chennai the city corporation has decided to start 20 more english medium schools to bring children from all sections of society to classrooms the civic body has taken the initiative by taking a leaf out of the pune municipal corporations pmc books pmc introduced semienglish medium of instruction in all schools after the several students began dropping out from marathi medium schools under the scheme selected subjects are taught in english pmc had also introduced elearning in some of its schools where most subjects will be taught using computers with minimal use of books several government schoolteachers from chennai who had visited schools in pune are an excited lot we had visited several pmc schools and studied the facilities in those schools we also interacted with primary students there in english the volunteers of teach for india were also playing a key role in upgrading the standard of academics said maheswari kalpana headmistress of kottur chennai high school the decision to start new english medium schools came after the visit at present of the 284 schools in the city only 99 schools have english as the medium of instruction officials said that they are planning to implement the pune model in its schools most parents prefer to send their children to the english medium school the dip in admissions to tamil medium schools proves this we are also considering starting semienglish medium schools we also need the teachers to have good command over the language said an official a corporation official said many parents from poor background wish to send their children to private english medium schools but the fees in such schools are beyond their reach the facilities we provide in our schools are on a par with the ones offered in private schools the problem is that awareness about our schools remains low a schoolteachers who visited pune said there was a marked change in facilities in schools adopted by corporates pmc also conducts campaigns to bring more children to their schools the pune civic body has set aside 10 lakh to advertise about their schools