Understanding the Problems with the Indian Education System (ft. Ratna Vishwanathan and Neeti Bhalla Saini)

[00:00:01] Today on The Big Story My daughter had 100% in psychology and history. How can anyone get 100% in history? In English? I mean, I can't believe it! So my mom told me to tell her teacher that she doesn't eat vegetables.

[00:00:18] A child who gets a 99% because your cut off is 99% is good enough and a child who's 98.5% is not good enough. I mean what are you trying to tell? Come on, what are you telling that child?

[00:00:28] At the end of the lesson, there used to be like a small box of activity but I can't remember doing any of them. It was only a match that was taught from a textbook. Everything else was experiential. You wanted to understand the law and physics.

[00:00:42] You walked across to IIT and you saw it visually. You're never going to forget it. Way back in the 90s, people who didn't do anything became teachers. That kuch nahi kia ladki badee ho gaya. She's done her post graduation, bhiye toh kari lo.

[00:00:57] There is a lot of people who need it as a job. A lot of them later on, when they do the work fall in love with the work. That's different.

[00:01:06] They may not come into it as a job but then they actually fall in love with it and do it well. It's like an arranged marriage. Ki pehle shadi karlo fir peyar ho jaayega. The views expressed in this podcast are the speaker's own.

[00:01:21] The quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them. Welcome to the big story. Listeners, this is Pratik. And this is Anjali. Yay! And in this episode we are talking about education. Education. Education. Education. Anjali, aap kahan tak paday ho? Hum.

[00:01:39] You know what, by the way, before we start this thing, this is my favourite test, bad joke. Ki koi kisi se puchta hai kahan tak paday ho? And then the other person is like 5 bhajita kya 2 bhajita kya 2 pehar tak? This is very old.

[00:01:52] This is bhatlab santa vanta se bhi old jo. Yeah. But this works every time. Me koi humbe shah siyati aapri times. Dis ki kahan tak paday ho? Do bhajita kya? Isn't this joke, what is the origin of this joke? This is from Kichidi, the movie I remember now.

[00:02:07] Yeah, this I've seen a lot of movies yaar. So yes, we are going to talk about education. And specifically, we want to talk about ki yaar what is happening to our education system. And what is happening to our kids because 2 examples are right in front of you

[00:02:24] that good education is so important in a child's development. Otherwise, they turn out like Anjini and me. Please. We are self-deplicating jokes mere nahi hai. Pali bathar hi ho. But okay Pratik, how would you rate your education? Like how satisfied are you with whatever education you've got?

[00:02:44] Yaar I would say that I am not the most educated person in the room like even I am just a graduate which is the bare minimum aaj ki date mere kyaat yaar. But the amount of education and not even education

[00:02:59] but learning that I've gotten outside of my classes has made all the difference when it comes to whatever I am today because technically agar dekhah jaay kaya desay I am not supposed to be sitting right here recording a podcast.

[00:03:14] I was supposed to be an engineer working on some chemical engineering company making chemicals and kya making dhawayinaya kuch bana raha hota main. If I would have had education agar main apni education ke sath gaya hota but I think it's a happy accident that happened in my life

[00:03:31] ki education se zada main learning pe fokus kara in different parts in my life through sports and extracurricular, theater, music, film etc and that I think has made me learn a lot. I would say. What about you? Were you like a straight A student?

[00:03:49] Oh no, no not at all. I was the straight A students. Bottom juhi se kayaate na, Barely passa wale students used to consider me straight A's and the parhaaku bache used to call me awara. So right in the middle. So I was the exact middle of it.

[00:04:06] But what was your schooling like? How was it two years ago? That was my college. College I don't consider that my schooling. So my schooling, I was a straight A kid. Seriously? You actually look like that.

[00:04:21] This I want to just tell my listeners the credit for all the research that we do on the big story goes to straight A Anjali. Oh that's a nice, alliteration. Straight A Anjali. I like it. But no so it was like I was a weird combination of

[00:04:39] book smart plus street smart kid. So smart. Yeah, so just smart in general. So I used to get good marks but I did not study for it. So ish liye mujhe kaafi, mujhe kaalaya bhi patti thiis cheez ke liye ki tu patti nahi hai, patti nahi hai.

[00:04:54] Par marks ki wajah? Ya, padni bhi chahiye. It was because I never really took studying as you know a spedke padne wala concept and fortunately my schooling did give me exposure to other things also. But I was not as outgoing.

[00:05:12] I obviously like a lot of people put a lot of importance, gave marks importance because I knew ki achha college admission wale ke point of view se. But I never stressed about it. I mean maybe it's thoda privileged ki mujhe mil jate thiis liye.

[00:05:31] I did not stress about it. But what I realized like I have seen people from my school who used to think score much better marks than me. So you know we'll go much further in life and who did not do as well as I did

[00:05:45] or are the kids and thought maybe not. Anjali ke dosto, you know I just want to point out ki Anjali aapko abhi bahari judge kar rhi hai. So comments ne tha hiyaar rahe. She's calling you unsuccessful. She's like you haven't made it in life. I did not.

[00:06:00] Let me complete my point. My point was that after a point I felt ki it really did not matter what school you went to. So till my 10th grade I was not in the best school in my city. There were much better schools in my city.

[00:06:14] And so I always felt am I missing out on something. But right now I feel like it, you know not being in those schools also had its own merits. Me being in a much smaller school for that matter. Okay so this is always this thing

[00:06:29] after I changed my school in 10th grade whenever you go to a new institution right before you start you have like this because they sell you that idea. Okay this is what you're going to learn. This is going to be so amazing.

[00:06:41] Even with college, I went to a great college. So why did you change your school after 10th? Was there a specific reason? I didn't change my school. It was like 11th to 12th my school it was just science. I didn't want to do science. Oh, okay.

[00:06:54] So I had to go to another school. There was a very different thing because you talk about changing schools after 10th. So I live in the Delhi UP border and my school till 10th was in Ghaziabad which is in UP, right?

[00:07:11] And just border cross there is a slew of line of schools which are considered very good DAVDPS type schools. And every year, every batch after 10th there is like a mass migration of people from UP to Delhi. Guess why? Why? Because apparently I still

[00:07:30] I mean I have been in school for 10 to 15 years. I think I am leaving school. I still don't know if it is true or not but if you do it from Delhi again then in Delhi's engineering colleges you get a 15% benefit or something like that

[00:07:45] and because of that one thing science action would get empty after 10 weeks which is the UP school and all my friends used to be they would join me in the Delhi schools. And hold in Delhi's schools. Oh my God! But I think enough about our school

[00:08:03] let's talk about what this episode is about which is about how we view education and because it is called a problem of India because we have the largest youth in the world. Which is so sad. It's not a system, it's a problem.

[00:08:21] Yeah, it's something that you have to fix. And I think even when we were deciding on the topic and when we were developing this I think one question that came from inside was why is this happening? And who is to blame for this? What is the fault?

[00:08:39] Are the principals and school people not studying well or are the kids not good? Or are there no environment or are the governments not doing anything? Where does the buck stop in this? And I think that is where we would want to start this conversation with that.

[00:08:57] First of all, understand this problem understand the gamut of this problem and understand who do we ask questions of and who can do something about it. And for that we have two amazing guests with us today. And the first one is Niti Bhalla Sehni

[00:09:12] who is the executive principal at Satya School in Gurga. And she has previously worked with a lot of state government schools especially in the Delhi and Sair area to get the international baccalaureate that is the IB board's curriculum into these schools in the primary year programs.

