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Long before independence, two friends in Surat, Chunilal Ghelabhai Shah, a clerk in the postal department, and Jaikishandas Athawala, a journalist and social reformer, decided to set up a school. They aimed to provide quality education to all at an affordable rate, compared to the schools operating at the time.
Thus, in 1905, the Sarvajanik Education Society (SES) was formed on the lines of the Deccan Education Society, Pune. It established the first school, named The English School, popularly known as ‘Dhingli school’ (also referred to as ‘Doll School’), which operated from a private lawn in the Gopipura area of Surat.
On October 1, 1912, Sarvajanik Education Society was registered in the government records as a philanthropic organisation run by a trust.
According to the centenary volume of the SES, Chunilal Shah, an alumnus of the erstwhile Baroda College, now MS University of Baroda in Vadodara, whose father was a teacher in a government school, realised that missionary schools charged high fees for an English-medium education.
Their fee was Rs 8 per month for Classes 1 and 2, Rs 12 for Class 3, so the Doll school decided to charge eight paisa for Classes 1 and 2, while the highest fee was Rs 1.80 per month.
The first batch saw 11 students being enrolled. While the medium was English, the Sanskrit language was introduced in Class 3 and Gujarati after Class 5. Among the teachers were Ganesh Sahasrabuddhe, who came from Pune’s Deccan College; Narbheram Joshi, headmaster of Elphinstone College, Jamnagar; and Murshanker Vyas, headmaster of Vansda English School, who gave honorary services.
Its list of alumni has illustrious names like writers Kanhaiyalal Munshi, Jyotindra Dave, Chandravadan Mehta, former chief minister Hitendra Desai, former Governor of Delhi and chief vigilance commissioner of India M G Pimputkar (ICS), Ramon Megsaysay award winner and Gandhian Manibhai Desai), former Chief Justice of India A M Ahmadi, former Chief of Indian Army staff (Arun Shridhar Vaidya), and so on.
Its current list of alumni includes International table tennis player Harmit Desai; International triathlon player and South Asian champion Pooja Chaurashi; seven-time Guinness World Record holder in martial arts Vispi Jimmy Kharadi; international swimmer Ansul Kothari; Mehul Chitroda, gold medal winner in yoga at an international competition in Taiwan; and Anjali Sangle, gold medal winner in the Asian powerlifting event in Hong Kong.
At present, over 28,000 students are studying in schools, colleges, and other courses at 32 education institutions run by the SES.
Among these seven are self-financed primary schools, seven secondary grant-in-aid schools, and a secondary self-financed school, followed by six grant-in-aid colleges affiliated to Veer Narmad South Gujarat University, eight self-financed colleges affiliated to Sarvajanik University (The Gujarat government granted it a private university status in 2021), and three research centres.
In 2022, the University Grants Commission (UGC) granted “autonomous college status” to the Sarvajanik Education Society (SES)-run Sir P T Savajanik College of Science for a period of 10 years.
SES chairman Bharat Shah said, “Our society runs on donations, and we charge minimum fees, but we impart quality education to the students and provide other facilities.”
“The goal is to ensure that no student in the city is left behind in education. For students who are unable to pay the fees, we have scholarships. We also have two hostels for girls and one for boys, catering to students from neighbouring tribal villages in South Gujarat. The charges of these hostels are minimal, with all facilities.”
Shah said the SES has plans to set up a multispeciality hospital. “We will also start a medical college in the future.”
The university also runs a research centre, where students pursuing PhD and MPhil get the advantage of an age-old library containing a rare collection of manuscripts. Apart from this, the society also operates the Dr Nimesh Vashi Centre for Environmental Engineering and Research.
Apart from academic education, the society also operates a music school for women, which offers evening classes.
Shah said, “The society runs education institutions that have classes with cutting-edge technologies – smart board, smart classrooms, e-learning, audiovisual system, online education, computer laboratory, etc.”
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