Teacher training evangelist
With a rapidly multiplying number of high-end schools affiliated with offshore examination boards (CIE, IBO etc) mushrooming countrywide, the demand for rigorous in-service teacher training programmes is rising exponentially. That’s the rationale behind the promotion of the Delhi-based TeacherSITY, which admitted its first batch of 50 in-service teachers from 25 schools on November 29. Promoted at a project cost of Rs.1 crore by Om Pathak, a former civil servant as well as the founder of Delhi Public School, Ghaziabad (estb. 1980), DPS, Vasundra (1995) and the SelaQui World School, Dehradun (2002), TeacherSITY is a training academy sited in Saket, Delhi. The academy’s fully-wired classrooms spread over 6,000 sq. ft offer a wide range of hi-tech audio visual equipment to facilitate delivery of its high-intensity, three-day, in-service continuous professional development (CPD) programme designed by a team of researchers who have transformed into full-time faculty.
CPD offers an array of professional development opportunities for higher learning, sharing of best practices, mentoring and empowerment progra-mmes for the career growth of in-service primary and secondary school teachers. Batches of 25-100 teachers will be put through TeacherSITY’s three-day CPD programme (priced at Rs.4,500) to bring them up to speed with contemporary pedagogies designed to empower teachers to become confident leaders and mentors in their classrooms.
"After 27 years of involvement with Indian education, I have come to the conclusion that in-service teacher development is the most urgent priority of the education sector. Quite frankly, the quality of teacher education provided by the country’s B.Ed teacher training colleges is pathetic, and is the major factor behind persistent rote learning in primary and secondary education resulting in poor learning outcomes. The promotion of Teacher-SITY is an attempt to upgrade and modernise teaching through in-service skills and pedagogy development programmes," says Pathak.
According to Pathak, TeacherSITY’s CPD programme developed by the academy’s researchers-cum-faculty has several unique features which distinguishes it from run-of-the-mill teacher training. "This is a research-based programme which is delivered in a structured manner. Before teachers — who can be self or school sponsored — are accepted into our in-service programme, they are obliged to complete a pre-course assignment on the basis of which we design customised teaching-learning programmes for them," says Pathak who adds that the TeacherSITY initiative has been "enthusiastically welcomed" by principals and teachers across the country.
A blueprint for expanding the reach and scale of the project is almost ready on Pathak’s drawing board. "We will be moving to a 20-acre campus in Greater Noida which will become a full-fledged teacher training college. Together with like-minded educationists, we plan to invest Rs.40-50 crore to set up the country’s most advanced teacher training facility, which will serve as a benchmark institution to B.Ed teacher training colleges and help them upgrade their training programmes and services. That’s our formula for improving learning outcomes in school education in India," he says.
Natasha Pathak (Dehradun)
Intel inside education
A blue chip corporate known around the world for its high quality computer chips and memorable ‘Intel inside’ ad campaign, the US-based multi-billion dollar corporation Intel Inc (annual sales: $30 billion or Rs.120,000 crore) also has a long-running global education initiative (started in the US soon after incorporation of the company in 1986) active in 50 countries including India, for which it provides $100 million (Rs.400 crore) annually. Intel Education in India is an important player in the digital transformation of school education. Currently, 15 state governments (with the notable exceptions of Bihar and UP) are working in tandem with Intel to train teachers in government and private schools to use modern information and communication technologies (ICT) in their classrooms. "We’ve improved the learning outcomes of more than 2 million children through more than 7.5 lakh teachers who’ve attended our training programmes during the past seven-eight years. Teacher training is an ongoing process in Intel as our focus on education is greater than the standard social responsibility of a corporate, especially since we are positioned as a knowledge industry company," says Rahul Bedi, India business operations manager and director (corporate affairs) Intel South Asia.
In August, Intel Education launched its ICT education tool kit for India which includes programmes to improve curriculums and content besides IT infrastructure like connectivity to labs and professional development of teachers. "We have customised the India tool kit for raising ICT competence standards of teachers, while keeping it simple and comprehensive," says Anshul Sonak, an alumnus of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand, who heads Intel’s education programs in South Asia.
Simultaneously Intel has introduced a K-XII education programme whose thrust areas are science and maths, enabling students, scientists and teachers to work collaboratively for application of science to resolve local problems. "Our plan is to train one million teachers in the next couple of years and 10 million by 2011, develop newer technologies for classroom PCs and expand our kiosk model to other states after its success in Kerala," says Bedi who also reveals that Intel Education is working on a pilot project with the Central government-sponsored Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (schools) to develop an online teaching programme for teachers.
Likewise, Intel Education’s higher education program hinges on fostering collaboration and encouraging research through funding programs in more than 240 colleges and institutions. "The need is to create pools of talented people in industry and academia who are familiar and comfortable with contemporary ICT. This will catalyse the transformation of learning processes at all levels in the academic system. That’s the best formula for reaping India’s demographic dividend," says Sonak.
Hopefully, Intel inside education will prove as effective as Intel inside computers.
Autar Nehru (Delhi)
Abacus learning pioneer
Eight years ago Chennai-based education entrepreneur Basheer Ahamad introduced the ancient Chinese abacus maths learning system in India when he promoted U C MAS India (Universal Concept Mental Arithmetic System Pvt Ltd) in the southern port city. Today, there are a plethora of abacus maths training centres in Chennai — the maths capital of the country — from where they have spread their wings countrywide. But U C MAS is still India’s largest supplementary maths education company, with 1,400 franchised centres in 25 states with an aggregate enrollment of 155,000 students. In acknowledgement of his contribution to maths education in India, Ahamad was named one of the 17 trailblazers of Tamil Nadu by The Times of India and features in TOI’s limited edition coffee table book released by chief minister M. Karunanidhi on June 5 this year. "The Abacus is an ancient Chinese tool which helps children do speedy mental computation by converting abstract numbers into concrete forms or images. The speed and accuracy acquired in computation by the Abacus technique is unmatched by any other mental arithmetic system, and I wanted Indian children to avail the benefits of abacus which is widely used in far eastern countries," says Ahamad, an alumnus of Bharathidasan University in Trichy, who worked for 14 years in Kuwait before returning to Chennai and taking over the reins of U C MAS India Pvt Ltd.