[00:09:32] And she has been in this field for 18 years and she is a consultant from the international baccalaureate board. Is it called an IB board? So I think it is international baccalaureate board. IB board, IB. I used to think it is IB's international board.

[00:09:52] Same and it used to be a thing where who stays in the IB board who goes out of India for bachelor's for IB board. Is it like that? Our thing was in engineering this thing used to be that you can't use calculators till 12th, right?

[00:10:09] But apparently in the IB board you can, the scientific calculators. So first year of engineering we used to think that we could learn from calculators. And all of these IB board's kids they used to be like I can make a graph too I can do differentiation and integration

[00:10:25] I am like bro. That is right. That is right. So yes, we were talking about our first guest Neeti Bhalla and with her we have Ratna Vishwanathan from Reach to Teach it is a social impact organization and they work with a lot of state governments to improve the

[00:10:42] standard of education and I think this is our panel, Anjali not to toot our own horns but this panel is really interesting because one side we have Neeti who is from an IB background and she works with these private schools and a lot of these economically well off

[00:11:01] education systems and boards and principles and all with a lot of resources and on the other hand we have Ratna who has worked with a lot of state governments and I won't say that state governments have less resources I think they have limited resources

[00:11:16] and they have to make do with a different set of challenges Yeah. So I think our listeners will enjoy that on the issue of education it won't be appropriate to say representative of a private school but the person of private school and the public education system

[00:11:35] and we will debate in between and argue and just kidding guys it's not going to be a debate we are going to have like a nice civil discussion although I cannot guarantee that Pratik will not try to inside debate 100% 100% but no So Anjali, let's start

[00:12:01] Hello and welcome to the podcast Neeti and Ratna. It's great to have you Hello Neeti, how are you? We were talking to the both of you offline and the first thing that really struck my curiosity is what are, what is your philosophy of education

[00:12:19] in general? What does education mean to you? If anybody would like to start. Ratna first So for me education is two main things one is empathy and the other is joy because for me without empathy and without joy there's not much learning that's happening. That's exactly

[00:12:39] why I think we end up with rote learning that is why we end up with joyless learning with low understanding because unless you're having fun and I think fun is key to anything in life right? So for me yes, what education means irrespective of where it is

[00:12:57] whether it's in the private space whether it's in the government space whether it is in this little horrendous mid-level small budget you know private school space which really needs a lot of re-looking at you know joy is essential so that's what education means to me. That's amazing

[00:13:17] Ratna, for me education is being a lifelong learner that you continue to learn and what you learn you enjoy that. It's not about knowing your maths and literacy like what you said it's just not that it is being able to learn and then apply in your life

[00:13:33] and I have these constant conversations at home also that who's truly educated a person who can apply what they've learned not a person who has degrees and multiple degrees education truly means being a lifelong learner continuing to learn and unlearn what you knew and then learn again, relearn

[00:13:51] and while you do that have that joy of learning. That's what this education is truly. So both of you have this concept of joy but like just personally speaking I don't think joy was something that I felt when I was... Last few were very simple questions

[00:14:11] okay like when you walked into the classroom and met a friend somebody in your class that you really liked you didn't feel joy you went into the sports field and jumped around in the grass and ran all over the field. Did you not feel joy?

[00:14:29] You know, you know, you know you know, you know I think it's also just being content with what you have and how you can utilize it in your everyday life. I mean I'm sure you felt joy in that one particular teacher's class who made things easy

[00:14:45] for you, who made things interesting for you. It could have... Everybody has that one teacher's face in our minds right? It could have been that very boring social studies I mean nothing against love history and geography but it could have been... I mean teachers tend to make it

[00:15:01] and I am a teacher by heart so I know how we tend to make things boring and subjects very boring. I mean that one teacher would have created so much joy in that class enacting some historical movement that is what joy

[00:15:13] is and I'm sure both of you can put your hands on your heart and say we felt that joy once. Oh 100% yes, yes, yes. The fact that you miss it when you are out of school is a testament to the joy that you felt.

[00:15:27] But since we are already hit a philosophical note on this what do you think is the purpose of the 12 years of schooling that we go through? See I'm not a teacher unlike Meethi and I... but speaking completely from early person's perspective I think the reason you put

[00:15:49] structures around things is more to be able to control the environment. There is no given. There are any number of people who are homeschooled who do brilliantly well in life because whatever they have learnt they have learnt to apply it they haven't learnt for the sake

[00:16:11] of learning. Now because we are so stuck in our heads that our children need to know now what they need to do beyond need to know I'm not bothered about as a parent I'm like tuition wage though 100% that one son got 80% who the hell cares but parents do

[00:16:33] and you know to completely blame the education system all the time saying you drive road learning you drive this it's a two way street it's not just being done by the schooling system it's also parents who are equally crazy maybe because that's the way they came

[00:16:49] up right. There are any number of instance of very bright people who've dropped out midway who've done excellently so I think as human beings we like a framework because it makes us feel secure it makes us feel in control and it makes us feel easy within this

[00:17:07] we can do this beyond that I'm a little scared where am I going with this and this is completely methi from a lay persons perspective. That's really interesting perspective and that's a wonderful way of putting it through but I also have a little different take on it

[00:17:25] I think the whole 12 years not 12 but it's 15 because you're also looking at early childhood schooling is a lot about building skills and developing skills originally in our education system when we go back to the Gurukul system what were we doing we were actually building skills

[00:17:43] and that somewhere got lost in the Indian education system and then with a lot of educators coming together working around it studying it and redrafting it came in your new education policy and new education policy hugely talks about the 21st century

[00:17:57] skills and how they need to be developed so since I've been with the IB for a longer time and IB has always focused on developing skills in students it is important to get marks but it is far, far more important to develop

[00:18:11] a skill so I may differ a little from what Ratna said that a student who is homeschooled also does equally well is successful I think there's a very definition of success is very varied from person to person individual to individual but some people's success

[00:18:27] is being able to earn a lot of money for some people's success is that what they do they are content in that work so when we go back to building skills and a child who's being homeschooled they do miss out on certain skills which would have been developed

[00:18:39] while they were in schools and they have this quote by Margaret Mead which says that children must be taught how to think they should not be given what to think but they should be taught how to think so thinking skill is so missing in our curriculum anyone

[00:18:55] in our daily life so I agree on that part where Ratna says that it's the home that drives it we spell out everything right from the time they get up to the time they go to school and come back get up Russia to do this have your breakfast

[00:19:07] pack your bag so when they go to school and that's where road learning emerges that when you're not thinking the convenient way is road learning then the convenient way is to learn everything and write it and reproduce it on a piece of paper

[00:19:21] also Nithi do you think that in a country like India education and schooling is seen as a way to employment and to like get a lot of people out of poverty and that is why this whole mindset of road learning and marks law or

[00:19:39] become so much more prevalent see India is the youngest nation if you look at the number of youngsters who are there and if they're not educated of course the problems will come in but do we really need them to be educated only in terms

[00:19:55] of putting in bringing in marks or do we want them educated in terms of skills as well why are we not producing and strengthening the programs where they can go into more skilled and vocational training and become stronger and excel in those fields so it is

[00:20:11] important that we have an educated more than educated idea educated and not just degree holding generation but educated it is important now yes so I work completely entirely with government schools but I come from a private schooling system and a very privileged private schooling system

[00:20:33] so I know what I had access to right and I see what these children have access to so when we talk about marks road learning etc for first generation learners they don't know any different right 50 percent of your country goes to government schools of which 84 percent

