‘I wanted a school in which my son can gear up physically, mentally and socially’

Mohd Naved Jamil is the business unit head with IDC Technologies and proud father of Azlaan Siddiqui, class 1 student at Apeejay Noida. In an interview he shares his reasons for choosing the school, his son’s progress at school and his hobbies and interests. Edited excerpts:

Why did you choose Apeejay Noida over other schools for your child’s admission?

Many of my colleague’s children study at Apeejay institutions. From the angle of academics, I was very confident that this should be the school for my kid. But apart from that, I also wanted my child to develop the skills required for social interaction and extra-curricular activities. I must say, Apeejay institutions are highly competent in this matter.

Nowadays, people tend to enrol their kids in schools which are fully air-conditioned. I did not want this at all for my son. I want him to start with an environment where he can gear up mentally, physically and socially. The infrastructure of the school is really vast. For every division there is a separate ground. It’s really good.

Please tell us about your child and take us through his progress at school

He is doing really well. The online classes are very good, slowly he is recognising his teachers and classmates. Generally at his age, people learn by interacting but the online classes are so good that not only is he interacting with his classmates but he is also aware of their names.

He is a bit of an introvert in terms of meeting large numbers of people. He doesn’t prefer noisy or large gatherings. But other than that, if he is gelling with someone, he will slowly open up.

His favourite subjects are English and Maths. He doesn’t prefer Hindi (laughs). He loves exploring technology. He is really good at online gaming. Many parents don’t prefer their kids to go online and play games. But my son has the necessary facilities. He has been participating in online games and has received a lot of exposure at such a young age, thanks to that.

I play football, I wanted my son to play an outdoor sport as well but the pandemic struck and I could not take him out. So he has taken his own field i.e. online gaming and technology.

His favourite games are Call of Duty and Fortnite. Some people say that for kids these games are not good. Many say that these shooting based games hamper the mind. But in the base years if the kids have some kind of grooming and if you are monitoring your child, there is nothing to worry. If you go to Korea once, you’ll see small kids playing these kinds of games and mind you, they are a peaceful community. They are also No 1 when it comes to gaming. People should think about this.

Are the teachers engaging well with the students?

Yeah, definitely they are. He has been gelling with the teachers well. They love his way of working and he is up to the mark in academics. He has been catching up on Hindi. Actually he has caught the American accent from all these YouTube videos. But he is cooperating and slowly improving. All the teachers praise his work.

What is the best thing about the school?

There are too many things. The proximity, infrastructure, teachers and the education. For me, the main thing was education. I could have enrolled him in any international school and he wouldn’t have had to study Hindi then.

But I wanted him to grow practically. He should be groomed socially. Apeejay has an excellent track record in extra-curricular activities when compared to other schools. I don’t want to limit my son to the career options of medicine or engineering. There are so many other career opportunities.