Fascinating write-up of Hindu school in Britain

02-12-2005, 11:56 AM

None of that "fundamentalist Hindu" mudslinging that one encounters in
the Indian ELM or in the NYT or Wash Post and elsewhere. Murli

http://education.independent.co.uk/s...p?story=609413

Welcome to Hindu modern
When a failing London comprehensive was closed down, the local Hindu
community took it over and transformed it into a thriving school
By Hilary Wilce
10 February 2005
The Swaminarayan School, the only Hindu school in the Independent
Schools Council, has blended the unchanging values of an ancient faith
with the relentless demands of modern education, to create a warm and
happy school - with exam results to die for.

The school, which has just under 500 pupils, aged two-and-a-half to
18, has virtually 100 per cent of pupils getting five good GCSEs (one
left early last year, spoiling the perfect figure), and gets a high
"added-value" score of 104 for pupils as they move from Key Stage 2 to
Key Stage 3.

But back in the 1980s the picture was very different. The school, in
north-west London, was an anarchic and failing Brent comprehensive.
The authorities finally threw in the towel, closed it down and sold
the site to be a car-park. But then, among the run-down flats and
semis of Neasden, a fabulous transformation began to occur.

The Swaminarayan Hindu community had been worshipping at a small
temple in north London, but as the numbers of Indians in Britain grew,
they acquired a new site and planned a stupendous temple. This was no
small-scale project. Five thousand tons of Italian marble and
Bulgarian limestone were hand-carved by 1,500 craftsmen and assembled
into the ornate and turreted Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, the largest
Hindu temple outside the Indian subcontinent. More than a thousand
volunteers worked on the site. When, in 1992, as the temple began to
take shape, the school site across the road became available, the
community bought it, refurbished it, and opened the first Hindu school
in Europe.

Today the layout of its 1960s-built corridors and classrooms still
hold faint echoes of that blighted educational past, but its ethos
could not be more different.

The school is based on the traditional values of Hinduism - respect,
compassion and moderation - and pupils are polite and focused, while
teachers speak warmly of being able to teach without discipline
problems. Visitors are greeted with ready smiles and class choruses of
"namaste". The Hindu faith pervades the school, with ornate silver
shrines in classrooms and Gujarati lessons on the curriculum, but this
doesn't get in the way of it being a mainstream school with a
wide-ranging curriculum.

"You see," says head Mahendra Savjani, pointing at lively artwork
lining the junior-school corridors, "we are just like schools
everywhere. Hinduism isn't that prescriptive. It's very open. But
parents put their children here for the values. They are very happy to
be here in Britain, but they don't like a lot of the more unsavoury
things they see, the alcohol and drugs and promiscuity and way-out
behaviour."

Also, he says, they may feel that they have missed out on their own
culture and not be able to read or write their own language as well as
they would like because, when they came to Britain, the opportunities
to learn it were not there. "They want to preserve the language and
the culture. This is a young community striving to find its way, and
we are here to help that."

He himself was taught in Gujarati in Tanzania, before becoming a pupil
at Sevenoaks School, and taking a degree at Warwick University. His
teaching career was in the state sector, working in tough north-London
comprehensives, before moving to his present job in 1997.

Pupils come to the school from all over north-west London, from Harrow
to Hounslow, often from modest, hard-working backgrounds where parents
have to scrimp and save to find the fees, which range from £1,500 a
term in the junior school to £2,160 in the sixth form. This means that
financial problems quite often force parents to take their children
out, although others leave because they win places at highly
competitive local sixth forms at 16. "In that way we are victims of
our own success," says Savjani.

However, because most pupils will never have eaten a hamburger, or had
an alcoholic drink, and live in close, extended families, the teen
life of other English sixth formers can come as a shock. "I have had
some come back. They couldn't handle it," says Savjani. And if they
stay in the school's tiny sixth form, they know they will do well. One
pupil has gone to Oxford, others have gone to Imperial College and
Queen Mary College, in London, mostly to pursue science-based
vocations such as medicine or engineering. Arts A-levels are less
popular, except for those with their eyes on a future in law, although
there is a lively cultural programme throughout the school. Girls
study traditional Kathak dance; boys play the tabla; there are singing
and drama lessons, and a recent stage performance was an East-West
fusion of Medea.

The Swaminarayan community describes itself as a tolerant sect within
a tolerant religion, and only a minority of pupils are devotees.
However, the life of the school is intimately bound up with the life
of the temple, which pupils see framed in the windows at the front of
the school, its flags flying and its marble carvings gleaming. Pupils
go there for assemblies, and two of its sadhus [holy men] are
governors. Nevertheless, the school is determinedly outward-looking.
Many teachers are non-Hindus, and pupils do a full array of
after-school clubs, sports ("We are brilliant at cricket," says
Savjani, "but we usually get thrashed at soccer!"), Duke of Edinburgh
award schemes and school trips, which are seen as particularly
important for extending inner-city pupils' horizons.

The school is also careful to avoid being "a little island in the
middle of Neasden" by plugging its children into traditional British
culture. It works with the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art to
get senior school pupils to recite poetry and prose and "learn to
speak with a BBC accent" to guard against the kind of slippage in
spoken English that can develop in a school where everyone shares a
similar accent. And a pantomime troupe comes to visit, "So they can
learn all about that 'Oh, yes he did!', 'Oh, no he didn't!' business.
It's part of being British," says Savjani. "We also have a nativity
play at Christmas, unlike so many other schools these days who we hear
are so scared of offending anyone. Our pupils have two sessions of RE
a week. They study Hinduism, but they have exposure to other faiths."

The school follows the national curriculum, but does not do Sats tests
at the end of Key Stage I, believing that at this age children are
developing at very different rates. The pupils' concentration and
commitment to study are clear in lessons. "This is pretty much the
best school I've ever worked in," says Allison Witton, an Australian
Year Six teacher.

"The children are so polite, and so respectful of you as a teacher,
and the parents are so supportive. They're on your side if you ever
have a problem, which you almost never do, and they help their
children at home all the time. There's a real work ethic, and it means
as a teacher it's much more fulfilling."

The school would like to grow by 100 or so pupils and to have a bigger
sixth form, but would never want to get too big. "I think if you have
good values, and are not too large, you can't go wrong," says Savjani.
Especially, he points out, if you have families who are totally
committed to education, and who have high expectations of the school,
and of what they expect their children to achieve there.

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