Getting to fly in an aeroplane for the first time, S. Moorthy of Class X was feeling excited and nervous. “It was scary when the flight took off and landed,” he said.
Moorthy was among the 20 Class X students, all boys, from the Government High School in Kannarpalayam near Karamadai who flew to Chennai on Saturday morning from Coimbatore for a free tour of the capital city. The students flew with their teachers and parents, making it a total of 54 passengers, most of whom have never travelled on a flight before.
S. Gnanasekaran, president of the Parent Teacher Association of the school, said tour expenses were borne by his educational trust.
He told The Hindu that the students visited several iconic attractions of Chennai.
When asked about the inspiration for the initiative, Mr. Gnanasekaran recounted how he encountered a group of students from a private school in Coimbatore during one of his trips to the U.S. two years ago. “Looking at them, I thought why can’t government school students also go on a flight like this,” he said. The girl students of Class X got to fly to Chennai on June 29 on a similar trip, Mr. Gnanasekaran said.
R. Prema, headmistress in-charge of the school, said the long-term purpose of the trip is to reduce the dropout rate in the school and to increase the pass percentage in government schools.
Echoing similar sentiment, S. Ramachandran, the tour coordinator and a resident of Kannarpalayam, said that while the tour was intended to de-stress the students, he hoped that such measures might attract students towards government schools in the future.
