Education plays the most important role in shaping individuals’ personalities and nurturing the next generations. It is the quality of Education that makes competent professionals who can excels individually and as a collectively powerful force make their country proud.

Empowering young people with the lifelong knowledge prepares them with the transformational skills and capabilities to grasp the world, identify the challenges and make a difference through their innovative, disruptive, and creative contribution to society.

By comprehending the world, well-prepared students are ready to take on any challenges head-on–be it in service, business, research, innovation, social, legal, scientific, health, administrative, technological, industrial, or environmental spheres. Developing the young generation into highly capable and pragmatic professionals is MIT Vishwashanti Gurukul-An IB World School, which stands for its high quality and value-based universal education.

Leading the legacy of values and virtues, Mr Venugopal Iragavarapu, the Head of School, has guided the team of teachers, staff and other members in offering a world-class education destination.

The Saga of Educational Excellence

MIT Gurukul is an International Baccalaureate Continuum School situated in Pune on the banks of the Mula-Mutha River. Mr Venugopal shares that they are an institution well known for their educational offerings guided by a futuristic vision and rooted in values. The school was established in 2006, and from those humble beginnings now boasts 600+ students, 119 teachers, and 189 administrative and hostel staff whose efforts make the school second to none within the Indian and international education scenario. The campus is spread across 125 acres and houses state-of-the-art tech-equipped classrooms and labs, playgrounds, sports facilities, art arenas, meditation and yoga centres, a gym, an infirmary, hostels and a canteen. He adds, “We also have 24-hour security available to ensure the safety of our students.”

Imbibing Code of Ethics

The school was set up to make it a learning community of motivated students and passionate staff engaged in realizing their full potential and imparting an education that fosters academic excellence, physical fitness, psychological and spiritual health, and social consciousness.

The school’s mission is to provide resource-based education with global opportunities for academic growth and development and ensure all students have the necessary life skills and competencies to function productively in society. Its core values rest on compassion, lifelong learning, respect, and being of service to others through the power of meaningful endeavours.

The Stalwart of Progressive Education

MIT Vishwashanti Gurukul World School is led by the visionary leader, Mr I.Venugopal. He is one of the founding stalwarts who had seen this institution from its inception when the first brick was laid to its present state, spanning over 17 years, making it one of the world-renowned institutions. He grew from being a Mathematics teacher to an IGCSE coordinator to being the Head of the School.

He is a determined disciplinarian yet maintains a calm demeanour with a ready smile. He strongly advises and recommends that aspirers be very disciplined as they grow higher, explaining how it takes a long time and resilient efforts to climb, but it only takes moments to fall.

Mr I.Venugopal is also an inveterate academician, a gold medallist in Statistics from Andhra University whose record of marks remains unbroken till this date, for more than a quarter century. He loves maths and advocates mathematics as a necessary tool to develop brains into critical and abstract thinkers.

He is also an ardent supporter of sports and firmly believes that sports can help shape learners’ personalities with some deeply ingrained core values. He plays badminton and, as a tough coach, does not mince his words when it comes to competitive sports, asserting his intentions of ruthless dominance and not just a marginal victory. Even his Maths classes give the students the impression that he does not appreciate mediocre efforts.

Some of his elemental strengths define his preferences even when preparing students for higher education. He motivates teachers and parents alike to leave no stone unturned, literally. To ensure the best opportunities are provided to the students, giving them an edge over the others in the global grid, making them future leaders of this ever-changing world.

Noble Inspirations

MIT Gurukul’s team believes that good education can transform individual lives, the community, and the world at large. With this vision, they set up a school with an international curriculum to enable the students to become internationally competent with a broad horizon and the ability to thrive within multicultural settings.

Gurukul is a place to thrive and grow into multifaceted individuals. It’s competitive to the core yet full of empathy. Knowledgeable and caring teachers guide and facilitate learning.

Value-based education is the school’s vision, realized through instilling values in daily life. The school believes that education does not mean only classroom instruction; it goes beyond the classroom in how students live their lives.

Gurukul feels proud when one student helps the other, when one capable student explains a difficult concept to the other, when a winning athlete does not disrespect the losing one and when one who loses congratulates the winner in healthy sportsmanship, and Gurukul feels happy when one resolves to put in more efforts next time.

