Page 55 - EducationWorld March 2022

“The objective Trade2Gain, Delhi),
of the report is to and co-founder of
understand, analyse Countingwell.
and highlight the Prompted by the
maths skills of middle- struggles of their own
school children. We children in learning
chose middle school as math in school, Nirmal
this is the stage during Shah and Ravi Jitani,
which math content a commerce and
becomes progressively business management
complex and students alumnus of Delhi
begin to lose interest in University and
the subject. Our goal NIRMAL SHAH RAVI JITANI INSEAD with over
was to understand the Co-founder Co-founder two decades of rich
factors that influence working experience
maths learning and (Fujitsu Consulting, Aureos Capital etc) co-promoted
interest levels of middle school students. Our study Countingwell in 2018. Headquartered in Bengaluru,
found that poor understanding of concepts, reduced Countingwell’s fully remote teams operate from New
parental involvement in monitoring math learning Delhi to Jaipur in the north to Salem and Honnavar in
at home, and increase in difficulty levels were some the south.
of the reasons attributed to the drastic drop in math The company offers well-researched and specially
scores in class VII students,” says Nirmal Shah, designed app-based math learning study programmes
a chemistry alum of Madras University whose mapped to the prescribed middle school (class
entrepreneurial journey began 24 years ago (Advanced VI-VIII) syllabus; a blended learning programme
Technology Labs, Chennai TESCRA, Bengaluru, for schools and teachers, and career guidance and
counseling programmes in careers of the future.
Countingwell’s team of curriculum developers is
PREVIOUS KNOWLEDGE - assisted by a group of advisors who conduct quality
GAP BY SKILLS checks and ensure alignment of curriculum content
with the company’s overall vision and ideology, as
20% 17.4% well as with classroom requirements. Its advisors
include Anita Sharma, principal of S.D. Public School,
% of Students 15% 4.9% 4.9% New Delhi and member of CBSE’s maths curriculum
committee, and Dr. Dharam Parkash, former NCERT
10%
(National Council of Educational Research and
5%
support team ensures that the overall learning
0% 2.1% Training) member. The company’s robust technology
Comprehension
Knowledge Calculation Modelling experience for children is joyful and stress-free.
Thus far, 400 schools across the country have
signed up for Countingwell’s blended learning
programme – introduced last December – and 80,000
PREVIOUS KNOWLEDGE - classes VI-VIII students are actively using its app.
GAP BY CLASSES
Within the country’s K-12 schools, there’s growing
awareness of the decline in maths learning outcomes
20%
and need to improve maths teaching-learning by
% of Students 10% 6.0% 9.9% 10.6% pedagogies such as puzzles, games and labs to replace
going beyond textbooks and adopting experiential
15%
chalk-and-talk methods.
“Math skills and learning outcomes are steadily
5%
declining largely because of students’ pre-conceived
0%
Class 6 Class 7 Class 8 notion of its subject complexity. For most students,
math texts are the thickest, teachers the strictest

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