Education Starts Early: Progress, Challenges & Opportunities

Learning to learn, should be a hobby and not an occasional occurrence and that’s what we are here for, said Dr Dheeraj Mehrotra, Principal of Kunwar's Global School, Lucknow addressing the ‘Education Starts Early: Progress, Challenges and Opportunities’ session at BW Education Leadership Summit 2023, organised by BW Businessworld at New Delhi on Wednesday.

He added that learning today is not restricted to A for Apple, B for Ball and C for Cat. It is more about A for Android, B for Blackberry and C for Cloud, learning to be redefined for a better future.

Adding to the redefined learning system, Vikram Sahoo, Director, Research and Innovation, SAI International Education Group, said, "Today education needs to be started at an early age and requires a sensory-trained approach that includes linguistic, visual and kinaesthetic teaching."

He stressed that every other child has a different learning capacity based on that, learning should be a fun activity, likewise, if you want to teach a child, what a lemon is, different teaching techniques should be used like showing the student the real lemon, making them cut it, asking them to draw, etc.

This helps to create retention and develops, a child’s early learning capabilities, Vikram added.

As early learning is not just restricted to private montessori, Dr Kuldeep Agarwal, Vice Chairperson, BOSSE, Sikkim & Former Director (Academic), National Institute of Open Schooling, Gol, said, considering the importance of early learning centre's Anganwadi are no more lacking behind, today all government Anganwadi provides a structured education as directed by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) guidelines.

"The mindset of parents and teachers plays a key role in the early learning phase of children," underlined Simrin Bakshi, Chairperson, Vedanya International School, Gurugram.

The session provided great insight into the early educational phase and was moderated by Dr Chaitra Harsha, CEO, Edufrontiers Educational Institutions, National Public School, ITPL and North Branches, Bangalore.

She maximised the engagement, implementing the highly effective Q&A session and added, happy learning and happy space a need for early learning.