Teacher-2-teacher

Looking back with anguish and regret

History teaches us one important lesson. Countries cannot grow their economies first and develop public education and health services later. The reverse is true. Unfortunately India has under-invested in these crucial services – Sarojini Rao is principal, Indus International School, Bangalore The on-going skirmishes and stand-offs at various points on the 3,488 km Sino-India border in the north-west stretching all the way to Arunachal Pradesh in the north-east, has brought the asymmetrical power balance between China and India into sharp focus. It is a matter of deep regret and anguish to recall that on October 1, 1949, when the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was proclaimed, newly independent India was educationally far ahead of our neighbour nation. India had a string of excellent British-style public — including boarding — schools around the country and well-reputed universities including the Presidency universities of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras established in 1857, and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (estb.1908). On the other hand in 1949, China was educationally and economically backward, devastated by the Japanese invasion. Seven decades later, the situation is completely reversed. While in India, 30 percent of the adult population is still illiterate, PRC is 96.8 percent literate, has a GER (gross enrolment ratio) of 81.7 percent in pre-primary education, high learning outcomes in its schools and higher education institutions, and significantly higher productivity in agriculture, industry and services. Moreover six Chinese universities are ranked among the Top 200 in the WUR (World University Rankings) league tables of the pioneer London-based rating agency QS and three in the WUR of Times Higher Education (THE). Not one of India’s 40,000 colleges and 1,000 universities is ranked among the Top 200 of either agency. There are two major causes for the relative backwardness of Indian education. First, the archaic pedagogy of rote memorisation of content continues to be encouraged to this day in the vast majority of the country’s 1.5 million schools. Opening young minds to develop the competencies of critical thinking, experimentation, research, innovation, design thinking, risk taking and problem solving which are of vital importance, is confined to a small minority of education institutions across the country. The second major cause of the pathetic condition of foundational K-12 education is the rock-bottom quality of education dispensed by India’s 6,846 teacher training colleges, 90 percent of them privately promoted, recklessly licensed institutions of professional development. The fact that barely 10 percent of the country’s 9 million primary-secondary teachers have passed TET (teacher eligibility test) despite being given a five-year time window to prepare for it, is testimony of the poor quality of the B.Ed degree awarded by teacher training colleges and endorsed by Indian universities. As a result, most teachers still believe their role is to teach and prepare students to pass examinations. Too many parents also believe that the purpose of education is to enable school students to get the best possible placements in prestigious colleges and universities. This dominant mindset has to change in the emerging highly technology-driven academic…

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Reforms required for democratic certification

– Bhuvana Anand is director of research at the Centre for Civil Society, Delhi. Tarini Sudhakar is a research fellow at CCS For the first time in 58 years of its history, the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has scrapped its school-leaving classes X and XII national exams. Thousands of students from schools affiliated with this and several state boards are grappling with the challenge of limited exit certification options. The shutdown of all academic institutions countrywide because of the Covid-19 pandemic, provides an opportunity to re-examine the possibility of multiplying exit options, to think beyond traditional school examination board certificates and democratise certification. Students who opt for traditional brick-and-mortar schooling in India usually write exams conducted by CBSE, Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE), state boards or offshore examination boards such as International Baccalaureate and Cambridge International (UK). These boards provide ‘exit-certification’ to students, signalling their readiness for higher education and the jobs market. However, traditional especially CBSE and CISCE certification, is not available for children who opt out of the conventional brick-and-mortar school system, e.g, homeschoolers or drop-outs. For instance, a teen who fails board examinations as a ‘regular candidate’ is eligible to write the CBSE examination as a private candidate. A regular candidate is “a student enrolled in a school, who has pursued a regular course of study in a school and seeks admission as such to the All India/Delhi Senior School Certificate/Secondary School Examination of the Board.” Private candidates are not permitted to write CISCE examinations. The only option they have is to write school-leaving exams of the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), state open school boards, or Cambridge International (UK). But these options provide limited, rather than clear, pathways to undergrad colleges. In a society that celebrates CBSE and CISCE toppers, NIOS and open school board certificates don’t carry much weight with parents or employers. They are perceived as an option for children unable to cope with traditional school curriculums. This adversely affects the credibility of certificates awarded by NIOS and open school boards. Indeed until 2015, the Pharmacy Council of India didn’t accept NIOS certification for admission into approved pharmacy study programmes provided by colleges and universities. Similarly in 2017, the Medical Council of India issued a notification disallowing students with NIOS and state open school certification to write the National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET) for admission into medical colleges. MCI cited lack of practical education in open schooling syllabuses as justification. Responding, the NIOS management argued that NIOS offers its courses through schools equipped with laboratories and its examinees are required to perform practicals. In 2018, the Delhi high court dismissed MCI’s disqualification order as unconstitutional and awarded parity to NIOS and open schools’ certification. Cambridge International (UK) — now known as Cambridge Assessment International Education (CAIE) — has run into problems with the Association of Indian Universities (AIU), a professional body that assesses the equivalence of certification awarded by foreign examination boards “to help people with…

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New technologies curative

– Sarvesh Shrivastava is founder and managing director of Eupheus Learning, Delhi In a country that produces millions of mint-new graduates, the ‘demographic dividend’ has yet to be encashed. In this situation, radical overhaul of the conventional education system has become an urgent national priority When Ginni Rometty, chairman, president and CEO of IBM, visited India in March 2019, her comments caused quite a stir. Instead of making a commitment to investing in India, she stated that generally speaking, Indians don’t have the skills required for employment at IBM, or in the high-end of the IT industry. Her candid comments highlighted this as a global problem. In the contemporary employment scenario the value of formal education has dropped, while certain skills have become exponentially valuable. ponentially valuable. This is not the first time that such a statement has been made about India. In 2017, Deepak Parekh, chairman of HDFC, said that 80 percent of Indian engineering graduates are unemployable. This damning indictment is endorsed by the India Skills Report 2019, which states that only 57 percent of final year engineering students are employable in top-ranked global and Indian corporates. These figures are corroborated by the Mumbai-based Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) which indicates that India’s current unemployment rate stands at 7.2 percent, which means that over 31 million people in the country are active job seekers. All these comments are harsh verdicts of India’s education system which has failed to unlock the potential of generations of students. Yet the plain truth is that India is a nation brimming with talent. Endowed with the youngest, and largest, workforce of any nation, the future is ours for the taking. Unfortunately, the education system has always prioritised rote learning and theoretical knowledge over application of knowledge. In a country that produces millions of mint-new graduates, the ‘demographic dividend’ has yet to be encashed. Instead, competition for every job vacancy is fierce and unemployment remains unacceptably high. In this situation, radical overhaul of the conventional education system has become an urgent national priority. It is submitted that India’s antiquated education system can be changed in three stages. First, new learning tools and products need to be introduced into the ecosystem to streamline and enhance the overall education experience of students. Among them: incorporation of Learning Management Systems (LMS); integration of gamification as a learning tool; and incremental usage of augmented and virtual reality technology. Popularisation of LMS is especially important as they are central, personalised databases through which students can access course material, upload assignments, and interact with faculty and co-learners. Moreover LMS which can be adapted to learner needs automates administrative processes enabling faculty and students to focus solely on teaching-learning and research. The second radical change required in Indian education is gamification, which infuses game mechanics and elements into school and college curriculums. When knowledge is presented in enjoyable, interactive formats, learners become engaged with learning, and improve their critical thinking and analytical skills. Content and concepts combined with AR and…

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Time to rethink history teaching

Over the past decade, we have witnessed unprecedented churning in India. Iconic leaders of the freedom movement including Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru have been criticised and reviewed as never before. Different groups in Indian society project new icons to take their place in what a historian has described as “history wars”. Often, these new icons have as complex a legacy as the ones they are vying to replace. But history wars are not an exclusively Indian phenomenon. The Black Lives Matter campaign that erupted after the horrific murder of African-American George Floyd has questioned why monuments to leaders of the southern confederacy of states that fought to maintain slavery and apartheid during the American civil war (1861-65) occupy pride of place in many of America’s cities. Earlier this week in a surprising initiative, the king of Belgium formally expressed regret to the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo whose experience of Belgian colonisation more than a century ago was one of the most savage and genocidal in modern history. Similarly a few years ago, Dalits in Maharashtra were harshly prevented from celebrating the bravery of a Mahar contingent that fought (on the side of the British) during the battle of Bhima Koregaon which led to the final defeat of the Marathas in 1818. Dalits are questioning why their history should remain invisible in modern India. This, in a nutshell is why teachers need to rethink how to teach history in primary-secondary education. For most school students, the study of history is restricted to memorising mind-numbing facts, figures and dates in a single narrative to be learned by rote and reproduced in exams. Moreover, history has repeatedly been pressed into the service of the nation or states and every year controversies break out over inclusions and exclusions in school history textbooks of different states. Therefore to rethink teaching history in schools, we must rethink history itself. On the one hand, there is the discipline of history and its practice with established research protocols, sources, standards of evidence and narrative styles. On the other hand, the discipline of history does not stand above the values of society and concerns about justice. E.H. Carr, the famous British historian, observed that history is the story of the past seen through present eyes. The narratives of historians are inevitably influenced by concerns of their times. If in the past, historians thought it was possible to write objectively about their chosen subjects based on research in government archives whose collection of documents was presumed to represent the most truthful version of events, contemporary historians tend to question the capability of anyone to write unbiased history even while consciously striving for objectivity. We dispute the presumption that official archives are the sole repositories of history. Moreover, in the past, history was written as the story of nations and great men. Today, history’s subject matter is considerably more varied, and includes narratives of groups at the margins of society. The imperatives of social justice make it…

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Preparing for the uncertain future: KG-Ph D education

With schools downing shutters worldwide, and learning having shifted online on a massive scale, a new era has dawned for KG-Ph D education. The novel Coronavirus aka Covid-19 pandemic, has upended lifestyles, and with production and usage of tablets, laptops and computers becoming ubiquitous, a new world of teaching-learning is taking shape. Projects, skills-building activities, maker spaces — the hitherto new mantras of education — are losing their sheen as learners struggle to find ways and means to apply theoretical knowledge. Future markers of professional success are likely to be radically different from the metrics of the past few decades. Work is being reshaped by megatrends such as geopolitics, economic uncertainty, automation and digital transformation, changing demography and finally economic inequalities worldwide. These megatrends are certain to impact young people. Choices of courses taken and career paths made now will determine success in an uncertain future. We believe that 3 basic ‘Cs’ — critical thinking, communication and collaboration skills are absolutely necessary to succeed in any career of the future. Critical thinking. This is capability to view problems from refreshing perspectives, to think things through, take a few steps forward, advance arguments and counter-arguments and reason with evidence before taking the next big step. Communication skills. To communicate effectively with people from all walks of life is a critical element of people management, service orientation, cooperation and negotiation. Collaborative creativity. As problems become more complex, individual creativity is not enough. One needs the power of collaborative creativity — capability to inspire creativity within groups of highly skilled people. While the 3Cs are set to become the new normal for all professions and vocations, liberal arts electives — the humanities, law, philosophy, design, communication, journalism, literature, psychology, art, music — are likely to be included in all higher education study programmes including engineering, law and medicine among others. This has also been strongly recommended in the National Education Policy (NEP) draft of the Dr. K. Kasturirangan Committee which is being given its final touches by the Union HRD ministry. While hard skills will remain important, developing core soft skills coupled with the ability to learn, unlearn and relearn on a regular basis will enable students to transform into lifelong learners. Development of life-long learning capabilities is vital because there’s no certainty that the study programme you choose today will remain relevant in the next decade. With the onset of the digital age, it’s clear that many jobs will be automated and driven by artificial intelligence and robots. Hence the importance of continuous learning to remain a step ahead of the digital revolution that’s already upon us. As technological advances multiply, traditional straight jacketed job roles will become passé. Multi-disciplinary knowledge and skills rather than specialisation, will stand graduates in good stead. Collaboration across disciplines is set to become normative. A good example is the domain of chemical ecology — the study of how organisms use chemicals to interact. And because chemicals usage is ubiquitous, this domain requires knowledge of botany, chemistry,…

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Internet service achilles heel

