They came visiting a authorities college in Nadakkavu. Again residence in Srinagar, like it's in a lot of India, authorities faculties meant the final resort, the place the place you went as a result of non-public faculties have been unaffordable. Their very own college, the federal government Women Larger Secondary Faculty (GHSS) in Kothibagh, might quickly be an exception, having simply completed a serious renovation impressed by “the Nadakkavu mannequin”. This journey to Kozhikode was to see first-hand what their college might ultimately grow to be.
Earlier this month, in a New Yorker interview, editor David Remnick posed a query to Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old socialist Democrat who's the frontrunner to be New York Metropolis's subsequent mayor, in regards to the disaster in its public faculties: How can we make our public training such that even when you've got the means, it's nonetheless the place you select to go? Is it a funding query, or one thing deeper?
The query in all probability finds an unlikely reply midway the world over, in these two unlikeliest of Indian cities, 1,500 miles aside, within the snow-capped valley of Kashmir and the tropical solar of Kerala.
THE GOOD SCHOOL
On the authorities Vocational Larger Secondary Faculty (VHSS), Nadakkavu, within the coronary heart of Kozhikode metropolis, it isn't uncommon to identify former college students scaling the compound wall. They don't seem to be breaking in to steal or vandalise. They're making an attempt to catch a glimpse of what they missed—renovated corridors, a brand new library, science labs. The drab college they attended has grow to be one thing else fully. One thing the place they'd proudly ship their kids to.
The architect of this transformation and the same one present process in Srinagar is Faizal E Kottikollon, a Dubai-based billionaire businessman, who hails from Kozhikode. His journey from metal scrap commerce to highschool reform reads like a parable of recent capitalism discovering its conscience. His father based Peekaay Metal—which imports metal scraps from China, makes castings and provides to US-based firms—a enterprise so globally built-in that Gaza battle and Crimson Sea piracy have an effect on their backside line.
Faizal, as he prefers to be referred to, constructed a metal foundry, Emirates Techno Casting, in UAE, remodeling a polluting, red-category enterprise right into a inexperienced one, and bought it to Tyco Worldwide in 2011 for $400 million. He later based the Dubai-headquartered conglomerate KEF Holdings. However wealth, he found, was merely a device. “I made wealth via data,” he says, “for which I thank the training system in Kerala.”
The Nadakkavu college experiment started in 2018 with a easy realisation {that a} mum or dad wouldn't ship their kids to a authorities college if they may. The infrastructure was crumbling, however extra damaging was the cultural inferiority complicated. Non-public faculties with “posh, English-speaking college students and clear corridors” had grow to be aspirational totems.
Faizal determined to do one thing about it. He earmarked ₹16 crore to revamp the infrastructure, ₹7 crore for soft-skills improvement like lecturers' coaching, and partnered with the then MLA, Pradeep Kumar, a frontrunner of the ruling Communist Celebration of India (Marxist), who chipped in with ₹5.5 crore from his improvement fund. Together with the then college principal, Beena Philip, they got down to reimagine what a public college could possibly be.
At the moment, it's a case research of what public infra might be with a bit of little bit of creativeness. Scottish architect William Cooper designed the corridors that invite lingering, studying corners that encourage contemplation and a library housing greater than 25,000 books. The primary corridor, with excessive ceilings, doubles as the college's social hub. The eating corridor seats 2,000 college students and serves each free meals and paid burgers. There are three basketball courts, two badminton courts, soccer and hockey fields with astroturf and a fitness center. All free.
Greater than 80% of its college students come from working-class, if not poor, households. Their uniform features a navy-blue coat, the type seen in elite non-public faculties. For youngsters, this element issues, it transforms issues. Their mother and father and neighbours are seeing them in blazers for the primary time. It offers them an identification past their financial circumstances.
The transformation has labored. The college that when struggled to fill school rooms now attracts greater than 2,000 college students who journey from so far as 16 km. It's ranked the second-best college in India and the very best in Kerala within the EducationWorld India Faculty Rankings 2025, a nationwide survey, within the class of state-funded day faculties.
From subsequent week, Bareen Rashid and Hibah Arshad from faraway Srinagar would be the newest beneficiaries of a silent college revolution that began in Kozhikode.
