Beating the odds

Students of GVHSS for Deaf at Jagathy preparing for SSLC examination

14.03.2017
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: SSLC examinations are underway and this year too two government-owned special schools in the city are expecting to get cent percent results. Government Vocational Higher Secondary School(GVHSS) for Deaf at Jagathy and Government School for Visually Impaired at Vazhthacaud have been silently engaged in preparing their students for the examinations. In the past, the students of these schools have overcome their physical impediments achieve very good results.

‘Express’ interacts with the teachers of these two schools to learn how prepared are their students this year.

At GVHSS for deaf at Jagathy, the teachers are confident that the school will get a good result. The specially trained staff have individually trained each child for the exam.

“Though their hearing is impaired, they have a strong eye-sight. We lay stress on developing their sense of vision so that they are able to learn and grasp the subjects,” says Iyeda David, a Mathematics teacher at the school.

According to the school authorities, hearing impairment is the most serious deformity that can afflict a human being. “It becomes hard for the students to grasp things properly since their capability to understand things gets reduced to 25 percent. Hence, we are concentrating on this 25 percent to get better results. We have to repeat a concept multiple times to make them understand it. But the previous year results show that our mode of teaching has been successful,” Iyeda added.

The students appear for all subjects except Hindi since it was found to be tough for them to follow. This year 15 students are appearing for the exams. Of the 15, eight are boys and the rest are girls. When Express met the students, all of them exuded confidence.

Eyeing the big prize
The staff at the school for the visually impaired at Vazhuthacaud near the All India Radio office are keeping their fingers crossed for their former students.

The headmaster in-charge Habi Aboobacker said she is happy that five, including a girl, of their former students are appearing for the SSLC exam.

“We have only till class 7 here. The students have to go to the regular schools for their higher studies. This year the boys are writing their exams at SMV school, while the female student is appearing from Cotton Hill school,” she said.

Habi said the students get pushed into a different atmosphere after class 7. This indirectly affects their learning process.

“The school authorities have submitted a memorandum before the Education Minister C Raveendranath seeking approval for expansion,” she said.

“It has been a long-standing demand to upgrade the school to high school level. It would do the children good to study till class 10 in their own school. We will be able to give them more care and hone the skills needed to appear of important examinations like the SSLC. The teacher student ratio will also be 1:1,” said Leena C Lambodharan, a teacher.