A first-of-its-kind day-boarding school, Roots Country School (RCS), has come up at DLF The Valley, near Amravati Enclave, Panchkula. Having formally started its operations for the academic year 2023-24, RCS, Panchkula, is the second branch of the residential school, Roots Country School, in Baghi near Kotkhai, Shimla Hills, Himachal Pradesh.
With an imposing building and infrastructure, the school provides state-of-the-art facilities with separate dormitories lined bunk beds for boys and girls. The Roots Country School has an inhouse bakery and kitchen, apart from an all-weather swimming pool, indoor games area, music room, dance hall, tennis ground, table tennis, a badminton hall, basketball, karate training, snooker, an AI lab et al. There is a fully equipped library and an e-library too. The RCS school building is centrally air conditioned with a multipurpose auditorium having a capacity to seat 700 people. An infirmary is also in place to help children with any medical conditions arising in school hours.
“The school is from pre-nursery till class 7 for now. We use the LEAD system of pedagogy which is benchmarked with the Nurturing Early Learners (NEL), Singapore programme and is in line with NCERT as prescribed by National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. Subjects are taught as a skill and our approach is making students learn by doing,” said Susan Bhagra, Principal, Roots Country School, Panchkula, who has earlier served as Vice-principal at Loreto Convent Tara Hall, Shimla.
“Kids will be in safe-professional hands after regular school hours and they will get a wholesome meal and adequate rest. They will complete their homework too. Parents will also heave a sigh of relief as they will now be free from the clutches of the tuition culture. The students during their stay back will participate in constructive activities. All this will reduce screen time which children get exposed to after going home post school. Their regimented routine at school will discipline them for their future life,” says Kriti Rotha, founder of RCS, Baghi, Shimla hills.
“Our school will come as a big relief to working parents, single mothers and fathers. The parents will no longer need to worry about pick-up of their children during their office hours. Parents can pick up their wards on getting free from work. There is also faciltiy for students’s pick and drop,” she said.
“We have already enrolled 200 students within a month of our launch. We would soon be introducing the IB curriculum as well which is designed as per international standards and allows students to transfer from a school in one country to another,” said Kriti .
Founded under the Society for Education and Environmental Development (SEED), the original school in the pristine Shimla hills was founded in 2003 by a the visionary and dynamic couple, Sunil Rotha and Kriti Rotha, who are orchardists too.
The school started with just 21 students in 2003 and now houses about 1000 students where 450 students belong to different states of India and abroad too.
“The idea behind setting up RCS at an altitude of 9000 feet in the midst of apple and cherry orchards and beautiful dense cedar forests in HP was to stop migration of children from the region to other parts of the country for want of better education. The educational initiative has helped the region retain its socio-economic and cultural equilibrium,” Sunil said.
“We aim at providing the same facilities available in the HP school at RCS, Panchkula also. The Panchkula school will groom students. We train students for the real world, rote-based academics is not practiced,” Kriti said.
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