Page 53 - EducationWorld June 2020

Fatema Agarkar
Co-founder, Agarkar Centre for Excellence
ducationist, parent-
ing expert and
Eteacher educator,
Fatema Agarkar is co-
founder of the Agarkar
Centre for Excellence
(ACE) Mumbai, a firm
providing K-12 educa-
tion consultancy services,
sports and life skills
programmes to over 25
schools with an enrol-
ment of 20,000 students.
An alumna of Mumbai
and Birmingham uni-
versities, Agarkar served
individualised, caring services with Commerzbank,
to parents from all walks of life. Times of India and Egon Zehnder
To ensure learning continuity International before switching tracks debate highlights that parental and
during the nationwide lockdown, to education consultancy in 2000. school expectations are completely
we made substantial invest- Since then, she has facilitated the mismatched. There’s a lack of faith
ments in technical infrastructure promotion of over 40 private schools and trust between them and it has
and professional training of our countrywide. become a running us versus them
teachers to switch to digital online war. This needs to be corrected.
learning. Our faculty and staff The Covid-19 crisis has majorly dis- School managements must invest
have also been duly paid without rupted the education system. How has in building trust and dialogue with
delay. Moreover, we understand ACE responded to this challenge? parents.
our parents’ community needs ACE’s objective is to empower What are your top 3 proposals for re-
our support when bank finance is and engage children by redesign- forming K-12 education in India?
difficult, hardships are rising and ing curriculums, student assess- • NCERT/exam boards need to
the economy is plummeting. Our ment systems, and introducing urgently revamp K-12 curriculums
school management and advisory trans-disciplinary pedagogies with to make learning experiential and
committees are taking case-by- strong focus on life skills and sports projects-based. The focus of teach-
case decisions to help parents. education. Over the past two months ing-learning should be on ‘how to
since the nationwide lockdown
What are your Top 3 proposals for was announced, ACE is engaging teach’ not ‘what to teach’
reforming school education in India? online with parents and educators • Schools should overhaul pedago-
Government and exam boards and highlighting the enabling role gies to make learning differentiated
and personalised. Also the exam/
should totally revamp school of technology, and importance of
curriculums. This is the time to developing children’s emotional assessment system needs to be
revamped. Our report cards are too
raise students’ awareness of radi- intelligence and life skills.
cal socio-political, economic and generic, they need to become more
qualitative than quantitative
scientific changes in society and What are the major challenges confront-
encourage creative flexible think- ing K-12 education in the new Covid-19 • Government and the private sector
should invest in building robust IT
ing, and to introduce examination era?
and evaluation reforms. The major challenges confronting infrastructure and online learning
Indian education are lack of IT infra- platforms that are user friendly, en-
Future plans... structure and capability — hardware, gaging and equipped to skill teachers
Our plan is to promote higher software and Internet availability, in virtual pedagogies and collabora-
learning institutions in col- and trained faculty. The switch to tive teaching-learning.
laboration with globally reputed online learning requires realignment
universities to offer specialisa- of content delivery, superior subject What are your future plans for ACE?
tions in fine arts and sports expertise, creativity in lesson plan- Recently, ACE launched #Cricket-
education. Moreover, to prepare ning and building teacher-parent Math — a gaming app for middle
our students for the new future, partnerships. school students — which connects
we plan to encourage peer learn- math learning with cricket. We are
ing by connecting our students Several state governments have issued also collaborating with some publish-
with counterparts in Singapore, fees waiver/ deferment circulars to ers to produce resource material
Finland, Australia and European private school managements. Your com- related to sports and academics, and
countries. ment? are planning to expand our reach to
The school fee payment/deferment schools in south and north India.

JUNE 2020 EDUCATIONWORLD 53