Date: Sun Feb 13, 2005 10:58 am

Subject: Premium School Creation White Paper and Estimate

I think they are detailed enough for anyone to seriously assess implementation feasibility of it. The main catch remains the finding of the promoters. The objective of this detailed white paper on which I have spent a lot of time is to have a ready material to sell the idea to the influential leaders in the state who have the financial and political ability.

Such social philanthropic projects are mooted constantly but never progresses beyond that. Hope this detailed info will make it possible for us to take that one step further into implementation. It will take years but as I mentioned with the "XXX Fund raising FAQ" having the details written down allows us to take the next baby step towards the long arduous path to the ultimate realization of the goal. The key is to aim big as the economies of scale apply only to a large student population school.

It is easy to nit pick faults and though that is crucial, the problem is we have too many of that NEGATIVE contributors. What we need is more people stepping up and taking the more difficult task of POSITIVE idea contribution and that will happen as our intellectual pool improves.

Conservative Estimate for a new school :

Land required (lourak)---------1
Cost/lourak------------2,000,000
Land Cost-------------------------2,000,000
Building Cost--------------------15,000,000
Project Overrun-------------------5,000,000
Facilitating Bribes-----------------500,000
Legal Consultation Cost-------------200,000
Misc Setup Cost-------------------1,000,000
Loan Amount----------------------23,700,000

Interest on Loan------10%---------2,370,000
Annual profit---------------------5,000,000
Years to Pay off Loan---------------------5

Project plan completion months------------3
Land Acquisition Months-------------------3
Construction Months-----------------------6
Set up problems resolution Months---------3
Total Setup Months-----------------------15
Academic curriculum development months----6
CBSE/ICSE board affiliation years---------3

Premium School Creation White Paper and Feasibility Estimate :

Objective and Goals:

1. The objective is NOT PROFIT MOTIVE but to produce the PREMIER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTE not in the NE alone, but the entire COUNTRY. So most decisions should give priority to attracting the best students from across the state and so there must be no compromise by looking for distant areas where land prices are cheaper.

2. The objective is not to look for new students where no other previous schools exist, but to attract the best students from existing schools, so location selection must be based on convenience for all bright students to attend the school, especially from poor families.

3. Drain of their top students from other schools may be an initial cause of concern, but students automatically step up in effort and self confidence and hence merit once they are thrusted with the psychological knowledge that they are toppers. Proof of this is the sudden academic improvement of students topping in the non science classes after the former top students leave to take the science stream.

4. So more schools means more opportunities to be psychologically exposed as the toppers and hence more bright, empowered and self confident students in the state. Academic merit is not tied to a genetically inherited IQ, but acquired through a snow balling, time taking process of diligent knowledge acquisition and perseverance, which increases self belief and self confidence to be even smarter. That self confidence leading to more intelligence cycle feeds itself in a continuous chain.

5. Promote indigenous cultures to instil pride in our roots. So school houses named with state ethnic tribes or historical heroes belonging to them.

6. Resist pressures from elders in community to promote any particular religion or parochial or divisive agenda.

7. Create the competition and set a benchmark in education to put pressure on other existing schools to lower fees and lift up their game.

8. Policies to promote local products wherever quality of education and intellectual development not compromised. e.g. if any part of school uniform, school bags, etc. can be manufactured cheaper within Manipur than other outside produced alternatives, the local product will be mandated.

9. Heavy promotion of school shops so that text books, uniforms, etc can be negotiated wholesale and sold at a discount by the school. Open competition from private vendors actively encouraged to prevent school authorities getting corrupt and not negotiating the lowest price for the students.

10. Instead of multi religion policy, agnostic, spiritual moral science classes

11. Active knowledge linkup and exchange programs with international schools.

12. Signing off a charter for the school objectives and goals by promoters and board of directors very essential to prevent future conflict.

13. Board of director selection crucial to success to not only obtain influence capability but harness their intellect without introducing conflict.

14. Continuous regular reality check of changing social mores and fabric specially of the younger generation from exposure to rapidly transforming popular culture beamed on TV from other cultures.

15. Involvement of school management bodies, parents and psychologist to chart school policies and rules realignment every few years.

16. Host family student cultural exchange programs with international schools and later with boarding facilities the program can grow larger.

17. Protection of children from paedophiles by constantly educating and reminding teachers of severe consequences.

Financing Option:

18. A first rough initial estimate yields a start up capital of Rs 2.5 crores with a 1 lourak land area. 19. Though a bank loan is still very feasible financing, a lower interest govt loan or more preferably a grant from either the state or the NE development agencies should be negotiated and procured.

20. State govt financing maybe difficult since it already has Sainik and MPS schools. But extra competition is always good for the students and hence the state.

