School Education at St. Catherine of Siena, Bandra

Children who live on the street and in slums are deprived of safe access to the school system, which leaves them vulnerable to substandard living. They fall victim to the survival systems of the street, and the fruits of education stay beyond their reach. When survival is the key word, activities related to it become more important than going to school.

St. Catherine of Siena, a school for destitute children founded by Rev. Fr. Anthony Elenjimittam in 1957, has become a change maker for many such children. The children admitted to our school are the ones rejected by many other schools. Parental illiteracy, financial backwardness, malnutrition and sickness dominate their daily lives, so the school provides not only free books, bags and uniforms, but also a wholesome lunch, medical checkups and sports wear, to give them a happy childhood.

The school creates an atmosphere where students can learn or re-learn concepts, and in the long run they are moulded into better students who can be part of the nation-building process for a glorious tomorrow.

Though the Right to Education is being implemented under the Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE), many children still remain outside the school system. The RTE Act translates the constitutional provision under Article 21-A into an empowering right for the children of India. The Act provides for the right of children to free and compulsory admission, attendance and completion of elementary education, and it seeks to ensure good quality elementary education conforming to the standards that are a dream for the less privileged.

Pre-primary and primary school

The pre-primary and primary section provides free education for underprivileged students who are rejected by the mainstream school system because of an orphaned or semi-orphaned background, a destitute or slum background, inter-state or intra-state migration, over-age problems, and similar circumstances. Admission is open to all, irrespective of caste or creed, and we aim to integrate the child’s learning with mainstream school levels so that the child can secure admission to grade 5 in a mainstream school.

The school is free for children and no tuition fee is charged. Uniforms, shoes, school bags and books are provided free of charge. Donors are encouraged to sponsor the education of children to cover school expenses. The children get a refreshing learning experience in our classrooms, with more learning opportunities and educational activities. The SSC curriculum as well as the LEAD curriculum are followed to accelerate learning in the classroom.

Teachers and support

Our teachers are trained as per government criteria and are given in-house training to meet the various challenges a teacher can face in the classroom, since students come from distressed and dysfunctional family backgrounds. The training covers academic and syllabus-oriented challenges, behaviour, emotional wellness and child safety. Teachers communicate with parents often and keep them updated through voice messages, because many parents are not able to read or write. This makes communication between parent and school much easier.

Students’ learning progress is assessed regularly, which helps the school identify slow learners. Slow learners are given additional support in the classroom so they can reach the expected academic level. Students who are disturbed and distressed receive friendly life-skill learning and counselling support to build emotional trust and socio-psychological development. Counselling and life-skill sessions are provided alongside artistic classes such as dance, visual art, music, judo and meditation with yoga. Sports also play an important role in the physical and mental development of children.

The biggest challenge is to improve the quality of education for children who come from backgrounds of multiple challenges and conflicts related to personal, financial, health, family and societal issues. The school takes great care to make education child-friendly so that children in difficulty experience education as a happy experience, like any other student. The school also focuses on providing adequate training for teachers so that the child’s learning and personal growth get the maximum benefit. This helps students bring visible and serious behavioural changes in academic learning, so that they are prepared to enter mainstream school education rather than drop out. Parent meetings are held every month so that parents understand their responsibility to provide good quality education for their children. Basic parenting skills are offered to parents who are almost illiterate, covering academic performance, behavioural impacts, good study skills, higher education, career opportunities and personality development. Since the school does not receive any government funding, all activities are conducted purely on the donations we receive from individuals, organisations and corporates. Your support can help us provide education to more students.

Arts, sports and clubs

Annual Sports, the Annual Happy Feet programme, and celebrations of national and cultural festivals give students space to showcase their talents. They help students develop hobbies and passions alongside academic subjects, and make them confident and happy.

One of the key objectives of incorporating performing arts into the school curriculum is to help students ventilate the baggage of abuse they carry. Aggression, rejection, the feeling of abandonment, loss of parents and family violence push very young minds into complex behaviour patterns that need immediate therapeutic attention. The negative emotions and energies are channelled into positive and creative energies where it matters most. Yoga helps students focus and develop their mental and spiritual lives in harmony. Judo classes play an important role in steering students towards a popular Olympic sport and making them vigilant and alert. Music classes give them space to explore their voices. The most noted impact of these activities is that, as children grow into young teens, artistic and martial-arts learning helps them stay safely away from abuse and addiction and helps them say ‘no’ to these vulnerabilities.

Clubs such as the reading club, planet club and peace club also contribute to child development and influence thinking patterns and habits. The St. Catherine of Siena school model provides children immense opportunity for overall development, making it a happy process and helping them to love the school atmosphere rather than the normal school atmosphere that most children hate. Overall, it brings the functional values of unconditional love, forgiveness, sacrifice, kindness, helping others, appreciation, thankfulness, care and protection into practice at a young age, and lets children experience their impact in day-to-day life.

