PNG School

The PNG (Palyor Namgyol) school sits and one end of Gangtok. It's a missionary school, taught in English for girls from class 1 to 12. The most common background for both students and teachers is Indian Nepali (typically I think 2nd or 3rd generation in India)[1], there are also Hindus, and Christians of both Nepali and Indian background.

There are about 1000 girls, and 50-odd staff. Around 1/3rd of the teachers are men. The headmistress is Indian, but she is the first: the 5 previous heads were from the UK, mainly Scotland. The school is religiously tolerant, so far I think the morning teacher's meeting has had prayers in a different language each day.

The girls are very friendly and hugely polite - say good morning (afternoon) every time you pass them, stand up for visitors and if you are checking their work. The model for the school is to keep the girls in their main room and move the staff around wherever possible (apart from the computer lab).The girls are sufficiently keen that they will work well past the bell if you forget to leave.

However, I was pleasantly surprised that the discipline within a class is quite relaxed, the girls chatter (and with 40-odd, it quickly becomes very noisy), and tease each other, and "forget" their homework in exactly the same way as the UK. They have some respect for staff and it's fairly easy to restore discipline - if they don't respond at first, the class rep or any nearby year 12 students will also help out with shushing. Class 12 have quite a lot of freedom, and for example, often take advantage of the computers. With very few exceptions, they are strongly motivated and most of the chatter results from them discussing the answers with each other.

Classes are typically around 30 - 40, getting smaller for years 11 and 12. Computing is compulsory for classes 6 - 10, the earlier years mainly investigating spreadsheets, web pages and drawing tools. From year 9 or so they also learn to programme in C++. This puts them a couple of years ahead of the students in my UK schools!

So far I have based myself in the computing lab, which has been managed for many years by Hitaishi, a Hindu from the Darjeeling area. It includes 20 pcs, and two more powerful machines which are a network server, and an internal lan server. The pcs are not fast but are adequate, the biggest problems are with regular power cuts - typically around half an hour to an hour, we had 3 on Wednesday! and viruses (see below).

Hitaishi has already invited me to her local home in Gangtok, and would also have welcomed me to her home visit to Darjeeling, except that it's in a very restricted area (very near the Nepal border) and it's unlikely I would get a permit.

In the computer lab I occasionally assist with practical classes, but mostly the girls (even years 6 and 7) work fairly independently, so what is much more needed is lab technician work: installing software, and fixing the all-pervasive virus problems. All the teaching staff turn their hands to this. The last volunteer (Simon) installed all the computers with free anti-virus programme, AVG - but although free, it's not effective, and the majority of the machines have painful registry or reboot bugs which cause no end of pain.

I have also taken some maths revision classes for year 8 (compound interest, volume and surface area) and year 10 (trgonometric manipulations of sin/cos/tan etc). These 2 years have finished the syllabus and are into revision for their important ("board") exams. The maths teachers both seem keen to throw me in and free up their own time. This keeps me fairly well entertained, firstly in remembering these subjects (it's been about 20 years or so since I touched some of them...) and also because there is quite an emphasis on paper& pencil calcluations and in the first class or 2 I found, for example, my 28 times table definitely not up to on-the-spot calculations! After the first day, I took a textbook home and have been working out the answers ahead of time.

All the staff are very friendly and go out of their way to help me, most are from Sikkim or nearby West Bengal, with a few exceptions from the South (Chennai, Kerala). All speak English, for most it's in addition to Hindi and Nepali. I can manage a few words of Hindi but my Nepali is nonexistent, which is a challenge in the hotel where I think they only speak Nepali and a few words of English.

My biggest helpers so far, apart from Hetaishi, are DK (aka Smitka), a primary teacher who lives in the grounds and put me up for my first weekend, and Suresh, the school secretary, who spent Monday evening taking me all round Gangtok looking for accommodation. Neither will take any money, please let me have any suggestions for presents - which will have to be bought locally, as I have brought very little. You can buy alcohol in a couple of outlets, maybe I should try a bottle? (Nepali and Christian Indians can drink, and do occasionally).

[1] Sikkim only seceded to India in 1974

19 Oct 2007