RBI Launches Quiz Competition For Schools

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) launched an all-India RBI inter-school quiz competition called RBIQ as an initiative to promote financial literacy at school level. The quiz will be conducted among students in of classes 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th. As this is the first year of the quiz, select schools located across the length and breadth of the country across all educational boards have been invited to participate.

The RBIQ strives to create an awareness and interest about the history and role of the RBI, banking and finance, economics, current affairs and personalities and events that have contributed to the growth and progress of India over the years. It is an effort to build a ‘connect’ between the RBI and the young students across the country and to disseminate financial literacy among them. The quiz seeks to recognise and encourage bright young students and provide a national platform for their talent.

Community Colleges to be set up for Skill Development: Kapil Sibal

The government will set up 10 community colleges in collaboration with Canadian educational institutes to educate illiterate adults and provide skill-based training for employment, human resource development minister announced Shri Kapil Sibal, Union Minister, MHRD

“Under the adult literacy programme of the HRD ministry, as many as 70 million people need to be literate and their capacity enhanced to enable them to acquire the skills required to perform jobs,” he said

Of the illiterate 70 million, 60 million are women who need education and skill training close to where they live. And for this, the government would launch 100 community colleges this year.

 600 posts of instructors in ITIs to be filled: Punjab govt

The Punjab government will soon fill 665 vacant posts of instructors in ITIs across the state besides providing them requisite infrastructure to enable them to develop professional skills among the students.

Disclosing this here on Monday, Technical Education and Industrial Training minister Anil Joshi said that presently there were 111 government and 294 private ITIs in the state which are providing professional training to over 64,000 youth every year.

Joshi said that he has issued instructions to complete recruitment process in the most transparent manner.

Sibal Launched Campaign to Promote ‘Sakshar Bharat’

We might send Chandrayan to moon and mars mission but if we don’t give education to our women, we can’t fly.” With these words, HRD Minister, Kapil Sibal has launched a mass awareness campaign for the success of the Saakshar Bharat Abhiyan programme that will employ a host of media including television ads to reach out to the people. The mission, which covers adults beyond the age of 15, has assessed close to two crore adults and issued literacy certificates.

The aim of the new awareness campaign is to give a boost to this ambitious programme whose benefits are yet to reach all the corners of the country.

Kerala HC directs state govt to grant NOCs to schools satisfying CBSE/ICSE norms

Kerala High Court has directed the state government to grant NOCs to schools satisfying CBSE/ICSE norms for affiliation. A direction in this regard was issued by a division bench comprising Justices T N Ramachandran Nair and C K Abdul Rahim after dismissing a government appeal challenging a single judge’s order quashing conditions imposed for granting NOCs.

The bench directed CBSE and ICSE boards to enforce a condition for continued affiliation, payment of salary provisionally at the rate of Rs 10,000 per month for primary teachers’, Rs 15,000 for high school teachers and Rs 20,000 for higher secondary teachers. The court also directed that non teaching staff– clerks– be paid Rs 6,000 and Class IV employees Rs 4,000 per month as salary as an interim measure till government takes a decision

Pranab K Bose
MD

Company Name
Waterford Institute India

Management Team
Charles Callis, Ann Treacy

Address
2nd Floor, Knowledge Park, Hiranandani Business Park, Powai,
Mumbai- 400 076
Telephone: +91-22-4170190
Email: inmktg@waterford.org

Website: waterford.org

Regional Office(s)
Regional representatives at Bangalore, New Delhi, and Kolkata

Contact Person for Clarification
Pranab K Bose

Distributors
Actuniv, JIL-Information Technology
Ltd, Connoiseur Electronics Pvt Ltd

Waterford Institute uses rigorous research to build award-winning and research-validated educational programmes

Waterford Institute is a US headquartered non-profit research organisation dedicated to provide every child with the finest education through the development of high-quality educational models, curriculum, programs, and software. Founded in 1976, Waterford Institute uses rigorous research to build award winning and research-validated educational programmes like Waterford Early Learning and Waterford Classroom Advantage. Waterford programmes have improved education for millions of children around the world. Waterford Institute is providing educators and children the tools they need to establish learning success. With offices in USA, Romania, Taiwan, and India and an expanding client base across USA, Mexico, Israel, China, Korea, Japan, Senegal, Rwanda, Haiti, Taiwan , Sri Lanka , India, etc. it’s flagship program Waterford Early Learning, is used in over 50,000 classrooms across the globe now. Waterford Institute India, with its registered office in Mumbai has been promoting the range of Waterford educational programmes in schools and learning centres across the country.