Gurukul feels confident when observing our students behave themselves, even when nobody tells them what and how to do. Gurukul feels secure when he finds the students trying to excel and do better than their past performances, trying to evolve constantly as good human beings.

Gurukul expects sincere commitment and consistent efforts from students and teachers alike. A conducive environment and supportive infrastructure support this expectation. It’s a pleasure to see students utilizing vast football grounds, athletic tracks, a 50-metre Olympic size swimming pool, indoor badminton and table-tennis courts, Gymnasium, Basketball and lawn tennis courts, Volleyball, Kho-Kho, Kabaddi and Archery.

Foundation of Values and Discipline

Gurukul also feels satisfied in providing students with well-resourced science and ICT laboratories with the additional advantage that Gurukul is located on the Rajbaug campus where there are several other institutions (Engineering college, Film institute, Design university) providing our learners with higher education institutional laboratories and professors. This unique opportunity keeps it confident that its students can attend university-level labs to support their innovative ideas and projects.

Gurukul employs the best industry leaders to motivate and guide students and teachers. Its leadership is a dedicated, knowledgeable and experienced team that stays on the school campus 24X7 to ensure there is never a time when there is a lack of guidance and support.

Experienced and highly qualified teachers are handpicked and recruited to teach the IB curriculums. Being a boarding school, it is another beneficial option that about 60 per cent of our teaching staff stays on campus, providing support for its residential scholars through evening prep classes, clubs and sports. Most of Gurukul’s staff are IB examiners, which puts them in an advantageous position. They are better trained and experienced to support learners.

Character-Building Ecosystem

Opportunities are in abundance at Gurukul. The learners can pick and choose from the academic, sports, co-curricular and community service opportunities, both locally and globally.

The multicultural, Multilingual and Multinational community of students and teachers at Gurukul makes it an international institution in letter and spirit. Its classrooms thrive in diverse cultures and ethnicities, enabling the learners to develop an internal mindset.

University Placements are another feather in its cap. Gurukul is reaching a 100% placement status soon. It organises Global Universities Fair annually to provide its learners with university options. Mr Venugopal adds, “We have become a favoured institution where most of the world universities visit and look forward to recruiting our learners in various colleges and courses.”

Immersive and practice-based learning gives them insights into understanding core subjects deeply. They also gain critical thinking, logical reasoning, creative writing, research, and inquiry, making connections between things and deriving conclusions, working in teams, being mindful of cultural diversity and imbibing inclusion and acceptance.

Surmounting Adversities

Revealing that the adversities faced were different and unexpected, Mr Venugopal says that initially, the challenge was to make the parents aware of the IB curriculum and how it benefits the students. It was also about scaling up the scope of the school’s offerings. At present, the challenges include a post-pandemic return to in-person classrooms and keeping the students involved while practising all social distancing and precautionary norms to ensure the safety and health of the students. Additionally, the challenge in an increasingly interconnected world is setting up meaningful collaborations with overseas institutions to bring experiential and educational and cultural exchange opportunities for our students.

Techno-Logical Knowl-Edge 

A professional with a modern outlook, Mr Venugopal says that technology has enabled learning through observation, involvement, and actual experimentation. It has made interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary study possible, thus giving rise to a plethora of opportunities that did not exist before. It has also increased students’ access to knowledge and materials that may be remote but available through the digital world.

Lastly, it has helped students self-learn and feel empowered as they tackle concepts at their own comfortable pace. In the future, technology will drive most education and a hybrid learning model combining in-person classrooms and virtual spaces.

The Guiding Map

As advice to budding professionals, Mr Venugopal states that international schooling requires careful planning, recruitment of qualified staff, maintaining high standards of pedagogy, continuous professional upskilling, and, above all, keeping the ethos of internationalization alive in everything that is done. Anyone venturing into international schooling must keep these salient points in mind.

Ambitious and Dynamic Vision

By divulging his plans for the institution, Mr Venugopal says they hope to set up more school branches in the coming years. They also plan to add more facilities, technologically enabled study spaces and state-of-the-art labs and incubators to commercialize the innovative ideas of their students. He ends on an expansion note, “Collaboration with industry for meaningful summer internships and summer schools are also on our long-term vision.”

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