Ludhiana, December 14
The XX annual day celebrations of GGN Public School was held on the school campus here today.. The Chief Guest, Mr Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, Parliamentary Secretary, Agriculture and Husbandry, presided over the function and gave away the prizes.

Dr S.P. Singh, president KEC, Mr Harmohinder Singh, Mr Kuljit Singh, Assistant Secretary KEC, Prof Prithipal Singh Kapur, former Pro-V C, GNDU and other members of the managing committee were among the guests who attended the function.

Mr R.S. Grewal, principal of the school, read out the annual report.

Three hundred and thirty three prizes were awarded to students for academics and curricular activities. Cash prizes were given to the best artist- Manjot Kaur, best athlete- Dhanraj Singh, best orator- Jaspreet Gill and for meritorious board results Jaspreet Kaur XII, Harsimranjit Kaur XII and Kuljeet Kaur and Charanvir Kaur of X were honoured. Prof Prithipal S. Kapur presented the vote of thanks.

Five teachers were awarded for their excellent academic board results- Ms Bindu Sandhir (English), Ms Rupinderjit Kaur, Ms Kuljinder Kaur, Ms Manwant Kaur (social studies) and Ms Manjinder Kaur (Punjabi).

The function started off with welcome song by primary students. The tiny tots captivated everyone with their performance in their group dances ‘Baby come Back’ and ‘Around the World.’ The English play ‘Never Never Nest’ highlighted the growing trend of buying things on installments. Rajasthani dancers spread warmth and colour with their dance performance. The programme concluded with Punjabi folk dance’ giddha’ by the senior girls.

Ludhiana, December 14
Government schools must realise that in today’s times, overall student development is a necessity and hence cannot continue to only focus on basic needs and sacrifice the benefits due to each student. The government should commit itself to a sufficient budget in the area of education.

These recommendations were made by Farzana Fakir, MBA student of Punjab College of Technical Education (PCTE), in her comparative analysis on ‘The importance of Budget Allocation between government and private schools’ recently under the guidance of Mr P.P. Singh.

For this comparative study, five government and five private schools in the city were taken. In her research work, Farzana found that student enrollment in government schools was lower than private schools. One of the major reasons for this was the high dropout rate in government schools. The annual and student budgets of private schools were much higher than government schools.

In private schools, the major source for the budget was school fees as private students were from families who could easily contribute financially to the school while in government schools, the only source of finance was the government. This was a poor indication of government schools not being able to involve private and public companies in the form of donations and sponsorship. Except one, none of the government schools used any budgetary method whereas all the private schools used formal budgetary methods.

It was found that private schools in the city arranged activities that contributed to students’ education as priority but government schools just focused on basic necessities. No personality development activities took place there. Only government schools experienced the problem of shortage of funds and their approach to the problem did not form a broad spectrum. Even though meetings were arranged with the parents, but even they (parents) did not seem to be bothered.

It was recommended that government should address the problem of dropouts. Government schools should try and acquire participation from private companies and international organisations in the form of donations. Formal budgetary methods should be integrated in the school system and this could be enforced from the state government level. It was important that government schools must be innovative in approaching their problems and not merely accept their situation.

Ludhiana, December 14
Disneyland School here organised a fancy dress show with a difference. The children were dressed as insects for a change.

Most of the children came dressed up as spiderman and performed stunts. A big web was filled with lady birds, caterpillars, ants, crabsand spiders. The competition stimulated the imagination of the small children.

A great effort was made by the school authorities to make the function unique. The parents were all smiles at the antics of their children.