The New Wave Of Educational Needs

While there are innumerable communities within our vicinity but the educational needs of kids do vary from child to child. At BW Education 40 Under 40 Summit & Awards, education leaders came together to talk about the challenges they faced in catering to all the needs and how they kept the educational flow ongoing.  

With schools and colleges shut down across the world, more than 32 per cent have been affected by turbulence and changes; with focuses been largely shifted upon e-learning and online education. But with just 25 per cent penetration into urban India and 15 per cent in rural India, it seems a tedious task. 

Talking about COVID times, it's pretty evident to say that things have been hard into the educational space to keep it up and running and even more difficult for leaders into this space to keep their moral high. Kounal Gupta, CEO, Henry Harvin Education made a clean sweep by saying that, “though we have been an online market place for students wanting to study but it was a big shock for us as well when we heard in march that schools and colleges will be shut down and immediately within a tie frame of few days we had to revamp our business model.” 

But this also proves that any model needs to be agile as we don’t know what’s going to hit our way any time of life.  

Moulshree Dubey, CEO, Professional Institute of Engineering and Technology, also laid a very important point stating that, “it's even more challenging to hold on to kid’s attention span in online classes.” With regards to engineering students, its been difficult to deal with students below the poverty line, accounting to 40 per cent as their mindset is such that e-learning for them is a luxury and not need of the hour. 

Such a situation made the leaders involve help from UNICEF too where they helped reach remotest of villages and guided kids on how to be hands-on friendly with technology. 

Removing the language barrier 

Planning on riding the barrier’s being faced within last 4-5 months, easing kids with language too has been a task and among other panellists Manit Parikh, Country Head, Elsa Corp and Kavish Gadia, Co-Founder & CEO, Stone2milestones Edu came out of this hurdle with flying colours, though it did involve sheer hard work and dedication at their respective ends.  

Both believe that this has been the best time to test the rigour in all kids to get past this stage and continue their education at full swing. Usually, parents tend to spend 30 per cent more in their kid’s education, focussing upon their language barriers in comparison to others, accounting to mere 5-10 per cent. 

COVID to them has just been the catalyst in booming this aspect, though the module was more or less the same even before the onset of COVID. 

“So English language today cannot be a barrier anymore in worst-case scenarios too, as the educational needs will automatically go hampered,” states Parikh. 

As per Devishobha Chandramouli, Founder & CEO, Kidskintha India Private Limited, “Even parents of young kids are very much bothered about basic educational needs of their kids that they don’t want them to face any hurdles in their educational understanding in times to come. 

Changing career dependencies 

Panellists feel that COVID has played a major role in the life of kids who have adopted various careers keeping in my extremities like COVID situation.  

Sameer Ramesh, Co-founder & Chief Product Officer, MyCaptain is of the view that “one shouldn’t force kids to opt for what they should do in their educational careers, they need to be believed upon with space and let them decide the best possible learning for them and that where they wish to grow.”