India’s education system and higher education institutions in particular, have suffered a severe setback because of the national lockdown declared from March 25 following the outbreak of the novel Coronavirus aka Covid-19 pandemic. With prospects of a reversion to the status quo ante uncertain in the near future, universities and higher education institutions worldwide are taking recourse to online learning in a big way. The crisis has precipitated a paradigm shift in consumer behaviour from face-to-face to online education. However as universities, faculty and students switch to online learning en masse, one needs to pose the question whether India’s Internet infrastructure is ready for this paradigm shift. In April 2020, QS IGAUGE — the India subsidiary of the London-based Quacquarelli Symonds (publisher of the globally-respected annual QS World University Rankings league tables) conducted a nationwide survey to assess consumer satisfaction with existing Internet service providers. A total of 7,594 students across the country responded to the online survey questionnaire — 62.16 percent male, 37.82 percent female and 0.02 percent transgender. The respondents were heterogeneous in terms of their age group with 74.33 percent in the 18-22 age group, 18.32 percent aged 22-27 years, 4.91 percent 16-18 and 2.43 percent aged above 27. Moreover, 81.03 percent of the respondents were undergraduates and 18.36 percent postgraduates The QS IGAUGE Further Academic Interest Report (FAIR) 2020 reveals the extent to which India is ready in terms of infrastructure to meaningfully scale online learning. The FAIR study indicates that to use the Internet at home, 72.60 percent of respondents used a mobile hotspot (i.e, connecting a wi-fi enabled electronic device to the phone’s Internet), 15.87 percent used home broadband (a high-speed communications system that links computers to the Internet using a cable, DSL or satellite modem hooked up to an Internet service provider), 9.68 percent used a wi-fi dongle (a pocket-size device that connects to smart phones, tablets or laptops and allows access to the Internet) and 1.85 percent had poor or nil internet connectivity. Notably, 22 percent of respondents used multiple connectivity devices. Of the 7,594 respondents, 38.12 percent used the Jio platform, 28.25 percent Airtel, 14.82 percent Vodafone, 10.59 percent BSNL, 3.24 percent ACT, 3.16 percent Idea, 1.29 percent Hathway, 0.53 percent BBNL with 4.64 percent connected through other service providers. The final segment of the FAIR survey focuses on connectivity quality. The responses reveal that among home broadband users 3.02 percent suffered cable cuts, 53.42 percent reported poor connectivity, 11.47 percent power supply problems and 32.09 percent reported prolonged buffering for data access. Among mobile hotspot users, 40.18 reported poor audio connectivity, 3.19 percent power supply problems and 56.63 percent reported delayed access to data. Among respondents who experienced inadequate access to the Internet and used no particular provider, 53.49 percent reported poor connectivity, and 46.51 percent experienced signal (data access) issues. Among wi-fi dongle users, 43.30 percent complained of poor connectivity, 9.23 percent reported power cuts and 47.47 percent signal issues. This data clearly indicates that the majority of Internet…

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Strong foundation for bright future

– Usha Pandit is the CEO of Mindsprings, educational consultant, teacher trainer, expert in gifted education, and author If India’s education policy formulators take a few leaves from prominent educators, we would have a clear roadmap to re-evaluate and solve the nation’s chronic education deficit. From Piaget’s Constructivism schema, they could learn how children connect with prior knowledge, and learn by doing. From Dr. Maria Montessori, they can learn about how children learn independently and Vygotsky’s zonal proximal development scaffolding would advise them that syllabuses and curriculums should inspire children to undertake tasks that stretch their capabilities. Educators also need to be aware of Skinner’s behaviourism which posits that if children are praised, they change their behaviour for the better. Moreover, Dr. Howard Gardner has demonstrated that all children are endowed with multiple intelligences that educators should identify and nurture. There are four distinct stages of physical, cognitive, emotional and social development in children between the ages of 0-2; 3-7; 8-11 and 12-16. At 0-2, the child already has one language — her mother tongue — learnt in the home environment. At this stage, the brain is completely ready for spoken languages and that’s why we should focus on developing oral skills. At 3-7, when a child enters pre-primary school, she is in her element — curious, playful, keen, imaginative and creative. Research indicates she has capability to learn five-ten new words every day. If taught through play, fundamental math, experiential and sight-reading become enjoyable and are learnt easily. In upper primary school (age eight-11), children need to develop core learning skills taught through a variety of hands-on activities, stories, games, print and digital inputs. In high school (age 12-16), students should develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills to validate theory, transform into autonomous learners, do teamwork, experience internships, become socially aware and engage in reflection. At all stages, teachers should appreciate differentiation and celebrate the diversity of potential in children. The foundation years are critical. They lay the cornerstones of all future learning. Hence, early childhood care and education (ECCE), accorded insufficient official attention, needs to be given high importance to build cognitive and social capital, as belatedly recommended in the National Education Policy 2019 draft of the Dr K. Kasturirangan Committee. What children don’t enjoy in the first two stages (0-7) is mechanical, overly technical education. Forcing children to engage in repetitive reading and writing numbers and alphabets, rudderless word study, and over-focus on the nuances of phonics, is not conducive to their cognitive development. Regimented classes that offer little free play and low sensory inputs in the form of pictures, materials and other resources can stunt youngest children’s minds and implant early disinterest and dislike of academics. Nature shows us there are clear stages in the growth of all organisms that require timely interventions to stimulate development. A young plant or animal has a natural growth trajectory that goads it towards becoming a successful tree or adult. The natural trajectory of young homo sapiens is similar. Understanding of age-compatible cognitive development curriculums and processes is required in contemporary education.…

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Enabling children to learn through BCL

-Anjum Babukhan Every parent and educator ponders over these questions: How can our children get smarter? What is that we can do to stimulate brilliance within our children and boost their creativity and critical thinking skills? If we believe the brain is the body’s central processing unit, then brain compatible learning (BCL) may be the solution to expand children’s learning bandwidth. Neuron hub. Despite rapid and mind-boggling technological advancements and the advent of artificial intelligence, nothing can compete with the dynamism of the human brain. The brain is the crown jewel and CPU of the human body that differentiates homo sapiens from all other animal species. It’s incredible that we can think about our own thinking. Thanks to the neurosciences, we can learn about how we learn. Brain-compatible learning (BCL) is an impressive interdisciplinary science that combines psychology, neuroscience and education. BCL influences not just pedagogy but educators to integrate information technology, art and physical education to boost the learning outcomes of students. The science of how the brain learns best is a revolution which has the potential to transform teaching-learning around the world. Right ‘software’ for digital natives. How do we effectively teach GenXers who are continuously and mesmerisingly engaged with digital gadgets? Beginning from early childhood, children are exposed to digital stimuli and find it difficult to engage with old school pedagogies preferred by digital immigrants (i.e, parents and teachers). In this scenario, it is a huge challenge for an adult teacher or parent to compete with multi-media stimulators, gaming and instant feedback loops. How do we effectively engage a digital native in school or at home? How do we use the same hardware (students’ minds) but offer a different, more updated programme for learning (software)? Built-in native capability. Given changing teaching-learning dynamics, educators and parents are becoming aware that hard research, backed with science equips us with the intellectual wherewithal to buttress best practices, especially the ones we knew worked, but were hard to prove. Through BCL we can make the new 3R’s — research, reflection and renewal — fundamental to learning and as important as the old school 3Rs (reading, ’riting & ’rithmetic). When educators and parents shift to using brain stimulating pedagogies backed by neuroscience research and validity, everyone benefits, especially children/students. Processing information flow. Learning occurs across multiple brain pathways that receive and coordinate simultaneous inputs. The human brain processes sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations all at once. Experiences that engage all of the physical senses — walking through a museum or practicing a new skill or art, visiting a novel event — stimulate the growth of numerous dendrites and enhance learning by association. Technically or more accurately electro-chemically, information transfer occurs through cell (neurons) transfer. Neurons that fire together, wire together! When stimulated, brain cells grow branch-like extensions known as dendrites which have extended legs called axons that subdivide and connect to other dendrites. Therefore, sensorial experiences, emotional connections and motor movements help to embed information in various neural pathways that…

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Bridging India’s massive education-skilling gap

– Siddharth Chaturvedi is executive vice-president of the AISECT group India has vast potential for economic growth and development, considering it is the youngest country in the world with a median age of 29. While a young population is potentially a productive workforce, the fact that less than 5 percent of the country’s 420 million workforce is formally skilled, considerably dampens the prospect of Indian industry (and agriculture) becoming globally competitive in the foreseeable future. To achieve the ambitious targets set by the Central government under its Skill India Mission, there is urgent need for bridging the skilling-education gap by preparing students for industry at every stage of the education continuum. With two-third of the population still working in rural India, the national skilling effort especially needs to focus on agriculture and rural development. It is only by creating a holistic learning environment that incorporates skilling at different levels of education right from school to college and university (as recommended by the K. Kasturirangan Committee in the draft National Education Policy 2019 pending finalisation by the Union HRD ministry), that we can bridge the education-skilling gap. Because of the critical importance of introducing and intensifying vocational education and training (VET) in schools, AISECT institutions are working closely with the Union government to execute the National Skills Qualifications Framework (NSQF) programme to complement regular academic studies with quality skills training. After completing their schooling, students usually pursue higher education in search of better employment opportunities. But one of the cruel injustices of our education system is that according to the India Skill Report, 2019 of CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) barely 47 percent of graduates are employable, indicating a deep disconnect between academic knowledge and practical skills needed in industry. According to a report of the Mumbai-based Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), an estimated 11 million Indians lost their jobs last year, with rural India hit hardest. Little wonder that an estimated 12,000 rural citizens end their lives by suicide every year. With rising demand for workers familiar with emerging technologies and hands-on experience, it’s high time our universities started offering new-age study programmes such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, data analytics, blockchain and neural networks to prepare students for moving up the value chain in the newly emergent, competitive jobs market. Simultaneously, as recommended by the K. Kasturirangan Committee, all undergrad colleges and universities should also incorporate skill development programmes into their regular degree courses. Short-term training integrated with much needed hands-on experience offered by universities in partnership with the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and various sector skills councils has shown positive results in raising the employability of graduates in all sectors of industry. In this connection it is pertinent to note that over 80 percent of India’s workforce is employed in the unorganised sector of the economy where the formal skilling deficit is even greater than in India Inc, where skill development programmes are conducted by employer companies. It’s imperative therefore to establish separate institutions that impart…

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In praise of peer learning

Whenever you struggle with a problematic question, whether in school or at home, you reflexively turn to your friends for help, before initiating a conversation with your teachers, tutors, or parents about it. Have you ever wondered why? While comfort level is one of the prime reasons, it’s also because you feel that your friend may have undergone or is experiencing a similar struggle, and may know the whats, whys, and hows of the question/problem better. The relatively tedious and disinteresting process of learning at school could turn into an insightful and enjoyable process if you learn from and with your peers. This is not just one’s personal experience, but a widely acknowledged and appreciated learning process normative in the gurukul tradition of ancient India. It’s self-evident that learning becomes a more active and engaging process when students are involved in empowering themselves as well as each other. Moreover, with online learning platforms multiplying, the ease of community learning is greater than ever before. It not only helps students to grow academically, it also facilitates friendship and development of life skills. There’s no shortage of research studies which prove that community learning significantly improves the efficiency of learning processes. This is because exploring differing solutions in a supportive environment results in rational reasoning and prompts students to observe, analyse, question, and dig deeper. Peer learning also enables multi-dimensional understanding as it is driven by deliberation and clarification of ideas and concepts. Moreover, since this approach exposes students to disparate viewpoints, it also stimulates critical thinking. Therefore, community or peer learning enhances one’s analytical and problem-solving skills, while simultaneously spurring creativity. This is especially true of the digital space, which provides access and enables interaction with the smartest students countrywide and even worldwide, leading to enhanced learning experiences. An unfortunate reality of the contemporary global academic scenario is that there are many countries and societies in which students and learners in general don’t have access to good quality school and higher education. Given this inequitable scenario, online community learning platforms can play a highly effective role in democratising access to acceptable quality education. For instance, learners residing in remote rural areas, where the education infrastructure is shambolic and well-qualified teachers are rare, can access vast treasure troves of knowledge readily available on digital platforms. This way, students/learners also get the opportunity to interact with their peers world over and acquire greater awareness and understanding of concepts and subjects. Community and peer-to-peer learning also offers an excellent opportunity for students to develop well-rounded personalities. Learning at one’s own pace and in each individual’s unique style while keeping up with peers, is highly motivational, enhances one’s accountability and encourages self-reliance and time management. Moreover, as students/learners become more aware of their strengths and weaknesses through self as well as interpersonal assessment, they are likely to develop new interests through exchange of ideas and information. Peer-to-peer interaction with globally diverse learners and scholars also develops social skills, indispensable in the rapidly crystallising global economy.…

