Mary Lucas School and College 4.77

Mary Lucas School was started in 1977 as a small Hindi medium school, and it continued to run with very few children. There was no money in the school account even to pay the salary of the staff, leave alone the electricity, water and other school bills. There was plenty of vacant land around but no money to build a boundary wall to safeguard it.
In 1989 Mary Lucas School was handed over to the Boys’ High School & College to try and see if they could run it as a branch or annexe of Boys’ High School 7 College. In April 1990, Dr. (Miss) L. R. Anthony was appointed as the principal of Mary School and when she took over there were only 119 children in the school from Nursery to Class V, 12 teachers, 5 class IV employees, an unkempt compound, a broken and dangerous old house and without exaggeration – no chairs for the teachers to sit on – obviously there were more liability then assets.
In the year 1990, students were admitted in every class. Good efficient and energetic teachers were appointed in the school who had the willingness and commitment to work hard. Class Vi was started for the first time in the history of Mary Lucas School in July 1990and every subsequent year one class was added and by March 1995, the first batch of Class X students were ready to appear for the ICSE Board Examination. Paper work had started and every formality required to get the school recognised was being attented to from 1993 but because of the rapid growth of the school a few initial batches of students of Mary Lucas School appeared from Boys’ High School & College .
The strength of the school increased rapidly, at the end of the first academic year, there were more than 500 children. One of the biggest problems that we faced was that there were no classrooms apart from the old house. Time was a big factor; we had to fish in high tide, buildings could not come up so fast, hence the school had to make two big sheds which we used as make-shift class rooms, these came up in a quarter of the time and were cost efficient, Then year by year, more classrooms were constructed as the strength crossed the thousand mark, the two thousand mark.
Meanwhile the recognition work was going on steadily and after five years of relentless effort Mary Lucas School was given the “No Objection Certificate” in 1977. The school opted for the Indian Council for Secondary Education Delhi and in March 1998 the first batch of students appeared for class X. The results were good and everyone was satisfied with the progress that the school had made in such a short span of time. The first batch of class XII students appeared in 2000 for the ISC examination.
The school has grown rapidly; one floor after another was added and today by God’s grace and blessing, the school has two wings comprising of ground floor, first floor and second floor. There are 43 class rooms in these wings. The school has 3 well equipped laboratories, an up-to date computer lab. and a library with over 20000 books. Each class room is well ventilated, with enough furniture, cupboards, teaching aids and of course well qualified and trained teachers.
This is Mary Lucas School today, after several years of hard work and unchanged vision. One of the great management thinkers has said that the progress of an institution depends on efficiency & effectiveness. Efficiency is “doing things right” but the effectiveness, which is the key to success is “doing the right things”.