Products and Services

The company offers Language and Math and Science Lab software, “Waterford Early learning Suite”, classroom based Group instruction software, Waterford Classroom Advantage and “Rusty and Rosy Reading Program”, Waterford’s Learn at Home Reading program. Our comprehensive early learning suite Waterford Early Learning ( English, Math and Science Digital Lab program ) comprises of Waterford Early Reading and Waterford Early Math and Science programmes, which includes reading, math and science curricula; early literacy assessment; and innovative teacher tools- providing a rich learning experience that inspires and empowers both children and educators alike. The program developed for early learners (4 – 12 years) provide personalised learning at the pace of the child. Waterford Institute has also introduced Classroom Advantage in response to the need for exciting, effective interactive whiteboard resources by adapting its award winning early reading, math, and science curricula for whole classroom/group instruction. The Programmes provides teachers the resources they need to have more frequent and meaningful interactions with students and similarly provides students a rich environment in which to gain the skills necessary for a lifetime of learning. Utilising latest proven research, Waterford Institute continues to be at the cutting edge of technology delivered instruction for early childhood education.

Target Vertical(s)

K-12 Schools

Paul Maidment
MD/CEO

Company Name
BBC Motion Gallery Education

Management Team
Jan Ross, Senior Vice President;
Justine Avery, Head of Education;
Yusuf Batliwala, Sales Manager

Address
Media Centre, MC3D1, 201 Wood Lane, London, W12 7TQ
Phone: +91 44 2084332861
Email: Education.Row@Bbc.Com

Regional Office(s)
Mumbai, New York, Los Angeles

Website: bbcmotiongalleryeducation.com

Contact Person for Clarification
Yusuf Batliwala

Archive of BBC Motion Gallery is amongst the greatest in the world, encompassing a wealth of subjects so vast it’s hard to fathom

BBC Motion Gallery Education is a leader in providing high production quality factual content geared towards the needs of educators and students. BBC Motion Gallery Education is part of BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC. For over 70 years, BBC content has entertained and educated, informed and inspired. Video archive of BBC Motion Gallery is amongst the greatest in the world, encompassing a wealth of subjects so vast it’s hard to fathom. It is from this extensive collection that company has produced thousands of ready-to-use educational modules, each of which can be previewed on the company’s website. Created in collaboration with education publishers across the globe, these modules can map directly to a national curriculum, or can be used in a more illustrative approach to introduce a topic, theme or idea. The mission is to Bring Learning to Life.

Product and Services

BBC Motion Gallery is a Digital Library offering Multi-Media Content and an Online Education Portal. The company delivers remarkable diversity and depth of content solutions, ranging from clip licensing to fully-produced segments tailored to map specific curriculums  and everything in between. Our educational videos can be used in a variety of media such as online usage, DVD, classroom usage and apps. Our clients include publishers, education service providers and online education companies. The short videos provided by the company cover all major curriculum subjects, allowing a provision for visual narrative that draws the student’s attendtion and allows them to experience the lesson with their own eyes. The company is coming up with the new education platform, which will offer the following services:

• Self-serve B2B window to curriculum linked video modules
• Project management tool enabling state-of-the-art workflow
• Customised secure screening room
• Instant review, feedback, collaboration
• Accurate, complete project histories
• A full e-commerce site with white label potential.

Business Collaboration

Our content sources include BBC, BBC World News, BBC Learning Class Clips from within the BBC . In addition, we represent other content collections including CBS News, The Open University, NHK, the Attenborough Collection and CCTV.

Nirmala Sankaran
Co-founder & Managing
Director

Company Name
HeyMath! (Sankhyaa Learning Pvt Ltd)

Co-founder & CEO
Harsh Rajan

Address
Steeple Reach, 25 Cathedral Road, Chennai 600 086
Telephone: +91 44 43481500
Email: contact@heymath.com

Website: www.heymath.com

Sales and after sales support
+91-11-40519085

Regional Office(s)
New Delhi

Contact Person for Clarification
Swetha Prakash, contact@heymath.com, +91-011-40519085

HeyMath! supports the work of teachers and helps students build a strong foundation in mathematics

Co-founded by Nirmala Sankaran and Harsh Rajan on the premise that “every student counts” and developed in formal collaboration with the University of Cambridge since 2000, HeyMath! is a proven method that makes Mathematics easy and enjoyable for every student.

