Nehru Garden School principal selected for national award

Aparna Banerji

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Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, August 3

Principal of Government Girls Senior Secondary School, Nehru Garden, Gurinderjit Kaur, has been selected from Jalandhar for the prestigious National Award for Teachers.

She is the only teacher from Jalandhar to be selected for the award.

Having started teaching in 1991, Kaur took charge of the Nehru Garden School in the year 1999 and has been serving as principal at the establishment since then. Clearly, the most reputed government schools in the city, Nehru Garden School has strength of about 1,300 students when she joined but its strength has now climbed up to 2,450 during her tenure. In 2010, she was promoted to the principal cadre, from lecturer.

A beaming Gurinderjit Kaur told The Tribune, “It feels very nice to have been shortlisted for the award. I plan to take the institution to much greater heights.”

Notably, Nehru Garden School bagged national limelight when a question put forward by a school student to the Union Renewable Energy Minister, Piyush Goyal, on National Energy Conservation Day last year, prompted the proposal for inclusion of energy management as a subject across schools in the country.

During Kaur’s tenure, Nehru Garden School got many additional clubs and committees as well as other community outreach programmes.

The school’s Cloud Sat programme was revived under her. The school also bagged the reputed NASA project. While the NASA project has been started in four schools in the district, the Nehru garden school is the only government school to have bagged it.

Additionally, the Legal Aid Club, NCC wing and sports like judo and yoga among others, have also been started at the school under the current principal. Inspired by the PM’s Swach Bharat Abhiyaan, the school also started the Green Brigade Club to spread awareness and efforts on cleanliness issues.

Additionally, the principal said all efforts are being made to inculcate moral values among students, “We also held an exercise wherein girls from the school were asked to talk to various addicts and exhort them to leave drugs. It was great success and they brought in quotes from rickshaw valas, drivers and some from their own brothers and fathers who caught the habit.”

Speaking about financial and infrastructural upgrade efforts, Kaur said the school had also raised Rs 38 lakh on its own to benefit students. While Rs 8 lakh was spent directly for needy or poor students’ fees, uniforms, notebooks etc., Rs 30 lakh was generated for facilities for them like furniture, fans, coolers, or other equipment.

Commenting on her future aspirations, Kaur said, “The award is a great honour and with this inspirations I look forward to further increasing the strength of the school and would also aim that its merit increases. I would b very happy the day half of my schools students score over 80 per cent marks.”

Kaur will be awarded the National Award at the Vigyan Bhawan by the President on September 5.