Reekrit Serai
Managing director, Satluj Group of Schools, Punjab, Haryana and Jammu & Kashmir

An alum of University College London, Reekrit Serai is the Chandigarh-based managing director of Satluj Group of Schools comprising 13 institutions with 30,000 students and 1,000 teachers in north India. Serai is also co-founder and director of Rumour Books India, a reputed English-language trade publishing house and angel investor.

Satluj Group of Schools’ Covid-19 response. It was tough initially. Everyone — students, parents and teachers alike — were thrown in the deep end and struggled to adapt to online teaching-learning. Eventually, we shifted to Microsoft Teams and Google Classroom, which have turned out to be effective platforms. The efforts of our teachers — and indeed all staff — needs to be applauded as they have quickly adapted to digital education.

Major challenges confronting Indian K-12 education in the Covid era.

A sudden shift to the online medium has led to adaptability problems for parents and students while they battle poor Internet connectivity. More than 800 million children worldwide don’t have access to the Internet or smartphones. The digital divide is huge. Also there is lack of parent trust in the education system as evident from the fees payment debate. Moreover with higher education and the job market in dire straits, it’s become even more important for educators to equip students with employable skills. 

State governments’ fees waiver/ deferment circulars to private school managements.

At Satluj schools, we’ve paid our staff, including non-teaching and grade IV employees, 100 percent salaries since March 2020. Yet there is conspicuous indifference about these people — neither the government, parents, nor society bothers about them. Because if we don’t collect fees how will private schools pay staff salaries? How will businesses associated with us, such as suppliers, edtech companies, contractors, bus operators survive? How will schools pay for the world-class infrastructure they’re providing to students? No rent, electricity, tax or EMI waivers have been announced for private schools by government. Do middle class parents who don’t avail the option of free-of-charge government schools, want private schools to collapse? The country will go back to the dark ages.

Top 3 proposals for reforming K-12 education in India.

• The prime lesson of the Covid-19 pandemic is that old ways of teaching and administering schools is over. With blended learning children will be freed up to pursue co-curricular interests and develop increasingly important life skills.
• School curriculums should integrate technical training and workplace experience at secondary and senior secondary school levels to boost the employability of students.
• Train teachers well and pay them well. Teachers are paid a pittance when compared to other professionals such as lawyers, doctors, etc.

Future plans. We’re expanding and plan to promote 75 new schools by 2025. Apart from our flagship Satluj Public Schools, we’ve launched two new franchise brands named Satluj World Schools and Little Satluj Preschools.