Bharat & Neelam Malik
Founder-directors, AryaGlobal Group of Schools
Bharat & Neelam Malik are promoter-directors of the Thane (Maharashtra)-based AryaGlobal Group of primary-secondary schools with an aggregate enrolment of 5,300 children. The group’s institutions include the Arya Gurukul School, Little Aryans Pre-K and St. Mary’s High, Kalyan. The latter is ranked India’s #1 budget private school in the EducationWorld India School Rankings 2020-21.
How satisfied are you with the CBSE-affiliated Arya Gurukul School’s switch to the online mode of learning over the past year?
Our schools were on the path to digitisation even before the pandemic started. The lockdown accelerated the process. We were a certified Microsoft Aspire School pre-pandemic and currently we are a Microsoft Showcase School with all our teachers Microsoft certified. Therefore, the transition to online learning was smooth not only for academic learning but for all co-curricular activities. Our Little Aryans Pre-K preschool also received good response from parents. They are enthusiastically sending their children’s activities through Flipgrid app accounts provided by us.
To what extent have you been successful in continuing the learning of children in the low-priced St. Mary’s High, Kalyan?
In St. Mary’s High too, we moved to online education last year. But many of our children didn’t have digital devices and Internet connectivity. We overcame the challenge by ensuring constant communication between teachers and students/parents. Our teachers made recorded lessons available and our parents helped each other by lending digital devices to enable children maintain learning continuity. We also started a tech support helpline to resolve technical issues confronting students/parents. Moreover, we have provided all St. Mary’s children free textbooks for the second consecutive year, and free Microsoft software to students in all our schools.
Should schools be reopened now? Are your schools ready for in-person classes? What safety precautions have you instituted?
Our teachers and students are eager to resume in-person classes. Now that we have the experience of over one year’s online schooling, we are well-equipped to teach through a technology-enabled hybrid model, combining online and offline learning. We are ready to reopen our classrooms with detailed health and safety SOPs prepared in consultation with our PTA. All teachers and staff are partially or fully vaccinated.
Any other comment. In the initial days of the pandemic, public opinion was that private schools were taking advantage of the unprecedented lockdown. But despite such negativity, private school managements pressed on to invest all their savings and resources to maintain the learning continuity of students. Now 15 months later, there is widespread appreciation of private schools and teachers who have pulled out all stops to ensure children’s learning is not disrupted.
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