(In this multi-part series, The Quint tries to explore the explosion of the privately-run Ryan ‘International’ Schools over the past few decades, and what it means for quality of education, safety of children, fair play by the administration and other factors. You can also read Part 1 and Part 3 of the series.)
There is enough to surmise that the Ryan group of schools is being run on more than just good intentions. Thanks to the good connections of the founders with politicians and builders, business is booming – ‘International’ and ‘Global’ Ryan schools are popping up on the map, just like a fast food restaurant franchise.
This entire chain of 180+ K-12 English-medium ‘International’ schools in India (and five abroad) is controlled by one private company called the Ryan Group of Institutions, with one family – the Pintos – reaping the profits and goodwill.
With the recent murder of class II student, Pradyumn Thakur, at Ryan International School, Bhondsi branch, several security and infrastructure lapses of the school which contributed in the child’s death have come to light. To examine the declining quality of the Ryan schools, The Quint deep dives into the company’s customer feedback.
We spoke with former students, their parents and dug out long threads of grave complaints against various branches of the school across India. While some complaints are just livid parents looking to vent after getting no response from the school, others provide troubling details about what has been lying underneath the shiny exterior of Ryan International School for years now.
A Disturbing Number of Violent (and Underpaid) Teachers
What could prompt such an angry, emotional outburst from a parent? Turns out, this complaint was a part of a larger thread with similar complaints from different parents alleging that, in 2013, the primary school supervisor of Ryan International School, Kundalahalli, Bengaluru, Daljeet, was “extremely cruel”:
There are at least five more complaints filed on the same website and others against this one teacher, calling her “not fit to be supervisor”, “cruel” and “arrogant”. Daljeet Kaur allegedly often hit students and belittled them for little or no reason. This isn’t the lone instance of violence by teachers of Ryan school.
On 28 September 2017, a class 4 student at Ryan International School, Ludhiana was allegedly slapped repeatedly and beaten with sticks on his arms, legs and back by two teachers after he got into a fight with another student. A week before that, at the Bannerghatta branch in Bangalore, a teacher was fired after he repeatedly caned a class 9 student for talking in class, to the extent that the child had to be hospitalised for fluid coagulation in the areas where he was hit.
This is just a list of corporal punishment incidents that have occurred in a month. Turns out, there’s a very disturbing pattern. In October 2011, a Physical Education teacher at Ryan International School, Ludhiana lost his cool and picked up a wooden desk to hurl at parents when a Parent-Teacher meeting got heated. In January 2014, Anjali, a parent of a child at Ryan International School, Faridabad, took to India’s Consumer Complaints forum to report that the teachers were “physically punishing junior students” by slapping them, “banging (their) head against the wall, books”.
When I was in 2nd standard, a teacher [...] slapped me so hard that my cheek was swollen and I had to stay under medication because my gums started to get numb; all because my dad had written a letter to her asking why she wasn’t teaching properly.Excerpt from a complaint lodged by Ria, a student of Ryan International School, Kundalahalli in 2013
In 2015, a case was filed against a teacher at Ryan’s Chembur branch in Mumbai, after she slapped a class 9 boy, Yash Singh, five times for not buttoning his shirt collar. Similar complaints had been lodged against the same teacher by other parents as well. Initially, the teacher admitted to the incident and resigned. Later, Yash was suspended from school, the teacher denied everything, and was reinstated by the school.
Almost like the recent update on the suspended principal of Ryan International School, Bhondsi, who was suspended after Pradyumn’s murder, being reinstated as a teacher at the school’s Sector 40 branch in Gurugram on Saturday.
It gets worse: in 2015, the principal of St Xavier’s, Andheri, Mumbai (run by the Ryan group) was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a six-year-old boy.
According to Section 17 (1) of the Right to Education Act, no child shall be subjected to physical punishment or mental harassment. Section 17(2) states that whoever does shall be liable to disciplinary action. Many provisions of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) can be applied in case of corporal punishment, depending on the severity. Teachers can be booked under sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, and Juvenile Justice (Care & Protection of Children) Act, 2000.
Underpaid, Undertrained Teachers
There are at least ten complaints from parents about under-trained, unenthusiastic and overworked teachers. In part, parents–even teachers themselves–blame the low salary being allegedly paid to them by the administration. They “don’t speak proper English”, are not paid their salaries and vacancies are left unfilled for months.
Complaints from way back in 2013 to the present suggest that in some branches, teachers quit on a yearly (sometimes, even every few months) basis after being “poached” by other schools, disrupting the continuity of teaching for students.
Looking back, the Ryan group of schools do have a pattern of under-paying their faculty. In August 2015, 19 schools run Ryan International Group were given show-cause notices by the School Education Department for allegedly not paying their teaching and non-teaching staff in accordance to the sixth pay commission and not contributing enough to their employee provident funds either. So, they’re not paid well enough; does the quality of education suffer in return?
I have never come across teachers like (the Bannerghatta branch’s) anywhere. The standard of teaching and dealing with kids is pathetic. My daughter has spent two years in this school and have always gone through a lot of torture. The teacher of class 2 was highly unprofessional and and not someone who believes in helping kids. She made our life and more than ours, my daughter’s life, miserable. She would neither finish the the syllabus on time nor correct the copies. In fact, when we asked her why has she been ignoring diary notes and corrections, she said that she was too busy. When we complained to the principal, (nothing) changed..She started abusing my daughter verbally and never missed a chance to ridicule and insult her.Amarpreet, mother of a former student of Ryan International School, Bannerghatta, Bangalore
The Quint spoke to two former students of Ryan International School Evershine Nagar, Mumbai and Faridabad respectively. Both said the teachers were only concerned about finishing the syllabus and dictated notes for the exam only, while the latter also said many teachers of the ‘International’ school spoke poor English.
Cynthia Lobo, a former teacher of the Kundalahalli branch, also reviewed the school extensively, including its academic standards:
Were there good reviews of the faculty too? Of course there were plenty, especially for the schools in swanky localities like Vasant Kunj, Vasant Vihar and Faridabad. But when three children have died and countless others injured, beaten or sabotaged by way of the quality of their education or safety, it’s time to pay attention to the complaints and feedback more carefully.
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