21. The govt grant negotiation implies the essential need for influential members of the state to be active promoters and board members of the school.

22. A govt grant will require less collateral guarantees, less pressure for generating profit for loan repayment and less financial headache to allow full concentration on the other complex multitudes of core start up issues.

23. The ownership by these financiers however has the risk of dramatically interfering and altering future directions and objectives. So we should negotiate for this govt grant to be entrusted with independent executive powers to the school board of directors by accepting the good faith and intellect of these promoters pursuing a not for profit but vital social service objective.

24. Legal - guarantee from govt of any land allocated for the school. If for any reason revoked in future, legal clause signed off to ensure it gives enough time for complete relocation at alternative site and compensation provided.

25. Legal negotiation to minimize future risk exposures essential not to prevent loss of profit, or loan repayment risk exposures for promoters, but PURELY for the STUDENTS. School promoters should have FULL ACCOUNTABILITY for undertaking the future lives of 3000 students.

26. Sainik and MPS are already govt funded schools. So why should the govt fund another school ? The rush for admissions to a good school indicate a severe shortage of good schools. And the objective is to create the best school in Manipur and introduction of competition, specially when it is well intentioned and qualified, is always good for the consumer by neutralising any unfairness fixed by existing players.

27. On Feb 10, 2005, the CM assured a grant of 5 crores to Sainik school.
http://www.e-pao.net/epArcDisplay.asp?src=110205

28. More investigation of Sainik school and MPS fees are essential to pitch our case for a grant. "Guesstimates"- Sainik fees 12000 annual, full boarding, class strength 75, classes 6-12. MPS monthly fee 200, 2000 students in school.

Start Up and Construction:

29. Since the large profit margins are only achievable with the economies of scale of large student sizes, renting the school premises and starting small is ruled out. New building construction also allows for future expansion growth and isolation of future possibilities of disruption to students from conflict with landlord.

30. Since Land:Building cost ratio is 1:10, more land should be purchased to reduce building cost. More sprawled out single storey building with reduced costly support structures with GI sheet roofing to reduce construction cost, instead of multiple storeys.

31. Low cost building consultants should be engaged. Provisions for future beam additions in case of future multi storeyed expansion plans. Building needs to be concrete and brick instead of timber, for sound proofing. Moreover timber is expensive now and will transmit sound across classrooms.

32. Investigate cross classroom sound transmission and summer heat implication of GI sheet roofing.

33. Initial "Functional over Form" philosophy for building cost reduction, even though presentation is important for marketing school credibility. Better "Form" upgrades can be gradually improved over later years.

34. Basic facilities at start to lower start up capital and time, with design provisions for later high tech facility improvements.

35. Safety to students paramount in cost saving decisions.

36. First school location must be chosen in central area and later multiple branches of the school can be opened in other areas.

37. Discount from building material/land suppliers can be negotiated in exchange for future guarantees of admission for their children. These could allow substantial reduction of construction costs.

Contingency Preparedness:

38. Realistic contingencies for worst case scenario like worsening security concerns, increased extortion demands, less student admission, fiercer competition from other schools, etc, must be in place to guarantee financial viability for future years.

39. Specially in our lawless society, false complacency about immunity from trouble because of our charitable pursuits should never be adopted. When taking any principled stand, enemies are easily created and they are dangerous in our precariously volatile environment.

40. So strong ties and guarantees must be flexibly cultivated and sought at all times with influential and dangerous parties with vested interests, as the responsibility to prevent any disturbance to the academic careers of 3000 students must come before any stubborn rigidity of personal ego and principles.

41. Prepare list of past, current and probable future gripes of student unions and other vested interests with educational institutions and ensure that solutions or work around conflict management strategies are in place and if possible, negotiated with these bodies.

42. Student Unions and naharol groups regularly allowed to attend special school management and parents meeting to be kept aware of school policies and also to get their feedback early before issues escalate to a level that will be unresolvable and disrupt the students.

43. Lessons learnt list from this project to expedite quicker and cost lowering for future schools construction and also made available to the public domain for others willing to start similar schools. No knowledge must be kept hidden. All knowledge must be disseminated so that the school is also constantly pressured to improve and evolve and adapt to growing challenges from competitors.

Academic Policies:

44. Start from class 1 to 8 in the first year so that matriculation preparation is not affected. Then open class 9 in 2nd year, class 10 in 3rd, class 11 in 4th and class 12 in 5th years progressively increasing the years.

45. If CBSE/ICSE board affiliation will take more than 2 years, then it will have to start with class 6 as the highest and then gradually expand like above.

