School vows to rectify faults to avoid closure

Sharjah: The Sharjah Indian School might get a chance to get their act together and avoid closure, Gulf News has learnt.

The education ministry recently instructed the Sharjah Educational Zone and related departments to halt all dealings with the school after it ignored several warnings against offering evening classes.

However, K.R. Radhakrishnan Nair, the school's principal, claimed that the school had agreed to rectify the situation by completing the construction of its new block within eight months and doing away with extra shifts.

"We have not received any instruction from the ministry [of Education] to close down the school. We have received two warnings and when we wrote to them giving an explanation on why we went ahead with the evening shift, the authorities [wrote] back saying that they are suspending all transactions with the school," Nair told Gulf News.

"The construction of our new block was supposed to start in March. Due to the delay, we were forced to club two shifts for boys into one and run it from 11.15am to 4.15pm," he added.

The community school is one of the oldest Indian schools in the country and has over 8,500 students enrolled from kindergarten to Grade 12. Established in 1979, the school currently has around 520 teaching and non-teaching staff.

A private education official from the Ministry of Education said the ministry could give the school a chance to remedy the situation and comply with ministry regulations.

Earlier, the ministry informed the school that no transactions would be carried with the school after June 14.

Two warnings were issued on May 14 and May 24. However, the school failed to inform parents about the situation.

The trade license of the school will expire after September but the school insists that its operations will not be affected.
Your comments

The MOE should definitely give another chance to SIS to rectify their fault and continue to serve the thousands of Indian students studying there and yet to study there. I being an ex-student of SIS, have seen the school grow and flourish and provide education to numerous number of children from all class.
Hans