Every child should have the opportunity to receive quality Education

Tell us something about the access to private schools in India.

I think when we talk about the Revolution taking place in the Education, today, more and more consumers from growing middle classes or lower middle classes are looking for a better Education than they are getting in the government sector. Today, the challenge is not just about the access in the government sector but what quality should be provided and through our initiatives in Jaipuria Schools is how can we provide good quality Education that is at an affordable to the middle income family and also to the lower income families. Our emphasis is really on how the teacher is transacting within the classroom to ensure that the student’s learning outcomes are at a par at best schools nationally. A lot of work that we have done is towards curriculum design, pedagogy and teacher training because in a lot of cities the Teacher doesn’t have the time to invest in pedagogy and the same thing is repeated years after years. So, at Jaipuria Schools our focus is how can we modernize the interaction between the teacher and the student and make it more accountable to ensure that the learning outcome and quality that we talk about are achieved whether you are in a city like Delhi or Bombay or in small towns like Varanasi where some of our schools are present.

In my opinion, we can reach significant portions of the population where the private players have hesitated in going before.

How do you enable such teachers to understand the student’s mindset of who wants to learn in this domain? How do you make them understand the importance of Technology in Education?

The idea of using Technology in a classroom or in any organization is that it should make your job easier rather than difficult. And similarly, when we talk about modern teaching pedagogies, we have seen that the fear is that it won’t adjust in a classroom in smaller cities is unfounded. Once you train the teachers and make them understand the benefit of it, it is something that they want to do as well. It’s just that they haven’t had the time to adjust themselves. So, we take on that role in seeing what Technology, what teaching pedagogy, what videos, other curriculum designs are applicable to a certain age of students and make those available in a relevant manner to the teachers.

At what level should a society or a school inculcate all the above factors?

The sort of barriers between Technology or old style Education and modern style Education are the ones constructed from old days. They have been completely broken down. When we talk about the Learning outcomes or class, it doesn’t matter whether you are in Kindergarden or Class 12, the use of Technology, modern teaching pedagogy, more participation classrooms etc are something that needs to permeate wherever they are relevant irrespective of the age group of the students.

For me, Revolution is the increasing paying capacity in people, especially the people getting into the middle class and lower middle class. They have an aspiration for Education, which we believe can be given justice to by providing Quality Education at a cost that is extremely affordable.