state rankings. In fact, one major concern when relocating was how the children would adapt to the totally different Kerala environment. To our pleasant surprise, the new school experience was an unbelievable upgrade and they thrived in their first year. When we scouted for schools in the Kochi metropolitan area in the 2008 time frame, the nearby options were Rajagiri Christhu Jayanti and Marthoma Public School, both in Kakkanad. Getting admission to these schools require a certain level of influence, especially when enrollment is sought for grades other than first grade. Openings come only if currently enrolled students’ leave for whatever reason or if they add a new division for a particular grade. At least, that was the impression imparted to us when we visited these schools. Further, the prospective students are subjected to an assessment test in language and science skills. Our kids stood no chance to ace those subject areas, for they had zero training in Indian languages (Malayalam and Hindi), French or Special English. Most students trying to relocate from the USA is faced with this classic dilemma. Rumor has it that with the right kind of influence and money, one can easily get into many of the schools, but that is uncharted territory for us. Our next option was to seek admission in one of the many International Schools in the vicinity. The well-known ones were Choice School, Global Public School (GPS), Dawn Public School, and Indian Public School. We focused on GPS for two reasons:

• Being a newer school meant little more ease in getting in
• A friend who relocated few years earlier recommended it.

Fees at International Schools are higher as they cater more towards Non-Resident Indians (NRI). Further, their assessment factors in students relocating from abroad.

Below was the fee structure for our kids (elementary) for 2010:

Note: The fees went up in the ~20% range every year and is now (2015) well above double these rates. 

The above fee structure compared to Rs 15K and Rs 20K respectively for annual fees at Marthoma Public School and Rajagiri Christu Jayanthi respectively (2010). Choice was around 25% higher compared to GPS overall. 

GPS offers both CBSE and ICGSE options from grade 9. A number of factors contributed to the kids preferring GPS (Kerala, India) to the schooling in Bay Farm Elementary School in the Bay Area. Below is a summary:

1. The staff at GPS takes at-least a peripheral effort to keep the students and parents content. While this is true at Bay Farm Elementary too, as it is state run, the establishment functions pretty much as a government organization with woeful service levels.
2. Teachers at Bay Farm survive on volunteering from parents. In a wealthy community like Bay Farm Island, where parents who do not need to work for a living are aplenty, this cry for help is a welcome outlet. Hence, on any given day, it is normal to see two or more parent volunteers in the classroom. While this may be considered a blessing by many parents, the downside is the immense pressure on families where both parents work – it is hard to put in volunteer hours but if you don’t, you run the risk of your kids feeling left out. Besides, there is no reason that a teacher responsible for a small group (20 students) needs hand holding in doing her job in the classroom – makes one wonder why employees in other fields are not incapable of doing their own work??? Parent volunteering thankfully is a foreign concept at GPS. We checked with the kids specifically on this aspect and they expressed relief that parents are absent in their school space.
3. As with most public schools in the Bay Area, a single teacher is responsible for a class at Bay Farm Elementary. The students are subjected to the same teacher for all subjects throughout the school year. The downside with this approach is that many teachers give priority to their area of expertise when teaching. For example, if a teacher is inclined towards Art, invariably that is what the kids in her classroom will learn most. GPS, on the other hand has a teacher for each subject. When questioned on this approach, the kids expressed their appreciation in being able to interact with different teachers throughout the school year.
4. The facility and the environment at GPS was a big upgrade to the kids. They loved the fact that swimming is part of the curriculum, being foodies they relish the decent breakfast that is provided to all, and the two-hour optional extra-curricular session were students can choose to train in two activities throughout the school year.
5. At GPS, covering the curriculum and following standardized testing procedures is mandatory. While this is theoretically true at Bay Farm Elementary too, in reality only a small percentage of the material is covered in class, claiming students are having a tough time with the rest. The net effect is that a small section of the students who can learn on their own or have access to other resources surge ahead while the rest are fed a hodge-podge of selected topics. The issue is further worsened as students are not required to own textbooks – the pricing for new textbooks are upwards of $70 and as such only a handful of students ultimately end up purchasing them.
6. Since GPS is a private enterprise, teachers have to perform. This is a big change compared to teachers in Bay Farm, a public school – in effect, there is zero accountability, although efforts are being made to change this. Most teachers are geared towards teaching perfect kids. The notion of being a perfect teacher to kids of different ability is an unfamiliar concept to most of the staff and parent volunteers.

Related Posts:

1. Global Public School (GPS) Review - Ongoing Update.
2. Global Public School (GPS) vs Bay Farm Elementary - Comparative Review (this post).

Last Updated: 04/2017.