46. Teachers must be trained in science of teaching as though focus on super training the best students, the challenge of making studying interesting and imbibing of knowledge easier for current uninterested students, must be pursued strongly.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Manipur-Diaspora/message/955
Subject: virtual teachers for free online education

47. Lower academic entry requirement provisions for students from rich families who will not enjoy fee subsidies and so pay a higher fee like the capitation structure in some private schools. These richer students will not only fund future facility expansions but provide the school with a close rapport with their parents, who are influential leaders.

48. Acceptance of the fact that NOT pure academic performance is ALWAYS the key to future success in life specially when propped up by the wealth and networking of influential families. Very important to have such future successful leaders from these influential families to be a product of the school so they can later contribute financially, influentially and intellectually as alumni members. However strict adherence to expulsion for any non tolerable behaviour in school like drug usage.

49. Responsibility and accountability towards these top students that have left their reputed previous schools to join our school. This responsibility for quality, and financial and academic stability guarantee must be the foremost consideration in any decision. The school must not commence till a 100 % guarantee for the next 5 years.

50. Teaching for meitei mayek demands will be accepted immediately if books available so pressure from meitei mayek activists are diverted to text book creators and not the school. No meitei mayek imposition on non meitei students. English will be the primary language. Besides that freedom in selecting alternative languages.

51. International languages learning opportunity provided, wherever cost effective to be offered.

52. Strong fearless debating and questioning of vexing current social issues during extra curricular activities to instill political correctness and tolerance and prevent social conflict from future exploitations of ignorance.

53. Given the sad employment opportunities in Manipur, and these being the cream of our population, we should be preparing these students for further education and careers not only in the indian cities but overseas. Intellectual development and advancement of their careers of these bright driven individuals is only limited by the opportunity constraints of where they choose to build their careers.

54. Because of the RAP we have grown up very isolated and so there is a big fear from ourselves and an even bigger pressure from parents to resist their children working outside Manipur. With the awareness of more of our successful overseas diaspora populations, hopefully parents will be more encouraging about their children's decision to reside overseas in the future.

I have a poignant personal story of my grandmother as a young widow, forced into finally migrating to imphal from the village eventually in class 8, after years of previously refusing my father's stubborn demand of a better education in imphal, when their mayang teacher from west Bengal, decided to leave their only village school, where he had topped all along. When my father, actually my grandmother's step son, as he had lost both his parents very young, decided to go for college outside Manipur, my grandmother had refused rightly claiming how by herself, as an illiterate woman, she would be unable to read any mail and neither had any income to pay any fees.

But later when my father's friends who studied outside the state, returned after the first semester, and my father persisted again, she finally relented to let him go. He had to drop a year in the middle unable to pay the fees, which he finally did by earning private tuitions in Manipur for a year and selling of some land, and there are many other sad stories along the way too but the message I want to drive home is that, with the hardship and sacrifice my grandmother made for those few years, my parents got to enjoy a much better life later on.

Of course studying a few years away from home as opposed to deciding to live outside the state, specially overseas is a much bigger decision. However, we need our top students to get the best education overseas and a career for about 10 years and then all the knowledge and funding can later be repatriated back to his roots.

Boarding :

55. Calculate cost and no. of students of both within state like sainik and those outside for better and accurate strategy and costing.

56. Boarding School option in first year not advisable to reduce complexity of additional cost and logistical issues at start up.

57. Instead of gradually incorporating boarding school facilities in the first school, better option may be to build a separate 100 % boarding school in the next expansion phase after 5 years.

58. Boarding school entails higher cost, more logistics and more responsibilities.

59. There is almost a bigger development opportunity for students after school hours than within the class hours, so boarding allows much better and complete education than a day school and should be the eventual goal.

60. However it allows moulding of the student during the non classroom hours by providing the non academic development facilities that most parents at home will be unable to provide.

61. A good option may be for boarding school students to go home for weekends every week or fortnight or monthly. This allows parents to be able to play a role in the additional development of their child during their home stay. Also poorer families that need the extra hand of their children in running their families too can get that assistance during their weekend home leave.

62. A combination of a day school and boarding school is chaotic on school extra curricular activity scheduling that might want participation of day scholars. Boarding residents may be too limited in number or for other reasons make it impractical to organise activities only for boarding residents.

Elite student Section:

63. Creation of an elite section purely on academic merit for advanced schooling for very top students. Psychological implications of that on young kids of not making the grade for that top group or being dropped from it must first be investigated and analysed.

64. Special curriculum developed for street smartness and non academic all round personality development for these elite students.

65. Extra skills and extra academic subjects and higher level taught for hot schooling these elite students

66. Though strong promotion of non academic extra curricular activities, focus must not be lost on academic excellence as that remains the uncompromising pursuit of the school for success in the fierce job markets of the billion people in India and overseas.

