‘No’ to corporal punishment, says education commissioner

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October 19, 2015

Now the fear of being cracked by a whip will no longer scare the students from venturing out to go to schools, as a recent judgment on corporal punishment has initiated that where will be disciplinary action taken against schools who still practice it.

Education commissioner Dr Purushottam Bhapkar has instructed all education officials in Mahrasthra to take action against schools that are found guilty. The instructions issued by Bhapkar have been given in a circular dated October 18 where the minister has asked the education officials to immediately take disciplinary action against those schools who have violated the rule.

According to the Right to Free and Compulsory Education, no child shall be subjected to physical punishment or mental harassment. It states that despite the Right to Free and Compulsory Education rule number 17 (1) and 17 (2) under responsibilities of schools and teachers that no child shall be subjected to physical punishment or mental harassment. Reports of corporal punishments have been noticed in some schools through newspapers.

Stating further that corporal punishment is still prevalent in schools today, Prashant Redij, Mumbai President, Maharashtra Permanent Unaided Schools Association, said: “The instructions might have been sent because of the reports of corporal punishments in some schools. Corporal punishments still exist and not all gets reported. The education officers can take disciplinary action against schools and teachers. However, ever since the no fail policy has come into practice, students have become notorious in the class. We cannot give punish to improve the child. We are expected to be friendly with them.”

Enhancing parent-teacher communication

Startup News

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October 19, 2015

Believing that the parental involvement in the education of a child is supreme and impacts the outcome of school education, Abhiraj Malhotra, Founder and CEO SchoolPad has launched an online platform that bridges the gap between parent-teacher communications which helps in setting the productivity of a child

Give us the brief of the various reasons behind starting the venture.

We at SchoolPad strongly believe that parental involvement is one of the most important elements or rather what greatly impacts the outcome of school education. As part of my previous company and out of curiosity I went to a couple of schools to understand the existing set of productivity tools they were using. It was surprising that none of these tools worked towards making parent-teacher communication more effective which was a big gap and at the same time something that we really wanted to solve. Going into a little more detail we found that these tools were too bulky and complex which instead of making things simpler for teachers, started to become an overhead and eventually lead to minimal or no usage. Also talking to teachers revealed that most of the times when teachers or staff members got stuck and looked for help on using these tools better, it was rarely provided in time.

So all these factors gave us enough reasons to come together and start SchoolPad.

What are the various difficulties encountered in doing business on ground level?

I was reading this quote recently which said “There are 2 things that grow just for the sake of growing: Tumours and Businesses.” Since day one we set out to solve this problem of transforming the way schools operate by bridging the communication gap between parents and teachers and though it is a big problem with an even bigger impact, the only way we could start was small. Since we were out to bring a fundamental change in the way schools operate by nature in our country, we knew that the only way this could be possible was by moving slow and understanding the way schools work in the first place. The only way we could progress better and come out strong was by learning faster and reiterating at every step on our product and strategies and the only way that would have been possible for us was by moving step by step and growing like a tree.

I think it’s because of this approach that we haven’t come across any major hurdles yet. From getting some seed money to initial customers we have been lucky enough to be surrounded by great and helpful people who found enough potential in us that they invested in us and helped us grow. Yet we are still in our early days with a long way to go and a lot to see.

What is the market size of the services offered by you in India at present?

Our software platform caters to private K-12 schools across India. As per the EY-FICCI report on the education sector in India, we have over 3 Lakh 30 thousand plus private schools in our country growing at a CAGR of 4 per cent. So that’s roughly the estimated market size of the services offered by us at this point.

What are the major benefits for organisations adopting your solutions?

Schools that have signed up with us see significant improvement in terms of teacher productivity and at the same time communication with parents because with least effort teachers are able to keep parents more informed and involved using SchoolPad’s online platform. We have created many happy moments for schools and parents with the experience that we provide and schools love us for the same.

What is the vision of your company for the next two years?

When it comes to creating happy parents through better parent-teacher communication, we want to be the most trusted and accepted tool across K-12 schools in our country. That would certainly take a lot more years but two years down the line we would like to see ourselves closer to it by widening our reach into more cities. That doesn’t mean just selling it to these schools but actually helping them find value and thus helping progress better.

What are the various methods you are using to increase the visibility of your organisation?