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Developing national sports culture

Vijay Krishnamurthy, Bangalore-based corporate coach and also a sports research scholar at Mysore University The 2020 Tokyo Olympics is less than a year away. Already there’s a buzz: How many medals will India win this time? These discussions will increase in intensity as the date of the quadrennial Olympics draws closer. As the event begins, media will lament systemic problems, starting from the quality of municipal playgrounds to world-class athlete preparation. A few months after the Olympics, life will go back to normal, and citizens will become resigned to the also-ran status of India. A child goes to school to learn how to read, write and articulate. For the majority of Indian parents, education is synonymous with proficiency in English, science, and mathematics. However, the draft National Education Policy 2019 recommends sports as a compulsory subject and advises that sports education should not be labelled ‘extra-curricular’ or ‘co-curricular. While most school managements are aware of the importance of sports education, few are aware of ways and means to introduce sustainable sports education programmes. The four basic requirements of a sports programme are infrastructure, coaches, curriculum and scientific assessment. Infrastructure. Access to playgrounds is a fundamental prerequisite. A recent survey conducted by the Odisha state government revealed that 78 percent of schools in the state don’t have playgrounds for children. Likewise, in Karnataka, a state which fares well in inter-state athletics, field games and sports, a similar survey of government schools indicates that only one-third have playgrounds. Poor civic planning and under-budgeting for education are endemic in all 28 states and nine union territories of the Indian Union. In the circumstances, it’s hardly surprising that India produces such few sports — especially in athletics and field sports — champions. In this connection, it’s noteworthy that all developed countries have faced similar challenges, and found solutions. In the UK, a national initiative for physical education, school sport and club links (PESSCL) was formulated in 2002 by the department for education and skills and the department for culture, media and sport to multiply opportunities for children and youth to access well-equipped sports venues for training and competition. As a result by 2008, England established 313 school sports partnerships across the country. The lesson to be learnt is that educators and school managements need to take the initiative to build partnerships between infrastructure providers — schools, clubs and sports academies — in every neighbourhood. Sports coaches. India hosts a huge number of retired national champions of all sports and games. They need to be provided employment and utilised as coaches in schools, colleges and universities. BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) has successfully enabled retired test cricketers to start cricket coaching academies. As a result during the past two decades, India has emerged as the world’s #1 cricket playing country in all formats of the game (test, ODI and T-20). The BCCI model needs to be adapted to all sports, including athletics. Currently, the sports coaches/PE teacher-pupil ratio in schools is abysmal.…

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Draft NEP 2019 technology confusion

Although setting up an autonomous NETF is not a bad idea, a better idea would be for the Central and state governments to confer autonomy to education institutions, says Anil Mammen. Since a policy is seldom the same as a policy draft, we need to read the draft National Education Policy 2019, which is under consideration of the Union HRD ministry, as just that — a draft. On education technology, the recommendation of the nine-member Kasturirangan Committee is to integrate technology into all levels of education: teacher-preparation, teaching-learning, access to disadvantaged groups as well as planning and administration. In its prescription, the draft suggests establishment of an autonomous National Educational Technology Forum (NETF) “to provide a platform for the free exchange of ideas on the use of technology to improve learning, assessment, planning, administration and so on. The aim of NETF will be to facilitate decision-making on the induction, deployment and use of technology, by providing to the leadership of educational institutions, state and Central governments and other stakeholders the latest knowledge and research as well as the opportunity to consult and share best practices with each other.” Although setting up an autonomous NETF for free exchange of ideas on education technology is not a bad idea, a better idea would be for the Central and state governments to confer autonomy to education institutions and education institutions to teachers, and teachers to students. Let us examine four aspects related to the use of technology in education — autonomy, efficiency, dependency and privacy. Autonomy. Institutional autonomy denotes that local stakeholders are in charge; they are not being controlled, and they are not pawns in an external plan. People accept policies that give them a sense of being in control. In that sense, most principals and teachers have already adopted technology. They use smartphones and the various apps that come with it. Also, any student who has access to the Internet knows the power of search engines, learning apps, social media and virtual collaboration. When a policy centralises management and control, the result is uniformity and standardisation. It is antithetical to local ownership and discourages experimentation. If the objective of the draft NEP 2019 is uniformity, the outcome will be mediocrity. Efficiency. Technology plays the role of amplifier. It doesn’t differentiate between good and bad teaching. What it does is scale up existing capabilities many times over. In schools, ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems have significantly reduced administrative load by mechanised online fee payment, attendance management, records keeping and so on. Simultaneously, communication apps have bridged the distance between parents, students and schools, making it easier to revise timetables, academic year plans, exam schedules, and announcements even at short notice. Moreover, online entrance examinations have notably reduced the time required for the admission process. However, it’s important to bear in mind that technology-enabled efficiency does not automatically translate into effective classroom pedagogy. Dependency. The purpose of technology is to improve efficiency. It’s not a substitute for competence. Greater ed-tech usage doesn’t necessarily…

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Going beyond multidisciplinary education

– Prof. Ranjan Bose is director of the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi The draft National Education Policy (NEP) 2019 prepared by a nine-member committee chaired by eminent space scientist, Dr. K. Kasturirangan, which is under consideration of the Union human resource development ministry, accords high importance to multidisciplinary education in undergraduate colleges. In fact, the committee has recommended that the duration of the currently three-year bachelor’s programmes in sciences and commerce be extended to four years with the first year devoted to the study of liberal arts subjects. This recommendation is as welcome as it is overdue because premature streaming and specialisation has almost destroyed the higher education system. It’s now well-known that of the 15 million graduates entering the country’s jobs market every year, 75 percent lack the general knowledge, soft skills and even technical know-how to execute the core tasks of their job profiles. A McKinsey report of 2008 indicates that only 25 percent of Indian engineers are employable by respectable foreign and Indian multinational companies. But although the draft NEP report recommends a switch to multidisciplinary college education, the quality of graduates certified by India’s higher education institutions is so poor that NEP 2019 in its final form should opt for interdisciplinary rather than multidisciplinary undergrad education. In a multidisciplinary approach, each discipline contributes a piece of the jigsaw resulting in an addition of parts. Interdisciplinary education, on the other hand, integrates the domain knowledge of several disciplines, pedagogies and knowledge creation processes, and problem-solving methodologies to produce a multiplicative effect. The foundation of interdisciplinary education is based on the core proposition that students can create their own understanding and knowledge of the world by integrating new experiences with alternate ideas through theoretical exploration and practical exposure. It enables students to break away from traditional learning paths and to break out of the silos of knowledge absorption and creation. To encourage a broader paradigm of learning, education institutions need to provide enabling facilities and platforms for students to learn skills and subjects beyond their regular study programmes. Class projects should involve students and faculty from diverse disciplines. Experts from different walks of life should regularly interact with students to promote freedom of enquiry and broaden their mindsets. College campuses need to be transformed into tinkering labs of ideas from various domains. Such liberal environments will also motivate students to work in teams and learn to respect and discuss alternative viewpoints. The promotion of interdisciplinary learning provides educators and faculty with a wide canvas to design innovative and stimulating assignments and projects. For instance, a class project could require students to build a mobile phone app to monitor and remotely control soil-moisture levels. Such interdisciplinary projects would add depth and encourage students from different faculties to work in mutually supportive teams. Moreover, study programmes can be designed to enlarge interdisciplinary learning. For example, a course on algorithms in computational biology. Such broad projects and assignments could result in designing an entire gamut of interdisciplinary study programmes…

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Wrong excisions for right reason: Draft National Education Policy 2019

In the draft National Education Policy 2019 report submitted by the Kasturirangan Committee to the Union HRD ministry on May 30, the power of the Delhi-based National Council of Educational Research & Training (NCERT) to “shrink the curriculum content in each subject to its core,” has been substantially expanded. Ditto SCERTs (State Councils of Educational Research and Training). But recent NCERT curriculum changes suggested by the council to lighten students’ syllabus load arouse apprehension that the subjects it proposes to drop are the wrong ones. For instance, the council has removed three chapters from the class IX social science textbook titled India and the Contemporary World-I. The three chapters are ‘Clothing: A Social History’, ‘History and Sport: The Story of Cricket’ and ‘Peasants and Farmers’. These omissions are ill-advised as the chapters on the history of sports and history of clothing shed light on critical time periods of struggle and social reforms. The latter gives an account of the apparel norms and ideas of beauty that existed in England, Europe and the United States and the reforms introduced to liberate women from strait-laced norms. This chapter details how apparel and dress defined the identity of women and traces the history of dress reform. Further it narrates clothing and dress transformations in India while connecting them to stringent caste-based dress codes — e.g, prohibiting lower caste women from covering the upper part of their torsos, using umbrellas or wearing shoes or gold ornaments — most strictly imposed upon Nadar caste women by the Malabar region’s (contemporary Kerala’s) dominant castes, especially the Nair community. It details the struggle of Nadar women to cover their bodies and the stance of the British Raj government which issued a proclamation to this effect but limited their right to cover their upper body “in any manner whatever, but not like women of high caste”. Likewise, the chapter on history of cricket delineates colonial history and how religious communalism and caste politics permeated this popular game. It traces the development of cricket, highlighting the exclusion of girls and women from all sports, and the link between race, religion and cricket. And chapter 6 focuses on peasants and farmers by discussing the agricultural revolution and its impact on India. It is submitted in the draft National Education Policy 2019 that deleting these histories from senior school textbooks will not only erase the history of these important liberation movements, it will also deprive students of knowledge about how new norms emerged in marginalised communities and translated into new rights and freedoms for women. For any discipline to evolve, history provides lessons and explanations of how social rights and dignity are won. In the past, national policies on curriculum were drafted bearing these objectives in mind. For instance, National Education Policy 1986 prescribed a national curriculum based on the realisation of constitutional rights and objectives and a detailed PoA (programme of action) which stressed the relevance, flexibility and quality founded on the values of justice and equality. The National Curriculum…

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Lessons of a virtual reality project

As the world grapples with the complex problem of providing access to quality, equitable education in every classroom, experiments with digital technology are showing the way to address the multiple dimensions of this challenge. From providing access to content libraries and subject-specific plug and play modules, enabling teacher support and training to facilitating assessments and diagnostics, there’s an extensive assortment of tech-enabled interventions available for adoption. The newest wonder technology is virtual reality (VR), an immersive medium that presents computer-generated simulations of three-dimensional images or environments using specialised equipment such as a headset fitted with a screen. VR heightens access to any type of visual stimuli by pushing the needle of engagement from passive to active, from one where a user is viewing an experience on a screen to one where she is placed inside the experience and is able to interact with it in virtual reality. This game-changer property of VR, viz, enabling presentation of a variety of data and environments in an enjoyable and engaging manner coupled with the element of interactivity makes it an attractive tool for use in classrooms. From studying the human body to exploring historical eras and environments, VR opens up a range of possibilities in subjects such as science, math, geography, history and art among others. Ongoing research lists history as one of the subjects that lends itself really well to developing VR-based learning experiences. This is expected as VR can transport us into historical spaces that one may not be able to physically access, into episodes and personae hitherto limited to textual description. In 2018, Flow India had the opportunity to design and lead a study on this dimension of VR, to build immersive experiences that enable school students to engage directly with India’s cultural heritage. Our project christened Culture Connectors, supported by the Prince Claus Fund (Netherlands) and the British Council, showcases a unique 360° immersive experience of the Qutb Complex in New Delhi, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Now in the final stages of implementation, the project offers valuable insights for educators looking to experiment with this technology. For teachers willing to experiment with virtual reality technology, the first step is to develop one’s own perspective on leveraging virtual reality in the most effective way for learners. Sampling a wide range of available experiences to find a suitable subject for end users is the best approach. At Culture Connectors, we invited suggestions from our learners about their preferences for initial digital experiences. Assessing the suitability of available content is the second consideration. The critical criterion is to ascertain engagement of the experience. Evaluation of content is centred around the authenticity of its subject matter. The quality of a simulation is manifested via multiple elements such as hi-fidelity imagery, cogent narrative, use of audio and creating seamless scaffolding for the experience to stimulate user engagement. Another important factor is to assess all possible biases embedded within the content. This is crucial especially for simulations that blur the lines between reality and fiction.…

