Ontario-based GTB International School excels in province's maths standard

When most Canadian schools failed miserably in showcasing their mathematics standard, the year-old GTB International School surpassed all with 92 percent students being above the provincial standards in mathematics at Grade 6 while 100 percent were above the said standards at Grade 3.

GTB International School in Brampton, Ontario, with its prime focus on maths and literary skills aims to create better logical minds for future.

Principal Sanjiv Dhawan proudly said, “Unlike most schools in Canada where calculators are permitted for students to do simple calculations from Grade 3 onwards, we strictly do not encourage the use of calculators unless they complete Grade 8.”

He further explained, “When a student completes school and prepares for University he/she has to appear for two mathematics papers. One allows you to use calculators and the other has no calculator usage. Students who are used to calculations with a calculator find it difficult to succeed at this stage.”

Dhawan, a professor of management studies, said, “The ability to do simple calculations on your own helps you to be strong in logic and improves your decision making skills in life.”

However, Dhawan points out that it is only calculators that are banned in his school in the formative years of child development. “We have projectors, computers to educate students wherever they are required for better understanding. And you won’t believe we even have Xboxes in our classrooms for children to use too,” said Dhawan.

The proud principal shared his achievement as most of his students from Grade 12 were highly accepted in most prestigious universities of Canada. “All our students of Grade 12 were selected by top Canadian universities like University of Toronto, McMaster University, Western University, Schulich School of Business and more,” added Dhawan.

Dhawan believes having a small teacher-student ratio in his school helped him to achieve this feat of excellence. “We have maximum 16 students in each class. Small class structures enhance the teacher-student bonding.  It also permits the teacher to pay any special attention if required to hone a child holistically,” explained Dhawan.

Apart from mathematics, the school also focusses strongly on languages. “If you are in Canada, you have to know English as well as French. Most schools start French when a child reaches Grade 4, except for schools in Quebec region or French dominated schools. But for us, we believe when a child is small he/she has the potential to learn as many languages as he/she can. So we start French and another third language as soon as the child reaches Grade 1,” said Dhawan.

When it comes to learning a third language the school believes in children learning their native languages. “If you are a Punjabi, we make sure you learn Punjabi, otherwise there is a selection of languages that we offer to our students from Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil, Spanish, Russian, Italian and more,” declared Dhawan.

(Reporting: Debarati Mukherjee)