One of the most important thing that I tried to identify is availability of teachers. Across India there is a dearth of teachers and according to reports we require 1.2 million teachers. The main reason for this, as per reports, is that teaching is the least preferred career choice. Another reason is the insufficient teacher training institutions and lack of qualified teacher educators.
Dr Dinesh Kumar, Additional Commissioner (Academics), Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan, New Delhi
The passion for teaching is lacking in the country. There is a huge gap beetween how the classes are held in India and abroad. The problem is either we have 18th century classrooms or we have 22nd century classrooms in most of the international schools, and we have 20th century teachers and 21st century students. To solve the problem we need to focus on quality teachers. The whole concept of education is a waste if teachers, the most important factor for student development, are not paid attention to.
Shalini Nambiar, Director, Excelsior American School, Gurgaon
You have to inspire children and create in them a desire to learn, not just rote learn. They should be able to discuss and have belief in values and should have confidence in themselves. We should give them a stable tomorrow with informed decisions. But are we training our teachers to do that? There are large percentage of teachers who are unaware of what they need to do for a better future of young children. It is teacher training component that is going to make a critical difference. Teachers today have to act as facilitators and turn into mentor. For achieving that teachers should become a life-long learners.
Gowri Ishwaran, CEO, The Global Education & Leadership Foundation
Teacher training is about getting complete mastery of ICT as pedagogical tools. Focus should be on ICTs in schools to transform teaching and learning. Implementation is an issue, professional development has happened haphazardly. It should be a continuous process. If teachers are not trained, then hardware and software are of no use.
Dr Termit Kaur Ranjit Singh, Senior Lecturer, School of Educational Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia
 Today our system demands so much from us. We have to add so much, like cognitive element, social element, and psychological elements, intelligent quotient, new curriculum along with new acts like RTE, etc. Therefore, capacity building of teachers has become a full-time demand for school systems. Schools may have dramatic infrastructure and you may get good admissions, but you will not sustain those children in your campus unless you do something extraordinary.
Lakshmi Kumar, Director, Pradnya Niketan Education Society & Coordinator, Sweden-India Project Inter-Cultural Training Specialist |
ICT can make a mark in education and various teaching challenges can be addressed by using ICT in classroom. So we have to change according to the digital world.
Monika Mehan, Principal, DAV Public School, Khera Khurd, New Delhi
Shri Shahid Ali Khan,
I believe no matter howsoever marvellous the school curriculum is, the problem lies in its implementation. I have been involved in setting up early learning centres with the Shri Ram Group. We believe in not only imparting skills but an attitude. We work in a children-centric curriculum. We look into different aspects like emotional security, experiential learning to encourage inquiry among students, and differentiating between a slow and a fast learner. We also hold workshops for parents to bridge any sort of disconnect.
Emotional stability is important, as a child needs to be understood and heard. There shouldn’t be any ranking, neither in academics nor in sports. Our effort is to de-digitise, as too early stimulation will affect in the long run. Thus, computers should be limited as an aid. Treating parents as partners is extremely important. Also, teachers need to feel valued.
The role of educators is to keep the curiosity alive in the children to develop them fully. The key imperatives of early childhood educators to help children reach their goals are: Care, Curriculum, Curiosity, Confidence and Creativity. The art of asking questions rather than knowing the right answers is a major aspect of a child’s development.
We have realised that we cannot live in that idealist framework where you teach a moral science chapter on don’t lie and the kid goes back home and observes his/her parents lying. So we believe that parents should go many steps beyond PTMs, and not only in pre-primary classes but beyond that as well.Amol Arora, Vice Chairman & MD, Shemrock & Shemford Group of Schools, New Delhi
The issue here is not only about early childhood education (ECE). It is about early childhood care where emotional needs should be met. A school is a child’s first point of separation from his/her family. I think there is a lot of homework that needs to be done by most schools in that regard. ECE also needs to have measurable outcomes in terms of the ambience and the pedagogy.
There was a time when MBA provoked a lot of craze among people. However, over the last few years, not only in India but even in the US, placements have been very bad in MBA institutes. The cost of tuition has risen manifold. The two-year MBA has lost its relevance, and it should be converted into a combined four-year programme. In fact, specialisation programmes of 14- 18 months on business analytics, financial engineering, multimedia, e-commerce, and digital marketing will do well in future.
