Trichy: At a time when schools are being besieged by complaints of overburdening students with books as well as backbreaking work, the panchayat union middle school (PUMS) at Mangudi in Pudukkottai district has turned a role model for many.It has reduced the use of books in classrooms and imposed curbs on homework as well. “Children are given homework only in one subject a day so that they go back home with the notebook of only that subject leaving the rest at school. As for assignments, they need not bring the notebooks to school. All they need to do is complete it, take a photo and e-mail it to the class teacher,” said a teacher at the school.In fact, the tag of a “panchayat school” has barely come in the way of PUMS Mangudi going high tech. It has airconditioned classrooms, smart boards and fully quipped computer labs. It is also one of the greenest campuses covered with dense native trees regulating the temperature on the school premises. With a total of 202 students, the school has done away with black boards as all the eight classrooms are smart classrooms. “Tablets are kept in the school for children who cannot afford electronic gadgets so that they can learn its usage,” headmaster V Jothimani told TOI.No wonder then that the school has added yet another feather to its cap by bagging the “innovative school” award from the state government. As many as 57 schools have been selected for the award introduced by the state government this year. Representatives of five of these schools, including the Mangudi school, received the awards from chief minister Edappadi K Palaniappan at a function at the secretariat in Chennai on Monday. The schools were awarded after being assessed on various parameters including basic infrastructure and technology-enabled teaching.The PUMS campus is under CCTV surveillance and biometric method is used for attendance of teachers and students. One of the most popular schools in Pudukkottai, it has received several awards in the past few years for creating a conducive learning atmosphere. The school has received over 30 prizes so far including that for the best school in 2007-08 and Unicef award for cleanliness in 2007.Chief educational officer (CEO) of Pudukkottai, R Vanaja, credited the headmaster for the achievement whose dedicated work has been rewarded by the state government. “While the school was started as a primary school in 1952, it was upgraded as middle school in 1973. It is the HM’s love for the school and the children which has transform ed it and set a yardstick for it to be a model school,” she said.

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