Amitava Banerjee, Head of Marketing, Rumi Education, talks about the advanced solutions that his company is offering to schools, inconversation with Pragya Gupta, ENN

Please share the genesis of Rumi Education in India.

Rumi is an education solutions company that is dedicated to transforming the quality of education provided in schools. We offer a host of education solutions that are world-class, comprehensive, cost-effective and enable partner institutions
to greatly enhance learning outcomes.

Rumi was established in 2008 by the Richard Chandler Corporation, a Singapore-based investment organisation. We strongly believe that making quality education cost-effective for all is the first step towards building a strong and prosperous society.

Tell us about Rumi’s classroom solutions.

Rumi Ready School is our introductory programme that enhances the school’s present curriculum. It can be implemented at any time during the academic year. The programme focuses on language development, communication skills and phonics training, conceptual tools for Math and enables students to acquire the skills that are essential for social interaction and knowledge absorption. The product is available for pre-primary, primary and high schools.

Rumi Smart School is a comprehensive programme that introduces core curriculum and runs throughout the academic year. The core curriculum includes specially conceptualised enhancement tools to boost inquiry-based learning that aims to satisfy students’ curiosity and offers an exploratory approach to build problem-solving and thinking skills. The tools are designed to develop confidence, critical thinking, and articulation skills that allow real-life application and lay the foundation for higher learning.

Rumi Digital Skills is an add-on programme. This award-winning digital education product has an IT-based curriculum and seeks to develop students for future employability.

Rumi English for Teachers present a rigorous curriculum that aims to improve the English speaking skills of teachers, thereby enabling them to communicate better with their students.

What is your opinion on the issue of having curriculum that is more employability specific?

‘Employability’ refers to a candidate’s potential to obtain a ‘job’, and should not be confused with the actual acquisition of the job. Whereas the world of employment has, by and large, been satisfied with the disciplinary understanding and skills developed as a consequence of participation in education, it has been less happy with the development of what has been termed ‘generic skills’, such as communication, team-work and critical thinking. Employability derives from complex learning, and is a concept of wider range than those of ‘core’ and ‘key’ skills. And our programmes like Rumi Digital Skills and Rumi English for Teachers addresses just those gaps.

Please highlight your plans for the Indian market?

Successful implementation of our school education solutions leads to improved academic performance, better student attendance, reduced dropout rates and increased motivation, retention and engagement of teachers. Our mission is to be the market leader in providing education solutions by offering comprehensive and sustainable education solutions that enable schools, teachers and students reach their full potential through effective and innovative teachinglearning methods. We aim to reach out to 300 schools by the end of this year. “We Aim to Reach Out to 300 Schools by End of this Year” Amitava Banerjee, Head of Marketing, Rumi Education, talks about the advanced solutions that his company is offering to schools, inconversation with Pragya Gupta, ENN Corporate Diary

Santanu Mishra, Co founder and Executive Trustee of Smile Foundation spoke to Pragya Gupta, about wireless campus

http://smilefoundationindia.org

Tell us about your Wireless campus.

We are making our Smile Twin e-Learning Programme (STeP) centres across 60 locations in India completely Wi-Fi enabled. It’s very important to have Wi-Fi campus because as it reduces the cost of wires along with the complexities of connectivity. The maintenance cost comes down. It also helps in seamless teaching and learning.

How critical is wireless campus in creating better teaching learning outcomes?

The role of wireless campus for the enhancement of teaching learning process is vast. Wireless campus supports everyday activities unobtrusively and seamlessly in classroom contexts. Project-based learning is facilitated as teachers and students can engage in teaching and learning via Wi-Fi. Also, it gives the class freedom and spontaneity in learning as the teaching is in progress.

Tell us about the ways by which the institute is making use of digital and connectivity related technologies?

We aim towards connecting all our institutes with WiFi for availing the maximum mobility. Also we are looking forward to convert our institutes into virtual classrooms for maintaining the quality of education through the country. We are looking forward in conducting virtual recruitments for increasing job opportunities of our students. In near future, we may facilitate free teaching of our students by connecting our classrooms with the best of the institutes and colleges.

What new digital teaching tools do you plan to deploy in future?

Our centres are already being upgraded with WiFi networks, which will reduce the cost and complication of wires. Also cloud computing is being made availed to all the centres. The main idea is to provide virtual classes across the country to all our students. In future we will like to introduce virtual recruitment process.//

Dr Picheswar Gadde, CEO, Lingaya’s University, speaks to Sheena Joseph Cherian, about the mission and vision of his institution

http://lingayasuniversity.edu.in

Tell us about the Lingaya’s University. What was the main inspiration that brought the university into being?

Lingaya’s University came into being in1998 with the simple objective of offering professional and technical education in North India. Most of the students were going from North India to South India as there was scarcity of good colleges in the North. We wanted to start an institution in Delhi, but those were the days when Delhi University was not giving affiliations. Indraprashtha (IP) came into being only in 1999. Faridabad was the nearest location to Delhi. So we decided to start there. Being a South Indian group, apart from the academics, we wanted to give more importance to the moral values and ethics. To an extent, we have been successful in the first year; we were amongst the top three colleges. In 2009, we completed ten years. As per the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) regulations, we needed ten years to become a deemed university, so we applied for I then. For that we needed to undergo very vigorous inspection. However, we got permission in January 2009.

Tell us about your views on providing job related skills to the students.

In the MNCs, where majority of students want find jobs, there is lot of competition; the MNCs give 60 percent emphasis on the academic part and 40 percent on the factors like: what is the attitude of the student, is he going to be a good team worker, how good is his body language, communication skills etc. So these are the very important things that we must also emphasise upon.

At Lingaya’s we follow a simple strategy, which says that if you manufacture a good product it will be definitely be sold in
the market, if you don’t manufacture properly it won’t be sold. We produce engineers and if they are good, they will be sold in the market otherwise they will not be sold. If we are just giving the degree for the sake of it, it means we are not doing justice.

How does Lingaya’s University distinguish itself from other technical universities?

There are certain systems that we have maintained at the Lingaya’s University. We are emphasising more on the Research and Development. We don’t emphasise on increasing the number of students or increasing the number of courses. The emphasis of the University is industry oriented. We do not emphasise on the academics; we see what the industry wants us to teach the students. Overall development of a child is also very important and this is what the Lingaya’s University emphasises on.

Tell us about your plans for building new institutes in Faridabad.

We want to build an international school in Faridabad. Haryana government has already given us the no objection certificate. The idea and concept behind this is that we want to shape the child from nursery to the Phd. level. And hopefully we will be able to complete it in the coming years.

What are your future plans?

We have our colleges in Vijayawada, we have colleges in Delhi also and we want to expand further. We wish to expand outside India also. The concept is very clear. We want to expand our wings to California. We wish to have a system that allows a student to study for three years in India and then go to USA for doing his final year. One advantage is that the student has to pay lower fees, and the other advantage is that if he does his finishing course from there, he gets visa for two years as per the policy. Same is for the Masters Program also; the student does one year here and one year there.