Once abandoned and deteriorating, a 140-year-old government school on Thimmaiah Road in Shivajinagar has witnessed a dramatic revival, thanks to a public-private partnership aimed at transforming foundational education.
The newly renamed Government English and Tamil Medium Higher Primary School unveiled a fresh building on Wednesday, featuring eight modern classrooms, including separate spaces for English-medium instruction. Classes for Standards 1 and 2 have already begun, with 30 new admissions, largely from the children of domestic and construction workers.
While the Tamil-medium section remains under government management, the English-medium wing is now supported by Inventure Academy, which supplies teachers, curriculum support, and co-curricular programs. The Prestige Group, via CSR funding, is backing this transformation.
The school’s former state was grim — after severe rains in 2020, its infrastructure collapsed, operations dwindled to two teachers and a few students, and its premises were littered with waste.
MLA Rizwan Arshad allocated constituency development funds for the reconstruction. A 1933 letter from then-inspector G. H. Cooke in the school’s archives recalls the school’s once-thriving status, praising an “educational exhibition” hosted there.
Nooraine Fazal, co-founder of Inventure Academy, noted they selected the school from five options primarily because of its spacious playground, reinforcing the academy’s belief in sports-led student growth.
Following the success of their previous project at Ramagondanahalli, where enrolment rose from 170 to 1,100 since 2019, the Academy hopes to recreate the same impact here — proving that public-private collaboration can reignite legacy institutions.