Dr Satyabrata Minaketan, Chairman, ODM Educational Group shares with Elets News Network (ENN) about the challenges in school education, qualities of a best school, parents involvement in child education, role of technology in education, ODM’s unique proposition and more
What do you see as the main challenges for school education today?
Today, the biggest challenge in the domain of school education is the dearth of quality teaching methodologies and curriculum. The school education in our country has actually gone through very few changes to catch up with the dynamics of the changing economy. I believe that school education should lay the foundation among the students to nurture future leaders. For this, schools today have to go through radical changes in terms of their teaching pedagogy and curriculum planning.
According to you, what are the qualities that defines a best school?
A best school is the one that truly prepares all its students for the future. An ideal school brings out the best out of every child. A child might be good at academics, sports, dance or music. A school will be best in real sense if it helps students recognise their latent talents and helps them excel in the same. This approach needs a dynamic curriculum planning, active parental involvement and an excellent growth environment provided by the school along with provisions for excellent training and exposure.
What makes your school sets apart from others?
Since the foundation of school, my team and I have relentlessly been focussing on providing a unique pattern of education – on enriching students with aesthetic values and overall grooming through modern global teaching pedagogy. We believe in nurturing students by imparting rich spiritual values (not specific to any religion) as well as ensuring a techbased education system with modern and advanced teaching aids used by leading schools across globe.
Positive parents involvement has a significant impact on student education. Do you agree? If yes, how?
It has been noticed that parents’ culture and lifestyle impacts the grooming of a child to a great extent. The way we behave at home, lead a lifestyle – our child learns from us and starts to act accordingly. We, at ODM, have clearly understood this aspect. Whatever we teach a child in school not only in academics but also in other aspects, if that training is supplemented at home, then that doesn’t lead to a complete development in a child. Hence, we think positive parents’ involvement has a significant impact on students. We have seen that parents who are concerned about their child’s development and cooperate with school by supplementing on the coaching provided to the students have witnessed their child acing domains with flying colours.
Use of technology has become an integral component of education. In your opinion, how technology is transforming the school education landscape?
It is undoubtedly true that school education is transforming with the aid of technology. The advent of smart classes, tab-based learning and other teaching aids have not only taken the education to next level among students but also have improved teachers’ efficiency exponentially. The smart classes have made learning fun and the visual and audio aids made understanding and memorising of facts easier for students.
We are one of the few schools in eastern zone to introduce tab-based learning for senior secondary students this academic session. Through tabs, they can go through recorded e-classes of some of the best teachers in the state which help them understand the concepts at any time of the day or year. The new ERP software for schools have made the process of maintaining records, student profiling and examination conduction a lot easier and the efficiency of the staffs in school increases exponentially.
