PRESENTS

eINDIA 2013
Convened with the theme of Building a Knowledge Society, eINDIA 2013 Summit was held on 23-24 July, 2013, at Hyderabad International Convention Centre, Hyderabad. The Summit was divided into three parallel thematic tracks on Governance, Education and Health. The eINDIA 2013 was inaugurated by the N Kiran Kumar Reddy, Chief Minister, Government of Andhra Pradesh. It provided a platform for discussions between key government ofcials, industry experts, stakeholders, and private players on the issue of ICT implementation in governance, education and healthcare. Inclusive growth can only become a reality when the government takes some signicant initiatives for deployment of ICT in all the major areas - this is the clear message that emerged from the eINDIA 2013 Summit.

eINDIA 2013

Education Summit
With eight separate sessions on government policies in education, school education, management education, technical education, private universities and industry-academia interface, the summit became an effective congregation for all the stakeholders in the education community.

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Information technology has evolved much in the past 25 years. It is very important that technology must be cheap and affordable. It should be within the reach of common man and must change their life. For a government, it is very essential that any citizen of the state must get government services which he requires in an easy, accessible and corruption free manner. The concept of Mee Seva was initiated in a review meeting where I expressed the need for a system which could deliver services to the citizens in just 15 minutes. N Kiran Kumar Reddy, Chief Minister, Andhra Pradesh

Youth is the biggest power and asset of India. Talent has wiped out the barriers between the rich and the poor. I want to make Hyderabad a synonym for letter H. We want to make Hyderabad a global leader in Information Technology. World Bank rated Hyderabad as the best metro city in India. Ponnala Lakshmaiah, Minister - IT, Government of Andhra Pradesh Mee Seva, from a very modest beginning of 100 centres, 10 services, and one district, has now got 7000 centres, 150 services across the state of Andhra Pradesh. We have covered more than 2 crore 35 lakh transactions in the last one year. Sanjay Jaju, Secretary, Information Technology & Communications Department, Government of Andhra Pradesh

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PRESENTS

Critical Role of IndustryAcademia Interface in Making Students Employable

Staggering data about the dearth of employability skills among Indian graduates has raised concerns about the need to foster Industry-Academia collaboration. Such collaborations can prove a win-win situation for all the parties including Students, Industry, and the Academia Dr Sreerama K Murthy, Co-founder, Chairman & CEO, Teqnium
I would like to approach employability from the angle of educational analytics. Analytics is basically looking at data and trying to find patterns in data and then acting on those patterns. What you can measure, you can improve. So in our institutions, if you can measure what you know and what you have learnt so far, what is the best thing to learn next then you will be able to learn in a faster, more effective way. Apart from personalising education to individual student, data analysis can help in matchmaking between the student and the industry. So the quality institutions of the future must be data driven, it means the decision maker in any institution should have the right data to support him in making a rational decision. They need to have enough data about themselves and about the environment to make the right decision. For example, the Arizona State University has built a campus wide data collection and data reporting system. So anyone will be able to go on the campus intranet and for example it is a professor looking to

Knowledge Centre

Amarnath Reddy, CEO, Jawahar

We have lakhs of students coming out from various engineering and degree colleges, but the job market is fluctuating. It is not just dependent on the local or national economy. There are so many factors including global factors, new technologies coming in, and thus students have to get equipped with a lot of new skills to get employed. Students must understand it is not only about the syllabus or passing through your exams. They need to develop their social skills, communication skills, innovate, visualise and add value to themselves. Learning beyond textbooks is the key.

decide a class time, and so he will be able to see the data about the students, other classes and take a decision appropriately based on the available data. Data does not come out of nowhere. The visionary institutes need to make a move for creating a data infrastructure for themselves. Also when your students are ready to take up a job this data along with students studying data and patterns can be made available to the industry and the industry can seek the right candidate based on the data. This will increase the employability as it will inform the employers about the relative strengths of the students.

