Collateral damage
J&K has been a hot bed of political activity, terrorism, separatism, 'ethnicide' and what have you. The activities in the state continue to orphan children and widow women. It continues to be a drain on the system for the rest of the country, thanks to our rogue neighboring nation.
Boy in Srinagar - would have helped for him to be in school instead.
What is more disconcerting than anything else is what this turmoil is doing to the children in the valley. Not just psychologically, but even in terms of education. It does not get talked about much, but we picked up something when we started doing research for KOOLSKOOL. We were looking through circulars issued at DPS, Srinagar and found that more often than not the school had used Friday as the weekly holiday instead of Sunday. A little more digging told us that DPS, Srinagar is not an exception.
Some schools are already trying to get their senior students transferred to schools in Delhi, including the DPS group to prevent loss of year for at least the senior secondary students.
Newspapers reported today the opening of schools after a gap of 100 days. School buses and other transport ferrying children and school staff are being allowed through. Government schools are starting to open up and the private schools will watch a bit and then open. It is appalling that a movement (of whatever nature) cares so little for its own children and future. Destroying education can't possibly help the Kashmiri people.
So why is it?
NCERT most likely is the largest provider of text books in the country. All CBSE government schools use their books, and all private /unaided schools use their books. Each year, at the beginning of the academic session, there is a perpetual shortage of NCERT books. Each distributor that we have met so far has been moaning about the pain they have to go through to procure NCERT books. Every school we talked to this time including Vasant Valley, and Genesis Global has shown concern mentioning that their time tested distributors and publishers are unable to get NCERT books on time. And this is in Delhi. In Bangalore, its the usual every year story too.The situation as we understand, is the same in West Bengal, Orissa or any other state in the country.
The shortage gets reported in the newspapers every year (2004 report, 2007 report)without fail and 2010 was no exception. Distributors complained that they receive the books in installments and the first installment never more than 10-15% of their total requirement. The books are cheap (thankfully), but late. For distributors who cater to Indian schools outside the country (middle east, Africa for example), they need to airfreight the books thus adding to their operation cost, on top of low margins. Even with the multiple installments, the distributors do not manage to get more than about 80-85% of their total requirement. This obviously impacts the syllabus completion in schools adversely.
There must be hundreds of distributors who pick the books from NCERT. Given that, and there is a perpetual shortfall of 20-15%, it surely can't possibly be that difficult for NCERT to print more and early. If the government is unable to provide books, how will the forcible admission of extra students through RTE work well? Just that this gives rise to a different industry. Distributors mention that fake (or photocopied) versions of the books invade the market every year to make up the shortfall.
Experience on the Road – II
At a Brand New school: We visited a brand new school (on the Yamuna Expressway in NOIDA) with this being their first year of operation. This is one of those completely air-conditioned building schools. They liked our proposition, and asked us to put in a quote. The principal gave us an optimistic base number (of students) to calculate from, and we produced the quote in a day.
Their procurement officer (the chances of the person in this role to be not straight as an arrow is high) bargains and haggles with us. Also, to prove his point he does an open book and shows us the discounts that he currently gets from different publishers and NCERT. After our first quote, this gentleman asks us to use a simple mechanism to put in the quote, appreciates that we might not be able to do deep discounts and mentions that the base number that we were told needs to be halved. This came as a pleasant surprise, this openness and honesty. He also mentioned that he will now go ask for quotes from some of his usual vendors. That is not great for us, but is surely the right thing for him to do. Well done, Mr. Sharma!
Sanskriti schools: children of the greater God
RTE has been criticized by many, for many reasons. At the core of RTE is to help uplift the underprivileged by providing their children better education. There is nothing wrong with that, even though you and I are paying for that through the education cess. You may ask whether the cess, is really doing any good.
RTE is a rather noble idea, but we seem to be becoming an Abhimanyu who soon will not know how to come out of the battle formation. Now, there is a new one coming in the form of elite schools
But, now the same folk who brought upAs if this was not enough, the IAS officers who framed these law are looking at a new elite schooling system for their children by way of Sanskriti schools. These schools, somewhat hypocritically, have only 15% of their seats reserved for children of underprivileged classes, and 55% for children of officers of all India government services and central services. These schools will be government funded, and built on government land and also subsidized by the government.
Not too bad yet. But, the government subsidizing means the government will dip into your pocket. The remaining 20% seats will be up for grabs but parents need to cough up more than parents attached to the subsidized 80%. In a way it does imply that the government wants children of its officers to be taught separately and will less infiltration from children of weaker sections. News article in TOI
Of simple pleasures and play grounds
- from our guest author
You will hear parents complaining more often than not about lack of playgrounds in the neighborhood, or that the parks are too crowded for children to play to their hearts content. You also perhaps can not blame urban infrastructure completely for children staying indoors most of the time. School timings these days barely leave children with time to do anything other than come back home almost after 10 hours of being in school and commuting to and fro. It takes so much out of a child, that to expect him/her to put on his/her sport shoes and step outdoors would be asking for too much. A child who does not get to eat his/her lunch on time in a homely environment is certainly missing out on simple pleasures of life.
Our education system in schools has really left children with no choice but to become extremely competitive and result oriented from day one. If children in kindergarten can have assessments and not one but three during the course of a year, then obviously we are going wrong somewhere. Ask a four year old if he/she went to the huge playgrounds that schools more often than not boast of. Chances are good that the child will report that they didn’t have the time since there was too much to do in class.