HeyMath! curriculum instruction and assessment software is mapped to specific curricula (CBSE, ICSE, IGCSE, State Boards etc) and helps students build a strong foundation in Mathematics. The animated visuals and interactive tools in the programme engage students, strengthen conceptual understanding through discovery, help in retention of ideas, and enhance problem-solving skills – driving the learning deeper and connecting to real world applications.

Regular training and support for teachers ensures that they save time in their classrooms while using the programme to strengthen their content knowledge and for connecting to their community of peers around the world.

HeyMath! is used in over 50 countries and produces results in both offline and online learning environments – ranging from a single room in a school to a WiFi enabled campus.

Products and Service

World-class, curriculum specific K-12 mathematics instruction and assessment software, backed by teacher support and integrated with customised learning environments (HeyMath! Zones) for experiential learning. HeyMath! also manages a collaborative question- bank for teachers that is contributed entirely by its partner schools, and provides editorial oversight to categorise questions by grade and topic for testing and assessment.

Target Vertical(s)
K-12

Achievements:

Over the last 12 years, HeyMath! has established itself as a cutting-edge programme that provides transformational and sustainable value addition to for school systems in Singapore, India, the United States and Africa. Featured as an example of globalisation in education in Thomas L Friedman’s bestseller “The World is Flat”, HeyMath! was also profiled in his Op-Ed column of the New York Times. In a nation-wide survey in 2007, Microsoft recognised HeyMath! as ‘one of the most innovative software companies in India’. The innovative approach of HeyMath! has also been covered by BBC News and The Economist.

Meena Ganesh
CEO and MD

Company Name
Pearson Education Services (PES)

Management Team
Meena Ganesh, K Ganesh,
Srikanth B Iyer

Address
10, 3rd Main, Ashwini Layout
Intermediate Ring Road,
Ejipura Koramangala,
Bangalore 560 047,
Karnataka, INDIA
Telephone: +91 (80) 30461020

Website: pearsoneducationservices.com

Contact Person for Clarification
Ashika Devi

Pearson Education Services (PES) provides end-to-end education solutions in the K-12 segment, with focus on technological innovations

Pearson Education Services is part of Pearson, a global education, media and publishing group, represented by market-leading businesses such as the Pearson Education, Financial Times and Penguin. Pearson is the world’s leading education company. From pre-school to high school, early learning to professional certification, our curriculum materials, multimedia learning tools, assessment and testing programmes help to educate more than 100 million people worldwide – more than any other private enterprise.

Pearson in India is well placed to bring its wide range of leading products and services to the Indian Education System and contributing to the development of learning in the country. We are committed to bringing this depth of international experience to contribute to measurable, outcome based and technology enabled learning in India.

Product and Services

Pearson Education Services (PES) provides end-to-end education solutions in the K-12 segment, with a focus on technological innovations. Being a part of Pearson, PES aims to seamlessly combine content and technology and offer customised solutions of international standards to audiences not just in India but worldwide.

PES’s current market offerings include:

School management services, by way of which they manage, operate and build high quality schools across the country that leverage Pearson’s global knowledge and expertise in the school space; on-line tutoring, that offers quality online tuitions to students across the world at very affordable prices; ICT solutions known as DigiClass, for both schools and higher education institutions by employing the DigitALly™ application; technology aided coaching classes and test preparation services for various Entrance (CET, AIEEE, IIT-JEE, AIPMT) and School/Board exams (State, CBSE, ICSE). For more information on Pearson Education Services, please log on to www.pearsoneducationservices.com.

Target Vertical(s)

K12 schools, Higher Education, Tutorials

Achievements

Its efforts at improving the learning process and classroom experience has won it many accolades – including the President Award for IT, Manthan Award for Best E-Content Development, the Marico Innovation Award and World Education Summit Award in 2012 for Best Innovation in Teaching Learning Technologies – Digiclass

Grace Pinto
Managing Director,
Ryan Group of Institutions

At Ryan, we follow a very simple, profound philosophy – excellence in education and all-round development. We manage to make a ‘difference,’ because besides being spiritual, and value-based, we also have a commitment to ensuring child-centred pedagogy. We believe in providing holistic development to the child…

Please tell us about the growth story of Ryan Group of Schools. What motivated the Founder Chairman, Dr Augustine F Pinto, to start this venture?

Nearly three decades ago, our Founder Chairman, Dr A F Pinto, was motivated to begin a school. He was passionate about enabling every child in the country to have access to quality education. He was also inspired by the fact that there was a growing demand for schools in the northern suburbs of Mumbai. The whole idea was to equip children with life skills, which enable them to face challenges of a changing world and empower them to be socially responsible leaders, who stay focused in spite of the many trials on various fronts. Joining him on this learning journey was a natural progression considering it is hardly possible to be untouched by his visionary leadership.