We are a small team right now, working hard in pursuit of making a big impact. The good news is that today, Internet gives you enormous reach which helps you connect to the right people easier and quicker than ever. We write and share a lot of useful articles and resources specifically for schools so that we can be useful to them in some way or the other irrespective of whether they are our customers or not. We share these pieces through our email newsletter, blog and social media and try to target them so that they reach the right people thus making us a little more visible. Doing a great product also helps because that’s what has helped us generate happy customers and enough word of mouth to keep our sales going.

How you can differentiate your services from competitors?

The way we have supported and engaged our customers and users specifically school teachers after selling our product is what has clearly differentiated us from our competitors. That’s where we spend a lot of our time and focus and that has paid off. Other than that we clearly underdo most of our competition in terms of the number of features. How that helps is that it makes our product much easier to implement and the same time to use by teachers who find value quickly and hence use it more often. It also helps us focus more and build an overall experience because of which our existing customers love us and enjoy working with it.

What are the ways of engaging the customers with you. Can you share any special case study?

It’s a great time to take customer engagement to the next level specifically for internet product companies. We have so many great tools available today which helps you keep in touch with your customers as and when they require without your physical presence. That in itself provides a great opportunity to create customer delight. In our case we use a tool called Intercom for most of our customer communication and I strongly recommend it. It helps us understand who is using what and how and accordingly we can reach our users and help them as and when required. Other than that most of our customer support happens over whatsapp which actually needs no introduction. All these tools have made it so easy for us to help users of our product and collect usage insights directly from the user that we require every now and then to create a better product.

What are the various initiatives taken by your organisation to emerge as a market leader?

I really believe in the power of focus and to do something really well you have to be extremely focussed and persistent. So instead of doing too many things we focus on doing just one thing that we are doing right now and try do it really well. Secondly, we want to consistently deliver great customer support. We have time and again invested money, time and effort on rethinking the ways we communicate and share information with our customers so that our customers can use the product to its optimum and generate real value out of it.

Access online coaching by SuperProfs

Startup News

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October 19, 2015

With a focus to dissipate quality education to every nook and corner of the country, Piyush Agrawal, Founder, SuperProfs started this unique venture to help students get the best of coaching from the top professors of the country on their mobile phones at ease. In an exclusive chat with Elets News Network (ENN), Piyush tells that this novel technology can even be used on the low bandwidth which is an issue of concern for remote cities

Give us the brief of the various reasons behind starting SuperProfs.

I was pursuing my PhD at Stanford University (USA) when a brainwave hit me. Technology can and should be used to dissipate quality education to every nook and corner of our country. I returned back home with one vision – to make quality education accessible to the masses. I worked with Sujeet Kumar (CTO and co-founder of SuperProfs) on a video compression algorithm so that videos can be streamed even at low internet bandwidth (as low as 100 Kbps). We initially offered this technology to universities and other institutes and worked with them to improve our solution.

In 2014 we decided to take this novel technology to students directly and that is how SuperProfs was born. As a next step we tied up with some of India’s top professors who offer coaching for competitive exams and helped them bring their courses online. We have so far launched 1000+ courses for CA, CS, CMA, GATE, JEE, UPSC (IAS / IPS / IFS) etc. We have planned to launch courses for many more such exams like CAT, GRE, GMAT etc. in the near future. Very soon, students from any corner of the country will have access to coaching classes on their mobile phones.

What are the various difficulties encountered in doing business on ground level?

Since ours is a B2C company, it is always a challenge to manage the details of logistics involved. We have to make sure that there are no slip ups and that our customers are fully satisfied with our course offerings. We have to make sure that the entire process of recording lectures, streaming it to students, providing study material, doubt clearing etc. is done seamlessly so that there is no inconvenience caused either to the professors or to the students. Our operations and customer facing teams work round the clock to make sure that this is possible.

What is the market size of the services offered by you in India at present?

Competitive Exam preparation coaching in India is a $8 billion industry. It is highly fragmented and concentrated in only a few hubs or cities across the country. There are specialists for every vertical – commerce, engineering, medicine etc. and no sincere effort has been made so far to aggregate and streamline the coaching process. SuperProfs is attempting to do this exact thing – aggregate and streamline the competitive exam coaching industry in India. This requires a change in the mindset of all players involved in the coaching industry, namely, students, parents, teachers and so on.

