Interviews

“Gujarat is a leader in implementing the NEP” said Rohit Mehta, State Project Advisor, School Education Department, Government of Gujarat at ArdorComm Media Group hosted ‘New Normal – Education Leadership Summit & Awards 2024’ on 10th February 2024 at Crowne Plaza Ahmedabad City Centre, Ahmedabad, Gujarat. We want to understand a few initiatives under your tenure as an adviser in the School Education Department. Could you shed some light on that? Dr. Vinod Rai is the longest-serving Education Secretary of Gujarat State, and his tenure gave him an opportunity to overhaul the education system and bring in quality education for every student, ensuring appropriate learning outcomes. Under his leadership, and building upon the efforts initiated by the Honorable Prime Minister Narendra Modi since 2002, we have implemented various initiatives. The key initiatives taken in recent years are based on five pillars: attendance, assessment, accreditation, adaptive learning, and administration. All these initiatives are tied together through artificial intelligence, which is our sixth key initiative. These initiatives are centered at Vidya Shiksha Kendra, which received the Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration in 2022. Our recent major transformative initiative is the country’s largest School Transformation Program called Mission Schools of Excellence, where we are upgrading around 20,000 government and grant-in-aid schools with modern infrastructure, digital learning opportunities, and sufficient human resources and technology, aiming to enhance education for more than 90% of the students in the state. What is the structure of the school education system in Gujarat, and what steps have been taken towards the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP)? Gujarat is a leader in implementing the NEP. In terms of the education ecosystem for school education in the state, we have 33 districts, 254 blocks, approximately 54,000 schools, and 1.15 crore students. Gujarat has taken leadership in implementing some recommendations even before the NEP came into effect. After the introduction of NEP, we have been leading efforts such as the Nipun Bharat mission for foundational learning, introducing Balvatika for children aged 5 to 6 years, developing curriculum under the New National Curriculum Framework, providing books before the session starts, and expanding skill education in many schools. NEP talks about school complexes, and through our Gan Shiksha Residential Schools, which accommodate 2,000 students, we are building school complexes in social partnership. How certain forums contribute when government stakeholders, academicians, and corporates come together on a common platform? As our secretary rightly says, he is not the Secretary of Government Schools but the Secretary of School Education as a whole. These platforms provide the government an opportunity to share its vision and future plans with the entire education fraternity, aiding in implementing our schemes across all types of schools. Corporates can also assist us in spreading our vision and mission. Any message you would like to give to ArdorComm Media Group? ArdorComm Media Group has shown remarkable professionalism, and the arrangements for this event reflect a level of experience that one would expect from a group like this. Congratulations to the entire team, especially to you, for organizing such a wonderful event that connects everyone. It’s been a pleasure to be a part of it. Thank you so much for inviting us.

“Once it was ready we gave it to 50 nursery schools to test it and share the feedback on how we can improve it” said Peter Ledwidge, Sales Director, Nursery Story at ArdorComm Media Group hosted ‘New Normal – Education Leadership Summit & Awards 2024’ on 10th February 2024 at Crowne Plaza Ahmedabad City Centre, Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Can you share more on what exactly Nursery Story is doing in education sector? Nursery story is a nursery management software package. Basically aim that the nursery teacher problem of being poor, didn’t have enough time to do everything, to record all observation from the toileting to napping to eating to learning of nursery kids. If you have to write all these down in pen and paper, it is taking away the time with the children. So, that time which is usually be spent administration task can be saved so from that mode. We develop with industry experts, a very fast and very responsive system where by the touch of a button teachers can record all these observation and share them with the parents instantly. So, as a parent who has the child in nursery all day is keen to know how they are doing. It’s been like a story, almost like timeline feed from Facebook before they pick their child up. So it’s great tool for nursery story teachers to save time. So, they have got more time with the kids and at information with the parents How this idea came to you to nursery kids improve the life of their parents? I am a grandparent now, the founder and CEO Sheena Johnston basically came up the idea. When she went to nursery to pick up her granddaughter, the nursery teacher was apologizing for not having the time to give her the details. So, that’s where the idea came. This type of software is not new. Our software is latest technology which makes it superfast. What we did is, once it was ready we gave it to 50 nursery schools to test it and share the feedback on how we can improve it. Of course! There are many features in which we’ll help the nursery owner business, for example Occupancy optimising but in the beginning we’re concentrated on the education of the kids and if the kids will get educated better, if the necessary teacher have time to spend with them and if parent will be happy , what’s going on than they can supplement that. So, that’s how it started it’s added with the real life experience of wanting to know what happened to your kids. If you got kids of 3-4 year, how their days been, teachers will say I am not going to give you details. 5 years from now how do you see Nursery Story to be in Indian market? Software development partners invited as over because they have identify the need for what we have. They have been developing it and they like “Oh my god!” This should be here, there is a conference coming up, even you should come over, you’re like little bit excited. Yes of course! We want to come but at the same time looking around, we the only non-Indian people-exciting, nerve-wracking but at the same time enjoyable. We were welcomed, that’s been great so hopefully we’ll get a foothold in the market. We’re giving it to 50 Indian nursery school free for 3 months feedback. Necessary for how we can improve it and use it in India. The simplest thing is we have to change the currency to rupee, but we have development team standing by, ready to go, once we get some fraction and some feedback we’ll start developing it. It’s a self-service model so you can basically contract yourself online on board, your kid and your teacher yourself see going viral because nothing can compete with it. Any message you wish to share to ArdorComm Media? I think the presentation was very nice, we were very surprise.