Health and hygiene

The health and hygiene programme supports children through a comprehensive annual medical checkup by an expert team of doctors, who provide additional diagnosis, follow-up and medication. The team includes a child specialist and eye, ENT, skin and dental specialists. Through the camp we have been able to identify, diagnose and treat many students with serious illnesses, including heart problems, kidney problems, cancer, HIV and tuberculosis. It is a great blessing for families who are unaware of hidden illnesses as they struggle for their daily bread and have no time for a routine checkup, even in the free services provided by municipal hospitals.

Children are provided regular hygiene kits to help them come to school with better daily hygiene. They are also provided breakfast, snacks and a daily lunch on the school premises so that no one sits in the classroom hungry. The medical section keeps an eye on children who are underweight; they receive a monthly nutrition kit of peanuts, jaggery, pulses and cooking oil, rich in protein, iron and fats. Mothers are encouraged to make ladoos or chikkis (energy bars) at home so that children can eat these simple, nutritious snacks when they are hungry. This has been a huge success as an intervention to stop weight loss in underprivileged school-going children. We often notice that underweight children show various health and behavioural issues in the classroom, including sleepiness, a low attention span, hyperactivity and weaker memory for daily classroom learning. Our consistent efforts have contributed to better learning behaviour among children, who also receive additional teacher assistance in the classroom under the supervision of the class teacher, supervisor, academic coordinators, counsellor, social workers and headmistress.

After grade 4

After completing grade 4, students are able to secure admission in neighbourhood schools that provide quality education. Children who are vulnerable to dropping out of the school system because of their family circumstances, such as being orphans, semi-orphans, abandoned children, children of critically ill parents, handicapped parents, mentally unwell parents, divorced mothers, or missing parents, receive long-term academic and financial support to continue and complete their studies. The support is provided until the age of 22, to help students and their families become employable and to break the life cycle of abuse, suffering and poverty.

St. Catherine of Siena Open School

The Open School system run by St. Catherine of Siena is an alternate education initiative that supports over-age children who do not get admission to mainstream school because of their age. Many students who join St. Catherine are over-age and are therefore rejected by mainstream schools. Open School is an alternate school system run by the National Institute of Open Schooling in Delhi. Students learn through various levels: A (grade 3), B (grade 5), C (grade 8), and grades 10 and 12. This structure is an advantage for children who are far behind in their studies for their age, and who are therefore vulnerable to dropping out. Many students who could not continue school because of non-payment of fees during the COVID-19 pandemic, and who dropped out of the school system, also study at the Open School run by St. Catherine so that their academic milestones are completed and their employability improves.

Students join university after completing grade 12, with financial and mentoring support through the Age 22 project, and are successfully employed. We welcome students who cannot get admission because of various difficulties and family circumstances, such as being an orphan, a semi-orphan, a street child, or a child in a nearly destitute situation.

Use of alternate curriculum

Additional and alternate curricula are encouraged in the school to give children more exposure to competitive learning spaces where technology is an important factor. Alternate curriculum helps children adapt to new and updated learning skills in the classroom. It also provides a smart classroom with audio-visuals to help students understand key concepts. Continuing an alternate and innovative curriculum such as LEAD boosts the learning experience and makes it easier. We look forward to funding so that the curriculum can play an important role in learning and remain an added advantage for students.

This intervention helps students learn ‘English as English’ and avoids mixing language variations in spoken and reading activities. Strong phonics-based activities help students read words, sentences and so on. Reading phonetically helps students spell words easily as classroom requirements change. Teachers are trained to use the curriculum efficiently, and frequent workshops are conducted. It reinforces the school’s belief in conceptual learning and the promotion of man-making education.

This competitive edge helps students get admission to more prestigious local schools after grade 4 at St. Catherine of Siena School. It is therefore pertinent to add such innovative ideas to support children and their learning, so that they can shed their underprivileged background and move more confidently towards higher education. It also takes pressure off illiterate parents to approach higher schools for admission when the child performs academically well. Extracurricular activities are also a big advantage, since the curriculum design encourages children to express themselves creatively and artistically. Students are encouraged to lead activities and so become the centre of learning.

The Science Lab

The changing way a child learns is a challenge St. Catherine of Siena School faces every academic year. To strengthen education and its quality, the school has upgraded with a science lab where the power of scientific learning boosts the quality of learning. The science lab has three dedicated rooms serving as a computer lab, a conceptual learning centre and an experiment lab.

The science lab has two aims: to introduce scientific concepts from a younger age (students in the Age 22 project can also use the lab for their learning) and to provide hands-on experience of day-to-day scientific activities. It is well equipped with computers, puzzles, models, DIY models and scientific models, and focuses on peaceful innovation around plant life, animal life, water species and their life, aerospace, renewable and recycling concepts, and robotics.

We look forward to volunteers, professionals and mentors supporting our activities so that students receive up-to-date information. We also need educational materials in kind; write to catherine_siena@yahoo.co.in to know more about our needs. For monetary contributions and student sponsorship, you are welcome to become an Angel Donor and sponsor the cost of education.