ALL ARE WELCOME
REWACHAND BHOJWANI ACADEMY, PUNE
Annual fee: Rs 22,000

Shveta Vashist Gaur
IN the real world people with disabilities live alongside others so why should it be any different in a school? That’s what Pune’s Rewachand Bhojwani Academy believes in. Set up 18 years ago, of its 426 students, about 13 per cent are dyslexic, a number of them have a hearing impairment and many have other medical and emotional problems.
The school’s principal Madhavi Kapoor says she started the school to realise her dream of inclusive education. So at Bhojwani, children don’t just fight their own problems but also learn to accept those of others.
This is also a school without sir and ma’am. The principal is called Adi, the teachers masi, didi or whatever the children want to call them. And English is not the only language of conversation. Unlike schools where you hear only English on campus, here you can jabber away in English, Hindi and Marathi. Students learn early about elections. They hold elections, complete with canvassing, to elect a students’ council that takes decisions on everything. ‘‘We recently had this debate on whether we should tuck in our shirts or not. We held meetings on the subject for a month and finally decided that it was fine either way,’’ says Naveen Devnani, the head boy of the school.
The wings of freedom are not restricted to ideas alone—classrooms are not numbered but named after birds: flamingo, cockatoos, the Indian robin.
Madhavi Kapoor says the school works on Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences and education, paying attention on skills other than academics. The school has three special educators who take charge of the children with learning disabilities. This includes taking special classes of these children separately and exempting them from examinations. Teachers work closely with counsellors and parents. In fact, any parent is free to walk in on Thursday and talk out issues.
The two counsellors on campus spend hours with children and their parents. Say one of them Dilmeher Bharucha Bhola, ‘‘A girl who was a dropout from another school joined us some years ago. When she joined us, she was not just painfully shy but peculiarly quiet. After observing her for some time we decided to exempt her from any academic pressures including tests. We found out that she was good at dance, so we helped her put up a solo performance on stage. That one performance changed her life. Today seeing her so confident gives us great pleasure.’’
The biggest compliment to the school comes from Akanksha Agrawal, a parent, who says the school has put a smile back on her 11-year-old daughter’s face.

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