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A school built on a very old conviction
That children grow best beside adults who are unmistakably on their side.
Our story
Twenty-five years in Thiruvottiyur
Our Lady's Higher Secondary School stands on T. H. Road in Thiruvottiyur, in the industrial north of Chennai, and has served the families of this neighbourhood for more than a quarter of a century. Our twenty-eighth Annual Sports Meet was held in August 2025.
The school belongs to the Salesian Sisters of Don Bosco — the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians — a congregation founded in 1872 by St John Bosco and St Mary Mazzarello for the education of young people, and present in India for over a century.
What the Sisters brought to Thiruvottiyur was not a method of instruction so much as a way of being present. In the Turin of the 1850s, Don Bosco worked among boys nobody else wanted: apprentices, orphans, children of the new factories. He concluded that punishment reforms nobody, and that the adult's job is to be there — in the yard, in the corridor, at the gate — before trouble begins rather than after. He called it the Preventive System.
A great deal has changed since. The conviction has not.
The Preventive System
Reason, religion, loving-kindness
Three words that decide, in practice, how an adult in this school behaves towards a child.
Reason
Rules are explained. A child who understands why the gate closes at nine has learned something; a child who only fears the consequence has learned nothing that will outlast us. Discipline here is meant to be intelligible.
Religion
We are a Catholic school and we do not hide it. We are also a school of Hindu, Muslim and Christian children, and the moral formation we offer is meant for all of them. Offered, never imposed. All faiths welcome.
Loving-kindness
Amorevolezza — affection that the child can feel, not merely affection that the adult intends. It shows in being known by name, being missed when absent, and being corrected quietly rather than in front of the class.
Vision & mission
What we are trying to produce
Our vision. Young women and men who think clearly, who are kind by habit rather than by instruction, and who are secure enough in their own worth to leave room for the worth of others.
Our mission commits us to five things:
- To teach the State Board syllabus thoroughly, for understanding rather than memorisation.
- To know each student individually — their name, their home, and what they find hard.
- To keep the Preventive System in daily practice, not merely in the prospectus.
- To welcome children of every faith and community, and to educate them together.
- To keep the school within reach of the families of Thiruvottiyur.
By the numbers
The school at a glance
Governance
How the school is run
Our Lady's Higher Secondary School is a Christian minority institution, managed by the Salesian Sisters of Don Bosco (Province of Trichy). It is a government-recognised unaided school following the Tamil Nadu State Board syllabus, co-educational throughout, with English and Tamil as the media of instruction.
The school is part of the Our Lady group of schools in Thiruvottiyur, which also includes a CBSE school on the same campus.
Records and disclosures. Recognition orders, staff particulars, fee details and other statutory records are held at the school office and are available for inspection by parents and by the authorities on request.
Judge us on an ordinary Tuesday
Not on a prospectus. Telephone the office and come while the school is working.