The last three decades, the Ryan Group has grown to be a large network of over 120 K-12 institutions in 15 states of India
and overseas. We began our first CBSE School in Delhi region in 1991. While we acknowledge our LORD, we are also grateful for the people He blessed us with – the various stakeholders both within and outside of our school community, starting with our dear students, the staff, our parent community, those behind the scenes, and our well-wishers. We are a testimony of His grace being sufficient, as we have sought doing our best in offering quality holistic education to the children of our nation.

What were the key challenges that you faced while setting up the brand?

Challenges are meant to strengthen character and as such the nature of the challenges we have faced have only caused us to stay grounded and rooted in values and our faith. The challenges were varied and complex in nature and largely a result of misperception. It has been a good and humbling experience to be in the lifelong learning mode- “learning from and for life” while in leadership. Apart from that the key for us to succeed has not just been to learn from our experiences, but also to anticipate

Future plans of Ryan Group

• Integrate technology appropriately to facilitate the teaching learning process. Invest in leadership and teacher development and training.
• Focus on pedagogical leadership in our schools for better learning outcomes.
• Support the cause of sports, social service and love for the nation.
• Be the prime choice for parents who aspire for better education for their students. and act ahead to enable preventive action as far as possible.

Like all segments, education also has its positives and areas of concern. Today as the education sector has been privatised, there is a whole lot of competition. It is becoming increasingly important to stay ahead in this segment of education and innovate and be progressive in approach. The approach has to be fine tuned with the changing trends in global education and leadership.

What are the opportunities that you found and what are your strengths?

We have learnt firsthand that every challenge presents an opportunity to learn and grow, and learn again. Every experience whether good, bad or ugly has posed as an opportunity for us to learn anew and march forth. Since the vision is clear to us, we aspire for our efforts to be aligned with the vision of encouraging “all round development.” Thankfully perception about what truly constitutes education is evolving and we are grateful to our parent community for embracing change over time and being more receptive to arts being integrated in the educational process. Our activities reflect the understanding that the key task in imparting quality education also involves pursuing sustainable development in the economy, ecology and social well being of all. Although an incredibly challenging journey, the opportunity of meeting the educational needs of the nation has been humbling experience. However, we can say that we have achieved a lot within a short span of time as we now cover a large part of the country and have also spread our wings globally.

Our strength is Christ and the hope He offers each day to enliven and make a difference to every person, thus investing long term in the nation’s wealth (our students).

What distinguishes Ryan from the other group of schools?

At Ryan, we follow a very simple, profound philosophy – excellence in education and all-round development. We manage to make a ‘difference,’ because besides being spiritual, and value-based, we also have a commitment to ensuring child-centred pedagogy. We believe in providing holistic development to the child.

Our objective is to nurture children, so that they not only excel academically, but become empowered citizens with life skills to thrive. Being in the field of education for the past three decades, we have attempted to develop best practices for ourschools, encouraging sports and extracurricular activities at the state, national and international levels. Ryan Group has been recorded more than 8 times in the Limca Book of Records in various academic and extra-curricular activities. We have launched world-level events like Indian Model United Nations (INMUN), International Children’s Festival of Performing Arts (ICFPA) and IAFA (Iceplex Ad Film Awards) amongst many others which provide international exposure to our students.

Since our approach is also to provide hands-on learning experience for children, especially in sports we have collaborated with the best in the industry like Mahesh Bhupathy for tennis, Baichung Bhutia for football and Vishwanathan Anand for chess to bring world-class coaching to our children.

Transcending the territorial limits, Ryan has opened wide the doors for exchange of ideas and multicultural learning experiences to our future citizens to explore the potentials of an international interface. Values with sound knowledge and the wisdom to use it constructively provide the differential factor to our students at Ryan.

Transcending the territorial limits, Ryan has opened wide the doors for exchange of ideas on multicultural learning experiences. The idea is to enable our future citizens to explore the potentials of an international interface

The Indian government has come up with the policies like Right to Education (RTE) & Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE). What are your perspectives on this?

While there is reasonable focus on higher education, there is dire need for systemic reform in the area of secondary and primary level education. Moreover, teacher and leadership training and development deserve attention if the lives of our future leaders and global citizens are going to be shaped by them. The well being of millions of children who are waiting to be brought under the influence of education largely depends upon the easy access to their Right to Education (RTE) while studying the most feasible way to do so.

Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation, which has been introduced in recent past is getting implemented across all streams of School Education, and it covers all aspects of student’s development with both Formative and Summative Assessment. CCE helps in improving student’s performance by identifying his/ her learning difficulties at regular time intervals right from the beginning of the academic session and employing suitable remedial measures for enhancing their learning performance. CCE has already been implemented in all our schools. Introduction of ERP in the school will definitely improve the CCE system at large. This also empowers students with selfassessment. Our schools have been at the forefront of adopting innovations and modern practices to ensure that there is a continuous enhancement in the overall quality of teaching and learning.

Over the last three decades Ryan has been serving the cause of providing quality education and it will continue to spread quality education in all corners of the country.

The traditional system of education is undergoing a change by introducing digital methods of teaching. So how proactive has the school been in accommodating such methods of teaching?

ICT has in fact attracted attention of academia, business, government and communities to use it for innovative profitable propositions. 21st century is characterised by the emergence of knowledge based society wherein ICT plays a pivotal role.

As the importance of digital pedagogy in school education is being highlighted, and being aware that children are very comfortable with modern technology, we have already incorporated the ICT tools to enhance the learning experience amongst our students. Most of our schools are affiliated to ICSE, CBSE and IB-IGCSE and understandably ICT is part of the academia. Besides ICT being one of the regular subjects, we have facilitated and partnered in the creation of various technology platforms like myschool.in.com to enhance communication and learning experience. We are in the process of working with some leading entities in this space to enhance the usage of digital methodology in our schools.

Ryan was among the first group of schools to include computer education in the curriculum, way back in the early 1990’s. We in the process of understanding the feasibility of digital books for our staff and students and believe in embracing change, using it to make education more engaging and meaningful. Our schools are established to develop academic and overall development of the students and encourage any effort that helps us do this effectively.

What is your vision for the Ryan Group of Institutions?

Ryan has been at the forefront of changing the paradigm of education. We are now gearing ourselves up for the next level of growth. We hope to leverage technology in offering quality education to inaccessible parts of India and enable the children to benefit from high quality English medium education.

Students of Ryan International School, Greater Noida participated in the Global Point Of View Project organised by Green Contributor and University of Erlangen, Nuernberg. The project was on the topic climate change in your region with participants from three countries i.e India, Germany and U.S.A. The project was conducted in three phases:

1. Getting to know each other- Students from the different countries prepared introductory videos and interacted on Facebook.
2. Working on the problem- Students identified the climatic problems in their region and figured out the causes for the problem and put the matter in a power-point presentation.
3. Discussing the problem worldwide- After preparing the presentation, the students exchanged their presentation and discussed the problems over the online discussion portal ‘Lo-Net2.de’
4. Planning concrete actions- Students from the different countries after going through the Climatic problems of all regions together formulated some steps to be implemented to eradicate the problems.

Participants from USA, India and Germany at the summit

The students of Ryan International School, Greater Noida always had a realisation about the deteriorating condition of the Global environment and they enthusiastically participated in the project with a desire to make a small positive change in the environment. The key idea was to sensitise students to look at global problems from various perspectives. The project involved studying issues, discussing/debating them, understanding differing perspectives/concepts of cooperation and brainstorming for solutions.

Living in the National Capital Region, Ryan students found that the most prominent climatic problem was the flooding of the river Yamuna and shared their presentation with the students of other participating countries like Zambia and together formulated some measures to eradicate the problem. They realized that the main cause was increasing global warming. As an extension to this project the students also participated in a project called the ‘Marine Project’ with a motive to save the water bio-diversity.

Shrishti Gupta of Ryan International School, Greater Noida got the opportunity to visit the Algalita Marine Center, California, USA as a part of this project. Aman Pandey of Ryan International School, Greater Noida got the opportunity to participate in the 32nd International Geographical Congress held atCologne, Germany from 25th August’12- 30th August’12 as he was invited by a leading European Publishing house.

Tackling Global issues together

Globalisation is a reality and models of this nature would definitely encourage cooperation amongst nations as Ryan Students had hands on experience in collaborating across time-zones. Global Point of View provided a platform for students to have an Intercontinental Exchange of ideas and perspectives to arrive at practical solutions towards a sustainable peaceful world. The project involved studying climate change and its practical impact. It has won accolades and been recognized with the prestigious award – Innovation in Global Collaborative Learning at an international front – World Education Summit 2012.