During classes III-V, I had to get to school by walking over 20-30 minutes. I also had to ensure that my smaller sister and brother did not get left behind. From classes VI-IX, the commute arrangement was worse – without a school bus, my group of 6-7 children had to first take a cycle rickshaw to a bus stand (took about 30 min), get into a local roadways bus to the airforce campus (1 hour), then there would be a walk of 20 min. In winter or summer, this arrangement had to be followed and I didn’t have the luxury of leaving my books in school or getting clean drinking water in school so had to lug a lot of load during this daily journey. Despite all the effort, I would be one out of 50+ students in the class and would hardly get heard or noticed. My CBSE board meant sitting for quarterly unit tests/half-yearly and annual exams from class I ! Shriram noticed that annual exams put too much pressure on students before they were ready to handle it, so brought in the policy of regular tests instead – CBSE schools are more bureaucratic in their processes so don’t manage to make such child-friendly changes in a hurry.

Tell me what you think of my schooling