If you were to look at this from a school’s perspective then not so long ago, a locality would not have more than one school and the boards (State/ICSE/CBSE/IB) didn’t really matter that much. Now, you have schools literally at every corner and each of these schools is competing with the other. In a situation like this, if schools were not to become purely result oriented then admissions would drop and schools would slowly wipe out. Can they afford to do that? Maybe not.
Where is the hand and heart ?
CBSE wants to adapt the virtual lab for Chemistry and Physics experiments. (Read More...) The whole idea of a lab is for the child to execute and witness the actual laws of the universe and remembers it. With an overdose of television and computers, it is hard to believe all that a child gets to see, hear or grasp. But, when someone holds the beaker in one's e hand and the chemical turns a different color, the theory takes life. Our previous blog on Mr. Gupta's 3-H principle, talked exactly about that. By turning the lab into a virtual lab, you may get the child's head but not his/ her hand and heart.
Donate a book
CBSE recently passed a circular to its affiliated schools informing them about UNESCO and Times Foundation's joint initiative "Donate a Book" (Read More). This initiative is meant to strengthen school libraries by receiving voluntary donations from students, teachers and parents.
Though the initiative is appreciated, and the goals noble, I believe its a step in a relatively lower priority direction. With Right to Education Act (RTE Act) related direction setting happening, and initiatives being chalked out, the Donate a Book initiative should have targeted a higher priority problem which will result from the admission of economically under-privileged children (belonging to a weaker section or a disadvantaged group) into the private schooling system. The Act asks the school to provide the learning material. Guess, how will this get funded in real life? Other children (who are not under-privileged) will bear the subsidy brunt.
How about getting older text books (and related material) from the non-under-privileged children donated to a pool and then distributed to the children who benefit from RTE? Sure, these children will not end up with new books thus somewhat violating the RTE principle of discrimination (perhaps), but surely better being resented! So, instead of filling libraries, it really might be a better idea for children (who can afford to do so) donate to their juniors instead.
This might be something that KOOLSKOOL will help facilitate in the future at least at the schools that it operates in.
Now – Patent Pending!
We had applied for a patent for our business process model with the Patent Office. Today we received the acknowledgment letter, and are officially authorized to write "Patent Pending". 
The 3-H principle
The education system in India though widespread, is not really as effective as we or even the government would want it to be. Many of our students seek admissions in institutions outside the country. And of course, more and more students seek admission in non-government schools. The ailments are many, as are the solutions. Lack of effective and trained teachers has been a perpetual pet peeve of many. Similarly, most of us keep complaining about lack of innovation in our schooling system or from the government bodies.
But, there are some exceptions. Just before visiting Delhi one time, I sent out emails to publishers that we wanted to tie up with so that we could fix meetings. One of those emails was sent to the workshop department of NCERT to locate and learn more about what they call school kits. One Mr Hari Gupta (head of the workshop department) wrote back mentioning that he was happy to meet.
After some logistics related conversations, we landed up to see Mr. Gupta a quarter hour late for the appointed time at 5.45pm on the particular day. We reached his office on time, but were told by the hangers on "Gupta sahab to bahut pehle ghar gaye" (Mr. Gupta has left for home long back). We were a bit disappointed, but still did call him on his cell phone. To our delight Mr. Gupta informed us that he will be back in his office in 10 minutes. We walked into his large almost typical government office and waited. The large desk had a PC, a printer and bunch of files, sheets of paper and all that you would expect. That is where the similarity with a babu's office ended. The other side of the large room had cupboards, and there were large desks with boxes, and laboratory equipment. Just that the laboratory equipment (pipettes, burettes, test tubes etc) seemed from liliputland. While we waited curious, Mr. Gupta showed up.
Molecular Model Kit
We spent time explaining what KOOLSKOOL was about and what we were setting out to do. Mr. Gupta's team designs, prototypes and manufactures (on a very small scale) Mathematics, and different science kits for schools. These include laboratory in a box which caters to four students at a time, molecular structure kits, advanced kits for higher classes. The chemistry kits have miniaturized equipment, made of readily available and cheaper material. e.g. the pipette is small soft transparent plastic affair. All the kits are based on experiments or concepts from the NCERT text books and ingeniously and simply implemented.
What surprised us pleasantly was that Mr. Gupta came back from home (in the NCERT campus) to meet us, and the amount of delight and pride that he took showing us what his lab was creating. The sheer childlike delight was heartening, as was his conversation (which we could not help over hearing) with an associate who got lectured about not being confident about pushing these kits. Mr. Hari Gupta truly does believe that he is serving the nation and it is his duty (being in the position that he is) to be ingenious and help education in our country. He believes, and wants all that is lab produces to follow the "3 H Principle". The Hs as Hand, "Hurt"(that is how Mr. Gupta pronounces Heart) and Head. Mr. Gupta says - "my kits should help a student use his hands, make education practical...should delight his heart, and get him to use his head"! Simple, and beautiful isn't it?
Microscale Chemistry Laboratory Kit
Mr. Gupta will launch an expression of interest type request, for manufacturers to come forward (from different parts of the country) to manufacture at scale what his laboratory prototypes. This man, does not want to patent his creations so as not to restrict free production. Though we feel not patenting will permit manufacturers to produce and deliver sub-standard product quality. But, that is a different discussion.
We just wish, there were many more Mr. Guptas in this country, and all related to education!
PS: Couple of related links
- Here is one of Mr. Gupta's papers for you to read
- and the list of school kits that his team produces
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