Page 40 - EducationWorld June 2020

Cover Story

Arjun Ray Secondly, Parliament should enact
CEO, Indus Trust legislation to ensure that all teachers
in government and private education
are paid a basic minimum salary and
n alumnus of the Staff Col- allowances including dearness allow-
lege, Camberley (UK), Lt.
AGen. Arjun Ray, PVSM, ance, on a par with class-1 gazetted
officers of the Union government.
VSM (Retd) is chief executive of the The long-pending proposal of
Bangalore-based Indus Trust (reg- instituting an Indian Education
std.2001). During the two decades Service should be implemented right
past, the trust has promoted three away. Teachers are under-valued and
top-ranked co-ed day-cum-boarding this situation has to be remedied at
international schools and seven pre- the earliest. Third, teachers should
schools with an aggregate enrolment be compulsorily re-skilled every two
of 4,000 students from 33 countries. years at government expense. And
The Covid-19 crisis has majorly disrupt- lastly, all school curriculums must
ed the education system. How has the prioritise innovation over content.
Indus Trust responded to this challenge? What are your future plans?
I believe the Covid-19 pandemic may We plan to introduce virtual and
turn out to be a blessing for human- rooms. This is unworkable and has augmented reality and nano-teach-
ity, especially for education. It has to change because in online teaching, ing pedagogies in a big way in all our
transformed all workplaces, includ- there is greater focus on non-linear schools. We will also provide every
ing schools and classrooms into thinking, compaction of syllabus and encouragement and opportunity for
digital teaching-learning war zones. lessons, considerable self-directed our students — and teachers — to as-
Schools and students have to become learning, continuous 360 degree pire to become self-driven, ambitious
digital ready and managements and feedback and formative assessment. entrepreneurs keen to launch their
teachers have to welcome adminis- own start-ups.
trative and pedagogy innovations. Several state governments have issued
At the start of the new academic fees waiver/deferment circulars to pri- Siddharth Chaturvedi
year, our three Indus International vate school managements. What’s your
Schools in Bangalore, Pune and comment? Executive vice president, AISECT Group
Hyderabad will transform into This is a very bad idea. State gov-
wholly digitalised schools on an ernments that have issued such n engineering and busi-
experimental basis. The feature of circulars should withdraw them ness management alum of
this programme is that a greater immediately. Schools have to incur ANIT, Bhopal, and S.P. Jain
number of AI (artificial intelligence)- considerable expense to introduce Institute of Management & Research,
driven robot-teachers will be placed technology-driven education and Mumbai, with five years of work
in classes IV-XI as supplementary also spend on teacher training which experience in blue-chip corporates
teachers. In addition, we are taking is complex and difficult. Teachers (ITC, IBM), Siddharth Chaturvedi
online synchronous and asynchro- are Corona warriors in the frontline assumed charge as executive vice
nous teaching to completely new of the on-going blended learning president of the family-owned
levels. We have had a head start be- revolution. Fee waivers and reduc- AISECT Group (estb.1985) of higher
cause we introduced robot-teachers tion will necessarily translate into education institutions in 2009.
in our classrooms more than a year salary cuts, which is not acceptable. AISECT Group manages 23,000
ago. As it is, school teachers are paid skills centres in 517 districts country-
less than in most professions. Their wide, and five universities in Madhya
What are the major challenges confront- remuneration must be protected, if
ing K-12 education in the new Covid-19 not enhanced. Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar and Chat-
era? tisgarh with an aggregate enrolment
The challenges confronting K-12 What are your Top 3 proposals for reviv- of over 100,000 students.
education in the Covid-19 era are ing and reforming K-12 education in The COVID-19 crisis has majorly dis-
manifold. But the main one for all India? rupted the education system. How has
schools is that they must switch to First, all K-12 schools should be AISECT Group including your universi-
blended learning — a mix of conven- enabled by IT infrastructure provi- ties and skills centres responded to this
tional and digital pedagogies — as sion, followed by intensive teacher challenge?
soon as possible. Even after nor- training to provide online learning. Thanks to our familiarity with digital
malcy returns, schools will need to The situation in government schools learning platforms, we were able to
continue building their IT infrastruc- that comprise 80 percent of primary- maintain learning continuity for all
ture and develop capabilities for secondary institutions countrywide, our 100,000-plus students. Since
conducting online and offline classes is pathetic to say the least. Therefore, April, our faculty has been conduct-
simultaneously. Unfortunately, most the Central and state governments ing live lectures from our skilling
schools teach online as they would in must immediately increase their edu- centres countrywide with students
conventional bricks-n-mortar class- cation expenditure budgets. also given access to a large repository

40 EDUCATIONWORLD JUNE 2020