THE KASHMIR CHAPTER
The GHSS Kothibagh within the coronary heart of Srinagar's enterprise district of Lal Chowk has courses from kindergarten to XII. On October 27, J&Ok Lieutenant-Governor Manoj Sinha will inaugurate section 1 of the renovation undertaking, which features a new two-storey constructing for the center college. The subsequent section includes a brand new administration block and renovation of the upper secondary college buildings. The campus itself is present process a major bodily change with new buildings with fashionable amenities developing.
Again on the Nadakkavu college campus, soaking within the solar, the visiting college students from Kothibagh have been extra within the on a regular basis Kerala story. “Individuals are consuming on banana leaves,” marvelled Rashid, carrying the surprise of somebody discovering that the world could possibly be organised in a different way. “They're carrying jute luggage, how ecofriendly!” exclaimed Arshad.
The lady college students from Kashmir, sitting in a semicircle, have been nonetheless processing their second day in Kozhikode. They have been surrounded by college students who moved round in rhythms of day by day life that felt basically totally different. “Pupil ambassadors”, educated to information the fixed stream of tourists, approached every of them and walked them via the campus, carrying themselves with a confidence no curriculum might train.
For 3 days, the Kashmiri college students have been in a faculty the place the phrase “authorities” didn't imply “neglect” and was as an alternative a byword for high quality, a supply of satisfaction.
“The college's standing issues,” says Annet Irene Hermon, a Class XI pupil of Nadakkavu college. “When individuals be taught I now go to Nadakkavu, it means one thing—the rating, the amenities.” She adjusts her coat's collar. “And carrying this… I really feel totally different. I'm extra critical about my training. Like I'm a part of one thing greater.”
The Kashmiri college students additionally met the mayor of the town who, because it occurs, is identical Beena Philip, the college's former principal. The opposite architect of the undertaking, former MLA Pradeep Kumar, is the chief minister's political secretary. Good training, it appears, generates political capital.
“Have you learnt Vasco da Gama?” Philip requested them. The scholars knew—the Portuguese explorer whose arrival in Calicut (Kozhikode) in 1498 marked the start of European colonisation of India. The dialog moved to their college in Srinagar. Arshad, a Class IX pupil at Kothibagh, recalled the heat of that dialog: it's like everybody right here cared about what would occur to their college. It's like they needed her to succeed. It's like they have been invested in her transformation.
Kerala's college transformation undertaking, formally referred to as PRISM (Selling Regional Faculties to Worldwide Requirements via A number of Interventions), is being expanded to different establishments, with a budgeted outlay of ₹1,000 crore from the state authorities. In the meantime, the Faizal and Shabana Basis (FSF), co-founded by Faizal and his spouse Shabana, is taking that change past Kerala. FSF has spent ₹250 crore on this experiment in a number of cities. Aside from the full-scale transformation of colleges in Nadakkavu and Kothibagh, it helps infrastructure improvement in 10 faculties in Kerala, one every in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in addition to two in Uganda and one in Kenya. It's also hand-holding 1,200 faculties that need to emulate the Nadakkavu mannequin.
THE CHINAR SEED
Faizal considered transplanting the Nadakkavu success to Kashmir when he visited Srinagar in 2020, a 12 months after the abrogation of Article 370. He was a part of a UAE enterprise delegation exploring funding alternatives; it was his first go to to Kashmir.
Faizal took a shikara throughout the Dal Lake and talked to individuals alongside the banks and available in the market. The delegation's focus was retail areas, luxurious manufacturers—the same old markers of improvement. However as Faizal talked to individuals, he heard a distinct set of complaints—in regards to the lack of healthcare amenities and failing public faculties. They wanted, he thought, faculties greater than procuring complexes.
He met with Lieutenant-Governor Sinha and confirmed him a video of Nadakkavu college's transformation. “What are you able to do for us?” Sinha requested. “I informed him: Give me one college,” recollects Faizal. “It may be replicated throughout Jammu and Kashmir.”