Over the years, foreign presence may increase in the management institutes and programme offerings will be changed. Less than two years or executive MBA programmes will gain popularity.
Only three percent of India’s total R&D is conducted by educational institutions, and we have not done well in applied research in engineering and management as well. So, that is a matter of concern. Also, teaching is usually done through the case study method that focuses on companies who have performed in terms of profit and strategy. But this method has become obsolete abroad, as it talks about past practices. But today, the future lies in building socially responsible companies and innovative practices.
There has been a dearth of serious people in education. I feel the faculty and students are the heart of any institute. We should invest in delivering quality knowledge and more value for all stakeholders. For instance, we have a structured mentorship programme for students at our institute, where faculty and industry leaders come together to guide our students. We also have academy quality assurance system, and academic audit at both internal and external level.
There is a common concern among universities of management education world-over on how to build socially sensitive business leaders for tomorrow. Our institute undertakes many pedagogic innovations in this regard. For example, the programme called ‘Abyudaya’, where our students mentor underprivileged students from neighbouring slums.
Kapil Sibal,
content. Context is more important than content. We conducted an experiment, where we converted a sixth-grade science textbook into a comic. Students read through their entire science textbooks in exactly two days. So by changing context you can get students’ interest.
There is only one percent penetration of interactive displays in India, while other countries like Moscow, Russia, and China have far greater adoption. So as a technology provider, we are working with our ecosystem to ensure that some of these problems are captured in our future products. Also, the future lies in 3-D stereoscopic, which is more engaging for students.
Our project e-Pronounce is an ongoing research project. It aims at learning correct pronounciation using phonetic symbols. We wanted to have something to bridge the language divide for people in the non-native English environment. The objective is pedagogy first and technology second.
apply technology. It’s about completely re-thinking the way we personalise learning spaces and learning experiences. It means we place the students at the core, and let them set their goals. Instead of teachers, we should have coaches. This personal coaching leads to personal accountability for the students. Even the assessments have to be on the basis of knowledge instead of running after grades or marks.
Education should not be limited to reading or writing, it must be understood,
Our core function is to digitise data that is written by hand to business processable data. We designed a digital pen with the prime purpose of not wasting human time for completely nonproductive things. I believe any new technology faces problems of adaptation and adaptability. No technology is bad. It only fails when it is wrongly implemented.
Carrying forward the grand success of its earlier editions, the 3rd annual edition of World Education Summit was held on April 23-24, 2013,in New Delhi. World Education Summit 2013 was jointly organised by the AICTE, and Elets Technomedia Pvt Ltd; and was co-organised by the UNESCO,NCERT, and National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS).
The students of Bal Bharati Public School in collaboration with Genoveva Gymnasium, Germany, have done exemplary work on the global issue – Migration. This made them win the World Education Award 2013 under ‘Global Collaborative Learning Initiative’ category
We are grateful to India for leading the international education aid programmes in our country. Nearly 7,000 Afghan students are studying at universities and technical schools across India. We look forward to increased collaboration between India and Afghanistan through faculty and student exchange programmes. Educational co-operation through sustainable mechanisms will go a long way in enabling an economically and socially integrated region.
There are many avenues of collaboration between India and the Philippines including the education sector. We welcome Indian investment in education in the Philippines. There is already an increased people-to-people contact between the two nations. Implementing less restrictive visa policies is a building block that can go a long way in boosting ties in the field of education. I also believe organisations like ASEAN and SAARC should look into co-operation in education with India.
more international students, especially in the short -term programmes of six months or nine months. Slovenia and India have been the main supporters of the International Centre for Promotion of Enterprises (ICPE) for the last two decades and we have had a lots of students from India. The programme will begin from this year in October and we expect that at least 25 or more students will enrol.
Our gross enrolment ratio (GER) in higher education is 28 percent and our government is setting up a new target of 30 percent, for 2014. Thus, there is a need for more higher education institutions in Indonsesia, and we look forward to more collaboration with friendly countries like India. Also, India has now become an attractive education destination for students from overseas students. We are already working closely in several areas like organising training and exchange programmes and joint-research programmes.
