HASSAN: How can one improve government schools? The Morarji Desai Residential School, Kandali in Hassan district can give a few tips for this. Its headmaster has bought about changes in the school, making it the preferred institution for students and parents from the district. He’s known for spending most of his salary on students and ensuring a disciplined campus life. He stayed a bachelor just to ensure he could concentrate on students.Meet headmaster JB Thammannagowdru of the school which is 8km from the city. He hails from Jinnenahalli in Hirisave hobli of Channarayapatna taluk of the district. The school has 246 students, with 50% reservation for boys and girls in every class. The library has over 10,000 books.When he was posted here as principal in 2000, he first planted saplings of different trees in the campus as he was inspired by Manasagangotri, the University of Mysore campus where he did post-graduation in M.Ed. Now, there are 1,200 trees, of which 480 are various fruit trees. “I planted fruit-bearing trees for students,” he said.In the early days, there were 20 residential schools in the district. Initially, this school was under the education department, was then shifted to BCM and finally to the social welfare department.In 2017 and 2018, the school had a 100% pass record. Instead of special classes and other pressurising methods, he implemented his own methods which include every teacher giving five questions daily at the end of class and he’d get answers from students called randomly in the prayer hall. Every student should spend 40 minutes every day on each subject compulsorily and students sing language poems at prayer which make them familiar with different languages.He gives a cash prize, starting from Rs 3,000, after every final result to students scoring above 95%, Rs 2,000 for above 90% and so on. He started giving a dictionary to each student in the school in his home town on his mother’s death anniversary.According to class 10 student Rahul, the headmaster stays on campus from morning till evening. "Every day after breakfast, he monitors all children in their study hours. At the prayer assembly daily, he tell us about current affairs from newspapers. He has helped many poor students financially to take admission into PU colleges,” he said.According to Thammannagowdru's elder brother Krishnamurthy, he stopped visiting his home town after his mother’s death and later family functions. According to Krishnamurthy, the headmaster turned to social service when he was studying in Mysuru. "When a relative passes away, he visits but doesn't attend funeral rites," he said. Hassan DDPI SG Nagesh recalled his friendship with Thammannagowdru. "He was my classmates while studying B.Ed. He has dedicated his entire life to students," he said.Dharnesh, parent of a class 10 student, wanted to admit his daughter to the school only because of the principal and the atmosphere. "My son studied here and the headmaster nurtured his life very well,” he said.

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