Bangalore City based IT couple were looking for a good school for their only son. To look for a good school was something they never needed a reminder about.
Anyone who had met their son even before he turned two, would ask which play school he was going, what extracurricular activities he was doing, can he paint, sing, dance, swim, do karate, yoga in addition to walk, talk, jump, eat and drink.
They had heard how tech savvy people of Bangalore plan for their kids’ education well before they are born.
They go through sites like magic bricks to book an apartment near the school they desire their kid to get admission into, carrying 6 kilogram of books and note books daily.
By taking help from a financial planner they planned everything. They knew the exact date the kid will enter school, college and become Infosys engineer through campus placement.
However, when the D-day arrived, couple stood in a queue overnight to collect the form for a prestigious school called MPS (Marathahalli public school). After sixteen hours of fight with chilled air, sun and other parents in queue, they got the form.
They filled everything starting from Caste, Religion, Gothra, Nakshatra, money they get as salary, bonus, blood group, ancestral property, foreign exposure and referral for the kid.
The school even went to the extent of doing background checks to find whether kid is calm, quiet, dignified like Sri Sri Ravishankar and does he have the capability to become another Einstein.
As the couple had started teaching the kid alphabets before he left mother’s womb, he answered everything and got selected. When the turn to pay the school fees came, the couple got a major shock. School was charging only 90K for first year of pre kindergarten education!
They were embarrassed as to what their neighbours will think. They feared their relatives will make their life miserable when they find out that they are sending their only son to such a cheap school.
They pleaded before the school to increase the fees at least for them. They were ready to buy dozen of school uniforms, half a dozen school shoes, everything possible to hike the total money they can pay for the school. They knew it very well when a school does not charge minimum 1.5 lakh rupees as school fees per year, it cannot be considered as a “reputed” school.
They started questioning school management why they do not give iPads to Pre KG students, with this kind of fee structure how the school will be able to compete with other big reputed schools.
Techie couple looked dejected when they saw nothing is working. They did not have any option other than rejecting the offer claiming that the school was substandard.
Like in magic bricks, during home search, they shortlisted apartments which start from 2 crores, now they are searching for the schools which charge minimum 2 lakh per year through the help of a website called money gurukul.
