Educational edifices

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: A school is a place with tattered classrooms, broken furniture and opaque blackboards, right? Where one goes out of compulsion and not to enjoy?

Well, it’s time for you to revise your views. Not just has the curricula gone for drastic overhauls, with designer buildings, smart gadgetry and much else, schools of the 21st century are anything but boring. In these schools, lavish classrooms are a given. Laden with furniture meant to ensure the right posture and internet connectivity to keep the students clued in all the time, the schools have quite a few other features that amaze.

Take for instance Pathways World School at Gurgaon. Located at a picturesque location at the foothills of Aravali range in Haryana, the school accommodates not just classrooms, dormitories, libraries and cafeteria but also a hospital, lawns for innumerable outdoor games and an integrated indoor sports complex, amongst many others. Spread over 30 acres, the campus was designed by architecture firm, CP Kukreja & Associates and has facilities for rainwater harvesting, sewage treatment plant and central irrigation system as part of its energy conservation measures.

“Pathway’s modern infrastructure facilities and environment-friendly concepts has brought itself the 'Innovative School Design Award from Design Share, a New York-based international forum for innovation schools,” says Prabhat Jain, director, Pathways World School.

The school faces a tough competition by another school nearby. G D Goenka World School (GDGWS) has campus laid out in 60 acres. It has earthquake resistant buildings, which are monitored round the clock via intelligent building management system (IBMS). Located at Sohna in Haryana, there is little compromise on availability of basic facilities. The campus has 100% power and water backup, light and temperature control, campus-wide broadband connectivity, fire safety systems and CCTV surveillance.

A walk into a typical classroom in one of these schools will take you to another world. Painted in lighter shades, the classrooms have ergonomically designed furniture to support the child’s posture, lux levels of light in classrooms conforming to international standards, bigger writing boards and larger font size to reduce eye strain.

“Our school also has good number of shaded areas for studying outside the classroom. Students are given lockers in the campus to carry books as per the class periods,” says Jain of Pathways.