Thiruvananthapuram: The oldest government boys' school in the erstwhile Travancore region has shed its gender exclusivity.
For the first time in its 189-year-old history, Sree Moola Vilasam School - better known as SMV School - in Thiruvananthapuram has admitted girl students.
This academic year five girls have been admitted to the upper primary section: Darshana R in Class VI, Vismaya and Sanjana in Class VIII and Akhila and Majhitha in Class IX. The number is low, less than one per cent of the higher secondary school's total strength of over 1,200 students.
Permission that came late
More than the initial reluctance of parents to send their girls to a school that till now had the aura of a naughty boisterous boy fortress, the weak trickle of girls into the school can be attributed to the delayed government order that permitted the admission of girls.
The General Education Department's order was issued only on June 12, nearly a fortnight after schools reopened on June 1.
"If we had received the order before June 1 perhaps more parents would have admitted their girls in our school," said Rani Vidhyadhara, the vice principal of the school and the headmistress of the High School section. She is confident that the number will go up in the next academic year.
Changing from a boys' school to a co-educational institution is widely seen as progressive but SMV School is also battling low student numbers in the upper primary section.
From class V to X there are less than 500 students. Throwing open the gates of the school to girls is also a way to boost student strength.
Growing clamour for co-ed
The school had officially sought co-ed status in a letter submitted to General Education Minister V Sivankutty on May 26, 2022.
The school's request acquired a sudden relevance barely two months later when, on July 21, Kerala State Commission for the Protection of Child Rights ordered that from the 2023-24 academic year schools exclusively for boys and girls should cease to exist.
"There is no need to teach boys and girls in separate schools in the existing social context. Moreover, the existence of such schools can only be seen as a turning away from advanced education and psychological theories. There is no justification for such schools to exist," the Child Rights Commission order had said.
It also helped that the government had also sworn itself to creating more mixed schools.
A fortnight before the Child Rights Commission issued the order, General Education Minister V Sivankutty told the Kerala Assembly on July 4 that 11 exclusive schools were converted into co-ed schools after the second Pinarayi ministry came to power. He said that more schools would be converted if more school authorities, PTAs and local bodies came forward with similar demands.
Conditions for conversion
The SMV School approached the minister after securing the approval of the School Management Committee, the Parent-Teachers' Association (PTA) and Mother PTA.
The General Education Department then put forward three conditions for the conversion of the school into a co-ed school.
One, there should be no new post creation. There was no rush of girls and, therefore, the need for new posts did not even arise.
Two, other government or aided schools should not be affected. Meaning, the migration of girls from nearby schools should not cause division fall in these schools as a result of a drop in student strength. This also has not happened as only three girls are from nearby schools. The three chose SMV because their brothers are studying in the school.
The remaining two belong to Tamil families that recently settled in Thiruvananthapuram from Tirupur and Theni districts.
Three, there should be adequate infrastructure, especially girl-friendly toilets.
"Except for girl-friendly toilets, we had all the other necessary infrastructure like desks and benches," the headmistress said. For girl-friendly toilets, the school approached the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation and Samagra Shiksha Kerala, a scheme that focuses on improving learning outcomes.
"We were already allotted a new set of boy toilets. We requested both the Corporation and the SSK to convert these into a toilet space for girls. The new toilet facility for girls that is now ready in the school has all that one would expect including an incinerator," headmistress Rani Vidhyadhara said.
Officially, over 30 gender-exclusive schools in Kerala had been converted into co-ed schools in the last seven years.
A promise and a silent rebuke
It is still too early to assess the impact of girls on the nature of the school. "It is a fact that boys tend to be protective of their girl classmates and girls, in turn, like to cast them in the role of a corrective force. This is why mixed schools are less problematic than gender-exclusive schools. But in our school, the girls are just seven days old," the headmistress said.
Yet, she has already witnessed signs of change. "There is a ninth standard boy who has the habit of scribbling on newly painted walls. We teachers have tried our best to coax him out of this habit but in vain," Rani Vidhayadhara said.
"Yesterday, I could see from my office one of the newly admitted ninth standard girl standing before a group of ninth standard boys. She was standing before them like a stern teacher and had her right palm thrown out as if asking for something. Then I saw this boy, our wall scribbler, reluctantly at first and then happily striking his palm on hers. There were claps all around. The girl was asking the boy to promise in front of his friends that he would never ever scribble on school walls," the headmistress said in a tone that suggested that she found this almost unbelievable.
Onmanorama too got a glimpse of the spell a girl could cast on boys. We went to VI A to get a photograph of the classroom. The class had one girl, Darshana.
When the teacher told the class that we were there to take the photograph of the girl in the class, the boys erupted in light-hearted cheer. They wanted their photographs, too, to be taken. Their high-pitched squeaky shouts grew so loud that Darshana, who was in the last bench, closed her eyes tight and put her index fingers into her ears, suggesting that she could not take this noise any longer.
The boys saw her, but persisted with their mock anger at not being photographed. One of the boys who sat near Darshana pointed in her direction and gesticulated vigorously to the others to keep quiet. Suddenly the boys sat down, some of them even looked embarrassed, and there was silence.