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Students loan options abroad

Sasha Ramani, head of corporate strategy at the Washington D.C-based Mpowerfinancing.com Despite universities abroad levying differential (higher) tuition fees on foreign students, the annual flow of scholars from India heading abroad for higher education shows no sign of abating. In 2018-19, a record 368,000 Indian school and college-leavers from India enrolled in higher education institutions in Canada and the US. But studying abroad is often difficult — if not impossible — without availing education loans. Fortunately, capital abroad is cheap and the free markets system ensures there’s no shortage of student loan providers. But with a wide array of loan options available to students enrolled in higher education institutions in Canada and the US, choosing the most suitable option is difficult. Here’s a guideline. Interest rate or APR? Some lenders charge fees that are incorporated into interest rates. This is why many countries mandate the disclosure of APR (annual percentage rate), which is a broad measure of the cost of finance. APR includes the interest rate plus loan processing costs. That’s why APR is generally recommended for student loan applicants. However, it’s important to note that some lenders insert charges that escape the conventional APR calculation, such as prepayment fees and compulsory purchase of life insurance. Therefore, reading the fine script of APR agreements is advisable. Guarantees. Many lenders insist on collateral, cosigners/guarantors, co-applicants, co-borrowers and similar security. While such guarantees may reduce the interest rate payable, you may be imposing a financial burden on nears and dears. Therefore, weigh how comfortable you are with this. It may be worthwhile to pay a slightly higher interest rate for financial independence. Fixed or floating? It is also important to consider whether the interest rate offered is fixed or floating. Lenders often offer floating/variable interest rate loans, which means the interest rate will rise or fall based on LIBOR (London Inter Bank Offered Rate). This means borrowers bear the risk of interest rates payments rising (or falling) over the life of the loan. Budget conscious students therefore prefer fixed-rate loans which means the interest rate on the loan is constant until the principal is repaid. Currency. Interest rates apart, students should also choose the currency in which the loan is to be repaid. Some students prefer rupee-denominated loans because they believe the rupee will appreciate in the long-term which means they will need fewer dollars to repay the loan. However, rupee appreciation is not assured — and even if assured — it may hurt the student. For example, a student who takes a rupee-denominated loan may find that due to rupee depreciation, the loan amount may become insufficient to cover tuition and other fees in dollars. Students who intend to work abroad after graduation usually prefer the stability and predictability of payments towards a loan. Therefore, they prefer to transact in a stable currency. Lender’s home-base. For the same reason, it matters where your lender is based. Foreign immigration authorities generally require students to prove they have sufficient funds to complete their…

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Great benefits of museum learning

Across the world, there’s high awareness that chalk and talk teaching for standardised testing is obsolete. There’s a global search for new pedagogies and processes to enable school children to acquire better conceptual understanding and deeper engagement with ideas to confront complex 21st century challenges. One way to achieve this is by venturing outside classrooms and teaching in informal settings — in museums and vibrant environments such as heritage sites, art galleries, science centres, archaeological sites, bio-diversity parks and gardens (hereafter collectively referred to as museums). Learning in museums makes classroom subjects come alive. Imagine reading about animals, birds and reptiles in class and then studying their fossils, skulls and specimens to better understand their features, habitats and diets. Or examining coins, manuscripts, maps and understanding first-hand how history has been constructed using objects and texts and what they tell us about our past. In museum environments, students have the opportunity to apply words and phrases learned in classrooms — a fantastic example of authentic use of language in real settings. Learning in museums facilitates deeper conceptual understanding by enhancing students’ sensory literacy — absorption of information through the senses of sight, touch, hearing, smell, and taste. That’s why a rising number of museums offer special ‘objects handling’ spaces where children can touch, hold and explore real or replicas of display objects. In recent years, it has become fairly well-established that museum learning offers gains beyond supplementing curriculum objectives. Objects-based learning stimulates and develops curiosity and capacity for children to make careful, insightful and critical observations. These skills are the basis of good research and have wide application in professions ranging from medicine to law to natural sciences. Another important outcome of the museum medium is that it develops students’ ability to make interdisciplinary connections between concepts and ideas beyond the confines of curriculum subjects. This helps to build lateral thinking and problem-solving skills. The huge proven benefits of museum learning explains why the Langley Academy, Berkshire (UK) has transformed itself into a full-fledged museum learning school. Learning here isn’t confined to day trips to museums; instead, real objects and exhibits are brought into the school for students to examine and experience. At the Langley Academy, students are also encouraged to curate their own exhibitions and advise the school on what they want and expect from museum learning through the student-led Museum Council. The philosophy of the academy, England’s first museum learning school, was inspired by the pioneer New York City Museum School founded in 1994. Today, almost every school in the UK includes museum visits and nearly all museums offer educational programmes for children. In the Federal Republic of Germany, a conservative attitude towards museum visitors is giving way to a more inclusive approach with strong focus on young learners. Under the lab.Bode programme, a four-year joint programme of the Federal Cultural Foundation and National Museums, the Bode Museum in Berlin has been transformed into a learning lab for designing innovative museum learning pedagogies that young visitors find appealing.…

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Ensuring the success of Operation Digital Board

On February 20, Union HRD (human resource development) minister Prakash Javadekar launched Operation Digital Board (ODB). The objective of this initiative is to digitise education delivery in schools and colleges countrywide. ODB will digitise 700,000 classrooms — 500,000 in schools and 200,000 in higher education institutions — in three years starting this academic year 2019-20. The goal is to install at least one digital and interactive board per classroom in government schools. In addition, e-resources will be made available to students with anytime, anywhere access, said the minister. This ICT-enabled learning initiative fits into the overall digitisation programme of the BJP/NDA government. In step with government initiatives such as SWAYAM (study webs of active-learning for young aspiring minds), e-basta, e-pathshala and Digital India, ODB is the country’s most ambitious programme for revamping K-12 education since Operation Blackboard was launched way back in 1987. Its proposed financial provision of Rs.9,000 crore is expected to substantially augment the country’s learning infrastructure. The coterminous explosive growth of cellular phone connectivity coupled with several other digital initiatives has opened up exciting possibilities of providing a variety of digital resources to hitherto unreached schools and learners. Following hard on the heels of reports of plunging learning outcomes in rural primaries countrywide as reported in the latest Annual Status of Education Report 2018, the ODB programme is being interpreted as the government’s response to repair the crumbling public education system. However, one wonders why this initiative is limited to senior school — class IX onwards. Secondly, why is ODB usage restricted to science, technology, mathematics and engineering subjects? To find answers to these questions, we may have to wait for the recommendations of a committee chaired by Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala (IIT-Madras), which was identified by the minister as the basis of this initiative. According to the HRD minister, ODB will make the country’s teaching-learning process interactive and popularise “flipped learning as a pedagogical approach”. Flipped learning presupposes that students have desktops or laptop computers or at least a tablet at home to access prescribed educational resources. This is too big an assumption. A second question that arises is who will conduct flipped learning classes in schools? Teachers, obviously! This means infusion of new technologies into India’s classrooms is not enough. Teachers remain crucial mediators for actual learning to happen. Therefore, without enabling teachers to use smart boards and new digital technologies, rolling out ODB will be tantamount to using American educationist Larry Cuban’s phrase “Dump hardware in schools, hope for magic to happen”. The history of the edutech industry in post-liberalisation India indicates that magic seldom happens. Thus, while technology input is being regarded as a magic wand, investment in teacher professional development (TPD) programmes remains the crucial consideration. Another question that arises is what type of digital boards are most suitable for India’s school and collegiate classrooms. R. Subrahmanyam, secretary of higher education, says the HRD ministry will float a global tender to choose vendors. Before this is done, it’s important to note that digital…

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Preparing for the all-important job interview

Asha Kaul, professor and chair, communication area and former chairperson, placements, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Adapted from Harvard ascend.com) With contemporary India experiencing the phenomenon of jobless growth, particularly in the organised sector or formal economy, competition for the shrinking number of best jobs at the entry and middle management levels is intensifying. Here are some guidelines and useful tips for bagging that all-important job. When you enter the room and are facing the interview panel, the first question you are likely to be asked is, “Tell me something about yourself”. Before you begin answering, bear in mind that these days, recruiters care less about grades and academic performance and more about soft skills — how quickly and creatively a candidate thinks, whether she will be able to cope in high-pressure environments, and what is the candidate organisation fit. Therefore it’s important to prepare yourself for the big day by being familiar with the organisation’s culture and values. It’s easy to source this information from the company’s annual or media reports, or by connecting with current employees over LinkedIn and reading up reviews on websites such as Glassdoor. Look for clues: For instance, is there age diversity and what is the overall attrition. Low attrition will indicate that the organisation nurtures its employees. Now comes the critical part of preparing for the difficult questions. Based on my interaction with recruiters as the former placements chairperson at IIM-Ahmedabad, I am aware that some questions are designed to unnerve the candidate and test her responses in a stressful situation. Here are some tricky questions you can expect, along with suggestions for conceptualising responses that will demonstrate your suitability for the job. “Why should we hire you?” Your response to this question should be steered to indicate a ‘fit’. Demonstrate confidence and present your personality traits which match the recruting organisation’s culture. “My achievements match your requirements” (spell out the requirements which you have researched) is a starter to lead recruiters in a direction that’s comfortable for you. The next question is likely to be, “What are your achievements and to what extent do they match our requirements?” This is a good time to detail your achievements in sports, academics and extracurriculars. Be careful, though, to link them to the position you’re discussing. For instance, tie your accomplishments in sports to leadership; in academics to project management; and in extracurricular activities to teamwork. Another question recruitment managers are likely to ask is: “What are some of your weaknesses?” This is a query framed to test your honesty. While responding, spell out some of your weaknesses in a straightforward and honest manner. You are human after all! However, the confessed weaknesses should not be ones that may be interpreted as detrimental to work. Responses such as, “I nitpick”, “I am in the habit of interrupting”, “I tend to talk while eating” are neutral and won’t hurt your chances of landing the job you want. It’s advisable not to be too frank and confess…

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Education trends 2019 forecast

– Sivaramakrishnan V. is the Delhi-based managing director of Oxford University Press, India The relevance of education in today’s world is possibly far greater compared to most aspects of human development. Arguably, this was insufficiently understood for several decades in post-independence India, until the correlation between education and socio-economic upliftment became apparent. This is perhaps why for the first time, the World Development Report 2018 of the World Bank is solely focused on education. Comments Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank Group, in his foreword to the report: “For individuals, education promotes employment, earnings, and health. It raises pride and opens new horizons. For societies, it drives long-term economic growth, reduces poverty, spurs innovation, strengthens institutions, and fosters social cohesion.” For professionals such as this writer who have been associated with education, the World Bank report which examines systemic issues that impact education and areas of future focus is a pleasant surprise. Although over the past seven decades, adult literacy in India has improved from 15 percent in 1947 to 75 percent, by international standards of education attainment, India has to do a lot more to improve the standard of its primary-secondary education. 2019 is likely to be an important year for Indian education. Several initiatives of the previous years are likely to accelerate India’s march towards transforming into a knowledge economy. Here are four trends to watch out for in 2019. Growth of integrated learning solutions. While on the one hand, schools and education institutions in urban India are rapidly integrating technology into education, the great majority of the country’s 1.2 million rural schools have not been able to experience its benefits owing to connectivity and infrastructure issues. They continue to rely upon the traditional chalk-n-talk model of education. K-12 education in India urgently needs integrated learning solutions that seamlessly combine print books with digital learning aids. And although the demand for education technologies will surge significantly in the coming years, it is impractical for schools to wait for 100 percent digital connectivity. Therefore, solutions with textbooks as the base with digital support are a more practical idea. For instance, we have developed Oxford Advantage, a solution that integrates print with digital content and also includes assessments and teacher training through structured interventions. This year, we’ve launched our Oxford Advantage Pre-Primary solution based on feedback from schools and teachers. Adoption of formative assessment solutions. With the gross enrolment ratio in primary education having crossed 95 percent, the attention of educators is now focused on improved learning outcomes, which in turn requires reliable assessment methodologies. Routine assessment solutions adopt a cookie-cutter approach and merely test memory and recall. On the other hand, formative assessment solutions analyse social skills and personal competencies and test learners’ progress alongside curriculum delivery and are more suited to ensuring impactful and customised learning. Learning through regional languages. Ours is a nation of numerous languages, and hence dispensing education in one or few languages is ineffective in terms of reach. Earlier this year, Internet…

