‘Making India a global education powerhouse’ – Key educators at SGEF2018 share with us the steps – Part II

Importance of child centricity

Dr Neeta Bali
Principal and Head of School, G D Goenka World School
To begin with, we are running an international curriculum which is very child-centric. We are running programmes that are being credited by IB and Cambridge. The child centricity is intrinsic to these programmes where the teacher is just the facilitator, not someone who controls the environment of the class. The focus is more on the needs of the students and what the student wishes to learn. The process is about what the student wants to learn and not what the teacher wants to teach.
Secondly, for us, the student is the most important stake holder. We believe in a three-way process; the school – the student – the parents. Since the student is our priority, the teaching-learning is mainly determined by the needs of the children. Also, we believe that every child may not be capable of excellent academic output. So, we have provided a number of activities for self-actualisation, like art, theatre and sports. To us, every child is an achiever. It is not important to excel in one field that we think is important, it’s about everyone finding their place under the sun. For example, our PYP (primary years programme) segment is absolutely non-competitive. On the recognition day, we believe that every child should be recognised for something or the other.

Moreover, we have very well-defined learner attributes in the IB as well as in Cambridge. For us, ensuring that children imbibe these attributes is more significant than the marks that reflect on the report card. For us, marks are not the reflection of their ability. I think, credit system is better than grades. It is about providing a holistic experience. We like our children to take responsibility for their own learning, we instigate a lot of initiative in the children, independence and the whole emphasis is on teaching the children to learn how to learn.

Our system is a completely research-oriented teaching system. So, the children are given adequate support but they are also encouraged to research on a given topic or on a given unit of enquiry. It is not content centric, it is research centric teaching. The teaching is inter-disciplinary with each other, particularly in the primary classes. As it grows to the 11th and 12th grade, there are units that are inter-disciplinary. For example, there is Theory of Knowledge which is completely inter-disciplinary and integrated into every subject. So, it is about maintaining connections. It is not so much about isolation running or standalone subjects; it is about inter disciplinary teaching and making connections.

Learning above education

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Sandeep Dutt
Chairman, Learning Forward India

We, in India, are perhaps more connected to the environment than the so-called advocacy world for the environment. Lot of the healthy things which we try to put in the curriculum as practices, are already there. We don’t look at them, we don’t appreciate them, but we need to understand that the more sensitive we are to our culture and value system, we will realise that we don’t need to focus on values, we are living with them. And that is the beautiful part of what we’ve been doing all these years. As we start getting optimistic about what we are doing, I’m sure we’ll add value to our education process.

For example, you see how people care for their pets, at absolute grass root level and how, with minimal consumption, they have happiness on their face. These are some important things that one really appreciates, particularly with limited resources. So, we need to realise that these resources are within us, not outside. That’s the strength of the system; where you find the resources within yourself. This has been an indigenous part. We are at the best possible time in our lives where we would actually see renaissance. Where we would be enlightened about what learning can do to you, not what education can do to you. That’s when we’ll be appreciative. Take your learning forward.

Child-centred classroom

Shukla Bose
Founder and CEO, Parikrma Humanity Foundation

‘He who opens a school door, closes a prison,’ this phrase by Victor Hugo many years ago continues to be pertinent even today.

I strongly and passionately believe that the demographic dividend that we often talk about will turn out to be a demographic disaster if we do not look at education as a strong influence on our society. I have always believed in the power of education; dedicating nearly 30 years of my life to creating an education platform which is equal, highly competitive and has a wholesome approach in transforming the lives of children. Thus, if we are not able to involve and integrate the lower social and economic segments of society, a disconnect will always continue to exist. We may talk about social unrest, terrorism and the law and order situation but we fail to look at their origin – it is this divide and inequity that exists resulting in dissatisfaction and frustration. With technology, the poor are getting to know what they don’t have. Earlier, we would call it a fatal approach to life but it is much more than that; it is access to knowing what you should have had but don’t have.

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Today, our foundation has 2000 children; we also continue to influence 63000 children from government schools by making their teachers realise why they’ve chosen teaching as a profession, resurrecting pride in it. We are making educators understand that a child-centered classroom is wholesome and less stressful while giving them greater joy.

Therefore, if we want to take India to a global platform, we need to address such issues as we cannot be happy with just 20%o of our population being educated.