Currently, U C MAS India — a franchisee of the global Akademi Sempoa and Mental Arithmetik U C MAS Sdn.Bhd. Malaysia and Zhusuan Association, China — which began by offering U C MAS abacus-based maths learning programmes to children aged four-12, also offers its U C MAS Memory Technique for middle, high, higher secondary school and college students and a special programme for business executives through its subsidiary U C MAS Memory Technique India Pvt Ltd (estb. 2004).
A third associate company, CUE English Pvt Ltd which became operational on October 2 this year, offers its CUE (Composite Universal English) programme in partnership with University of Cambridge ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) Examinations and prepares children aged seven-12 years for the ESOL tests.
Presently Ahamad’s energies are directed towards extending the abacus programme to government school students through the state’s education department. A pilot project is being tested in 25 government schools in Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur districts with 4,000 students being trained upto the third level of maths learning. "Our purpose is to spread awareness of the abacus maths learning system and reach out to the great majority of students in government schools. We also plan to train 120 government school teachers and are confident that the response from the education department to this maths learning programme will be positive," he says.
Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)
Educationists extraordinaire
Sited in Bakshi ka Talab, a quasi-rural suburb of Lucknow, the administrative capital of the Hindi heartland state of Uttar Pradesh (pop. 180 million), Bharatiya Gramin Vidyalaya (BGV), a K-VIII primary school, has established a formidable reputation. This private school is recognised by the UP Board of Secondary Education and some of the 700 students of this school for the poor and socially under-privileged travel 12 km to attend, giving neighbouring government schools a wide berth.
BGV is the dream of Shiv Balak Misra who promoted it after completing his Masters in geology at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. Credited with discovering the oldest record of multi-cellular life on earth, a discovery which has recently been named fractofuses misrai in his honour, Misra left the quest for personal glory behind in 1968, moved by pictures of a drought in Bihar. Returning to his native village Kaunara, he promoted a free-of-charge primary school on inherited farmland. In 1972, he married city-bred Nirmala, after extracting the promise she would share responsibility for running the school.
A couple of years later, when their savings ran out and a family of two sons had to be educated, Misra accepted a teaching assignment at Kumaun University, Nainital while Nirmala remained behind in Kaunara to manage the school. Until 1982, when the school was formally recognised and started receiving an annual grant of Rs.8 lakh, all expenses were met by the Misras who constructed 13 classrooms where in addition to formal classes, they conducted health and nutrition camps and offered stitching, embroidery and dairy management as vocational education to children of desperately poor and lower caste people of the region. "Today there are hardly any families which don’t send their daughters to school. Indeed, currently we have more girls than boys on our muster rolls," says Nirmala. After completing upper primary education, 80 percent of the school’s students enroll in secondary schools.
The school has no electricity which rules out computer education, and there is no boundary wall around the 1.5 acre area which is neglected by the civic administration.
But the Misras aren’t complaining. "When we started off, we never expected an enrollment of 700 students and any girl pupils at all. Now we have the satisfaction of having created widespread awareness of the importance of education. And we are certain our dream will go way beyond us," says Shiv Balak.
Wind in your sails!
Vidya Pandit
(Lucknow)
Engineering education missionary
The focus of attention at the 6th national conference on Virtual Instrumentation in Engineering Education held in Bangalore on October 26, was on ways and means to improve the quality of engineering education in India, and to make engineering graduates industry ready. The one-day conference, which attracted over 300 captains of industry and academics, was hosted by National Instruments — a Texas-based company engaged in the design and marketing of engineering software for more than 25,000 companies worldwide. At the conference there was a consensus that the biggest obstacle to making engineering graduates employable is the theory-centric, non-experiential curriculums followed by India’s 1,346 engineering colleges. "Although India’s engineering colleges churn out more than 4 lakh graduates every year, only 25 percent of them are employable, because they are not taught to apply the engineering skills they learn in workplace situations. Hands-on teaching and learning is the key to making students industry ready. The objective of this conference is to provide a platform for academics and industry leaders to interact and discuss new teaching and learning pedagogies which can make engineering education experiential," says Tony Vento, the Austin (Texas)-based vice president of NI who visits engineering colleges across India, to create awareness about new products and instrumentation which facilitate learning by doing.
The highlight of the one-day conference was the unveiling of the latest version of National Instruments’ Labview 8.5 — a product specially designed to facilitate ‘experiential education’ across several branches of specialisation in science and engineering. "NI Labview is a unique laboratory-based academic programme which helps students and faculty to develop practical engineering skills. This programme helps students to understand fundamentals thoroughly and become better engineers. Currently over 200 engineering colleges across India including the IITs, BITS Pilani, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and NIT, Delhi are using NI Labview," says Vento, a graduate of the University of Texas who signed up with National Instruments in 1986.
Given the acute shortage of qualified engineers being experienced by Indian industry, Vento believes the process of educating and training engineering students can be accelerated through new information communication technologies. "Teachers in engineering colleges are crucial to initiating experiential education in classrooms. They need to be educated on how new technology-driven virtual instruments can be used to make learning meaningful and fun. The key to making engineering graduates employable is hands-on, experiential education," says Vento.
Joshua Muyiwa
(Bangalore)