What are the major benefits for organisations and individuals adopting your solutions?

In India, nearly 1 crore students appear for various competitive exams (like IIT-JEE, IAS, GATE, NEET etc) every year. However, only a small fraction of these students have access to good quality coaching. There are geographical and financial constraints that prevent students, especially ones who are not from metro cities, from receiving the best coaching possible. We believe that technology could resolve these issues and bridge the gap between teachers and students. Now students from any remote corner of the country can access coaching classes by top professors on their mobile phones even with 2G internet connectivity by spending less than 50 per cent of what they would to attend an equivalent face-to-face coaching class.

What is the vision of your company for the next two years?

For the next two years, our key focus will remain on helping students enrolled with us to do well in these exams. We will continue to tie up with top professors, we will add several more courses in regional languages, as well, so that students will have more options to choose their coaching from. We will focus on providing the professors with whatever tools they require to conduct mock tests, conduct interactive sessions etc. We have also planned to launch courses for exams such as TOEFL, IELTS and GMAT, over the next two years.

What are the various methods you are using to increase the visibility of your organisation?

We are focusing our energies on making sure that students enrolled with us have the best possible experience. At the end of the day that is what is important – happy customers. We are trying to spread brand awareness among students by conducting various activities in colleges across various cities in India. We are very active on Social media as well. We have a good presence across channels such as Facebook, youtube, quora and so on. SuperProfs is also getting a lot of attention in media – print and online. All these together help in increasing our reach over our customers.

How you can differentiate your services from competitors?

A lot of our competitors are focusing on selling packaged educational content in the format of CDs / DVDs or automated assessments. SuperProfs’ anytime, anywhere model offers the option of interactivity between students and teachers. This differential model has struck a chord with the students because this allows them to utilise their time more constructively. Students now not only get access to the same classroom sessions as those offered to face-to-face students but they also get to experience that even with a flaky internet connectivity.

What are the ways of engaging the customers with you. Can you share any special case study?

Our clients are students preparing for competitive exams such as CA, CS, CMA, GATE, UPSC, JEE etc. Most of them sought out online coaching because they couldn’t spare time and attend traditional coaching classes or are from tier II and tier III cities where good coaching classes are not available. Students are very happy with SuperProfs because our videos can be streamed smoothly even at low internet bandwidth. More importantly our courses are taught by excellent faculty of professors and the course material (including text books, assessments) is helping students do better in their exams. Its been only a few months since we have launched our Android App and we already have over 1 Lakh downloads and extremely positive reviews by our first set of users.

What are the major stakeholders and sectors you are focusing on?

Our major stakeholders are – professors (who teach the courses for competitive exams) and students (who take up these courses on our portal). We aim to be the intermediary party who makes sure that the professors are provided with all necessary technology that allows them to share their knowledge with students from any corner of the country. It is also our responsibility that students get what they are promised – best online coaching classes that will help them ace in competitive exams such as CA, CS, CMA, UPSC, GATE, JEE, Banking and so on. The only sector that we are focusing on currently is Edu-Tech (Education technology).

What are the various initiatives taken by your organisation to emerge as a market leader?

We believe that there are no shortcuts to the top. We will become the market leader only and only if we offer the best services to our customers. We have promised to make competitive exam preparation easy for students. And we intend to deliver on that. And we will do whatever is necessary to make sure that students get a wholesome experience while taking courses on our platform. We also want to make sure that the professors who are tied up with SuperProfs are facilitated with everything that they need so that they can communicate with students from across the country with ease.

Shouldering child education

Interviews

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October 19, 2015

Maple Bear considers making children learn a huge responsibility and follows highest possible standards of professional performance and integrity. Hazel Siromoni, Managing Director, Maple Bear India tells Elets News Network (ENN) about Maple Bear’s franchise system, quality standards, expansion plans and more

As we know pre-school is often a child’s introduction to the world of education, what role does a pre-school educator and facility play in the child’s future?