Progressive mindset

Skand Bali
Principal, The Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet

For learning to be progressive, the community and its mindset needs to be shaped like that; I have set up a department in my school, working closely with me, called the department of progressive learning. A person has been employed to work towards the progress of this department wherein all committees come together. We are trying to incorporate the learning environment not only in students and teachers but also in the sub-staff, support staff and parents as well. Further, as part of the department, we have started a programme called the quality circles. It is a unique concept of critical thinking and positive thinking with different parameters working together. Another important step taken by our school is of creating a blend between the technological revolution and the traditional Indian way of learning.

Research says that the responsibility of a child is 30% of the school’s and 70% of the parents; whereas I feel the responsibility should be 100% of the school and 100% of the parents. Leadership plays a key role in understanding the parents’ opinion, ideas and involvement; I believe schools or leaders who are worried about the extent of parental involvement are the ones who have something to hide.

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The powerhouse effect

Dr Swati Popat Vats
President, Podar Education Network, Early Childhood Association, India

When we talk about becoming a global powerhouse, it is necessary to understand the powerhouse effect, as it requires you to always move ahead instead of being stagnant. It is urgent that we address the stagnant practices pulling us down. We identified two practices; first, there has been too much emphasis given to traditional methods of writing and providing worksheets. Thus, we decided to weed out cursive writing. Then, we questioned why are we making children write on four blue and red lines, when eventually they’ll have to write on two lines; the shift makes the child go berserk when they go to primary school. Also, why are we using red pens when it clearly upsets children?

Usually, schools put the laborious task of writing at the mere age of two; instead, we prepare the child for ‘readiness’ at the age of two. We focus on preparing the child’s muscles through play and activity. If parents want their child to write at the age of six, we start at the age of four without stressing out the child during his or her early years.  But how do you convince parents? We gave them logic through workshops, books and blogs, because no parent when given logic would want to torture their child. Often, they’re worried about their child’s adjustment in high school. However, if we give them logic about the importance of foundation years in shaping the child’s healthy adjustment, they understand it. We took many workshops and realised that it is extremely important to reach out to parents and solve their queries. And it can only happen when the teacher who they’re dealing with on a day-to-day basis is convinced. Here, the role of teacher training comes in as teachers must understand the parents’ queries and the why of what they’re doing. Everything comes down to logic and people respect doctors and engineers because they have a logic behind everything. Similarly, if teachers will provide logic for sandplay or waterplay, and why they’re doing away with cursive writing, parents will understand. They need to drop that vagueness and look for logic in their teaching instead of doing it because it is a fad or a school regulation.

Secondly, India did not have a curriculum initially. So, we studied the curriculums around the world including Te Whariki of New Zealand, EYLF of Australia, EYFS of UK, and High Scope of USA to understand the best suited curriculum for India. We narrowed down to EYFS or the Early Foundation Stage. It has seven areas of learning which gives you a structure but also the freedom to plan. Another advantage to the curriculum is that the observation and assessment of the seven areas with every month provides a map of the child’s growth. For example, if a child is 23 months old, what should he or she have achieved by that time. I love that the assessment doesn’t tag the child as an A or B grader; instead it has emerging, developing, and secure. Through the observation map, parents can know that their child is emerging in a particular skill or on the right path of development or has already secured it. It also helps to identify developmental delays and provide help at the right time. The EYFS is given to the parents during an open house wherein they’re asked to use the map and observe their child at home; if they feel that their child is doing something at home but not in school, we can bridge that gap as well.

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It was this effectiveness and specificity of the curriculum that delivered results for our schools. Suddenly, from a school struggling with just 18 admissions because of these “high funda” ideas, we reached to 55000 admissions with 395 centres.

Learning needs to be fun with logic; we developed a programme called Symphonics for language learning along with the Cambridge program called Numicon for teaching maths. Numicon includes Number Magic, a programme where children first learn to touch and feel numbers, play with them and make associations. Even in the worksheets, the programme has three formats including the figure, number and the Numicon tiles. For example, a child will count the number of balls presented on the table and then, colour the numicon tile, which corresponds to that number. This way learning becomes more of thinking rather than blind doing. We, as educators, need to allow our children to look around and learn from their environment, which is also the third teacher. In Early Childhood Association, we make people send us their best practices and we award them to promote that practice and allow others to replicate it.  

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