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Call for global partnerships for sustainable development

Dr. Peter Greenhalgh is a Cambridge classical scholar and former professor at Cape Town University As we enter 2019, Britain is evaluating the outcome of the first public secondary education examinations following the reforms of former education secretary Michael Gove who resigned his office in 2014. Our two main examinations are the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) and the Advanced Level (A Level). The GCSE is taken at the end of class X (age 15-16) in preparation for either entering into the sixth form (classes XI-XII) at school, or leaving to start a job. The A Level exam is taken in class XII (age 17-18), mainly as a qualification for university entrance. For years, the quality of these examinations has been declining, with massive grades inflation exceeding even currency devaluation. Even as these examinations became easier, many were taken on a fragmented modular basis that made a deep and lengthy course almost impossible to achieve, and they often involved large components of coursework, which is easy to ‘fiddle’. In a society of seemingly ever-falling standards, it is reassuring to see that Gove managed to stop some of the rot in secondary education. Modular examinations and coursework contributions have been largely abolished, and the new syllabuses are much more demanding. The grading system has also been changed and stiffened to make it easier for universities and employers to assess the quality of candidates, and although the grading in the first ‘transitional’ year of the new examinations was softened so that the full rigour of the new system doesn’t apply immediately, the quality and reliability of the results have certainly improved, and are likely to continue to do so. Regrettably, Gove’s reforms in secondary education don’t solve the tertiary level problems caused by the vast expansion of universities 25 years ago, when all the technical colleges and polytechnics, instead of being upgraded in a way appropriate to what they were designed for, viz, to provide high-quality vocational education to less intellectual students, were designated universities. The result was a decline in their standards in technical subjects and a proliferation of third-rate pseudo-academic courses wholly inappropriate for universities worthy of the description, while leaving unemployable graduates saddled with student loans they are unlikely ever to repay. So desperate are some of these institutions to get “bums on seats” that they are admitting almost anyone who can write her name to remain in business and avoid insolvency. The ultimate irony, of course, is that Gove’s reforms, welcome as they are, would have been unnecessary if the excellent system of General Certificate of Education’s Ordinary and Advanced Level exams (GCE O-level and GCE A-level) of the 1950s and 1960s had been retained. Unfortunately, ever-meddling popularity-seeking politicians and educational babudom could not leave well alone. “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it!” should be written in huge letters above every government building in the country. Also read: Global Development: SDGs replace MDGs

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Union HRD ministry’s NIRF needs review

The dawn of the knowledge economy era has brought research universities to centrestage. Apart from disseminating knowledge and providing higher education, universities discharge a pivotal social role and contribute significantly to the national development effort. Moreover, research universities contribute to culture, technology and society and facilitate global linkages. Little wonder that all major World University Rankings surveys (QS, Times Higher Education (THE), Shanghai Jiao Tong-ARWU) give significant weightage to research. Even the Union HRD ministry’s rankings system — National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) — has followed suit. However, research is a capital-intensive activity and is limited to a small number of students and faculty in higher education. Therefore, only a select group of higher ed institutions worldwide qualify for the cachet of research universities. For instance, in the US a mere 150 of a total 4,800 post-secondary institutions of education are classified as research universities. Similarly, the Union HRD ministry has bestowed the status of ‘national institutions of excellence’ on only 30 out of the country’s 960 universities. Nevertheless, the NIRF parameters for ranking India’s universities are heavily skewed in favour of research activity, ignoring the prime interest of the majority of students who want information about teaching-learning standards. The importance of tertiary education in India is exemplified by the exponential expansion of the higher education sector and massification of enrolment. There are almost 35 million students currently in higher education with the number likely to swell to 70 million by 2030. Such rapid expansion has thrown up challenges relating to infrastructure adequacy, intellectual capital and quality of higher education. Unlike in the developed countries, students in India enter universities to acquire degrees to prepare them for the job market, instead of quest for knowledge. Parents and students need information about universities that will best equip graduating students with skills and knowledge required by potential employers. Industry also needs information relating to the employability of graduates. Unfortunately, NIRF does not meet the information requirements of the three major stakeholders in higher education, viz, parents, students and industry. Consequently it would be advisable for the Union HRD ministry to review and recast the NIRF parameters — teaching-learning and resources, research, graduation outcome, outreach, inclusivity and perception — in which research, professional practice and collaborative practices have been given highest weightage on a par with teaching-learning. The ministry needs to accord greater consideration to Humboldtian concepts of lernfreiheit (freedom to learn) and lehrfreiheit (freedom to teach) and devise a ranking system that gives prominence to teaching-learning instead of blindly following QS, THE, ARWU which accord high weightage to research, published papers and citations which are of interest to less than 1 percent of students in tertiary education. However, the low ranking of Indian universities in the league tables of QS, THE and ARWU aren’t entirely because of their poor research capabilities and record. The well-documented reluctance of Indian industry and business to trust and accept their certification at face value indicates that they need to modernise and improve their curricula and teaching-learning…

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Teacher to Teacher

Are teachers going the way of dinosaurs?

A new book The Fourth Education Revolution: Will Artificial Intelligence Liberate or Infantilise humanity? (2018) co-authored by Sir Anthony Seldon and Oladimeji Abidoye, is creating waves within the community of educators worldwide. It predicts that artificial intelligence will create ‘holographic teachers’ who will ‘individuate’ learning for every child. Earlier, Seldon, one of the world’s most authoritative commentators on education and a well-known writer of contemporary political biographies (Blair Unbound (2007), Brown at 10 (2010), Cameron at 10 (2015) ) and currently vice chancellor of Buckingham University, UK, had made a time-bound prediction that within ten years, school teachers will lose their traditional role and effectively become little more than classroom assistants, as the technological revolution sweeps aside old notions of education. Similarly, a paper presented by PwC at the World Education Forum meeting held last year in Dalian, China on the theme ‘Macroeconomic impact of artificial intelligence to 2030’ predicted that tutoring as a vocation is likely to be wiped out by artificial intelligence (AI) in the next five years. There are multifarious responses to the prediction that teachers will soon become extinct. Some say it sounds familiar; we have heard such prophets of doom often, so just ignore them. Others assert that AI is already a game changer and is bound to fundamentally alter the practice of education. With the emergence of AI, adaptive machines will provide an opportunity for everyone to learn from the best teachers who will listen to the voices of learners, read their faces and study them in the way gifted teachers study students. If every child in a classroom can constantly enjoy individual attention and guidance, even the most talented classroom practitioner could become redundant. There’s no denying that ed-tech has decentralised and democratised access to knowledge to the extent that it’s no longer wholly dependent upon the traditional twin sources of knowledge — textbooks and teachers. Therefore, 21st century teachers need to adjust and refine their skills in line with emerging technologies and use innovative ed-tech tools to make engaging and involving learning experiences for students. In short, technology has highlighted the inadequacy of the classical expert-novice relationship. Indeed, the emergence of AI in education seems to have added an interesting twist to the unfolding narrative of education in the 21st century. But the argument that AI-driven ed-tech tools will replace teachers in the near future needs to be carefully examined. Infusion of technology into education — especially K-12 education — needs to be calibrated bearing in mind the socio-economic conditions and varying cultural contexts of Indian society. An illustrative example is revealing. In a remote village of Arunachal Pradesh plagued by irregular electricity supply, tech gadgets are mostly run on power generators or inverters. Our team was demonstrating the ‘K-Class solution’, a blended learning solution which makes digital resources and ed-tech tools available offline. K-Class is built on K-Yan, a protean device that can transform any smooth hard surface into an interactive learning space with an in-built sound system. It works as…

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Teacher to Teacher

Building good schools prerequisites

In my over 30-year career as an education writer, school coach and consultant, I have come across many people who say they own a tract of land and would like to build a school. But is land ownership the prime consideration for setting up a school? Others say ‘we are promoting a township and must set up a school’. And of course, real estate developers believe that running a school is great business! However, to my mind it’s important to understand the purpose of a school before setting out to build a bricks and mortar institution. A school is an institution designed for teaching students/pupils under the direction of teachers. Most countries have a formal school system, which is commonly compulsory. In these systems, students progress through several stages of schooling. The names of these stages vary by country, but generally they are primary schools for young children, and secondary and high schools for teenagers after they have completed elementary education. Later, they go on to college and university. The term ‘education’ encompasses a whole gamut of experiential learning which is provided by teachers in classrooms and often, in spaces beyond. It is the quality of the learning experience, how it is designed and delivered that differentiates a good from ordinary school. There are three important functions of the educational process in the classroom, apart from mere learning. They are: to develop the problem-solving and creative capabilities of children and to arouse their curiosity and inquisitive spirit. Therefore, before beginning work on constructing a school, promoters need to ask themselves whether they have made arrangements for their schools to offer teaching-learning systems that encourage the development of these capabilities of students. Whether driven by the spirit of enlightened self-interest or philanthropy, education entrepreneurs (aka edupreneurs) need to be fully aware of the purposes of education before setting out to build schools. It is imperative for them to understand that they will be moulding the lives of young children. When a potter starts his work with clay, his mind and body have to be in unison and as he strives to build a work of art for utility he also has to invest empathy, care and devotion into the process. A great potter doesn’t make pots because there is mud with properties of quality clay, or merely to earn a livelihood. The potter’s labour of love is what creates a masterpiece. Likewise, all artists have canvases to paint. However, only the fully committed can combine the emotions and skills required to paint enduring works of art. The advice of Gulab Ramchandani, the famous headmaster of The Doon School, Dehradun and later an education consultant, was always: “Once you start to work on a school project, you will need to forget all other work in your life, pour your heart and soul into this very project and only then, will you build an institution which offers quality education.” Ramchandani invariably advised aspiring edupreneurs against promoting a school as a business enterprise. He…

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Teacher to Teacher

Technology must enthuse and enable teachers

Karthik K.S. is CEO of the Bangalore-based AEON Learning Pvt. Ltd It’s almost a truism that education is now a continuous lifelong learning process. New millennium business and industry professionals have to reconcile themselves to learning throughout their careers rather than accumulate knowledge and master a specific skill during the school and college years. How one adapts to the rapid technology changes transforming almost all industry verticals, will separate winners and losers. Simultaneously the gap between the speed at which technologies are transforming and the pace at which individuals are reskilling themselves is widening. This has prompted corporates to increasingly turn to online learning platforms to reskill their employees in revolutionary new technologies. Over the past two decades, in particular, education technology platforms have successfully overcome deterrents such as high costs and geographical constraints to enable corporates and individuals to access high-quality content from top-ranked universities and faculty around the world to reskill themselves from within the comfort of their homes. For a short while, massive open online courses (MOOCs) were widely heralded as harbingers of new education. But a decade later, it’s clear they have not lived up to expectations. Although public enrolment has soared, course completion rates are abysmal. What went wrong? Faculty influences technology. For centuries, faculty (aka teachers), have been at the centre of education, supported by two inseparable elements that complete the education process — viz, social interaction and personalisation. But when new digital technologies were introduced into education spaces, they became the centre of attraction and drove social interaction forcing teachers to play a secondary role. This prompted massive resistance to online learning as scholars and students become overwhelmed by technology. But contemporary online education providers are awakening to this situation. They are becoming increasingly aware that teachers are fundamental to the success of online learning, and that technology should be at the perimeter rather than vice versa. For MOOCs and other online education programmes to become successful, faculty must continue to lead social interaction and personalisation. In the circumstances, it is imperative for Moocs and online education providers to ensure they respect the primacy of teachers for the success of their programmes and products. Faculty influences online engagement. Sustained student/learner engagement is the prerequisite for the success of any online learning process or programme. But there’s growing awareness that it must be teacher-driven. True content is king, but faculty capable of assessing the mood of the class and becoming the facilitator within the classroom is the vizier. Admittedly, new technologies such as AI (artificial intelligence), robotics, machine learning, gamification etc, can become game-changers. But faculty/teachers are prime drivers of the transformation required to revolutionise classroom teaching and management. The plain truth is that technology is most effective when it is invisible. It needs to remain at the backend to enable teachers to drive the teaching-learning process using new AI, robotics and machine learning technologies. The rapid induction of new digital labour-saving technologies in the industry worldwide has brought about an urgent requirement for…