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M P Pillai, Director, National Institute of Electronics and Information

Technology (NIELIT), Chennai only 25 percent of our engineering graduates are employable. It has also to do with the fact that industry expects from day one the recruits to be productive, and that as soon as you are employed you should deliver that day onwards. There are three categories of skills that the industry expects are Core employability skills, Professional skills, and Communication skills. This core employability and communication or soft skills it is common to all industries. To develop the professional skills in the students, which are industry specific, requires an industry input. Thus, unless we involve the industry in curriculum making or teaching it is not possible to impart the professional skills.

Amit Sharma, Additional Secretary, Government of Jammu and Kashmir

Tamil Nadu higher education department has taken a lot of steps by increasing the input for higher education sector and the input in engineering colleges has gone up by almost 800 percent that has led to a decline in the quality of education entering into these colleges and thus leading to unemployability. Most of academicians, including myself, do not support the stats that

VSN Raju, Chief Operating Officer, Globarena Technologies

When we develop skills among our students, we are building our country as 54 percent of our population is under 25 years of age. Employability skills are the skills required not only to gain employment, but also to progress within an enterprise so as to achieve ones potential and contribute successfully to an enterprise. However, education imparted in majority of institutions is examoriented and not skill-oriented. At the college level, the academia should be able to provide basic communication skills, soft skills, aptitude sector specific skills through professional trainings to ensure that students perform better at the employment space. Apart from these some fundamental problems for employability skills development are the lack of industry exposure, outdated curricula and methods, dearth of trained and qualified teachers, and inability of the academia to keep pace with changing technologies and latest developments. As a result, education is not resulting in proper employment for a large number of students. There are two kinds of un-employability -- lack of fundamental skills resulting in unsuitability for any job and lack of technical and soft skills resulting in under-employment. There is also a huge disparity in the student-teacher ratio leading to pushing of semi-finished talent to industries. Some of the possible solutions to the lack of employability include: effective career counseling, create awareness about traditional and emerging jobs, train faculty to leverage technology, evolve mechanisms for industry-academia partnerships to provide practical exposure to students, using internet technologies to provide access to learning resources and collaborate with academicians, industry experts, HR and peer institutions/ universities for specific skill training.

I believe that the fire within is very important. All the youngsters should strive to know what they are made for and the various lines available to them. In J&K we have a lot of initiatives as far as providing employment opportunities are concerned. For example, the J&K overseas employment corporation, which was started with the objective that our youth which is educated and skilled should find ways to access markets like the Middle East. This corporation came into existence three to four years back and we are coordinating with different ministries, overseas corporations and departments and we are trying to send skilled workforce outside also. I only request students to not have a typical mindset about employability in terms of job seekers. Try to go a step further and be job creators.

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PRESENTS

Dr Pankaj Gupta, Director General, Jaipuria Institutes of Management

No student is a bad student and no teacher is a bad teacher. It is all a matter of situation and perspective. There are students who think that in the three-four years after completion of class XII they would have a lot of fun, whereas there are many who are focused and clear about what they would do during these years. The most important thing is that we need to be aware of who we are and what kind of possibilities and potential is lying within us. Talking about communication skills, nobody is weak in communications; it is all a matter of igniting your inner confidence. Lot of learning, unlearning and re-learning is the need of the hour. The students should know the purpose of their life and what they want to do in life, at least in the next five years or may be during the whole day. You should also maintain a KASH (Knowledge, Attitude, Skills and Habits) diary for yourselves to be able to rate yourself on your learning from life at the end of the day. We talk about how much industry input should be there in our curriculum and we also claim that our curriculum has been vetted by the industry. But, how much of that industry curriculum is relevant for a student and how is it been taught in the classroom? So, you cannot depend on the system. Good make good students teachers and not the other way round. You need to be responsible for yourself. Be ahead of the professor, do your own study before you come to the class.

