*Took over Indian Central School this year June

It has hardly been four months since the new owner has taken over the reputed Indian Central School in Kuwait, but the changes are visible within this short period of time. "We are trying hard to make the school a better place for the students and parents alike", said Mr K. O. Mathew, the Director of Indian Central School, Abbasiya.

K. O. Mathew, who is also the director of Al Essa group, which span its activities from medical equipment’s to engineering to travel and healthcare, took over the Indian Central School in June 2019. In a brief chat with IndiansinKuwait.com Mr K  O Mathew speaks about his vision to take the school to the next level.

The Dar Al-Salam Educational group completed the takeover of Indian Central School last June. The group is also opening a new school in Jleeb "Aspire Indian International School" in the close proximity of Indian Central School. The new school will be led by the prominent educationalist in Kuwait Mrs Anju Dheman, Mr Mathew said. The school will be functional from the coming academic year in April 2020.

K. O. Mathew is also the Director of Canadian Bilingual School, Khaitan and Creative Children International School (CCIS), Hawalli. CCIS is specially  for the slow learners and students with learning difficulties. With his vast experience of running and managing these schools in a professional way, the group had laid out its mission to transform the Indian Central School to a next level. "Education is the same whether it is for a Kuwaiti or an Indian or any other nationality. We don’t believe in segregating the education, But our experience in this field will help us to do lot of improvement in the Indian educational system in Kuwait", Mr Mathew said.

We are cultivating lot of ideas such as student exchange program where our Indian students can experience the Canadian system of education and vice versa. This will enrich our students. Kids can be exposed, they can interact with other community and start building friends early. After all, we all are same. “Think about our students from here helping the special need children at their facilities in Hawally, this will definitely build self confidence among the students...” Mr Mathew said. We can bring the best practices of both world. What works in the west can be brought here. What is best in the Indian education can be implemented in Canadian school system, he said.

“Indians by and large are very intuitive in nature where as in Canadian system everything is systematic. Even for the house keeping in school, we have policy and procedures in place. Implementing these policy and procedure in our Indian school will make a big difference to our people. These policy and procedures will help us to study and analyse the job of each individual and will help to improve things better”.

We are formulating many things for the students. Many student clubs are in pipeline which will definitely help the student’s overall growth. We are currently planning a robotic club in our school, Mr Mathew said.  

“For us listening to parents is very important. When a parent criticizes the school for something, you are getting a free consultation”, we have a lot to learn and improve from each criticism, he said while speaking about the issues related to parents community. This year before we took over this school, there was some resistance from the parents about the school book prices. This was before we took over this school. After we took over, the first thing I did was to analyse root cause of these resistance. This will help us to improve better. “Today I can see a long queue here when parents come to pay their fees, this makes me to think why don’t we make an online payment facility? We already started working on this,” Mr Mathew said.

A school should be competent with each other. We should be mindful of the cost to the parents. Same time, we are following all the ministry regulations and is very much compliance to that.

Our focus is also into making the students engage with the school, Mr Mathew said. We have a very good facility for sports. We have a strong team at our school. Under the leadership of Principal Shantha Maria, our teachers identifies which student always stays away from sports and physical activities, which student is never participating in community service, etc.  We will inspire them to take part in certain activities, which will identify and overcome the strengths and weakness in students.

We have a good student base and many ideas can be implemented, Mathew said.  Debating skills, communication skills, presentation skill, train the kids on various digital platform etc, we are planning as part of improving our academic performance. We also encourage our teachers to take extra classes here at the school itself. We have the facility and I believe all these clubs like science club, economic club etc will help the students to learn more in the after school hours and to make a difference, Mathew said

Currently the group owns Indian central school and Pakistan International School, both are nearby. With the opening of Aspire Indian International School and Aspire Bilingual school – both on the nearby location - Mr Mathew hopes that the group can do a lot in-between these four schools. “With the diverse nature of both students and teachers, we could think about some inter-school clubs to benefit the students of all our four schools in this area” Mr Mathew said.