[00:20:55] is rural India from that 58 percent now those parents their children are first generation learners unless and we as a society and we as educators and we as people who are the ones who create these curriculums in syllabi and frameworks are completely under the assumption

[00:21:17] that parents from low income households will not add value to their children and do not involve them in anything when the first learning environment of a child is spent at home and also secondly the mind of a child develops between the ages of 3 and 11

[00:21:37] where a large part of it is spent at home so by pushing this particular segment out of the learning framework you are actually doing more harm than good number one you make parents feel that they are not suited to be part of the engagement and the child's parents

[00:21:59] their children puts them at a disadvantage because they constantly feeling the child knows more but then they have one quantifiable parameter in their head marks because that they understand clearly so what do you do and when we talking of skilling nithi classes 6 to 12 there is vocational skill

[00:22:25] having a vocational skill means nothing because I can never be an entrepreneur and I am the youngest country in the world and I am producing more job seekers than job creators that's one two much more importantly what is the level of employability when I skill

[00:22:43] I know for a fact that the skilling that is done by the national skill development council you go and do employability indicators of a large part of the people who have gone through skilling processes they are not employable do you agree with this nithi

[00:23:01] no I completely agree with it absolutely there is no denying what rathna is saying and the whole crux of it also lies and I am sure rathna would agree with is teachers who are dealing with them the professional development of the teachers because the teachers who

[00:23:19] are teaching them can teach them a lot of things however they are not able to for various reasons I know rathna works very closely with government schools but when I stand outside and look at how it's happening there are some amazing and very talented teachers in government schools

[00:23:37] and there are other teachers who are not ready to learn and that's the same scenario even in private schools in private schools they don't have much choice because they are forced and it's kind of forced down that you have to learn and you have to transform

[00:23:49] it's important that if you want that generation of what rathna is talking about the 58% who goes to the government schools you need to have better teachers you need to have better teacher training programs and empowered teachers who can implement some bits of the curriculum to the students

[00:24:05] not just only for marks but a little much better curriculum for them in fact nithi to come in here one of the things we focus on and it's critical to our work is the central point of our work is restoring the teacher agency in government schools right because

[00:24:21] what was your best subject the teacher that you liked the best that was a serious subject when you went into school you had no idea this is English we were just talking about the favorite teachers the most joyous teacher it has to be the teacher

[00:24:37] unless the teacher wants see we keep saying child at the center the child at the center is a lost case it's the environment it's the teachers it's the home community around that actually creates the space for that child to learn so then

[00:24:57] who is the point of contact that actually gives the largest number of hours in teaching the child it's the teacher who knows the child better than anybody else it's the teacher it's that same teacher who has consulted for curriculum who's not consulted for syllabus 100 people come to them

[00:25:19] private agencies, government agencies asking for all kinds of data nobody ever bothers to go back to them to say why they collected that data and what did they do with it and that's the biggest they say we get exhausted giving data and we don't even know

[00:25:37] why we giving this data so unless to restore teacher agency I don't think children will learn teachers have to be given that and I think that is one difference between a government school and a private school and I wouldn't say all private schools but a lot of progressive

[00:25:53] private schools are giving agency to teachers so for us it is very important that if teachers are given the agency they will give agency to students students will have ownership of their learning that is how it works for them

[00:26:07] so when you say teachers should be given more agency exactly do you guys mean see you go ahead thanks so when we talk about teacher agency we talk about teachers taking ownership of what they want to do what they want to teach, how they want to teach

[00:26:21] and when they want to teach you have caused the overall at the back end you have the universal construct of syllabus, curriculum etc but there is nothing that stops you from within that same curriculum or within that same syllabus devising lessons in a manner you know your children

[00:26:41] that they will be able to absorb it in the best possible way there are parameters to check whether they are on the same lesson planning there is a diary which they have to take and another manual drudgery that goes into their daily work, you talk about head teachers

[00:26:59] head teachers are supposed to be school leaders they are supposed to develop other teachers they are supposed to look at classroom observations they are supposed to look at school governance what do they end up doing salary pay, electricity bill okay this is happening now leadership

[00:27:19] forget basically how do I strengthen the teachers in my school so when we talking about let's say road learning or we talking about there being a set syllabus there being a set curriculum is the way it is because it is quantifiable that way and at the end

[00:27:39] of the day you can go to the parent and present it in numbers in marks and stuff like that or in the absence of such a system wouldn't it be too difficult for the school to present to the parents this is what your child has learnt is that

[00:27:57] why a system is like that and in general adding to that why like how did we come at this situation what's the history of all of this and what do you think are the reasons for all of the problems that you guys highlighted

[00:28:11] would you like to talk about the white man where it came from no I really want to that's an interesting very very interesting question but I think the point that is here is that it's an easier way to be able to quantify something than to

[00:28:27] qualify it so if you are given a curriculum that you have to teach it's very easy for me I will just copy paste and do that and like I said in one of my the court by Margaret Mead that you're not telling the teachers to think

[00:28:41] you're telling them what to think so they're easy and they don't want to rack their brains and nobody wants to none of us would want to do that I think this system I remember as a child when I went to school I had some amazing teachers

[00:28:53] and my father by the way I come from a family of teachers my father was a teacher at doon school and my mom was a teacher later on so I come from a family of teachers and I grew up on that campus that amazing campus

[00:29:05] which had all my fathers colleagues and they were all teachers I saw a very different form of teaching for me that is what was teaching that teachers did not sit in the classrooms and taught students so somewhere from the 80s before that the system was

[00:29:19] there where there were more creative ways marks were of course focused but not that big a focus I think somewhere in the 90s and 2000s is when the marks became such a big focus and everybody was like running after marks that nothing mattered to a teacher

[00:29:35] I mean 60% in my times I don't sound too ancient I don't want to sound too ancient but Ratna would agree that 60% and getting a first division was a huge deal the family celebrated if you got a 65% as soon as you said 60% I could already imagine my parents

[00:29:51] like yelling just 60% I am already judging you guys for 60% the moment you cross 60% but I think it's also a supply demand issue with the number of higher education institutions we have and the demand on the number of higher education institutions we have it's only recently the whole privatization

[00:30:17] has happened more agencies have been allowed to come in etc and the whole aim was to get into government colleges and one of the reasons for getting into government colleges was affordability because higher education is an expensive space and then when demand outstrips supplied there had to be

[00:30:37] I guess a quantity and it's like you said over the last 10-15 years it's been horrifying my daughter had 100% in psychology and history I wanted to kill myself how can anyone get 100% in history and psychology and in English I have seen children getting

[00:30:53] 100% in English I mean I can't believe it the cut-offs were at 100% are you creating children or is this a joke right the whole system is chaotic and I think there is the need to rationalize all of this mad race and have alternate ways of getting higher education

[00:31:13] rather than just fighting for those institutions that exist and creating these completely false cut-off parameters because you are not really being fair to the child where are you being fair to the child a very smart child who got 98% you are really playing with those emotions of the child

[00:31:33] the self-esteem of that child and the child starts feeling less when they are not right that's what my question to all these higher education the tertiary education level is that a child who gets 99% because your cut-off is good enough and a child who is 98.5 is not good enough

[00:31:53] what are you trying to tell come on every now and then you open the newspaper you see the news and you hear that a child jumped off the place or did this did that it's so heartbreaking for what and also I think somewhere we should encourage alternate education

