Pragna High School

If you take the Sarigam Bhandarwada Road in Umbergaon, you will find us right where the road curves a bit. Pragna High School has been part of this community in Valsad for many years now. The building is older, with heavy doors and windows that sometimes stick when it rains. And it rains a lot here. During the monsoon, the ground gets muddy, and we all spend a lot of time wiping our feet before going into the classrooms. The rooms are simple. We have old wooden desks that have names scratched into them from students who left years ago. Our teachers are mostly local people who have lived in Umbergaon their whole lives. They know the families and the kids well. There isn't anything corporate about how we run things. If a window breaks, we find someone in town to fix it. If the roof leaks, we put a bucket under it until the rain stops. We focus on the textbooks and the exams, making sure the students stay on track. The walk to school is long for some of the kids coming from the outskirts, so they arrive a bit tired, but they settle in quickly once the first lesson starts. It’s a practical place for learning. We don’t have fancy gadgets, just a lot of chalk and paper and daily routines that keep us busy from morning till late afternoon.