Principal's message

Principal

M.Phil. Mathematics, Quaid-i-Azam University. Twenty-three years in classrooms, twelve of them at Dewan. Still teaches one Grade 11 section every year.

Prof. Ayesha Kamal Dewan

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Every October a parent sits across from me and asks about our board results. It is a fair question and I always answer it: last year 96 percent of our candidates passed, and 41 percent secured an A grade. But I would rather be asked a harder question, which is whether their child will be noticed here.

Results are a lagging indicator. They tell you what a school did two years ago with a group of students who are already gone. What tells you more is whether a teacher notices the week a confident girl stops raising her hand, or the term a cheerful boy starts sitting alone at break. That noticing is the whole job, and it is much easier in a school of 1,240 than in a school of 4,000.

So we have kept the school deliberately mid-sized. We cap classes even when the waiting list is long, which costs us money every single year. We keep our teachers by paying them properly and giving them time to plan together. Seventy-one percent of our faculty have been here more than five years, and that continuity is worth more to your child than any facility we could build with the same money.

None of this means we are relaxed about academic work. We are not. Homework is set every day from Grade 3 upwards, examinations are properly invigilated, and we tell parents honestly when a child is drifting. What we refuse to do is turn eleven years of a childhood into a rehearsal for two examination papers.

If you are considering Dewan for your family, please come and see us rather than judging from a website. The campus is open to visiting parents every Tuesday and Thursday morning during term. Walk the corridors, look into a classroom, and ask the students what they think. They will tell you the truth faster than I will.

Prof. Ayesha Kamal Dewan Principal