67. If affordable, in house psychologist consultation service for students and parents if unable to be addressed with staff consultation.

68. Better student:staff ratio enforced and that can vary for different sections with students of different graded academic performance.

Parent Involvement:

69. Parent involvement programs are essential and frequency and agenda must evolve over time and with feedback.

70. These will not only cover feedback about their children's performance, but let parents play a very proactive part in influencing the direction of the school

71. This will highlight issues faced at home by parents that affects the student but are not otherwise known to the teacher or the school

72. All teachers and not just the school management staff must be involved in these sessions.

Teacher programs:

73. How can we be a better school than many the current schools who already have a past successful record of several years ? Quality of teachers are the key, to ensure successful execution of the school objectives.

74. Academic records does not equate to teaching skills as long as the basic academic qualifications are met.

75. Having a genuine interest to teach and the skill to ensure absorption of the disseminated knowledge by making it easier and interesting is very critical in teacher selection.

76. The huge pool of unemployed and qualified graduates can be tapped as the best source of teachers. These qualified teachers who can get better paying jobs elsewhere can take on "transitory" teaching jobs while they wait for the better jobs.

77. Active promotion for teachers to leave for better paid jobs to ensure hiring the best crop of unemployed graduates. They should be free to leave their teaching jobs after a minimum 1 full year atleast commitment.

78. They must sign a bond to give sufficient notice to enable a replacement recruitment by holding back a substantial bonus.

79. There should be another bonus scheme as a retentive policy that builds up substantially the more years a teacher stays in the job.

80. Continuous teacher improvement training program to prevent apathy or deterioration of standards.

81. Higher Pay for teachers not just for retention but for their due worth to attract best quality.

82. This will apply pressure on other schools to pay equally to almost govt salary rates, specially given the large profits.

83. Teachers' performances will be annually assessed by both students and teachers and fired if performing below the standard expected.

84. Teachers will not be allowed to take paid private tuitions on any school student as the higher salary should partially compensate the loss of tuition income. This may be difficult to enforce. This ensures that the teacher's employment future is assessed purely on his performance during the class hours to all the students in the class

85. However the teacher is free to conduct private tuition for other school students as he will definitely earn a premium reputation from the association with our reputed school and should be allowed to capitalise on it as additional income.

86. Yearly conducted teacher certification exam program that can be established as the de facto regulation for verifying teacher competency before getting jobs anywhere even in govt schools throughout the state.

87. Track and publish student performance records for each teacher to apply additional accountability on teachers. These will allow better performing teachers to negotiate a higher salary and also in his own private tuition income.

88. Extensive English speaking classes for all teachers since their English is what is subliminally transmitted to the students. English speaking ability is one of the strongest factors for better employment. Better communication skills not only translates to self confidence but projects a much larger magnitude of that to others interviewing and assessing him.

89. New technology of computer and internet skills update for teachers.

Extra Curricular Policies:

90. Actively fund and initiate promotion of inter school dramatics, elocution, debate, sports, Quiz competitions and participation in state. Later national and international competitions must be targeted.

Facilities:

91. Science laboratories are essential for learning and cannot be optionally.

92. Computer facilities are expensive and though basic exposure must be given to all students, its effectiveness is only on a higher exposure time.

93. This higher exposure time must be made available to top students only and those rich family students who will be mainly funding it in the first place.

94. Idea of most of these extra curricular activities may prove to be too expensive for a day school and more important waste of infrastructure. So may only apply for boarding school option.

95. Swimming pool may prove expensive and not feasible with our water shortage and source of diseases.

96. Decisions for playing field size and count and scheduling activities can be gradually built up as boarding school option materializes.

97. Music, And and Crafts, and other hobby facilities must be investigated if affordable without excessive fee hikes.

98. A woodwork and a concrete construction business each can be formed as a side business and it can be profitable or break-even for such a large construction project. The wood work business will find plenty of market later in Manipur as wooden furniture demand is huge.

99. This first big school project will allow these construction business spin offs to invest in high tech machinery to not only expedite the construction of the school, but revolutionise the building and furniture industries in Manipur.

100. Specially the woodwork business can introduce the latest electrical equipment being used overseas that are relatively cheap and reduces the construction time by huge margins. These also allows introduction of much more revolutionary design possibilities.

101. The machineries and equipment or business as a whole can be sold off after the school construction, if it proves too much of a diversion from running the school. However retaining the businesses will allow the set up of a polytechnic school allowing construction vocational skills to be taught first and then expanded if feasible.

102. To prevent the waste of these classroom infrastructure during the evening hours, evening and weekend classes for more adult skills like language and crafts etc must be promoted for more knowledge dissemination and skills training of the population.