Confluence for Progressive Change in Education,School Of Tomorrow Culminates Successfully

Hyderabad|India|December'2010: The second edition of iDiscoveri’s School of Tomorrow, an XSEED annual international conference on innovative education, witnessed thought leaders and educationists engage in high quality and stimulating dialogue that could pave the way for progressive change in school education. Held simultaneously across New Delhi , Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai, School of Tomorrow is an unprecedented effort to generate thought leadership for school education in the Indian context. The programme was seamlessly integrated live across the four cities using Internet and videoconferencing technology.

Prof Peter Senge from MIT Sloan School of Management, one of the world’s foremost researchers on teaching and learning for understanding Prof David Perkins from Harvard University, distinguished author and former CEO of Procter & Gamble India Gurcharan Das, presented stimulating keynote addresses that was simulcast across 4 centres. Over 50 luminaries from the domains of education, corporate and business participated in the mega education confluence.

In his message Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam, outlined his vision for the kind of citizen India needs to emerge as knowledge super power and detailed out his expectations on the values, skills and attitudes that need to be instilled in the formative years.

Prof David Perkins, a senior professor at the Havard Graduate School of Education and co-founder of Project Zero research program spoke on what effective schools of future will look like and what can be effectively done at present to take advantage of these opportunities.

Professor David Perkins, Harvard University feels, “As educators, we all want learning that matters, learning that makes a deep difference in students’ lives. And of course much of what students study from kindergarten to graduate school does matter. However, a lot of it doesn’t. Whereas traditionally we educate for the known, today’s world also asks us to educate for the unknown, preparing learners with the knowledge and perspectives, the communication, learning, and thinking skills and attitudes for thriving in the 21st century. Here we envision the opportunities and challenges of educating not just for the known but the unknown.”

Prof Peter Senge highlighted, “The world has moved out of the Industrial Age, and so has the business world. Our educational system, however, has not. We must abandon Industrial Age assumptions about schools. This requires centering learning on the student instead of the teacher, discouraging “homogeneity,” and getting away from rote memorization. In short, it means treating schools like living systems instead of machines. Attempts to improve this ‘living system’ must therefore be wholesome interventions and not just patchwork solutions.”

Gurcharan Das shared, “India has become the second fastest growing economy in the world with one hand tied. The tied hand is a metaphor for the lack of good education to our children. Imagine what would happen if the other hand got untied. India would be formidable if we were able to educate our children!”

The pattern of the conference was such that each city featured two facilitated panel of experts - education domain experts and business and government leaders who discussed the various micro and macro trends that can transform school education. For the panel on Innovative Practices in Schools, noted educationists’ Abha Adams, former Director Shriram School; Graham Ranger from British School; David Zarowin (WIDE); Gunmeet Bindra, (VJDS) discussed how school leaders can act to improve teaching and learning.

The second panel that deliberated on the Society’s Expectations from Schools comprised Vineet Joshi, IAS, Chairman, CBSE; Abha Adams, former Director of Shriram School; Dr. Rukmini Banerjee, Director, Pratham; Anuradha Das Mathur, one of the founders of 9.9 Media, Vivek Ramchandani from UNICEF and Aditya Natraj from Kaivalya Foundation.

XSEED has been adopted by over 400 schools across the country (including 100+ schools in Andhra Pradesh and now touches 130,000+ children and 12,000 teachers. Some of the leading schools implementing XSEED include Hyderabad Public School , Bombay Scottish School , Padma Sheshadri, Chennai, Bangalore International School , etc. XSEED has shown visible impact in student learning including improvement in grasp of basic concepts, better vocabulary and communication skills and close to 20% improvement overall in academic performance in pilot studies.

XSEED, the flagship program from iDiscoveri, is a path-breaking and comprehensive solution for quality teaching and learning in K-12 schools.

Speaking on the occasion Ashish Rajpal, CEO, iDiscoveri Education, remarked, “India is on the threshold of emerging as a knowledge superpower and progressive education will play a key role in shaping young adults into custodians of tomorrow’s knowledge economy. Hence the need of the hour is to present a simple and a powerful vision for what schooling can be, a practical understanding of what exactly to do inside the classroom to bring this vision to reality, and a collaborative mindset between education, business and government leaders to sustain this change over a period. The School of Tomorrow is an unprecedented effort in this direction as good education is imperative to building a just, compassionate and sustainable society.”

The first edition of School of Tomorrow hosted in 2009 witnessed participation from more than 250 schools. The conference engaged the audience in a high quality interactive dialogue on school education. Prof. Howard Gardner of Harvard University presented the keynote address via live video link from the United States . The unique “Adopt a School program” which allows corporates to directly participate in improving the learning outcomes in low income schools across the country was also launched.