Pre-school educator/facilitator and environment plays a key and significant role in a child’s first step to learning, which has a lifelong influence on the child’s future. Indeed, it is not an easy task to run a pre-school, considering the responsibility to educate young minds. Maple Bear believes that when children enter school, they regard learning as a pleasurable experience. Therefore, they are naturally inclined towards it and eager to learn. It is important for us that the programmes are reinforced and built on this positive attitude and to offer varied stimulating and enjoyable experiences to children. Teachers integrate subject knowledge into a variety of active techniques that are suitable for various developmental stages of the children. Maple Bear schools have high learning expectations of children, within a healthy, stimulating and supportive learning environment.

“Franchises enable not only sharing of expenses, but also knowledge, experience, brand image, as well as technical expertise.” How far do you agree?

The question is quite complex. However, as far as Maple Bear franchising system is concerned, we offer opportunity to entrepreneurs who are not from education sector, especially an end-to-end solution without them to spend resources and time in reinventing the wheel. On the other hand, our main focus is on implementing the curriculum and maintain the high standards and benchmarks that Maple Bear expects.

What is the set of quality standards which your brand is associated to?

We believe in very high standards. We have rigorous systems to ensure quality on continuous and consistent basis, providing a 360-degree quality assurance. Maple Bear shares the belief that educating young people is a huge responsibility, given by parents and society. Our actions must, therefore, reflect the highest possible standards of professional performance and integrity.

Are you planning to expand your pre-school franchise further? If yes, then how?

Yes, we certainly are on an expansion mode across the country. We firmly believe that our existing franchises, teachers and parents are our brand ambassadors, who share about their experiences and attract many others to pursue or replicate a similar success story for themselves.

What is the investment required for starting a pre-school?

For starting a Maple Bear Canadian Pre-school, you need between Rs 15-30 lakhs as initial investment. However, it varies depending on the type of the city and condition of the infrastructure available.

What is the first step towards establishing a brand or buying a franchise?

Most importantly, the first step is to follow the brand requirements in creating a Maple Bear space as per the international standards and benchmarks, keeping the child in the centre of all. This is followed by creating opportunities of experiencing the learning and care giving environment of a Maple Bear preschool and day care.

To take a franchise, we are just a call or email away. Log on to www.maplebear.in for more details.

20% MP funds for education, proposes NEP draft

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October 17, 2015

As per the draft of the National Education Policy (NEP), being drawn up by the Human Resource Development ministry, MPs will be asked to contribute 20% of their funds to education. The draft envisages a separate and permanent cadre for education along the lines of administrative, revenue, foreign and police services.

The other key components of the policy will be social services and spirituality. In addition, educational institutions could be asked to adopt villages and participate in social upliftment, and the National Council for Teacher Education could be asked to make BEd a five-year programme.

With the consultation process in its final stage, the government has started the drafting process.

Academicians has been demanding from a long time, to set up a separate cadre for teaching, that is to take education out from the hands of bureaucracy. The report on education commission of 1964-65 by DS Kothari had recommended setting up of a separate cadre for education along the lines of IAS and IRS.

The HRD ministry is also considering the option of setting up an independent commission for education along the lines of the Election Commission of India. The ministry is vetting the report of Hari Gautam Committee that has recommended replacing the UGC with the National Higher Education Authority.

Skill training programmes for clinicians and surgeons

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October 17, 2015

As part of its objective to enhance clinician skills, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) India in partnership with Joslin Diabetes Center – an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, is considering to launch a flagship online course on diabetes management through its J&J Diabetes Institute. In addition, J&J Medical India offers educational grant for a Certificate Course in Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (CCGDM) created by PHFI in partnership with Dr Mohan’s Diabetes Education Academy (DMDEA), Chennai.

On the other hand, J&J’s Ethicon Institute of Surgical Education (EISE) has trained over 130,000 healthcare practitioners across various specialties, in order to help the surgeons and healthcare professionals in India to keep themselves updated with the emerging trends in medical and surgical care.

The state-of-the-art institute imparts `hands-on’ training to budding and practicing surgeons, gynecologists and paramedical staff with real life simulated situations to facilitate quality learning. The institute is planning to offer transformational curriculums to help the healthcare professionals in India to enhance their skills.

India has about 800,000 physicians with only 0.6 physicians per 1000 population. Moreover, the demand for well-trained physicians in India far outstrips the current supply especially as the country’s health challenges move from acute, communicable diseases to lifestyle related diseases.

