St James School, Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Road, Kolkata

I did my 11th and 12th Grade in St. James' School, Kolkata from 2000-02. Although it was a short stint in my academic life, it was a somewhat pleasant experience, overall. This is what I have to say about the same.

SCHOOL ESTABLISHMENT, STRUCTURE & HISTORY

It is a CNI school, associated with ICSE / ISC board of education, located in Acharya Jagdish Chandra Bose Road. It was established on 25 July, 1864 by Bishop Cotton. It is one of the more prestigious, private schools of Kolkata.

The school uniform is blue shorts / trousers with a white shirt. Students refer to themselves as "Jacobeans". It was an ICSE affiliated school and therefore some of the traditions of the school were as in a Christian school. The motto is "Pro Ecclesia Et Pro Patria" or "For Church and For Country".

THINGS TO NOTE ABOUT THE SCHOOL

CAMPUS: The campus is not overtly big. But it has adequate buildings with playgrounds and decent infrastructure for the classrooms and labs. It has a somewhat old feel to it. The seating in some of the classrooms is quite close together.

CURRICULUM: The curriculum probably can't be called too rigorous, but I suppose, it was typical of any day school. There was a somewhat defined way of going about things, as compared to my previous boarding school experience, for example. But there was no feeling of too much enforcement anywhere.

One did have the option of extra-curricular activities, if one chose to have so.

FACULTY: There was a wide variety of teachers for many subjects and they took their work reasonably seriously, at the same time, leaving room for adequate freedom for the older students that we were.

STUDENTS: It is not uncommon to switch schools to achieve specific objectives for the 11th and 12th grade. For the same reason, the student composition was not purely restricted to previous students of the school, graduating from 10th grade.

STUDENT-TEACHER RATIO: This is not good, which is why even though one can understand the teacher means well, the student doesn't get the right kind of individual attention.

INFRASTRUCTURE: The infrastructure was good enough to support enough extra-curricular activities for those interested, in addition to main activities in school.

EXTRA-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES: There were plenty of things for students to be involved in, if they choose to do so. But generally, in a day school format, it is a tad difficult to shift attention too much from your main studies. I had changed boards, so I was anyway mostly focused on my studies.

SYLLABUS / COURSE: I had changed over from West Bengal Board to C.B.S.E. board to I.S.C. board then. So, it was different.

The depth of English course is much more / more rigorous here although maybe not as structured and defined as C.B.S.E. But I was already quite strong at it. So, I didn't find it to be an impediment. The Hindi is supposed to be simpler than C.B.S.E. What I felt though, is that maybe it's a substantiation, subject to rigour because if one took it seriously, that syllabus was also pretty good. The Sciences content, if I compared it with C.B.S.E., taking into account middle school to senior school content, it wasn't really the content which was too different. Perhaps the sequence in which the I.C.S.E. schools went about their content was not that organized, compared to C.B.S.E.

CO-EDUCATION: This is not there here. It is a boys' school, although there is a sister school, Prat Memorial in very close proximity. But there is no CO-EDUCATION as such.

WEATHER / LOCATION: Kolkata can be quite humid and moderately hot and also cold in respective seasons. That does have some impact on day to day proceedings. Especially the humidity factor with a strong monsoon season.

THING TO NOTE: This is not necessarily specific to this school, but characteristic of most day schools in Kolkata. People are by default, too dependent on external tuitions and there is very less emphasis on self-study. So, even though people go to school, they rely on the tuitions for their actual learning and between tuitions and school, don't get much time for self-study. Not many have objection to this, as they are just following an age old format and don't want to deviate too much from it, and also most are not too inclined towards self-learning.

But such a regimen doesn't inculcate too much independent thought and is not time-efficient. Because I advocate self-learning, I was happy that I was part of this system only for 2 years. I believe actual ability / confidence comes from self-learning. But one has to have time / invest time for the same.

Regardless though, I performed more or less similar to my previous good performances.

TECHNOLOGICAL ACCESS: I'm not sure this was all that much, within the school premises during the period I mentioned. But probably the same could be said of most day schools during the time. For it's time, this was not that relevant. But at the same time, would've been an asset to have it.

All in all, it was an interesting day school experience for 2 years and marked the end of my schooling days. It was time for college.

For a day school, I think it was pretty nice as an institution.

On a day school scale of 5 (and not an overall school scale, as privileges are different in different types of schools), I would give it a solid 3.5 out of 5.

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St. James School, the oldest and one of the leading schools in Kolkata for boys. The school is affiliated to I.C.S.E and I.S.C boards, guiding and assissting students in educational  careers.

Its organizes various sports, fests and cultural activities which help children to learn new things also for better development of a child. St.James School was established in 1864 , was inaugrated by then Most Revd. George Edward Cotton- the Bishop of Calcutta on 25th July 1864.

The principal Mr.T.H. Ireland has made many contribution towards the school for the upliftment and development of the school.

My brothers son has been studying here for almost 6 years, and we are proud of him as hes doing so well, not only studies but everything infact his all round development. We feel proud as he belongs to one of the best schools of kolkata ie St.James, not every child gets this priviledge. They conduct academic programmes as well as extracurricular programs which helps a child to learn new things and grow in all aspects, which motivates and encourages a child.

The administration is too good also the staff and teachers which acts as an guiding light for their stdudents always helping them , motivating them and encouraging them in all aspects. They also conduct alumini network which also invites the ex-students , which excites as ex-students are always excited to come bck to school and meet their teachers. This is one of the best schools in kolkata.

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