[00:32:11] like my child and I went to a school called Mirambika till class 8 they had no exams and there are 13 kids to a class and the rest of the world was doing you know, class year and exams school was taking off to some ashram in Ramgad in Nenital

[00:32:29] or taking off they had some place called Keechla which was like a little island where they went and taught village school kids right and they had the time of their lives and yet after the age they graduate to regular schools they've all done very well

[00:32:47] because they didn't learn linear they learn special right so the ability to apply was given far more importance than just learning Hindi English maths you wanted to understand of law and physics you have walked across to IIT and you saw it visually you're never going to forget it

[00:33:09] and when I talk about frugal innovation Niti you don't need the big stuff it's what's in front of you what you can use to demonstrate like somebody I was talking to they said give a child a seed ask the child to plant it

[00:33:27] in a little pot and take a picture every day with a regular pot from 8 to 10 days learning, excitement joy, growing technology all together not cost you can sell so it's how we use what we use and the way we use it that actually

[00:33:47] leads to learning and with NEP that is exactly what they are talking about that the children need to be able to experience what they are doing and move away from road learning however I will again come back to the point are the teachers ready to implement that curriculum

[00:34:01] they're not yet ready and so we may write hundreds of documents we may write anything but till the time we don't focus on our teachers we don't focus on training them and upskilling them we will never be able to implement the beautiful documents that we keep

[00:34:15] producing somewhere in those big rooms how will something like this happen how will training the teachers happen from the government school perspective now most government schools teachers are very apathetic they are so not used to having agency that they stop bothering after a point

[00:34:33] because at the end of the day the government employees they will be paid, they will get a salary they don't really have to care right that is nothing being paid they're disconnected from I will not say they are disconnected no they are apathetic

[00:34:49] because of the fact that nobody cares yeah right now the same teachers and this is what we are doing right now we are working with teachers and children to bring life back into the study so what are we doing we are not touching curriculum

[00:35:09] we are not touching syllabus all we are doing is we have taken the content right and infusing that content with experiential and activity elements now the moment we've done that there is something for the teacher to do and there is something for the child to do

[00:35:27] can you give an example Ratha for instance let us say learning about leaves I walk around pick up leaves come back to the classroom and then we sit together hold up a leaf show me what leaf you picked up that is a compound leaf

[00:35:43] that is a variegated leaf right that is a simple leaf you are watching you picked it up you held it right and none of you forgetting the teacher is equally excited because different leaves not something stuck in a textbook yeah because every day you will find

[00:36:01] different every season you will find different different things and what we are doing is we are doing very very detailed teacher notes it's almost like a do it yourself one two three to support the activity the learning to hell and the content hey but that activity

[00:36:19] needs to be supported because there is a reason to that activity that it leads to a learning outcome and we find strangely enough that teachers now they you see play something the human being loves no matter why do people who are 45 and 50 do management games here

[00:36:37] play everybody loves so the moment there is an element of things to do see here feel there is excitement on both ends and there is also joy because there is something fun happening and you learn this reminds me in a lot of our science math

[00:36:55] textbooks for that matter at the end of the lesson they used to be like a small box of activity but I can't remember doing any of them we were told to skip that yeah because now lesson is over we rarely ever did those activities there were

[00:37:11] these little boxes I can distinctly remember that said activity yeah yeah yeah there was a bulb made on top as our animation kuch tha us milik hotta tha try these exercises yeah and we were conveniently told to skip to the questions and exercises on page and now

[00:37:27] guessing all of these used to be these things only and they would be super fun I'm assuming yeah but also just adding to what Ratna said I think it is also it is very important that the teachers who are with us we have the

[00:37:39] beard exam we have the the C-Ted and the end and all those things that the teachers appearing for what after that once you're done you're done and then you're a teacher and I think there has to be a system that all teachers need to get teaching licenses

[00:37:53] way back in the 90s people who didn't do anything became teachers it's unfortunate thing for me to say that and say it like up loud that kuch nahi kya ladki bidi yohu kaya she's done her post graduation beard to karilo and that is what the saddest

[00:38:09] part is that so many of the people who became teachers actually didn't want to be teachers and I feel that if you truly feel and if you are passionate about the thing that's when you should get into it otherwise get off the bus and do something

[00:38:21] else that you're passionate about so so many people took beard degrees I mean and all these places were randomly distributing and Prasad Nebatre degrees to everybody and everybody who ever came in was a teacher I meet so many teachers and I interviewed them

[00:38:35] and I just think that why the hell did this person become a teacher do you also go through this Ratna talking to teachers and teaching is a job like any other right now there are two ways of looking at it a lot of

[00:38:49] us get into something we want to do out of passion but to be honest in a country like ours with the kind of population we have passion is a luxury right there is a lot of people who need it as a job a lot of them later on

[00:39:05] when they do the work fall in love with the work that's different it's not they may not they may come into it as a job but then they actually fall in love with it and do it like an arranged marriage that first get married then fall in love

[00:39:19] then they will work that route but be honest you know so the problem doesn't lie with the teachers I think it's our approach to teacher one of the biggest problems that faces government meet is you have what are called these teacher education institutes

[00:39:37] a lot of them don't even exist they're on paper and we were tasked by one state government to create a format to help them sift out whether that those institutes really existed right and then they will you pay money like you say Prashar you know you just

[00:39:59] they get a certificate and they come and say see I have done teacher education so if you put those through a test again I would be horrified also a question that Pratik had asked that why do you think that teaching and where did it really start changing and

[00:40:17] started going bad whichever way he had asked that question I think was also when I go back to looking at my dad when he was a teacher he became a teacher by choice he didn't become a teacher because he didn't want

[00:40:29] to do he wanted to be a teacher and a lot of people in that in the 70s and the 60s and the 50s became teachers because that was their passion and they wanted to become teachers then came in the 80s people were still looking at 90s, 2000 even now

[00:40:43] I mean people become teachers just because they don't want to do other things I remember when I became a teacher way I was just 21 and I had finished my graduation and my mom said get into teaching and I did

[00:40:55] that for a year and I said no I don't want to be a teacher both my parents are teachers doesn't mean that I'll be a teacher it's not something genetic that has been passed on to me I was like

[00:41:03] I said and dad said okay let me try it and let me do it girls should be teachers you know that kind and I wanted to break that but I realized that that's what I did best that's a love marriage yeah no it was arranged

[00:41:17] I need to have a conversation with you after this that was also kind of arranged I was into that pushed into it but yeah so people need to be passionate and I agree with Ratna when she says that it's a luxury

[00:41:35] passion is a luxury but can we have little more compassion if not compassion from teachers who are teaching the students yeah because compassion shouldn't be a luxury yeah that shouldn't be a luxury because every profession that you are looking at deals with products deals with

[00:41:51] humans deals with this and that teaching deals with children and when we look at children we say children are tomorrow's nation they're tomorrow's leaders what are we talking about if we are not empowering our teachers to take that step to nurture those individuals it's the teacher who's the

[00:42:07] you know who's the god for that child I mean parents call the teachers and say ma'am this one my child doesn't listen to me why don't you tell her to do this why don't you tell him to do that that's the value a teacher has

[00:42:19] in the life of a young child I have an anecdote my sister wouldn't eat her vegetables in her tiffin my mom told me to tell her teacher she doesn't eat vegetables so this is how much trust we have on our teacher there is the other extreme

[00:42:39] where the teacher says something which you know is incorrect and you tell the child this is not the correct answer no mistake it is correct do you also think like the reverse happens where people with a lot of passion for teaching do get into it and then eventually