“If student is happy they will be very responsible citizens and give their 100% in everything” said Seema Singh, Director, Florescent Public School, Ahmedabad at ArdorComm Media Group hosted ‘New Normal – Education Leadership Summit & Awards 2024’ on 10th February 2024 at Crowne Plaza Ahmedabad City Centre, Ahmedabad, Gujarat. How does the New Education Policy impact the overall growth in the education system in terms of technology? Nowadays, technology is a great aspect, we need to introduce technology in school at all levels, be it is primary, secondary, senior secondary, college or university. Just now we discussed in our panel that how we have to take the initiative. So, we need to be aware that we have more and more parents association with us. We need to have a good infrastructure, we need to have some partner with us who can fund for the technology, and in this way, we can train our teachers as well as students to accept the new technology and use it for positively for teaching-learning process. 5 years from now how technology will eventually impact the education system of India? 100% it will bring modernization, this is the era of globalization, this is the era modernization, So, 100% to bring changes. AI cannot replace the teachers, of course. But AI can develop the teaching-learning process in such a way that the teachers and students learn more advanced. What was the overall takeaway from this event? The happiness that we need to create in the minds of students. If student is happy they will be very responsible citizens and give their 100% in everything. So, my takeaway is to how we can make our education system fruitful so that our students when they go home, they are happy and we can create a happy and safe environment all over. Any message you wish to share with ArdorComm media on its second anniversary I will just appreciate ArdorComm media that this platform is because of them. When we talk about little transformation, I got connected with ArdorComm media, with Chandan sir only via this digital platform. So, they are doing excellent and we hope that we have this association for a longer time.  

“Polytechnic has reached from 50% to 85% in Maharashtra and the number of the figure in engineering education has these two around 1.17 lakh in this academic year” said Dr. D. V. Jadhav, Joint Director, Technical Education, Regional Office, Pune, Govt. of Maharashtra at ArdorComm New Normal- Education Leadership Summit & Awards 2023” held in Pune, Maharashtra on 24th November 2023. Kindly highlight few initiatives under your leadership and by the department in the field of Technical Education. Hon’ble Director Dr. Vinod Mohitkar has initiated many initiatives especially to promote technical education, the opportunities for the students for technical education, the government scheme for peace reimbursement, even the admission procedure so that maximum students can benefit from this one and the outcome of this mission in polytechnic and engineering colleges. Polytechnic has reached from 50% to 85% in Maharashtra and the number of the figure in engineering education admission has these two around 1.17 lakh in this academic year. Apart from that the skilling initiative we are taking that DT has made the MoU with Infosys, they offered the free program on springboard platform for the skill-based learning. Also, through CSR funds Infosys goes through the foundation 176 hours program, offered to the students for skilling and values. Nasscom is also offering a program for skill education to the students of Maharashtra and Technical Education where the students do have not to pay any charges for that they have to learn the online way and we are trying for this so that students’ employability will be enhanced through this. Apart from that the government has many initiatives for fees reimbursement through the Central Government and State Government and all these schemes are available DVT portals the student can directly apply and get the benefits. When it comes to the implementation of the NEP, What initiative you are taking? What message you would like to give to the academicians and educators? Maharashtra has become the first state in the country to implement the New Education Policy (NEP) curriculum in engineering education. We have taken the advantage of AICTE credit framework and issued the guideline in terms of GR and around 59 autonomous college in Maharashtra has started implementing autonomous curriculum from the academic year 2023-24 and all affiliated colleges or universities will be implementing from the next academic year. We have conducted workshops for all the stakeholders, and feedback was taken, accordingly, the guidelines were taken. You witnessed the summit, where the representation was from the government, academicians, educators & the corporate, how does such forums help us to engage better & learn more? See corporate is one of the major stakeholders what are their expectations and what is today’s curriculum if there is a gap that has to be bridged. Corporates can give feedback to the university and autonomous colleges. Apart from that some Institute may have one practice some may not have so this is a platform for sharing their best practices. We expect that policyholders and decision-makers can frame the policy. Such a platform for exchanging thoughts and coming up with a better policy and better implementation and expecting even the revised outcome that if any lack is observed that can be care taken. This is a platform for that so I congratulate the team of ArdorComm for having this initiative bringing all these on one platform for one complete day for exchanging ideas.