Pailan WS joins hands with GEMS for taking over management

Kolkata, Mar 18 (UNI)Pailan World School,the Rs 100 crore project of the private sector Pailan Business Group,has joined hands with the Dubai-based Global Education Management Systems(GEMS)for running the overall management of the boarding school at international standard.

Announcing the global partnership Chief Excutive officer of GEMS Susant Vira and Chief of GEMS' Asian operations as well the prinicipal of the Pailan World School under the new management,John Mason said this would be the GEMS first venture in Eastern India as well as the 13th in the country so sar.

"At present we run the entire day-to-day management and educational courses of 12 other renowned boarding schools in India, including the Doon schools in Dehradun and several other top international schools in Pubjab, Haryana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Jammu and Kashmir," Mr Mason said. He said 60 top international schools in different parts of the world, including 23 in the Middle East, 13 in the UK and two each in Germany,France,Finland,Sweden and Australia, were run by GEMS 'with huge reputation'.

Referring to his plan to increase GEMS' operations in more Indian schools in the coming years,Mr Vira said they had also started necessary dialogues with six other Indian schools in different parts of the country for starting similar operations and hoped to materiale the contracts before the year end.

On future plans for the Pailan world school, Mr Mason and Mr Vira said with an investment of about Rs 80 crores so far by the joint promoters - Mr Apurba Saha and a conglomerate of five nationaliased banks on 50:50 equity basis - the school would be promoted to a middle level international educational institution by April-May this year under ICSE syllabus.

"We are also planning to introduce an internationally accepted educational syllabus under the Cambridge International model,as an option for new students in the new course," Mr Vira said adding they were yet to sign the final agreement with the foreign partner.

With an infrastructure of top international standard, the Pailan World School would provide a dual curriculam to help provide the students a world class education by all standards,they pointed out.

About the cost of studies under the new management, he said it varied between Rs 2 lakhs to Rs 2.5 lakhs per annum for each primary school student and a little over Rs 3.5 lakhs each for the proposed middle level ones.

To start with only about 100 middle level students of up to class eight would be admitted following a unique and diversified admission tests,Mr Mason said adding that in the primary section the total number of students was around 2,000.

Among others GEMS Director Sanjay Behl and the main promoter Mr Saha were present.

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