[00:42:57] like we've pointed out all the troubles of being a teacher in our education system then get out of it even though they do have the passion does that happen or become that mechanized version of a teacher no anybody who is passionate they will keep fighting

[00:43:13] they will keep fighting they will keep trying to do something however small on a daily basis to make something better because it comes from within and the fight is for them the fight is not with education or teaching the fight is with the system

[00:43:29] with the institute they are working with so they may leave that institute they may leave that system but they will continue to be passionate teachers okay so we were Ratna I think you had touched upon alternate methods of learning right now first of all I have a question

[00:43:43] what are those methods for our listeners who maybe who are young parents and people who might be in schools currently what are number one those kind of systems and another question that I had was when we talk about these alternate methods of learning is there an apprehension

[00:43:59] that you guys face if we do all this then the result why should we waste time showing them showing them it's interesting you are asking me this question because when I put my daughter into Mirambika that was a question I was asked sure

[00:44:19] that is where you want that child to go can you ask by who other parents friends I was a civil servant competitive as hell right aren't you scared that your child will not be able to compete I said you know the school I went to we were taught

[00:44:37] that excellence is only with self and you only need to excel with yourself so I am not bothered about whether my child can compete with the outside world as long as she develops the strength the courage and the understanding that she is very good at what she does

[00:44:57] the moment she has that within her that resilience and that self confidence learning is not hard I mean she did very well she went to mother she went to see him she went to I mean she did very well and she did not follow

[00:45:13] now I am curious Ratha what to do now works with advertising with two civil servants parents she did not want to be a civil servant so she works with advertising what she had through that schooling in her life was the joy of learning

[00:45:27] what Ratna said in the beginning and happiness and that's what made her do things in a different manner and that's what helped her to succeed so joy of learning helps there exactly because of the fact that she had joyful learning she is so intense

[00:45:43] she is so passionate about whatever she does and she has these things like she drives herself and I think one of the things we as parents also make a mistake the moment you go after children read, do homework I will do your project for you what you

[00:45:59] end up doing is removing the responsibility from the child and taking it on to yourself so the child says ok mother did not say come and say that you will be studying till then let me just chill now the moment you do this you actually disempower

[00:46:15] the child and I remember very clearly telling my daughter papa has done whatever he had to I have done whatever I had to now it's up to you you want to do domestic work your call you want to paint houses your call with no judgements

[00:46:35] I don't think I ever sat down and told her to do homework projects not by any long I don't know what project she had and I think she did pretty well because the responsibility was hers I remember when 10 standard exams were happening Neeti a lot of people

[00:46:51] took away their children's phones cut off internet connections I did nothing of this sort she did extremely well so now that we are at this point this is what we were going to talk about next is how has parents involvement or their relationship with schools

[00:47:09] changed over the years I think for sure they are way more involved than they used to be and we see it in the form of parents associations also how does it differ between a private setting I'll take the private school one I think it's

[00:47:27] good to have parent involvement but over indulgence is never good and somewhere the parents need to realise that there is a line being involved in what your child is doing being over indulgent it's kind of a guilt that they feel that probably their parents weren't

[00:47:45] enough indulgent on them or over involved that I want to be over involved so I'll just take very live example of my school what we want our parents to do is be involved in the life of the child know what your child is doing

[00:47:59] and offer your services to the school in terms of your expertise that's how we want parents to be involved because they are equal stakeholders come and talk to us what your child is going through and we want to figure out ways and means to sort those problems

[00:48:15] being over protective about the child actually loses the child to be resilient it's a small thing the child goes crying back home and the parent wants to take immediate action that group doesn't suit my child change the class, change the section change the seat starts from

[00:48:33] right from there that let your child learn to fight his or her own small classroom battles that is what will make them resilient and strong individuals however it is important that you know what your child is doing and how your child is progressing

[00:48:47] and have those open conversations with the teachers and go back to the schools you know Neeti I honestly feel sometimes in private schools parents somehow have this attitude that you know what you can do your job and that somehow removes respect from the child

[00:49:05] towards the teacher which I think is the greatest tragedy because the child has to have respect for the teacher and half the reason teachers are angry or upset is because they're like I am the teacher I know what I want

[00:49:21] and I have a parent coming and yelling at me just because I pulled up a child for doing something the child shouldn't have done now those are things that somehow have crept into the system and even more so because you know when you have both working parents

[00:49:35] that burden of guilt that oh my god we both working we're not giving quality time to the child that's not correct I've worked all my life and I know I've given enough quality time to the child so who do I take it out on I find alibi's

[00:49:47] right and I find external agencies to project it on and who is the most obvious agency it's the teacher right it's your job because the child is spending so much time and also the child is spending so much time in the school so that's where

[00:50:03] so it comes back around there so if the parent and the teacher could work collaboratively that is where more patience is required from from the parents side and more trust is required that if they have trusted a place a space for their child to go to and learn

[00:50:17] then let's have that patience to say that what is that person telling us about the child and how is that person responding to the child's needs and the flip side is parents from low-income households because they feel they don't know enough they're already modified

[00:50:31] by the thought of walking into a formal education for a lot of places I'm assuming it's the first time somebody from the generation a lot of them are first generation learners so they're almost like supplicant to the teachers they feel that they know we don't know

[00:50:53] somewhere that gap needs to be bridged to we actually have two very diverse ends of the spectrum one of entitlement and the other of completely being scared and modified of a formal learning setting so I have a question that Tabse Abhitha all the points that we've touched on

[00:51:13] Ratna you've been talking about the government side of the things and Neeti you're talking about the private education side of it I want to understand what is the difference between government education and private education is it just about affordability and money and in general

[00:51:31] what's the difference between them see the government has to provide services as a welfare state right but there is definitely a we are a very large population there is a limit to what is available in terms of a budget right it's we don't have the wherewithal

[00:51:51] I'm sure I don't think anybody if they had the money and they had the wherewithal would be averse to creating similar conditions that private schools have but it's about juggling resources because you have to build infrastructure everywhere and for such a large population

[00:52:11] and school is one part of that infrastructure so it's also there are so many forces at play and but we also have to look at the fact that the government does provide a huge number of schools to cater for very large population right so somewhere the balance between

[00:52:31] numbers availability of budgets and infrastructure creates the kind of you know stresses and strains around government schooling systems and having said that in a state like Haryana for example they have created model schools and slowly upscaling and upscaling they started with

[00:52:53] a few and then a few more and then today there are about 130 they doing a hub and spoke model you go to any of these government schools pure government schools it's beautiful they have labs they have great libraries the way they use the entire campus for

[00:53:11] teaching aids like on the walls on the little stones that pave you know for kiaaris they have used the entire school as teaching aids right you have confident young children there that's a government school as well so a lot also depends on the state

[00:53:31] the availability of budget it's a it's a concurrent subject so where with all for the budget lies with the state right and it's the same thing in delhi schools also you look at the delhi government schools the delhi board of school education what they are doing and

[00:53:45] how they are trying to transform those schools so much so they are trying to also bring in an international curriculum so that the teaching learning practices become better they have put in a lot of resources on teachers development so they took in from finished curriculum from various curriculums

[00:54:01] and they have trained teachers and it is really true I mean I've seen that work and I see it closely because there are three four of their government schools there as an IB from the IB from the IB can side as a consultant and they're trying

[00:54:15] to do a lot of things there of course their challenges are huge like while it was lockdown and online learning they didn't have devices the students didn't have devices where they came from the background and like Ratna says that you know their parents