Sinha purchased into the thought. They selected the federal government GHSS in Kothibagh. There have been 10,400 college students within the space however GHSS Kothibagh had solely 140 college students in KG to Class X. Many of the kids went to personal faculties. They shifted to state faculties just for Lessons XI and XII. The Kothibagh college's renovation, which might value ₹20 crore, started in 2021.
Nevertheless, probably the most consequential intervention, based on Faizal, is the trade programme beneath which the scholars got here to Kozhikode. “These children by no means exit of Kashmir,” he says. “These college students characterize the primary batch of younger leaders who need transformation. This initiative shouldn't be a one-time effort however an everyday, sustained engagement.”
OVER TO KOTHIBAGH
Standing amid flaming chinar timber in Kothibagh, principal-in-charge Sabahat Chalkoo is thrilled in regards to the new life her college is about to get. “It's an incredible intervention that fills the gaps in a authorities college. We're a prestigious college and this initiative offers us wings to fly,” she says.
The brand new constructing could have air-conditioned school rooms and robotics and STEM laboratories. All of the buildings are differently-abled-friendly. College students will get to work on digital circuits, chips, sensors and drones. FSF signed a memorandum of understanding with the J&Ok authorities in 2023 and has since performed at the least six coaching classes for lecturers.
“We have been uncovered to multifaceted studying approaches and educated to mentor college students in the very best methods,” says Maryam Akbar, a senior lecturer, who teaches geography. She was a part of the group that visited Nadakkavu college. “In Kerala, communities are robust stakeholders in public faculties, which makes the entire system accountable and accessible to college students.”
Her colleague, Humaira Shah, who teaches environmental sciences, says the ambiance in Kerala, in and across the college, was “vibrant and hopeful”. Zahoor Ahmad Sheikh, the coordinator of the renovation undertaking, says their Kerala expertise each revealed and magnified the need of going past the standard academic expertise. “We have to personal our establishments in addition to the scholars and transcend rote studying,” he says.
Khairat Muhammad, a retired trainer, provides a caveat: “Such philanthropic efforts must be beneath scrutiny to ship the outcomes they're meant to. They shouldn't fall prey to bureaucratic routines and purple tape,” he says.
Younger Arshad hopes that the scholars within the authorities faculties in Kashmir could have the identical alternatives and publicity accessible to college students in Kerala. Arshad says she received't overlook their days in Kozhikode.
VALUE OF EXCHANGE
On their final day, their new buddies from Kerala gave two conventional dance performances, oppana and kaikottikali, as a farewell piece. The youngsters from Srinagar demonstrated Kashmiri people steps. Then they tried Kerala's classical mudras or hand gestures whereas their hosts realized theirs. It was the form of night the place variations grew to become factors of connection, via curiosity, via laughter, via the straightforward act of making an attempt to know the opposite's traditions.
Nevertheless, the faces of the Kashmiri kids shifted after they have been requested if the Pahalgam assault—during which 26 civilians have been killed and which set off an India-Pakistan army battle—had any influence on their education. “We go to highschool like every other child anyplace else in India,” a pupil mentioned, her voice gaining an edge. “We don't have day by day shutdowns.” The group grew to become animated.
Kashmir is gorgeous, they insisted. Peaceable, too. One of many elders travelling with them invited Malayalis to return and see for themselves. The others clapped.
The scholars made it appear like they didn't carry the trauma of many years of turmoil that outlined earlier generations. They scroll Instagram, watch Netflix. Their identities, they insisted, belong to a shared fashionable consciousness that transcends geography.
Within the night, they went to the seashore. The second they noticed the ocean, all of them jumped out—they ran, received moist, constructed sandcastles. The form of issues children do when they're on a seashore.
The Nadakkavu college students requested about snow, the Dal Lake, what winter felt like within the mountains. The Srinagar college students requested about monsoons, about how in a different way humidity hit on the coast. The summary, grand phrases used to explain their respective states—Heaven on Earth, God's Personal Nation—collapsed into specifics: what does snow really feel like, melting in your palm; does humidity make it onerous to breathe?
When requested if they'd change something about Kerala, the Kashmiri college students discovered nothing wanting, nothing that wanted fixing. One pupil smiled and mentioned: “Possibly the climate.” The form of joke that lands in a different way in a spot the place children have stopped believing in limits.
