Jayant Hari Har Lal, Executive Director, Shri Ram New Horizon shares his vision of education system in India and talks about his mid career shift from the corporate world to academics. In conversation with Pragya Gupta Excerpts:
Please share your journey from the Doon School to the Shri Ram Group.
After my schooling at the Doon School and graduation from IIT Kanpur, I was selected at IIM Kolkatta; a University in the US and was offered employment in the private sector. Family issues compelled me to take up employment in India where I worked with various companies over the years. My entrepreneurial instincts got the better of me and coupled with family concerns I moved to my home town in Dehradun, where I set up a manufacturing plant making precision components for photocopiers and other electronic machinery. A chance offer to teach Math and Physics at my alma mater saw me teaching voluntarily for a period of 7 years at the Doon School. This opportunity of voluntary teaching made me shift my career towards education. There after there was a swift move up the ladder becoming a House Master in 1996 to the Deputy Head Master of the Doon School in 2001.
The lure of a headship took me to Bhopal where I was the founder Principal for Sanskaar Valley School- a Dainik Bhaskar group project. Two years ago, I finally hung my boots as Director Development at the Doon School and free lanced as Academic Advisor to Virendar Sehwag’s School in Jhajjar, Haryana. After completing that assignment I moved to the Shri Ram Group as the Executive Director, setting up high quality Shri Ram Global and Shri Ram Centennial schools all over the country.
What are your views on the education system in India?
My time in Doon has really given me a huge amount of exposure, both in India and abroad. I have visited schools around the globe, and I know with experience what is good education. It is my dream to make good education available in every part of India. Good education is not about securing marks alone, it is also not about rote learning, it is about living a life that you choose.
In our schools we provide varied experiences to a child, and let him/her determine what is good for them. During our youth, we had limited career options, but today there are nearly 2,200 listed careers. These careers do not require you to just perform well in the board exams, your self-confidence and the ability to learn is what will make the difference.
Sadly the rat race for marks has become important. This is due to chronic shortages – whether they are for college seats, train ticket, we are taught to always stay at the head of the queue. This is where development becomes crucial to our future. Indian minds are more inclined towards entrepreneurship, and we should be creating jobs rather than looking for jobs. India is sitting on a golden path, either we can stagnate or move forward and all of that is dependent on providing good education to all.
Evaluation is one of the important aspects to open up minds. How do you see new evaluation practice like CCE?
Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) is an excellent move, however certain aspects like not detaining a student till class VIII may be detrimental to the growth of the child. This aspect should be revisited. Through
CCE, students are being assessed on a daily rather than through a two hour annual examination.
Implementation of CCE can be a problem especially for those who do not understand how to implement it.
| Teacher training should concentrate on encouraging innovation and curiosity in a child’s mind with regard to the subject they are teaching |
How to gear up principals and teachers for taking new roles?
At least 99 percent of the teachers do not know why they teach, what they teach. After all, anyone can learn Math, Physics and English at home without even going to the classrooms. Schools are the place for socialisation, collaboration and interaction. Teacher training should concentrate on encouraging innovation and curiosity in a child’s mind with regard to the subject they are teaching. I also believe in empowerment of school Principals. I think promoters should leave management of school in their hands. Promoters can look after other things like government formalities, accounts, etc.
What are your views on schools going for International accreditation and collaborations?
In India, a small percentage of students go overseas for higher studies. For those who want to go abroad, international programmes offer an advantage, as these bring them on par with other students worldwide. Affiliations should be chosen carefully.
There are very few Indian universities which accept international programme grades in the same way they accept Indian programme grades. Although, things are changing, most Indian universities do not accept predicted grades of the International Baccalaureate (IB). A university should give provisional admission on the basis of predicted grades, however most Indian universities entertain final grades only. I see that CBSE is changing rapidly, through the introduction of CCE and now the CBSEi. Unfortunately CISCE has not kept pace.
Please share your expansion plans in India
At the moment we have eight projects viz namely Gurgaon, Rohtak, Agra, Indore, Dehradun, Tarapur, Patna, Makhrola etc. We are looking to open 100 schools in the next few years. Finally, we want a school in each district. We also have economy schools called ‘Bharat Ram Schools’ for the non-premium sector. Since land is very expensive, even 2-3 acres would suffice for a slightly truncated program. Here we offer the benefit of good education, but with slightly trimmed facilities.
How do you assure quality in the Franchise model of school?
Through regular visits and we have a really tight school audit system. Last year in our Rohtak school, a team of 12 people conducted a surprise check. For three days they checked every report card, notebook, administrative system etc and produced a detailed report. This audit is a regular feature in all our schools. If somebody dilutes our programme, we reserve the right to remove them.
Quality is the hallmark of education. It can be attained by aligning global partnerships to national interest, along with institutional autonomy, balanced with accountability to prevent misuse of freedom. The private institutions should come up with innovations to include a global perspective in a more global-oriented curriculum. The students should be given challenging assignments and be evaluated on an innovative grading system.