[00:54:27] are not as educated they have their first time probably learners the first generation learners these students are so the parents also don't have an understanding and where with all of saying how my child should learn and what my child should learn so there are huge challenges but

[00:54:41] having said that within those challenges also some of the governments are trying to bring in a difference to the schools. There's no mark of intent Pratik let's put it this way right there are would you say that would you actually say that there is actually work being done

[00:54:55] there is a lot of work being done oh yes at different levels which is why I like I told you have different boards you have different you know what should I say courses you have the ICSE you have the CBSE you have the you know the government

[00:55:11] state boards. State boards as well and then different syllabi different curriculum it's but so obviously there's a lot of work happening otherwise it would all be defunct you know and it's not that we running as a Ram Bharose country there is a lot of structure

[00:55:27] there is a lot of work happening it's just that the sheer numbers the sheer numbers breed sometimes it reflects on quality and that is the you know biggest bane which is where the national education policy 2020 if it can actually be brought down into doable bits and pieces

[00:55:47] and explain better and explain then torn into those little you know bits what are you right tear it down to the level that every individual every I mean for example it talks about play as a source of learning for the early childhood teachers don't understand years ago

[00:56:03] I was in one school and I said that oh so you do play-based learning the children go out and play and then they come back and do the work I mean on a funnier side that was an interpretation of a small town private school very small

[00:56:17] town private school and not even talking about a government school so again goes back into understanding and is it the first time we are incorporating things like play education system it's always been there it's been there forever at the policy level though

[00:56:33] even the other NEP talked about play and experiential learning so this NEP came in after 32 years we have 6-7 drafts that have been coming though they were not called the education policy there were different white papers through the years that have more or less talked about similar things

[00:56:51] right the national education policy that we have today has culled out a lot of the good stuff which has already been talked about in the past recommended by various committees put it all together to create NEP 2020 but having said that also there is a lot of idealistic

[00:57:09] language that goes into NEP 2020 now when I say 21st century skills I have not yet NEP found anybody who can define what that means right now somewhere you have to break it down into bite sized pieces and also into a sequential structure of how

[00:57:33] so with NEP we've done a what and we've done a why but the how we've not got no but it is also to each one's interpretation and that is what scares me so much that if we will leave the how to be interpreted

[00:57:45] by the individuals and by the schools we'll have an overall framework yes but how if you're leaving it to be interpreted that scares me I mean yeah I've seen some of the great educators who talk about NEP and it just scares me what they're talking

[00:57:59] about them how they're talking you know one of the things we doing is creating what I call communities of practice right now for government schools what happens is I'm here and I'm doing something really innovative within my school there's another school 2 kilometers away

[00:58:15] the guy has no idea about what I'm doing you know I went to the school sweet little school the headmaster they're very enthusiastic headmaster he was teaching his children about saving money and interest right so there was this little tiffin box you know those little steel boxes

[00:58:33] these to carry to school a hundred years ago so one of those little boxes that multi-decker one single beyond your time it used to be a little aluminium box with a handle yeah yeah yeah and it had these clips on the side yeah on the side

[00:58:49] you should open yeah yeah actually you know kept one of those boxes and told children any money you want to save you put in here and I will give you x percent interest right and this way the pocket money that you have you can

[00:59:05] grow so I asked him I said where would you get the interest from it's all going into this box he says every year at the end of the year we have a school mailer they make enough money there they don't need

[00:59:17] to know where we are making that money but they know that because they've saved their earning interest on their money I thought it was brilliant yeah you know we're talking about all these big things financial literacy and here's this guy happily doing it in his school right now

[00:59:33] by creating communities of practice you know what we're trying to do and it's still in the ambition stage is creating a new talk about technology technology technology create a portal like a virtual common room where only teachers have access so that they are free to

[00:59:51] speak to each other right and creating a virtual common room where they come in they can exchange and I would not only this good practice and this is what by the way I mean local level innovation the whole frugal innovation story and

[01:00:05] share the practices and all of it but also share anxieties share frustration share worry shout outs to say I need this help show emotional support peer to peer support is the best form of support and it's not expensive creating a portal and creating a virtual you know common

[01:00:23] room yeah so what Ratna is talking about I'll talk more from the private school perspective and also the private examination body so in an IB setup in international baccalaureate setup they have a portal which is called the program resource center and PRC all schools who are

[01:00:39] in IB school their teachers have access to that and there they have this portal of teachers coming in sharing that I did this and this work well for my class and sharing that also asking questions that you know I'm stuck here and I'm teaching

[01:00:51] this unit and I'm going to talk about this how do I do it so there's a whole lot of ideas that are being shared so much so some of these PYP schools and NYP and DP and all those teachers have made communities on Facebook as simple

[01:01:03] as that and somebody posts that you know I'm doing this unit and I want to collaborate anywhere in the world and I'm a school in Africa or I'm a school in Japan and then people start writing that okay I'd love to connect with you and this

[01:01:15] and you know and then you inbox and then you share your emails and that's how collaborations start so there's huge number of communities in private sector where they are already collaborating with each other through virtual medium this is what we need to do for government schools absolutely

[01:01:31] are there any plans happening for something like this because this is like a very doable thing no we're already in talks with because we work with the government of Haryana as well so and it's Haryana being a highly urbanized state internet connectivity is not a problem

[01:01:47] because you do need connectivity so we are actually working with them to create this portal and create communities of practice now in a place like Arunachal where it is only 10% connectivity we've asked them to create this big virtual common room within the same district

[01:02:05] let head teachers visit each other schools and 2 days do some classroom observation talk to other teachers see what's happening you know the culture of learning and sharing doesn't have to be driven by money and resources right and but it has the problem is we'll have

[01:02:25] to coordinate and facilitate this till they see the virtue in it and then it'll go on auto mode just creating it and leaving it falls apart and such things are already happening in the private sector already and hugely sharing good practices visiting each other schools and

[01:02:45] getting a mentor school especially in the primary primary school so northern India has about 50 odd schools who are either candidate schools for the primary program or are already authorized and so they hand hold each other through the journey they do sharing good practices they do job like sessions

[01:03:03] virtual and physical both kinds so different schools host it and that's become a very good practice and nobody has to spend money on it you see it's not about money it's about sharing your ideas and thoughts and that doesn't need money for doing it

[01:03:17] absolutely absolutely I totally agree so now I have a question it's not necessarily a criticism of the private system but it does pose questions of access to me right because a certain only a certain class of parents would be able to enroll their children into a private setting

[01:03:41] how is the private side of the education system working to tackle that and do they consider this like an issue as well if Nithi can answer so what I understand is that you're looking at a private sector where the parents who have that entitlement

[01:03:59] or have that resources to be able to access that versus children in the government schools not getting that access and wouldn't that alienate a large chunk of population you know it does so as for the right to education when you talk about schools needing to have 25-25% of

[01:04:17] children from the economically weaker section to be part of your school that's something which has been said and written and schools have to follow it so that was done to look at that the good or let's say the private education is available to everybody and

[01:04:33] those children who can make it or are in the vicinity I see it a little differently that when you're trying to bring in children with no means and resources behind them and from the economically weaker section in trying to put them into those very fancy schools where

[01:04:49] they look at other children with all the resources you're trying to somewhere also let them realize that oh my god I don't have this and I don't have that and also feel sorry for themselves rather if I were to have a system and if

