Changing schools

This academic year, beginning in April for CBSE curriculum schools, has brought about some changes in my kids educational graph.
Ash got into DPS Sharjah this year, considered one of the best Indian curriculum schools in the UAE. In fact most of UAE's CBSE grade X toppers this year were from the school. The school has a healthy mix of academic and extracurricular activities, a good team of teachers, library, sports etc. The peer group also makes a difference though of late he's getting bored as he finds them all very studious. For someone who likes football, video games and YouTube and dreams of a career in one of them, Ash is feeling a little out of place. But as one who makes friends easily and is a cool guy, he remains happy wherever he is.
DPS has seven divisions each for girls and boys with a strength of over 30 per class. Being in Sharjah, the girls and boys wings are separate from Grade 6. And classes are exclusive for those who take Hindi or French as second language.
In an unprecedented move, the school gave Ash the option to shift to French _ after fervent pleas from the mother with the HM, HoD etc _ if he learnt the language during the two-month summer vacation and passed an entrance test to check his French prowess. He qualified yesterday, and it has been a matter of great relief and joy for him and us. To see him struggle with Hindi the past three years bothered me no end while the father took the line that he should be able to grasp Hindi just as lakhs of children in India do. It's another matter that the father can't speak a word or comprehend much of the language after doing it from class 4 -10 as we do in Kerala schools under the three-language formula.
Now Ash has the distinction of having learnt quite a few languages _ Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam, Arabic and now French apart from English.
Mira also has the same number of languages in her kitty, though she regrets her poor grasp of Hindi since she shifted to Malayalam after a year of struggle with Hindi in class 5. In the year we migrated here, she and Ash took Malayalam tuitions and Mira made the shift with confidence. But what I didn't bargain for was the complexity of written Malayalam. Unlike Tamil which has minimal alphabets, Malayalam has letters and nuances for each possible sound and unless one is familiar with the language from a young age, it isn't easy to write without errors. Writing the way she spoke (bhayankara was pankara and  kazhichu was kayichu for her), she offered hilarious instances _  but worrisome from the exam perspective. Still mom and daughter enjoyed the prospect of teaching- learning a language which we understood well. She also got a feel of the culture, myths and ethos of Kerala and India through the poems she memorized and the essays she prepared. Her teacher was very supportive too.
So it came as a shock to her when Mira divulged that she was shifting school from Dubai to Sharjah. Choices for Mira were limited as they were fewer CBSE  schools offering Malayalam as second language. Our search for a good school for her ended when Aspam offered to take her in the French stream on the basis of an undertaking that she'll learn the language in three months' time. It's believed to be a good school though relatively new and unheard of. And the higher grades have very few students (since boys and girls have to be in separate classes) as of now and it's as good as attending a private tuition.
Let me hope they'll gain much from their individual schools and come out finer and well-rounded individuals!
#DPSSharjah #Aspam