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Teacher-to-Teacher

Unstoppable march of technology in education

Saiju Aravind The #1 factor that distinguishes the 21st century from the past is the powerful impact that technology is making in almost every sphere of contemporary life. Like an unstoppable tsunami, it totally transforms any landscape it decides to visit. If the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s catalysed a mechanical engineering revolution that radically transformed the lifestyles of people (for instance the way they travelled), the ongoing digital revolution is transforming people mentally and psychologically. Let’s explore how technology is reshaping the teaching-learning process in unprecedented ways. Ubiquitous learning. Learning is increasingly becoming instantaneous and needs-based. A project manager in the thick of a mega construction project may suddenly realise he needs to learn statistical analysis to optimise construction expenditure. Online platforms that deliver Moocs (massive open online courses) fulfill such learning needs through short, on-demand courses. Unsurprisingly, they are becoming popular, especially with corporates for employees’ skill/professional development. Synchronous and asynchronous learning. Sometimes, there’s a need to adhere to classroom traditions to promote collaborative learning. At other times, individuals prefer to learn in isolation, at their own pace. Moocs broadcast from some of the world’s most admired universities including MIT, Boston, Harvard and U Cal, offer both options. The use of virtual classrooms is growing especially in the Asia-Pacific region as it offers a low-cost, meaningful education alternative for students from low-income households. In the asynchronous learning space, there are several online course providers with differing revenue models like the not-for-profit Khan Academy and others such as Coursera, which offers free-of-charge courses but issues course completion certificates against payment. In addition to such companies that operate in the generic space, there are niche edtech firms offering Moocs in the K-12 school segment, competitive exam coaching etc. Active knowledge creation. Traditional education relied heavily on students retaining facts within their long term memory. But with the emergence of cloud technology, the obligation to remember individual and corporate knowhow, has become less important than active knowledge creation — the activity of producing unique knowledge through collaborations and information gathering. One of the best examples is the dethronement of the time-honoured Encyclopedia Britannica by Wikipedia, the well-known online encyclopedia which is the fruit of voluntary active knowledge accumulation by thousands of netizens. Learning support. In addition, a large number of edtech firms cater to the unique needs of learners. One of the most popular edtech sites, Duolingo, styles itself as “the world’s most popular way to learn any language”. Moreover, open universities which started offering free courses on television are now solidly entrenched in education technology spaces and offer a mind-boggling array of study programmes, online tests and certification using software which is common across a variety of digital devices — computers, tablets and mobile phones. Integrated learning. Niche career options are emerging, requiring widely divergent skills. For example, the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2017 was awarded to Richard H. Thaler for interdisciplinary work that introduced psychology into the science of economic decision-making. Another interesting field is that of genomics, a queer combination…

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Women's Day series: Kiran Pai, Co-Founder & Pro-Chancellor, Vidyashilp University

Teacher-to-Teacher

Change the single story of education

In 2009, Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie gave a rousing TED talk titled ‘The Dangers of a Single Story’. She posited that there’s a great risk in reducing complex human beings to a single narrative. While she spoke of narratives in a cultural context, I believe her central idea, has broader application. Around the world, education systems are clinging to the single story of academic capability assessed on test scores. It’s a story as old as time, but with a very high stakes ending. If children score well in tests, they will succeed in college and careers and live happily ever after. If not, the entire voyage of their lives will be spent in shallows and misery. This story is the reason why the testing culture has become overwhelmingly predominant in schools worldwide. Rather than using testing as a diagnostic tool for instructional support, test scores are used to rank children’s academic capability on a very narrow spectrum. Through their school years, children shuffle from one test to the other, driven by the singular goal of increasing their scores rather than improving the quality of learning. In the US, children who attend public (i.e, government) schools take an average of 112 state-mandated tests between pre-kindergarten and grade 12, excluding other school-developed, teacher-designed or diagnostic tests. The number of tests is so high that teachers, quite literally “teach to the test” and spend over a month preparing students for each state-mandated exam. In China, the test culture is so stressful that students who write the gaokao matriculation examination, resort to extreme measures such as attaching themselves to intravenous drips for energy boosts. And recently in India, scores of anxious parents in the state of Bihar scaled school walls during an examination to provide their children with answers to test papers, resulting in a mass expulsion of aided students. When teachers reduce students’ diverse intellectual capabilities to a single number or grade, we overlook the diversity of talents, strengths and intelligences they inherently possess. This is mostly because most education systems assess only one intelligence, excluding others. Howard Gardner, professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the originator of the theory of multiple intelligences warned: “We must proceed cautiously before we place students’ minds and hearts at risk with tests whose meaning can be over-interpreted and whose consequences can be devastating.” Regrettably contemporary education systems make a very narrow definition of what constitutes intelligence and ability. The great scientist Albert Einstein said, “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it’s stupid.” Modern education systems worldwide are designed to suit a small minority of students who conform to narrow definitions of intelligence and capability, while the vast majority are disenfranchised by testing metrics. According to a recent Unesco report, 47 million children are dropping out of public schools across India before reaching class X. This huge number dropping out of the school system demonstrates that the…

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Special Essay

Design For Change Schools Challenge invitation

Back in 2013, a group of primary school children in Benin (Africa), angered that adolescent girl children were being forced into marriage, persuaded the government to ban child marriages. A year later, students in Colombia designed a toy plane that would drop seeds into a deforested valley to restore its green cover. In 2015, school students in Israel grew vegetables on a farm and donated the produce to thank the man who cooked lunch for them. These are some of the can-do young children around the world who have opted to take the ‘I Can’ pledge of Design for Change (DFC), a global learning-by-doing children’s movement initiated in 2009 by the K-12 Riverside School, Ahmedabad (India). The objective of DFC is to disseminate the idea that education must extend beyond mere academics and good exam results. To enable primary school children to conceptualise socially beneficial experiential learning projects in the neighbourhood of their schools, the authors of DFC designed a FIDS framework — a four-step process of feel-imagine-do-share. Through ‘feel’, a group of students identify a social issue or problem in their neighbourhood they feel strongly about. Next they ‘imagine’ a practical way to ameliorate it. Then they put remedial project implementation ideas into action — the ‘do’ stage. Finally, they ‘share’ their story with other children by saying, “I Can. You can too!” School managements anywhere in the world can introduce DFC projects into their classrooms by taking on our School Challenge. There is no charge for participation and our DFC toolkits are open source. Schools can register at www.challenge.dfcworld.com and submit their stories of change. We have also developed a DFC curriculum for class VIII children implemented in 164 schools across India since 2014. Over the years, teachers of student groups who have signed up for the DFC school challenge have become aware that the FIDS framework develops communication, collaboration, critical and creative thinking skills of children. A research study conducted by the Good Work Project of Harvard University, USA endorses DFC’s FIDS curriculum because it “has been able to increase average student’s empathetic ability, as measured by choosing problems that affect others, describing multiple viewpoints, and keeping the stakeholder in the centre of designed solutions”. Since it was launched eight years ago, the DFC School Challenge has attracted 2.2 million children and 62,000 teachers in 58 countries around the world. In India since 2009, the DFC imprint has reached 340,000 children in 27 states. In the process over 22,000 I Can stories of change have been written and recorded in the past eight years. These stories are shared every year at a DFC Be the Change celebratory programme which brings young change makers from around the world together to share their extraordinary stories. This annual event also provides an opportunity for our global partners to connect and collaborate to spread the I Can message to children in different countries. As a non-profit organisation, 40 percent of DFC funding comes from individual donors and 60 percent from foundations.…

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Teacher-to-Teacher

New student visa policy: early days

Student visa 2016 policy changes have impacted higher education institutions down under, which host 450,000 international students, with gale force. The previous Liberal-National Party coalition government’s much-publicised review of the earlier policy resulted in a Simpliﬁed Student Visa Framework (SSVF) which promised great beneﬁts by reducing the visa categories from eight to two, and a simpliﬁed single immigration risk framework. However, ab initio, the new visa processing regime under SSVF has inconvenienced thousands of students from India and China who have had to endure frustrating delays in having their visas processed. The claim of the department of immigration and border protection (DIBP) that it would process 75 percent of applications within a month has failed miserably and prompted several universities and service providers to indefinitely postpone some planned study programmes. If the DIBP had made it clear that international students could clear immigration on a bridging visa to start their study programmes and switch to a single student visa (subclass 500) later, it would have created a safety net. Providing for a bridging visa system would not have created the embarrassment of the Chinese Scholarship Council advising Chinese students accepted into postgraduate programmes in Australia, to look elsewhere. Reputable institutions such as Macquarie University, the International Education Association of Australia and English Australia, which represents English language colleges, have criticised SSVF for grouping students from ‘low immigration risk’ countries such as UK and Japan together with high-risk countries such as Nepal, Pakistan and India. While available data indicates that the highest number of students whose visas have been cancelled are from China, India and Thailand, ﬁne grain analysis isn’t available to indicate the proportion of cancellations due to students’ changed study plans, withdrawal from study programmes and/or fraud or breaches of immigration policy. Stereotypical thinking by bureaucrats, blind prejudice and/or inadequate communication between the DIBP and foreign ofﬁcials are factors that can ruin career prospects of outstanding students. Recently, Ananth S.M, an aerospace postgrad from IIT-Kanpur awarded a fully-funded Ph D research position by the University of Melbourne, was denied a visa by DIBP because a report from the Australian high commission in Delhi suggested he could be involved in the “proliferation of weapons of mass destruction”. The incumbent DIBP minister, Peter Dutton, hasn’t helped clear suspicions about SSVF by stating that he prefers to leave “operational matters” to bureaucrats. The case, which received wide publicity in the media, has gravely damaged Oz’s reputation as a reliable higher education destination. However, the new SSVF has been welcomed by public sector service providers who take pains to recruit bona ﬁde students and penalise ‘ghost’ students who don’t show up for classes because they are hunting for employment. Federal government ﬁgures provided to the Senate, indicate 10,949 foreign students had their visas cancelled in 2015 for a wide variety of breaches. Navitas, a leading Australian student recruitment ﬁrm that recruits 80 percent of its Nepalese and Indian students through agents, conducted an internal check and sacked 40 problematic agents. While tougher screening…

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Teacher-to-Teacher

World peace — Teachers’ vital role

The manner in which most political parties and politicians, as also fringe elements regularly indulge in propagating casteism and intolerance in society in flagrant violation of constitutional provisions and democratic values, is indeed sickening. Sickening, because it impacts the younger generation presently experiencing the process of growing up, and who will take over the reins of power tomorrow. H.G. Wells, the well-known science fiction writer had warned a long time ago that “If we don’t end war, war will end us.” This celebrated author had also indicated a way out: “Human history becomes a race between education and catastrophe.” Our very own Swami Vivekananda exhorted us that it requires education, education and education to lift the nation out of the darkness of intolerance and ignorance. The issue that urgently requires a global discourse in a strife-torn and violence-infested world is: What type of education? The missing link between the eternal objectives of education — the “ray of hope and enlightenment” — and its failure to create a cohesive and caring world, needs to be found. Impressive achievements in universalising education, significantly greater numbers in higher education, unimaginable advances in connectivity, mobility and cultural interaction, have not led to a proportionate rise in the peace quotient. Therefore, education policy formulators in all countries need to address this issue. In this context, it’s instructive to remember the words of the great American civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through periods of great social change. Every society has its protectors of the status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through the revolution. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change,” he said. In the new millennium of accelerating and unpredictable change, the progress of nations will be determined by the capacity to keep pace with, if not lead, change. But this is possible only when national education systems are updated and re-designed to move with the times. In India, the evidence of “not having remained awake” is mountainous. In my opinion, the education system must incorporate the real strength of India’s ancient civilisation which acknowledged the essential unity of all human beings, regardless of caste and religious injunctions. Indeed, it is arguable that India was the first major civilisation to acknowledge the critical importance of a man-nature relationship which respects all forms of life. In ancient India, divinity was assigned to trees, plants, animals and birds. It was this philosophy that led to the celebration, not mere tolerance, of diversity. Respect for all creeds and religions is the sole alternative available to humankind to end religious fundamentalism, fanaticism, bigotry, violence and distrust causing huge loss of life, misery to children and spreading insecurity worldwide. In simple words, all education systems must actively teach religious tolerance and propagate the verity that…