Mark Zuckerberg to host Q&A in IIT Delhi on Oct 28

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digitalLEARNING Network

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October 17, 2015

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, is to host next Townhall Q&A at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), New Delhi, on October 28. The Founder and CEO will be answering questions from across Facebook, as well as from a live audience at the Institute.

Zuckerberg made the announcement on his Facebook page and urged people to post their questions in the comments section. Getting a hilarious response, more than 60,000 people comments in just three hours. India make up around 125 million users out of Facebook’s entire 1.44 billion global base.

Zuckerberg wrote, “I’m looking forward to hearing directly from one of the most active and engaged communities.” In September, Zuckerberg hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Townhall Q&A in California. During the event, they discussed the significance of technology and its impact on governance.

Two-year extension for varsity courses: UGC

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October 17, 2015

There is some reason for the students to cheer as the University Grants Commission (UGC) under the Ministry of Human Resource Development has formulated guidelines within which a student will be allowed to qualify for a degree in two years of extension, officials say.

The commission had also constituted an expert committee to consider the issue.

“On the basis of the recommendations made by the committee, the commission has formulated guidelines for compliance of the universities. In case a student is not able to complete the programme within the normal period or the minimum duration prescribed for the programme, they will be allowed a two-year period beyond the normal period to clear the backlog in order to qualify for the degree. In exceptional cases, and on merit, the university may allow a student one more year for the completion of the programme,” UGC chairman Ved Prakash has said. However, he clarified that the duration of the course will be at the university’s discretion.

The Delhi University currently gives an extension of three years to complete a three-year bachelor’s degree and two years to complete a two-year master’s degree. On the other hand, Ambedkar University gives an additional two years to complete bachelor’s programmes.

IIHMR University to set up Center for Injury Research

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October 17, 2015

With the ever increasing road injuries in India every year, IIHMR University from Jaipur has signed LoA with the Johns Hopkins International Injury Research Unit to set up Centre of Injury Research (CIR) in Jaipur. The centre will be set up to design and conduct research studies, capacity building and intervention projects in the area of injury and accidents.

Dr. S.D Gupta, President, IIHMR University, said, “Over 10 lakh vehicles are registered every year only in Rajasthan state. And the trend is year on year increasing which requires a proper road traffic planning for inter-city roads and national highways in Rajasthan. Even after the law enforcement and awareness programmes done by government and private sectors in Rajasthan, there have been no change in last five years as the number of accidents has remained same to over 24000 in 2010 and in 2015.So, CIR will mainly focus on behavioral studyso that it helps to change the scenario.”

Globally Road Traffic Accidents (RTA) is the eighth leading cause and has caused the death of 3.4 lakh youngsters in the age group of 15-29 years. India has recorded the highest number of death caused due to RTA. According to the road transport and highway ministry report, 75,000 youngsters will killed in road crashes alone in 2014. Last year in India, the total deaths in the age group 35-65 years were 49,840 and between 15-34 years were 75,048.

The state wise share of fatalities in 2014 is: UP (11.7%), Tamil Nadu (10.9%), Maharashtra (9.2%), Karnataka (7.5%) and Rajasthan (7.4%). The statistics were even more horrifying as the number of deaths were classified as per the vehicle share, Two-wheeler caused (23.3%) deaths, 3-wheelers (4.5%), car, jeep and taxi caused (18.6%), Truck, tempo and tractor caused (25.6%) deaths and Buses caused (8.&%) deaths in 2014.

IIT-Kharagpur ties up with Israel universities

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October 17, 2015

To give an international exposure to the students, IIT –Kharagpur has signed an agreement with three Israel Universities for student exchange programme, faculty visits and research collaborations in aerospace, agriculture and computer science.

P P Chakrabarti, Director, IIT-Kharagpur led the delegation from India during President Pranab Mukherjee’s recent visit to the country where a Memorandum of Understanding was signed with the Ben-Gurion University (BGU), Hebrew University and University of Haifa.

These universities are strong in the areas of agriculture, computer science, aerospace, and food engineering besides other subjects. The tie-up will help Indian students and their counterparts to take a trip to the universities and get exposure of the international studies.

The scope of cooperation from these universities range from exchange programmes from faculty, students and scholars, joint research and exchange of research materials, joint academic activities- teaching and supervision of students, joint conferences, workshops, participation of students in study-abroad programmes.

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