Page 52 - EW JAN 2022

Cover Story

SRI CHAITANYA GROUP OF INSTITUTIONS

NATIONAL ROLLOUT OF INDIA’S

LARGEST PRIVATE SCHOOLS CHAIN

After three decades of under-the-radar growth in Andhra
Pradesh and peninsular India, during which it has imperceptibly
evolved into the largest chain of proprietorial K-12 private
schools in India, and perhaps Asia, the Sri Chaitanya Group’s
second generation management has ventured forth to establish it
as a national brand in English-medium K-12 education

Dilip Thakore

T HE ILL ADVISED 65 70 WEEKS 450,000 private schools and 30,000 private higher ed insti-

tutions which are totally dependent upon students’ tuition
lockdown of all education institu-
tions — the world’s most prolonged
and other fees — started pulling out all stops to devise ways
and means to maintain learning continuity of students. For-
— to check the spread of the Covid-19
tuitously, this compulsion has resulted in a massive, un-
pandemic has accelerated a compre-
hensive new digital technologies-
driven makeover in K-12 education
learning models.
countrywide. With middle class par- precedented reliance on Internet connectivity and digital
“Although myopic politicians at the Centre and in the
ents compelled to work, and chil- states seem unaware of the huge learning loss of an esti-
dren forced to learn from home, a large and rising num- mated 200 million children in early childhood and primary
ber of schools — especially private primary-secondaries education — and that’s a staggering number — the silver lin-
which contrary to popular perception, host almost 50 ing of the dark Covid-19 cloud that has enveloped the coun-
percent of India’s 260 million school-going children — try is that the process of digitisation of Indian education has
have engineered a new ICT (information communication been accelerated by at least ten years. This opens up the
technologies)-driven education revolution. possibility of making good the lost learning of the pandemic
Suddenly the country’s lackadaisical change-resistant era through remedial education. India’s moribund educa-
education institutions across the spectrum have been pitch- tion system mired in 19th century rote learning pedagogies
forked into the digital age of ICT-enabled teaching-learn- has been pushed into the 21st century. This explains the fast
ing. Even as elections-focused politicians played safe by de- growth of edtech (education technology) companies with
creeing school and college lockdowns from pre-primaries outlandish valuations that are sprouting like mushrooms,”
to universities, managements — especially of the country’s says a Bengaluru-based education consultant preferring to

52 EDUCATIONWORLD JANUARY 2022