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Teacher-to-Teacher

Personalising children’s learning

As adults, we have the choice to turn off a programme or turn the page if what we see or read makes no sense. However, we cannot afford to extend this liberty to children in schools — that they should walk out of classes which don’t make sense. Turning away from education is equivalent to shutting the doors on an informed present and future success. Therefore the only choice we have is to ensure children find meaning and purpose in what they learn in school. This cannot be achieved by promising a deferred reward — that education is required to succeed in life. Children the world over are unimpressed by this message of the hereafter — if you study, you’ll do well; if you don’t, you’ll be a failure. Learning has to make sense right now, right here. Moreover there’s more to learning than a tedious chore or a competitive sport in which some win, some lose. At the end of a school day, children should return home reflecting on what they’ve learned in class and its purpose. It’s a tragedy if children believe that schooling is a duty thrust upon them. To use contemporary student lingo, school should be a cool place to hang out — a purposive institution that makes students sharper, lends perspective and develops their problem-solving and life skills. Given that every child is unique, teachers should resist the temptation to design instruction and lesson plans for the mythical average learner who doesn’t exist. Research has shown that even choice of vocabulary and contexts have an impact on how children respond to learning. For a child who seldom watches or plays cricket, a mathematical problem involving a cricket match remains a purely academic puzzle. On the other hand, if a child is acquainted with the game, it becomes an engrossing exercise. It’s also well established that every child processes information differently. Depending on what she is familiar with, she imagines things in her own unique way. Children also express their understanding of lessons and issues differently. A child who has not mastered arithmetic will find algebra difficult. On the other hand, if teachers undertake remedial teaching for struggling children in a classroom, it could demotivate students who have learned to solve more complex problems. It could be argued that high-performing students are outliers and that the majority of students in every class are in the middle. But what exactly is this middle? Moreover, how can we be sure that the ‘middle’ is uniform? To address such complex issues teachers can derive important learnings from new technologies. Google suggests search options based on your personal search record. YouTube recommends videos to be watched based on those you’ve accessed in the past. Amazon recommends books of the genre you have browsed or bought before. Of course, users aren’t walled in by these recommendations. But they make our experience of using the worldwide web richer by narrowing our search areas with the freedom to disregard past history. The 21st-century…

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Teacher-to-Teacher

New learning paradigms

I returned to India in 1968 after graduating from Cambridge and 11 years of teaching physics at Gordonstoun — the well-known British public school. I was immediately struck by the glaring lack of hands-on learning in India’s best schools. Science is an observational subject, and doing, observing and interpreting are integral to the scientific process. Memorising laws and formulae is secondary. Yet more than 40 years later, reports of several official commissions chaired by well-known educationists indicate that teaching of science in India’s schools remains as textbooks-bound as before. Rather, dependence on memorised formulae to solve problems form the core of science teaching in the country today. It’s particularly wasteful to stuff and clutter children’s brains with potentially defunct knowledge because we have little idea of what knowledge and skills will be required five years from now. Did we have the slightest inkling at the turn of the century that within 15 years the smartphone would be so essential for contemporary living that nearly a billion people, poor and rich, would own one? The unlikeliest of people use smartphones today and when questioned, they all say it has helped them increase their business, whether it’s a thelawala talking to a supplier who wants to know when he’s available, or a ragpicker calling for help as she has located a large dump of plastic bags! It’s incontrovertible that Indian children are very bright — even those who have limited access to knowledge. Today with the ubiquity of television and mobile phones, children are more aware of their world than we were. Information is flowing at unimaginable speeds and children are keeping up. They learn very quickly about which button to press on the remote! They seem to be genetically hardwired. I have given a computer and an internet connection to my housemaid’s children without teaching them anything except how to switch it on and off and connect with the internet. But they’ve promptly learned to download songs and games. At this point in their lives, they don’t need to learn more. I’m confident that as time goes by, they will learn to use Google and other search engines to acquire information and enhance their knowledge. In this rapidly changing world, the role of the teacher has also changed. This is a particularly critical and important issue. Since information is now available at an instant click, dispensing it through textbooks has become less important than how information is used. So children have to be taught how to access information and how to use it. To learn this, I believe there are five qualities that need to be developed in children to make them genuine learners. I describe them as the 5 Cs — curiosity, creativity, critical thinking, communication and learning to make choices. In fact, human progress through the ages has depended on these five attributes of the human mind. It is curiosity that led to each and every discovery but no good would have come of it but for inherent creativity,…

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Teacher-to-Teacher

A satisfactory association – Vibgyor & CAIE

A research paper titled Assessment for improving learning in schools in India: A Perspective submitted by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to the International Association for Educational Assessment in 2008, admits that current student performance assessment and evaluation systems in K-12 education in India are entirely exams-based. “Assessment focuses only on cognitive learning outcomes and in the process, co-curricular domains are neglected, even though co-curricular areas are an equally important and significant part of child development. Even in curricular areas, the focus is on rote learning and memorisation, characterised by a neglect of higher mental abilities such as critical thinking, problem-solving and creative ability,” says the NCERT paper. Currently, there’s a raging debate among progressive parents on whether the Central and state boards, whose syllabi, curricula and pedagogies are synchronised with public entrance examinations, provide better chances for admission into India’s 35,000 undergraduate colleges and 835 universities. On the other hand, several offshore examination boards such as Cambridge Assessment International Examinations (CAIE), International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO) and Edexcel offer syllabi and curricula that test and develop the broader cognitive and problem-solving skills of students which aren’t adequately appreciated by public entrance exams and university boards in India. Nevertheless the number of schools affiliated with CAIE and IBO in India has grown rapidly in recent years. In particular CAIE-affiliated schools in India has grown to 350 and the number of IBO schools to 120. Currently five of the 20-strong Mumbai-based Vibgyor Group of K-12 institutions are affiliated with the UK-based CAIE and our experience of the CIE syllabus/curriculum has been good. Internally generated evidence indicates that the CAIE pedagogy develops the cognitive, physical, social, emotional intelligences of children in a balanced, integrated way. Students are encouraged to experience hands-on learning in a spirit of exploration. The promised objective of the curriculum, to make children confident, responsible, reflective and innovative, has been substantially delivered. For example, ‘A’ level (class XII) students at Vibgyor High, Mumbai recently undertook a project on sales and marketing of food items as part of their business studies curriculum. This exercise enabled students to acquire valuable practical experience of planning and implementing business ideas while trouble-shooting and problem-solving in a systematic and logical manner. Simultaneously they interacted with co-workers and customers, managed time and set priorities in the real world context. Another significant advantage offered by the CAIE curriculum is a wider choice of subjects. While Indian exam boards offer just one-two subjects within each stream — humanities, science and commerce — CAIE’s ‘A’ level school-leaving exam offers a broad choice of 55 subjects with schools given the option of offering them in any combination. This flexibility means schools can build individualised curriculums, and learners can choose a cluster of subjects across disciplines to study. This freedom helps students to focus on subjects which interest them even as they explore several career paths. In the area of evaluating learning outcomes too, CAIE affiliation offers several advantages. Evaluation is not restricted to written papers. Learning…

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Teacher-to-Teacher

Progressive Education Movement revival

The 1920s was a high point of the Progressive Education movement whose most famous proponent was American educationist John Dewey (1859-1952). A response to school education delivered according to social class in 19th century industrial society, progressive education broke the mould and introduced a more enlightened approach to public schooling — to transform schools into effective agencies of democratic societies. While progressive education had several facets, it essentially followed three teaching strategies. First, it developed an emergent curriculum which responded to children’s enthusiasms, acknowledging that students are most motivated to learn things in which they are already interested. Second, it introduced integrated curriculums enabling children to learn thematically, rather than study compartmentalised subjects. A third innovation of the movement was experiential education (aka learning by doing) which requires students to move out of their chairs, work with their hands, and actively cooperate with peers to achieve shared goals. Despite its promise and a number of early successes, progressive education eventually lost momentum in the United States. Much of the decline was due to the cultural conservatism of the 1940-50 era, a time when national identity was highly valued and standardisation of education was emphasised. In that era, the good citizen was one who fitted into “the system”. The ensuing Cold War caused political and education leaders to value outcomes rather than process — a philosophy which substantially persists to this day. However, as America comes to grips with the 21st century, the precepts of progressive education are once again becoming popular. Mainly because the human skills needed in this century are vastly different from those of the past. A recent World Economic Forum research study New Vision for Education: Unlocking the Potential of Technology identifies critical thinking, creativity, communication, curiosity, initiative, persistence and adaptability as vital life skills students will need to succeed in the 21st century. These skills, states the 2015 report, will be as important as language, arts, mathematics and science. The revived progressive education movement also mirrors the priorities of contemporary American society — the need to accept diversity in terms of skills, preferences, responsibilities and individuals’ rights. It values socially engaged thinkers who can analyse complex issues and offer independent conclusions that benefit their societies and the common good. As much as this modern version of progressive education owes its existence to innovators of the early 20th century, it has been re-shaped by 21st century instructional thinking. Therefore: • Emergent curricula are built around passion-based learning, in which knowledge and skills acquisition are developed to match with students’ interests. • Integrated curricula are now known as theme-based learning, using topics that not only activate interest in a diverse array of subjects, but also allow students to grasp how each subject plays its part in solving larger challenges. • Experiential education has been transformed by technology to provide hands-on, interactive knowledge. Tiny Finland (pop. 5.4 million) is an acknowledged leader of the neo-progressive movement. Music, physical education and art accomplishment are not only required, but prized, as…

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In praise of Montessori education

Although rather belated, there’s increasing awareness within society and even within the Central and state governments of the vital importance of early childhood care and education (ECCE) to give children a good start in life and enable them to grow into healthy and mentally alert citizens, capable of contributing to the common good. In the twilight of its unlamented ten-year term in office (2004-14), the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre approved a National Early Childhood Care and Education (NECCE) policy draft. One hopes the new BJP/NDA government in New Delhi will bolster and implement the policy for the benefit of India’s 158 million children below age five. It’s regrettable but true. Successive governments at the Centre and in the states have grossly neglected ECCE, resulting in 48 percent infants in the age group 0-5 countrywide being severely undernourished and in danger of suffering stunting and brain damage. The country’s 1.6 million anganwadis — early childhood nutrition centres for newborns and lactating mothers which also provide a modicum of education — accommodate only half the children in this age group. I don’t believe the Central and/or state governments need to make extensive budgetary outlays to provide good quality ECCE to the country’s vulnerable infants. The early childhood experiential pedagogy carefully developed by Dr. Maria Montessori (1870-1952) is an enabling and empowering process which gives all children the opportunity to advance, regardless of their socio-economic background. Its salient features and huge potential for developing India’s abundant human capital are outlined below. • In traditional classrooms, every student reads the same book at the same time. A Mont child learns to explore, browse, select and read a book of her choice, softly or loudly, at her own pace. • While traditional ECCE schools group children in classrooms by age, Montessori classes host children of different ages with older children encouraged to teach younger ones (peer learning). It’s inexpensive, effective and should be incorporated into the NECCE policy. • Inducted into the Montessori system at age four, I believe my early childhood education was formatively more valuable than my IIT degree. • A Mont child is always “hands-on”. Alphabets are ‘felt’ in three dimensions; numbers are represented by rods of different lengths; all toys are purposeful rather than abstract. A mug, mat, napkin, knife, etc, not only help children to use their hands and fingers (which in turn help improve writing), but introduces them to real life skills and experiences. • Montessori is a child-centred system whereby children are allowed to choose activities based around their interests, which motivates them to learn. For example, math sums are not thrust on a child, instead she is encouraged to calculate how much she needs if she wants to buy chocolates. • Infants in Mont classes are never given homework. Nor are they shamed or punished. Encouragement and assisted learning opportunities are the dominant mantras with every child given free rein to learn spontaneously through exploration. • Lack of concentration is often a problem encountered by…