[01:05:03] I were to look at the system I would say that have these private schools adopt one school and make sure that whatever practices they're doing in their schools teaching learning whatever good practices they're running their professional development they're doing in their schools go ahead

[01:05:17] take it to that school and implement that in that school whatever it requires and honestly if you want resources like Ratna said you go out and walk out and bring in a leaf and observe a leaf you only need that you don't need

[01:05:29] many fancy resources to be able to make your teaching learning better so I would look at it that instead of telling private schools to say that get all the children in go and impact a larger chunk and say go take a school under you and start

[01:05:43] helping that school to develop and build just one thing I want to bring in here Nithi you know there's been a massive amount of research and documentation that has gone into this whole 25% EWS access for children what it has ended up doing is creating a huge deal

[01:06:03] of resentment within those children for the not only to the school as such because you know you have children talking about going on for a holiday yeah absolutely they actually start looking down on their parents they turn hostile they start stealing from home

[01:06:21] to be able to afford things you know and the gap is widening for them yeah it's such an unequal divide that I think it's a you know what shall I say an exercise that should never have taken place I agree with you about this

[01:06:37] and like Nithi said it makes more sense to go and support a school if you're a private school go support a school with good practice and all but don't do this because it is just a horrific joke on those children who are seeing things and they know

[01:06:53] they will never be a part of it was a part of this exercise also to promote like interaction within let's say students from like a economically weaker section and also to have both of them put in the same classroom and see and boost their interaction with each other

[01:07:13] was that an objective not at all I don't see that as a real time objective because that's not serving the purpose of whatever they would have thought about it like Ratna said it is creating a far bigger divide and resentment in the lives of these children

[01:07:29] and so many hours are going into counselling these children to say that appreciate what you're getting you know instead of the 25% reservation they put aside 25% of each child's fees and that money go and develop a school further and work with the school better absolutely and improve the lives

[01:07:51] of all those 100 in that school why just 25 in that school yeah I think again that selection process in itself would also be so politicized which for students then you pick out of a class of 100 then it's unhappy it's like an issue Anjali it's a very very unhappy space

[01:08:11] for the parents involved for the children involved and you know it's not like the other children are being deliberately cruel they're just living their lives they just think who they are right and then you suddenly expect them those children who need to be extra sensitive

[01:08:29] then pity comes in and that's not what another child needs right so it's a political system I mean I think it's also because the gap is that wide you know from a government to a private school that gap is very wide which is where I think Ratha

[01:08:45] you mentioned and you were not too happy mentioning it are your mid budget private schools that's a nightmare space that's a real nightmare and it's in Delhi I can tell you it's in Delhi because I know like people who work for me their children it's aspirational

[01:09:01] they go to those schools they say they will teach them English it's an English school and they take a lot more money than a Sarkari school does and the Sarkari school teaches 20 times better right but because what they call a private school they feel it'll teach

[01:09:21] better and I know for a fact that for one of my staff I mean 2 years there was no teaching whatsoever the school was closed when it opened he was told deposit 32,000 rupees tomorrow or your child can't come to school where is he going to grow that from

[01:09:39] so that particular segment they are understaffed they do not have quality teachers a lot of it is run by small level politicians or others and what happens in those schools is it sells a dream to the most vulnerable those who just want to move out of the government

[01:10:01] to a private school could be any school so you say if it's so big I can't afford it Sarkari school will be fine and they end up in a heavy hole and it's like a worst of both because they don't have the resources of a private school

[01:10:19] and they are teachers are understaffed not the teaching quality of a government school so it's actually not a great space and I think somewhere we are going to start looking at it start assessing quality start looking at the teaching parameters right now I think it's just mushroomed

[01:10:37] you remember there used to be little clinics that would open with every quack in every college these schools I also call them mushroom schools and some of the bigger chains also mushroom schools like that mushroom schools are the one that's the term for them

[01:10:51] so now we are nearing the end and I want to specifically talk about how can these two extremes of government and private schools how can they coexist and how can they work together and learn from each other because I would say

[01:11:09] please correct me if I'm wrong that the government side of things has a problem of stress and quality I would say and obviously the private side of thing has problems of access they have problems of affordability so how can we find like a bridging gap

[01:11:27] so that we can ensure as you said that it's like a basic right to give education there were lot of agencies Pratik the not for profit sector and the social impact sector they work across so they would collaborate with private schools they would collaborate

[01:11:45] like we collaborate with a lot of agencies abroad because we are a UK based charity so and you try to bring good practice I don't use the word best practice ever because that means you stop you can't go beyond so good practice

[01:11:59] so you pick it up from other places and then you try to create programs you try to create interventions you try to create tools, framework, structures which you then go and work with the government and work with the government schools to bring these in

[01:12:15] so it's not like there is this huge gap and it's never going to change and I think more and more this whole process of collaboration and partnership is getting better and better and also I think with the advent of technology where it doesn't all have to be

[01:12:31] physical presence you have large learning session large seminars lots of places from where you can pick up learning pick up good practice and of course the whole open source concept today a lot of agencies put a huge amount of excellent content into open source

[01:12:51] so it's not like you have to pay for them they are copyrighted all you have to do is ascribe your source but it's available to be used right? I would again go back to saying that private schools and government schools could embark on a journey of collaborative work

[01:13:07] a better journey rather than take children from there but do more collaborative work with them and look at strengthening the teachers training systems in the government schools and is that collaboration currently happening at what level? I'll give you a little example

[01:13:23] I used to be in a school where the students because that was an IB school and as part of IB students of 11th and 12th have to do a CAS which is Creativity Action and Service and they have to give in certain number of hours

[01:13:35] and as part of that they collaborated with the nearby government school and that was a primary school so they said we want to come here and work in the school sports day for them they looked at the flooring it wasn't really good, they said let's start working

[01:13:49] so they would come back to their school generate funds through various other activities and take a month the students would and generate funds through various cupcake sale and this and that and generate funds and then go back

[01:14:01] so that was part of there what are they being able to give back to the community and then actually lay out the floor along with the Mason and do all those jobs as well but while these are old children 16, 17 year olds they also observed

[01:14:13] that the teachers were not really teaching the students the way they should be and they started voicing those concerns that ma'am why aren't you teaching and why are you sitting here and your class is just and this was a primary school as a result the principal

[01:14:25] and the teachers raised a concern that these children from that private school come in and they don't do any work here they play around and go away so we would don't want them coming in because they started questioning what they were doing with the children

[01:14:35] and how they were working around with the students there are things which I mean I'm not going to name that place or anywhere but I've also seen it with my eyes that a class of 30 students of grade 5 were sitting and there's one little

[01:14:47] 2 year old child running around so I ended up asking that girl that oh that's your little brother I knew that the children from the house wouldn't be able to see their elder sister or something like that she said very shyly and she said no that's ma'am's child

[01:14:59] so she was actually babysitting her teacher's child in her class while she is supposed to be teaching so the students also saw this so I feel that to be able to have this proper collaboration there needs to be better systems wherein if a private school wants to

[01:15:13] come into the school then there has to be an openness from the government school also to say that yes we want to see what you're doing and see if that impacts us positively if it doesn't of course they have a full

[01:15:23] right to say no don't come back here you're not doing a good job but it has to be like a balance because that school did transform at the end of the day the school did transform you know they had a better water tank everything got maintained and things

[01:15:35] were in that school infrastructure and why do you think it's not currently happening as extensively I think there is too much of a divide there is too much of a divide and there is also there is this whole aspect of who has the time there is a curriculum