For education we need only one thing, which is a great mind and enabling environment. We know that India has great minds, but where is the enabling environment? There is a lack of freedom for private institutions. The hope is that they can differentiate themselves by focusing on students, who should be treated as the centre of all the activities. Another hope is in engaging the industry, as employability of students depends on the industry. But it has to be two-sided interaction wherein teachers and students also contribute to the industry. Also, private universities should have other models of revenue generation apart from students’ fees, to remain s u s t a i n – able in the long-run.
We believe in innovations through entrepreneurship whether it is technology or management or business schools. The motive should now be to produce employers rather than employees, because an employer can feed and assist four other people. We encourage our students to take up entrepreneurial projects.
Innovative curriculum, including contemporary subjects, is going to be the most important thing in the coming years. Experiential learning is also very important and students need to take up projects with the industry. Technology transfer and collaborations between government, research institutions, and industry are going to play a pivotal role.
Though the private sector has contributed a lot towards the success of technical education, priority structures have to be maintained across institutions. The most important thing on the list is the quality of the faculty that you acquire. It has to be followed by teaching-learning processes, quality of academic leadership, quality of admission, alumni relations, sports and cultural activities. But most of these segments have been misplaced in the priority list. It is time to stop distinguishing between public and private colleges, rather making both of them deliverable.
Prof (Dr) Dilip K Bandhyopadhyay,
Mimio, interactive teaching technologies provider, began in 1997 with a singular philosophy: to make learning more engaging for students with the help of technology. Jaemes Shanley, Director of Sales – Asia Pacific & Latin America, Mimio, shares his insight on the changing market dynamics of education technology all across the world in conversation with Dr Ravi Gupta. Excerpts:
By Joe Chang,
In India only 10 percent of fresh graduates are employable, as the majority lacks industry specific skills. We need to emphasise on vocational training for target groups like school dropouts, women and socially backward
TextIndia has become one of the major hubs for knowledge outsourcing and skill development. The quality of skill enhancement programmes, their variety and delivery has become major advantage for the world. It is only in India that you can find skill development enhancement solution for any need. One of the most sought after course is the algorithm training programme. Another emerging area of skill development is that of cyber security, given the rising cyber criminal activities.
Recently, the Government of Andhra Pradesh started Rajiv Yuva Kiranalu scheme. It aims to build job specific skills among the unemployed, and place them in appropriate private job sectors like construction. However, it is essential to make people aware about the different vocational skills and their learning centres.
Globarena Technologies has 13 years of experience in providing education services.
By Lakshmi Vishwanathan, Next Education India Pvt Ltd
Graduates now require skills like critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity that are documented in the approach paper of the plan document in the 12th Plan. Special emphasis on verbal communication skills, especially English, will help in bringing employability. We need an interactive and collective arrangement
The sectoral approach is that we need to scale quality capacity among the faculty, infrastructure, students, and the ecosystem, at large. Employability at the entry-level, and research and development at the higher level, both are required. While the industry has gone on its own journey, we have not made our efforts to bridge the misconception of supply and demand requirement. So the supply side has actually perceived the industry requirement and moved on its own journey.
The government is not solely responsible for doing everything. There are many examples across the world where education, health, transport and many important sectors are into private domains. It is good to involve private sector, both at the school level and higher education level in education, as it increases the competitiveness. When we say that education is the backbone, it is about inculcating democratic and secular values among the citizens.
Industry and academia are not working together. We are facing this issue that after four years of engineering, the companies come to us and say that their mindset is different, and they want something else from the students. We made industry-specific learning as a part of our curriculum. There are some industryrelevant curriculums, which we have designed in consultation with major companies.
We have kept the concept of corporate mentor at our institute, whereby we assign 15 students to a corporate and the mentors groom students. They take all the responsibility, starting from the academics to placements and teach business etiquette to students. We are also providing vocational courses to our students as corporates need students with basic knowledge of a particular industry. We must emphasise on practical knowledge and then the theory.
During the second year of MBA course, we talk to the industry people, and they give curriculum to us, which has to be added to the syllabus. Retail giant, Shoppers Stop, approached us and said that they need 900 employees every year. Attrition rate is high, but we have to give extensive training to graduates for one year to make them employable. They suggested us to give sixmonth training in the last year of graduation for students who want to join the retail industry.
Gujarat Knowledge Society (GKS) is a revolutionary measure of the Gujarat Government, undertaken in 2008, to bridge the gap between the industry and academia. GKS believes in empowering the youth. We incorporate training centres with the help of various industries, where quality education is imparted to the candidates. GKS has already registered with some of the finest public and private institutions in the country like NIIT, HCL, etc. The students get great employment opportunities along with enhancement of the skills and knowledge.
