Personality Development

Prof. Geeta Kingdon
President, CMS

Dear Parents,

On 1st July, CMS celebrated the completion of its 60th year – its joyous and momentous Diamond Jubilee. The Founders – Drs Jagdish and Bharti Gandhi – started off the caravan in 1959 and their indomitable and cheerful spirit made the journey enjoyable for all who accompanied them. They were incredibly fortunate to work with many amazing individuals who appreciated their vision and their penchant for service, and who worked selflessly shoulder to shoulder with them.

Mr Roshan Gandhi
Director of Strategy, CMS

The school passed through the stage of infancy in the 1960s, of childhood in the 1970s, and of turbulent adolescence in the 1980s; it passed through the phase of maturity and infrastructure development in the 1990s; the first decade of the 21st century was a period of consolidation, and the last ten years have been a period of broadening the opportunities that CMS offers and of making a mark on the national and international scene.

We are delighted to report that when school rankings became available for the first time in 2013 and 2014, three CMS campuses ranked 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the national league table of all ISC affiliated schools, when all schools were ranked by their number of students with 90% plus marks, and 5 CMS campuses were in the national top 10 schools! It is also worth gloating about that last year three CMS students bagged the All India Rank 1 in the ISC class 12 board exam, with 99.5% agg. mark, and this year one student bagged the AIR 2 in ISC, and another bagged the AIR 2 in ICSE, plus 10 others got AIR 3 at the ICSE and ISC levels. These extraordinary statistics make us all feel on top of the world, though we realize that there is a huge lot yet to be achieved. And we realize that marks are a narrow measure of success – there is so much more to a human being. That is why it is very pleasing to note that today CMS has solid provision for college and study-abroad counselling, for psychological counselling, foreign languages teaching, western music teaching and orchestras, unparalleled international exposure, externally-assisted professional development and training of teachers, robust quality-assurance processes and experimentation with new and innovative pedagogical approaches. We have developed our sports infrastructure with astroturf playgrounds in many campuses and our students are doing well in state and national level sporting competitions; we have integrated a variety of appropriate technologies in our teaching-learning and in our administrative procedures; and provided valuable infrastructural upgrades including attractive libraries and robotics labs in several campuses. In terms of character-education, we have an effective Junior Youth Empowerment Program with an element of community service.

CMS has also recently launched its Cambridge International Section, which follows the International GCSE curriculum from the UK. The dedicated leaders and teachers of the section have enthusiastically undergone rigorous training to become pioneers in Lucknow of new, modern pedagogical methods that are in line with global best practices – teaching students a variety of cognitive skills, providing individualised attention, and providing them an environment in which they can flourish in both academics and extra-curricular activities. It is fitting that this Diamond Jubilee year is also the first year in which our Cambridge students have taken board exams – and received results which we can proudly declare to have been a resounding success.

All CMS campuses are hosting an international event a year, attracting school teams from all over India and typically from 5 to 25 countries each – on topics related to the subjects (e. g. computing, history, biotechnology, geography, economics, etc.), as well as on cross-cutting themes such as the environment, peace, interfaith dialogue, gender equality, character education, and law/order and justice. Several CMS campuses are hosting Model United Nations (MUNs). CMS students get unparalleled global exposure through participation in conferences and Olympiads abroad but also through international video-conferencing with schools in other countries. CMS is the only SAT examination centre serving the 220 million population of Uttar Pradesh; this enables CMS students to display their academic prowess and about 60 students have been receiving admission offers from many prestigious universities in the US, Europe and across the world each year, many with generous scholarships, including 100% scholarship offers from Ivy League US universities. The 60th anniversary of CMS is an occasion to pat ourselves on the back (in all humility) for these scintillating achievements, without forgetting that the journey to perfection never stops.

Parents, if a school is to be relevant in this age, it must prepare students to engage with the affairs of the age and to prepare mindsets for peace. Here we want to note how prescient and sagacious our Founders were, how much foresight they had in 1959 – when they chose Jai Jagat as the motto of CMS, and how far-seeing that they have consistently kept the preparation of students’ mindsets for world unity (vasudhaiv kutumbkam) and for world peace – robustly at the centre of the CMS agenda, vision and mission.

We salute all those current and past generations of staff whose contributions have given CMS success beyond the Founders’ wildest dreams and have prepared the children of Lucknow to make meaningful contributions to the progress and development of the country and the world.

CMS Alumnus Dy CM, Uttar Pradesh Dr Dinesh Sharma, inaugurating the
Diamond Jubilee Celebrations at CMS

It was a veritable sea of emotion as nearly 3000 CMS teachers and other staff members, alumni and students, took out a huge procession marching proudly with heads held high and armed with the values of Jai Jagat and Vasudhaiv Kutumkam in their being. It is these values which had withstood the ravages of time and led the school to become one of the foremost educational institutions of the country as well as the world. CMS Founders Dr Jagdish Gandhi and Dr Bharti Gandhi; CMS President, Prof Geeta Gandhi Kingdon; CMS Director of Strategy Mr Roshan Gandhi, Mrs Susmita Basu, Superior Principal; and all Principals of CMS campuses led the march.

The March symbolized the historic journey of CMS which began at 11 Station Road on the 1st of July 1959, when the newly married Gandhian couple Dr Jagdish Gandhi and Dr Bharti Gandhi planted the sapling of CMS with a mere strength of five students and just two teachers (themselves) on a borrowed capital of ₹ 300/- Today, the plant has grown into a huge tree and assumed gigantic proportions, CMS being recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest institution in the world in a single city with over 56,000 students on its roll and more than 4700 staff members in its 19 campuses dotted across the city.

Celebrating the joy of traversing 60 successful years, grand Diamond Jubilee celebrations were organized at the CMS Gomti Nagar Campus II auditorium, on 1st July 2019. Chief Guest, Deputy Chief Minister, Dr Dinesh Sharma, lit the lamp and formally inaugurated the function followed by scintillating educational-cultural items. Mr Barry S. Gusi, Chairman, Gusi Peace Prize, Philippines; Mr Rajan Shukla, IAS, Principal Secretary and many other eminent guests looked on.

CMS delegation leaves for Mauritius to participate in Quality Summit

Delegation to Mauritius

A 23-member delegation of CMS Kanpur Road and Aliganj I Campuses, left for Mauritius to participate in the 'Quality Youth Initiative Summit'. Mauritian Society for Quality Control Circle and World Council for Total Quality and Excellence in Education jointly organized this event from 22 to 27 July in Mauritius in which students from various countries competed and won prizes.

2 Principals selected for 'Future 50 Leaders Shaping Success' award