[01:15:51] that has to be taught there is a certain set of classes again we go back to the marks and that's why the new education policy and the existing system of syllabus curriculum lesson khatam karna hai Militate actually and there needs to be some point where they

[01:16:11] kind of come together and they hold tight because otherwise it's not going to be easy right and like what Niti said once in a while you go to another school and you look at it it's nice it's a learning experience but it's not a scalable experience

[01:16:31] you have to be consistently there to do it the whole social work as it's called and you can't blame the children because they really had no exposure to it in any way so then you know what they came but they were so condescending that is also unfair

[01:16:55] you have to look at both sides of it because they didn't know any better this is the first time they are seeing it and they are coming to it with solutions they understand so they don't understand that it will take so much money to paint

[01:17:09] they would say why can't the wall be painted but in terms of learning yes there can be a lot of collaboration there can be things that can be done and I think good practice from the private sector can percolate into government teaching and learning because

[01:17:27] it's a systemic level so that has nothing to do with anything else I think that is a good point to conclude our conversation we always like to end on an optimistic note yes that's a good thing and I would just ask in the end

[01:17:43] to the both of you what is that one final message that you would have our listeners part with we started the conversation with what is your philosophy of education in the future what do you see education becoming in the future and what would you like

[01:18:03] if a young parent or a student is listening to this conversation what would you like to leave them with the future education you don't know what kind of jobs are going to be there and how the jobs are changing at the rapid rate

[01:18:17] so for me future education would be to have empowered and skilled individuals who have the know-how of the content but more conceptually driven individuals that is where the education will have to lead them to to be able to function in a world where you don't know the professions

[01:18:35] that will exist in 20 years from now I mean I didn't know that a job that there would be a job of a consultant and that what is the role of a consultant everybody is a consultant these days and everybody and that's like such a huge

[01:18:45] thing but so you're looking at jobs which skilled jobs will always be there and what can be done that those jobs will always always have for the future education one needs to be educated of course but also have skills with them

[01:18:59] to be able to survive in the future world well for me very frankly if you talk about young parents and what they should be looking at I think one thing that they should be really concerned with is involving themselves with their children not patronizing not condescending not talking

[01:19:17] down but talking with their children I think that's really important number two like Niti just said the world is changing rapidly so the ability to be agile and the ability to you know absorb and learn and learn in a manner that is where you can apply things

[01:19:37] no four things but be able to apply all four of them and apply them well rather than having a learning a hundred things and not knowing how to apply even one of them and if you are agile because everything is changing and I this whole conversation going on

[01:19:53] around can chat GPT replace teachers it can't we are huge what is AI we have an answer very very shameless plug our first episode of our this podcast was on AI and what we concluded was AI is a parrot it's a Tota

[01:20:13] it says what you feed into it which is not what teachers are absolutely so it can be a tool for teachers but for teaching it's a tool a tool can never replace that individual who does what they do it's an enabler that's it yes great thanks a lot

[01:20:31] for this chat Rathnayan Niti thank you I mean no it's been a was like such a we enjoyed it thoroughly just to kind of voice our deep thoughts about we think and it was amazing interacting with you Rathnayan Pratik and Anjali thank you so much

[01:20:47] great and we must keep in touch absolutely please do I share those contacts so Pratik how do you feel after this discussion I feel educated I feel that finally yes finally I feel that this discussion should have ended with the words class dismissed tend to

[01:21:16] tend to add that should have brought an hour in the studio but no I think we don't know but Niti and Rathnayan became great friends by the end of it yeah so I think yeah this is what this chat was supposed to be

[01:21:34] it was supposed to be a partnership between the public and the private system and I think this conversation also tells us and what we were saying in the beginning that who should blame that question is not who should blame the idea is we both will meet

[01:21:52] and we will meet like you because I think we have realized that the problems are not exclusive to either one of them whether it's a problem with their teachers or it might be a different like a different degree of the same problem and the problem's face is different

[01:22:12] but yeah but it's more or less basically a child and their environment that really needs to be looked at and so of course the way that both of these systems function is different so their way of coming to a solution will also be different

[01:22:30] but what I think we have highlighted quite quite prominently and should be done that way is the idea of collaboration between both of them I think the idea of collaboration in general like with teachers and parents with students and teachers with parents and students with your law makers

[01:22:50] and teachers and I'm glad that we did it with both of them together because it's true that neither of them exist in a vacuum and I mean there is at some point the students from both of these institutions are going to become the part of the same

[01:23:06] society. Exactly whether you came from government school or private school, you have to do the same thing in society and in the future they will have to work with each other talking about the future I think we did extensively talk about the NEP but it is

[01:23:26] a step in the right direction but as both of them pointed out it has its fault lines it has its fault lines and again it has the same thing of breaking it down into sizable, manageable chunks and then giving the freedom to schools and institutions to

[01:23:46] interpret it in their way and you know because all government schools aren't the same and all private schools aren't the same right? We have made a blanket idea that government school has one stereotype and private school has one stereotype but both these institutions exist in a very

[01:24:04] large spectrum so it is very important that you lay down these guidelines and then let the principals or the teachers or people who are smart enough and who know the realities of that particular institution you know run it the way they want to right? I think we did

[01:24:22] not talk about how systems are sort of you know the uniformity that we have made that is very intrinsic and this is the fact that everything has to be quantitative everything has to be measured and standardized is where a lot of our problems are Nice, interesting

[01:24:42] it was a great chat I think and I think our listeners would be equally enlightened and educated to learn that there is a problem but there is also solution and also a lot of work is already being done like the collaborations that Neeti talked about between the

[01:25:00] private institutions and government institutions I mean it's a very nice thing that things like that are happening and to be honest a lot of times I was like this close to tearing up and I was like it means it is getting so much fun

[01:25:14] okay before we end another thing what is the one thing that you don't understand about today's schooling because I have one this is one thing that a lot of times it's cool if I just pause for a second think about how does it work

[01:25:32] and okay maybe this might not be the best way to do it I felt this same thing about schools that kids are walking in line line they are not wearing the belt in their uniforms so they are getting scolded and I think about that

[01:25:48] and there is a time when everyone says that they have to eat so everyone is sitting in line and eating and it feels like there are a lot of these people who believe that we are living in a simulation and schools

[01:26:02] really feel like that everyone is doing the same thing at the same time yes at 11 am they have to eat 8-9 am they are hungry so they have to eat a single meal secretly it shouldn't be a thing that needs to be scored last 2 seats I passed

[01:26:16] that a french fry piece is hiding yes that is one and one thing I would say is all of these group assemblies and all are also maybe because ours wasn't an indoor assembly ours was outdoor so the only way

[01:26:32] to not attend that assembly is to pretend to faint which is why a lot of people in my school to coaching their biggest reason was that they didn't have to attend the assembly so I am doing football coaching and cricket coaching so imagine it's possible that

[01:26:50] the player who is earning millions he started playing cricket just so that he doesn't have to attend the assembly really then assemblies aren't as bad way to turn the episode on its head yes interesting on that note let us conclude this episode

[01:27:08] thanks a lot for listening to this episode of the big story thank you Anjali for tolerating me thank you Neeti and Ratna for being a part of this conversation we will see you in the next episode this was Pratik and this was Anjali thank you bye bye

[01:27:24] the big story is a quint original podcast executive produced by Shalivalya and Ritu Kapoor this episode was produced, hosted and edited by Pratik Lidu and Anjali Palode and the background music is from BMG Productions a special thanks to our guests Neeti Bhalla and Ratna Vishwanathan music