more than just school fees...

The great news of knowing that the three boys have found a sponsor for their school fees is truly huge. Yet there is still a long way to go as keeping a child in school as we all know necessitates a lot more. For the past three years little Utpal has been in school in we have learnt the ropes and know how much more than school fees is needed.

Often these get overlooked and ignored but they remain nevertheless essential. There are some costs that one may call unavoidable: uniforms, shoes, clothes etc and there are some that may look non essential but are those that ensure that every child is given his right to be a child: the pizza on PTM day or the tuck carefully doled out by the housemother.

So in spite of the fact that we need not worry about school fees we still need to ensure that all the add ons are on sched!

This is how it looks:

Books and uniforms: ~ 10 000 Rs
Home clothes for week ends (summer and winter) ~ 5000
Shoes twice a year as they seem to out grow them (school shoes, white PT shoes, bathroom slippers, week end shoes _ sports or floaters) ~ 1500
Undergarments summer and winter: 1500
Toiletries (soap, shampoo, cream, hair oil) 1000
Tuck (biscuits, etc) 1000

Over and above this there is transport component as we have to fetch and drop them several times:
april(term begins) may (summer holiday) july (term begins) august (2) (rakhee) october (2) (dusserah) november(2) (diwali) (2)december (xams) january (term begins)plus a couple of PTMs where we have to go. Each trip costs about 800 Rs and thus the transport cost is about
15 000 or 3000 per child.

On PTMs we take the kids out for the day to the local market at dwarka and the popular demand is Pizza and Pepsi: another 200 per kid

So all in all the add ons would come to about 25 K per kid per
year....