Cotton Hill girls school enrols its first foreign student - a Russian

Thiruvananthapuram: A foreign national has joined the Government Higher Secondary School for Girls at Cotton Hill here in the Kerala's capital city. This is reportedly for the first time in the history of this institution, popular as the Cotton Hill School, a foreigner has been enrolled as student.

Olga, who is the daughter of Russian native Yulia, has been admitted to the Class 9 English Medium section ahead of the commencement of the new academic year after a month.

Yulia works as a translator at the Technopark in Thiruvananthapuram.

The mother-daughter duo has been based in Kerala for the past four years. Initially, Olga was studying online following the Russian school syllabus. Later, she had got admission to a private school in Varkala and learnt Malayalam there.

The family has decided to live in Kerala permanently; hence Yulia decided to admit her daughter to a State syllabus school. “It is not the infrastructure or the syllabus that mattered most, but the school atmosphere. When I visited the school, I realized that a State school like Cotton Hill where children from various strata of society studied together would be an ideal environment for my daughter’s all-round development,” Yulia said.

Foreigners like Olga can learn Special English and General Knowledge as optional subjects, but they are not part of the all-important Secondary School Leaving Certificate examination held for Class 10 students. So Olga will have to learn the first language, including Malayalam and Hindi. Even though it is a bit difficult, Olga is determined to learn these languages.