Five Coimbatore Corporation schools will soon turn ‘smart schools’. They will have modern classrooms with multimedia boards, wi-fi connectivity, clean toilets, purified drinking water and a facelift that will attract students.
Sharing the details of the project the civic body proposed to undertake, officials said that under the Smart Cities Mission, the civic body planned to take up 22 schools for improvement. Of those it would take up five schools in the first phase - R.S. Puram West School, R.S. Puram Boys School, another elementary school in R.S. Puram, the Corporation school on T.V. Samy Street and the Selvapuram High School.
The civic body would spend between ₹2 crore and ₹8 crore on each of the five schools depending on the requirement.
The work could be broadly classified as those to be taken up inside and outside the classroom. Inside the classrooms, the Corporation would provide better seating facilities to the students, a smart board capable of showing multimedia content, wi-fi connectivity, etc.
Outside, it would install water treatment plants, improve the landscape, rebuild toilets wherever necessary to improve hygiene, develop grounds and sports facilities and also give a facelif to the façade. The noon meal kitchen would also undergo change in that part of the energy requirements of the kitchen could be met with solar power, they said.
Apart from the infrastructure work, the local body would also improve teaching and learning in the schools as unless that exercise was taken up, the investment in infrastructure would not bear fruit and the students would not stand to gain, the officials said.
It planned to rope in non-government organisations it was working with in this regard.
At present, the Corporation was close to accepting the detailed project reports that were under preparation for the five schools. Once that was done, the execution would begin soon, the sources added.