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21st century teacher guidelines

Recently released authoritative studies — Annual Status of Education Report 2014 and the Young Citizen National Survey 2015 of the Children’s Movement for Civic Awareness — highlight that learning outcomes in school education are rock-bottom. While it’s easy to blame the ‘system’, the teachers’ community which is an integral part of the system is also to blame. Learning 21st century skills requires 21st century teaching. For students to learn, we have to teach them differently than we have done in the past. How we teach will reflect how our students learn. It must also reflect the world our students will live in. Change is in the air. The world is changing rapidly, connecting, adapting and evolving. Our style and approach to teaching must also change and we need to bear in mind the fact that students we teach today are completely different from students of the 20th century. It’s our responsibility to acquire new classroom skills, absorb new pedagogies and focus on developing the problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration skills of our students. In short, a paradigm shift in pedagogies and classroom practice has now become mandatory. For teachers in primary, secondary and higher education to transform into contemporary educators, here are some guidelines: Make teaching relevant. Teachers need to develop dynamic learning mindsets and embrace social, collaborative and self-directed pedagogies. By welcoming and integrating technology into our classrooms, we can connect school with our students’ everyday lives. Teach through disciplines. We need to link classroom content with real world problems. Knowledge delivery should also suggest ways and means to apply knowledge. Develop students’ thinking skills. While much of the content we teach may become obsolete within a few years, thinking skills developed will remain with students for their entire lives. 21st century pedagogies require teachers to develop our students to attain higher order thinking skills as defined in Bloom’s taxonomy. This means we need to move from ‘lots to hots’. 21st century teachers need to encourage and enable students to develop their comprehension, creative, imaginative and deep thinking skills. Encourage learning transfer. Students must be taught to apply the skills and knowledge of one discipline to another, and to apply what they learn in school to diverse issues and activities beyond school gates. Self-learning and study. Educating students for the 21st century requires teaching them ways and means to learn independently. Therefore, students must be made aware of learning processes and pedagogies which are as important as learning outcomes. Promote teamwork and collaborative learning. The 21st century is an age of collaborative information gathering and learning. With teachers having transformed into facilitators, they need to encourage peer-to-peer learning and team building activities. Use new technologies to support learning. In today’s digital landscape, children are highly interactive and demand quick access to new knowledge. With the world literally at their fingertips, students need teachers and administrators to thoroughly contemporise classroom technologies. Foster creativity. Creativity development requires structured teaching which can be learnt through the disciplines. If students discover…

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Dangerous neglect of higher education

India’s higher education sector is adrift. Resource inadequacy, quality deficit and policy opacity are ruining our 35,000 undergraduate colleges and 700 universities. Although some of these institutions — especially the universities of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras — were established in the 1850s, not even one Indian university (IITs included) has ever been ranked among the Top 200 in the World University Rankings published annually by the highly-respected London-based rating agencies Quacquarelli Symonds and Times Higher Education. The continuous decline of learning outcomes at all levels — primary, secondary and tertiary — in Indian education is hardly surprising. The annual outlay for education (Centre plus states) has averaged 3.3 percent for the past 67 years as against the Kothari Commission’s recommendation of 6 percent made way back in 1966. Three subsequent commissions — the Birla-Ambani Commission (2000), Knowledge Commission (2009) and the Narayan Murthy Committee (2012) — have endorsed the recommendation of the Kothari Commission and all political parties including the incumbent BJP which swept General Election 2014 in summer, have routinely promised to increase education expenditure to 6 percent of GDP, all to no avail. On the other hand developed OECD countries are investing 5-7 percent of their GDP in education according to the UNDP’s Human Development Report 2014. Indeed instead of greater allocations for quality higher education — the prerequisite of India Inc being able to compete in the emerging global economy — the trend seems to be in the opposite direction. After the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (primary education for all) programme was introduced in the new millennium following the Millennium Declaration of the United Nations, while the annual allocation for primary-secondary education has risen to 2.3 percent of GDP, national expenditure for higher education has averaged a static 1 percent of GDP for the past decade. With the Central and state governments reluctant to increase tuition fees which contribute a mere 5 percent of the expenditure of government colleges and universities (against the normative 20 percent), it’s unsurprising that the great majority of the country’s government — especially state government — colleges are in a pathetic condition defined by run-down infrastructure, obsolete curriculums, huge faculty vacancies and lack of research funding. Inadequate funding for the country’s colleges and particularly universities has not only adversely affected teaching-learning, but more critically research and development and creation of new knowledge suitable for Indian conditions. While developed countries spend an average 3 percent of their significantly higher per capita GDP on R&D, official and private spending on research in India aggregates a mere 0.7 percent of GDP, a crippling infirmity for which the country’s corporate organisations are as much to blame as the governments at the Centre and in the states. Ill-conceived confiscatory taxation policies and the emergence of a self-centred new middle class unmindful of the poverty and misery around them, have prevented the promotion of great philanthropic organisations such as the Rockefeller, Ford, and Bill and Melinda Gates foundations which have contributed significantly to the rise of America’s great universities…

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English language opportunities

Uniquely among the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China & South Africa) countries, India has a competitive advantage. Not only in the education sector, but also in the world of employment, with a potentially beneficial fallout for India’s balance of payments. Every nation across the world is stronger, more vibrant and attractive if it is able to communicate with, trade with, and learn from best practices happening everywhere. The best way to develop advanced communication skills and competencies is to become fluent in the international language of business and education — English. English is an associate, not the national, language of India. But most professionals know and speak it, and it is theoretically the language of instruction in much of secondary and tertiary education. English is where it’s at. Yet is India maximising and exploiting this potential advantage? The answer to this question requires focus on three areas — the impact of English on the education sector; the impact which the education sector has on the future of Indian youth; and the impact greater engagement with education overseas might have on the Indian economy, including the country’s balance of payments. The value of English to global education is very straightforward, and is to do with engagement. According to Unesco, English is now emerging as the language of academic communication to an extent not witnessed “since Latin dominated the academy in medieval Europe”. Academic conferences, research papers, and communication of knowledge, are all mostly happening in English. Inadequate English language skills of educators inevitably translate into risky academic research, which fails to fully engage with the international cutting edge of thinking and development. The second focus area is the added value which would accrue to the Indian economy from improved communication skills of its graduate population. Indian students attend secondary schools and then universities in which all or much of their tuition is supposed to be in English. In practice, even where instruction is given in perfect English, an education setting in which students are passive receivers of knowledge won’t develop their interactive communication skills in international English, and workplace (aka soft) skills which they will need in later life. The fallout of inadequately developed English language skills is the so-called ‘employability crisis’ in India. ‘Less than 10 percent of Indian MBA graduates are employable!’ screams a Wall Street Journal headline. ‘75 percent of technical graduates and more than 85 percent of general graduates are unemployable,’ says another WSJ headline. No one is saying India isn’t producing technically competent graduates in IT, engineering, and other professional vocations. But current structures aren’t equipping young people with the interactive communication skills needed to engage fully with modern workplaces. With over 400 million youth under age 25, the need to adequately educate this massive cohort is more pressing than ever. Quite rightly, most Indians regard English competency as a necessary skill to succeed in business — as evidenced by the reality that people with good English communication skills already enjoy a 25 percent premium in…

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Summer learning enrichment programmes

FOR THE country’s 228 million school-going children, the imminent summer vacation offers numerous opportunities to explore, learn, read and absorb supplementary and experiential education, which is at best sporadic during school terms. It’s a good time for children to enrich their school curriculums by learning important life skills such as leadership, public speaking, conflict resolution, team work, creative writing or learning new languages, in addition to getting into shape by playing sports and trekking. For children from the country’s growing number of ambitious, upwardly mobile households, vacations are becoming too important to waste. Research studies conducted in the last few decades clearly indicate that learning outcomes from programmes delivered in informal learning spaces stimulate the specialised interests of children and improve classroom grades in regular school. Consequently there is a virtual consensus among educationists that life skills (listening,writing, debating), co-curricular (music, theatre, art and dance) and extra-curricular (sports and physical activity) education are — and should be — integral components of the education experience of nexgen children. In the US and OECD countries, several creative experiential learning programmes have been conceptualised, professionally designed and implemented. For instance, the US-based Envision EMI offers summer camps for elementary, middle, high school and college students in multiple locations across the country priced between $2,500-3,000 per programme. One of Envision EMI’s best known programmes is the annual Global Young Leaders Conference (GYLC). Currently in its 28th year, GYLC is a premier leadership development course for high school students who can choose to attend any one of six sessions from June through August. Each session lasting 10 days is attended by 200-250 students from 145 countries. Through a highly intensive out-of-classroom learning experience and a rigorous curriculum, participants learn leadership skills, experience cultural diversity, group dynamics (competing and bonding with peers from different nationalities) and global competitiveness. The programme culminates with a two-day session at the United Nations headquarters in New York where students simulate live sessions of the UN General Assembly. Thus far nearly 1,500 Indian students have participated in GYLC programmes ($2,825, excluding air fare). Besides the leadership programme, Envision also offers a range of career programmes in collaboration with some of America’s top universities under which students visit their campuses to get a feel of their academic culture, facilities and ambience. For 12 days, students of medicine reside at the Johns Hopkins University, engineering students at UC Berkeley or Georgia Tech, law students may sojourn at Stanford Law School and business management students at Babson College or Stanford University. These summer programmes are particularly recommended for high school students aspiring for undergraduate education in the US. Envision’s summer programmes are priced at Rs.2-3 lakh (inclusive of airfare). The New York-based Summer Discovery programmes run by Musiker Discovery Programs Inc provide month-long internship opportunities in 25 career choices for high school students chosen through telephonic interviews. In New York, they stay in the vacant dorms of New York University interning with a range of companies through the week. On weekends, they work on…

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Making intelligent ICT investment

As the new academic year approaches, schools are planning and budgeting for big-ticket purchases in preparation for the next year. This is a good time for school managements to pay heed to emerging trends in 21st century education to avoid investing mega bucks in technology which is cumbersome, expensive and on the threshold of obsolescence. The pace of change in education is rapid and of technology even more so. Parental expectations of schools are also changing. The latter must start producing faster, smarter and better school-leavers. This is possible through intelligent infusion of technology into education. While there is general acceptance that ICT is a game-changer in education, ubiquitous use of the internet will be a total ‘disrupter’. The US-based business magazine Forbes has just released its ‘Forbes 30 under 30’ list of the brightest young stars — creators of multi-million dollar enterprises, and all of them are in web-based businesses. Contemporary school and college leavers are confronted with the challenges of a dynamic, entrepreneurial and impatient digital world. There is no escaping the imperative that all schools must urgently provide broadband internet access. With the influx of high speed, low cost, cheap devices, technology is rapidly becoming synonymous with the worldwide web and the distinction between hardware and software is fast blurring. Therefore a top priority of school promoters, trustees and principals should be investment in high speed broadband access for their schools. However, despite the urgent need for internet access for almost everything — from the latest teaching tools to education content to discussion platforms and educator collaboration groups — most schools including some among India’s Top 100 don’t have broadband access. Most of them choose from a range of internet service providers and make do with poor quality and expensive service. Some schools are fearful of misuse and abuse of the internet. However, as principal Samik Ghosh of Scindia Boys, Gwalior, says, issues of access and security are much the same as parents have at home. “But learning cannot be compromised. The most effective solution is to counsel students and create an environment which encourages them to learn,” he says. Moreover technology administrators can easily fix these challenges. There are YouTube video lessons which can help even a novice learn how to install controls on internet usage. Another interesting buy is the Google Chrome books now available in India through IT majors such as Samsung, HP, Dell and Acer. Chrome books function like a typical PC but use the cloud for all applications, which means there is no need to purchase the usual software and software licences because it simply links up to the cloud. A cloud means a set of huge servers connected to individual computers via middleware. Google, Apple, IBM and Microsoft are some of the big companies investing in cloud computing. All applications such as Google Apps for Education which offer email, calendar, documents, data, and more are stored in a ‘cloud’ and can be accessed anywhere, agnostic of device. In addition, they connect…

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