Tag Archives: Mohammad Mohsin

Mason’s son scores 600/600 in Karnataka PUC

Amazing Feats, Education, FREE : Accomodation, FREE : Food, Karnataka (under research project), SCHOLARSHIPS, , , , , , , , , ,

Mannur Village (Gulbarga District), KARNATAKA :

Mateen Jamadar with his parents, mother Razia Begum and father Nabisaab. Photograph: Kind courtesy Mohammad Mohsin

A teenager who doesn’t need to be told to study, who makes no demands on his parents even while preparing for his board exams — and then goes on to score a perfect 100%.
Jyoti Punwani salutes Mateen Jamadar’s scholastic achievement against all odds.

He’s 18, but looks 15.

A teenager who doesn’t need to be told to study, who makes no demands on his parents even while preparing for his board exams – and then goes on to score a perfect 100%.

Meet Mateen Jamadar, the pride of Mannur village in Gulbarga district, for having scored 600/600 in Karnataka’s PUC (pre university course) exam, the results of which were announced on Friday, July 23, 2021.

His father Nabisaab works as a mason on construction sites in the village, earning about Rs 500 a day; his mother Razia Begum cleans her neighbour’s field all day to come home with barely Rs 150.

Both parents have studied upto Class 10 and wanted their three sons to study further, but their eldest had to give up after Class 10 thanks to an eye affliction. He is now handicapped and at home, unable to work.

Their second son has done well, he’s a constable in Bengaluru; but it is their youngest who has brought them fame they had never imagined.

Razia Begum says she knew Mateen would do well. “Since he was a child he would come home and sit with his books,” she recalls. “No playing, no roaming around.”

That made Mateen his village school topper; he scored 619 out of 625 in his Class 10 Boards.

Mateen says he expected to do well in the PUC. This year, the evaluation for the final PUC exam had to be done based on previous performance since the exam was not held due to COVID-19 restrictions.

“I had scored 98.7% in my 10th and around the same in my First Year PUC,” he says over the phone. “I thought I would get 99%.”

Always fond of studies, Mateen decided to seek out a good college after completing his 10th from the government school in his village. The PUC college in his village wasn’t up to the mark.

His quest took the village boy more than 600 km away from his home to the MMU PU College in Ramanagara. The magnet that drew him there was the hostel run by the Rahman Education Foundation in Ramanagara city.

The Foundation provides free stay for five years to meritorious boys to prepare them for the UPSC exams. The stay includes not just food, but also access to teachers, computers, sports facilities, and lectures by visiting IAS and Karnataka Administrative Service officers.

It was one such talk by IAS officer Mohammad Mohsin that made Mateen decide his final goal — the IAS. “The IAS gives you respect,” said the youngster.

Mateen, third from right with his hostel mates.

Mohsin, a Karnataka batch IAS officer hailing from Bihar, tells Rediff.com that the Rahman Foundation had invited him to spend half a day to motivate their hostelites. “I told the boys that no one from my family had ever joined the IAS; we are a business family. But I wanted to do something for the country.”

It was Mohsin who brought Mateen Jamadar’s achievement to the world by tweeting (external link) about him. “I wanted to show students that poverty need not mean the end of the road,” said Mohsin.

It may well have become so for Mateen.

Forced by the lockdown last year to return home as his hostel shut down, Mateen had to depend on online teaching. When he left for college, his parents had given him a simple phone, just good enough to stay in touch. Students were anyway not allowed a phone by the hostel authorities. The latter would keep the students’ phones with them, and give them back for just one hour every Sunday to call up home.

That phone was no use for online classes. To buy himself an Android, Mateen had to use his annual scholarship of Rs 6,000 given by the Karnataka government, but even that wouldn’t have been enough had his father not dipped into the funds he had saved slowly over the years.

Of course, that meant working harder to make up, but said Nabisaab, “We have to do that much for our children; and this boy has turned out to be so clever, we have to support him!”

 Mateen Jamadar

Nabisaab and Razia Begum used to work in Mumbai and Pune earlier, on construction sites. But it was the desire to educate their children that took them back to their village, said Nabisaab.

His youngest son has made sure that’s a decision he will never regret. As Mateen said, “More than me, my parents are overjoyed at my result.”

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com

source: http://www.m.rediff.com / rediff.com / Home > Getahead / by Jyoti Punwani / July 27th, 2021

Minority School Shows the RTE Way

Community Involvement / Social Issues, Education, , , , , ,

Bangalore, Karnataka :

Seven-year-old Vidhya S carries a pile of books to her principal’s chamber. Her notes are neat, with all the right answers. Vidhya is one of eight children admitted under the Right to Education (RTE) Act quota at M M Nursery and Primary School, a Muslim minority institution in Tasker Town.

Although minority unaided schools are exempt from the RTE Act, this school took a decision two years ago to implement the quota in keeping with Section 12 (1)(c).

M M School’s move is in sharp contrast to the practice of some schools which claim “minority” status to avoid RTE Act obligations.

This school, however, admitted eight children (four boys and four girls) belonging to the Hindu community under RTE, of whom five are in Class 2 and three in Class 1.

“Our management knew that they didn’t have to comply with RTE, but I started looking and found there were so many parents in the neighbourhood who wanted to send their kids to school. They had to be provided with the opportunity to give their children education,” said principal Veena Nesam.

The school, which is managed by the Modi Masjid Education Trust, allotted five seats in 2012-13 and three seats in 2013-14 under the RTE quota. “In the interest of children’s education, the management agreed to go ahead with RTE. We are aware that we cannot expect any fee from these children,” she said.

“I have already spoken with my management on how we can sustain ourselves financially. We already have children whose parents are unable to pay fees,” Nesam said.

The school, located in a three-storey building opposite the Modi Masjid, has 350 children spread over Classes 1-8 and is permitted to use Urdu as its medium of instruction. Still, the school also teaches in Kannada and English. “My knowledge of Tamil helped me reach out to parents in the neighbourhood. Awareness among parents on RTE is low. All they know is that there is free education,” Nesam said.

When asked why other private schools were using the minority tag as means to keep RTE at bay, she said: “Many schools do not want RTE because of the financial burden it comes with. It is the 25 per cent clause that schools are wary of.”

In fact, the Bangalore North-3 BEO has sanctioned Rs 10,000 for admitting children under the RTE quota.

Nagasimha G Rao, convenor, RTE Task Force, lauded the school for having gone against the odds to implement the RTE quota.

As of July last year, the Department of Public Instruction has identified 288 certified religious and linguistic minority schools in the state.

However, it cannot issue any more minority certificates because of a pending case in the High Court, allowing schools to falsely claim minority status without certification.

“We cannot issue certificates as the previous government’s new minority definition was stayed by the High Court,” said Mohammad Mohsin, Commissioner for Public Instruction.

The new minority definition of the previous government required 2/3rd of the members of a school’s management to belong to a minority section with more than 75 per cent children belonging to that minority community.

“Now, because we cannot issue certificates, many schools have approached the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions for certification,” Mohsin said.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Karnataka / by Express News Service – Bangalore / February 14th, 2014