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PRESENTS

Fostering Excellence in Technical and Management Education

Dwindling quality is a matter of concern in technical and management institutes across India. But fostering excellence and quality in higher education institutions presents a range of challenges. These include developing excellent pedagogical practices and attracting quality faculty to implement them

Prof K Lal Kishore, Vice Chancellor, JNTU, Anantapur

We have had a history of educational institutes like Takshashila and Nalanda where the spirit of inquiry was encouraged. Even though we expanded education as such, the spirit of inquiry is not being encouraged so thats why we find the quality is not satisfactory at the higher education level. India has the largest higher education system in the world in terms of the number of institutions as compared to the USA and China. The numbers are attractive but it is not proportionate as per the population and there are some state-wise anomalies and progress is not uniform. A lot needs to be done to increase the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER). The undergraduate enrolment is highest at 86 percent followed by post graduate which is only 12 percent, but it is less than one percent for research or PhD programmes. Thus, the quality also depends on this particular factor particularly the postgraduate education and PhD programmes. The numbers are less even in terms of faculty i.e. the studentstaff ratio. Potential faculty should be attracted and existing institutions with active research

programmes should be supported by the government. Updating faculty members through workshops, courses or teacher training in the industry should be encouraged. Financial innovation is also one of the important aspects because when we say a large number of institutions have to be established

then the government alone cannot do it. Therefore, the private sector has to be encouraged, but with certain restrictions so that degrees are not sold or it will not become a commodity. The government spend on higher education is very less as compared to the other countries and we must increase it.

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Technical Education & Training Dept, Govt of Odisha The whole system of higher education stands on the edifice of school education. We cannot suddenly talk about quality at higher education level. If good quality is maintained through the school or senior level then probably we will have better quality at this level, but if there is a huge gap then that is a matter of concern. Also, we have to educate in such a manner that a student is employable after next four to five years of college. These are the two biggest challenges. Another big challenge is that we have to create teachers for future, for both in higher as well as school education.

Chandrashekhar Kumar, Commissioner-cum-Secretary, Employment &

Dr K Sarukesi,

Vice Chancellor, Hindustan University There should be inspiring teachers in technical education because only 25 percent of the technical content is imparted under classroom teaching and the rest of the 75 percent the student has to learn on his own. So we need to impart a different type of training to the teachers so that they make lectures interesting and inspiring. Today, the faculty development programmes are needed in all the fields and not just IT and the conceptual understanding has to be imparted. For this, the universities and the technical institutions need to have improved industry-institute interaction and the student must visit industries. The teacher should go to the industry first, come back and share the experience with students and tell them about the relevant matter as per their subjects. The net result

Anbuthambi B,

Associate Vice President, ICTACT, Tamil Nadu If you go to a campus hiring manager of any big company, they point out that the students are good technically, but they lack communication or soft skills like conversing in English, ability to present themselves, teamwork skills or are unable to adapt to the company culture. So these skills should ideally come right from the school. Today, that can change only when the success measure of the school changes. Another important factor is the faculty in engineering colleges. Nobody checks where the teachers are coming from. There are certain teacher training institutes but it is not compulsory and many new teachers are last year pass outs from the same or other colleges without any prior training. So the solution to the problem of skill development will have to start from schools and the problems of good teachers can be addressed through one or two week training programme where they can be taught classroom and pedagogy techniques. The student life will depend upon his faculty around whom he is going to be for the next four years and faculty will only make the difference in engineering education where we are facing a big problem of the skill-gap between industry and academia.

of this exercise is reflected in the campus placements. Another positive impact of sending the faculty to the industry is that industry gets to know that there is potential in the institutes and they start giving consultancy projects. Thus, the interaction grows into research partnerships between industry and the institutes.
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Education for All: Cohesive Efforts by

Government and Private Sector

India is progressing towards building a knowledge economy and making ICTs available to all is imperative for achieving this goal. The government and private sectors are putting in dedicated and consistent efforts in this direction. Yet it is the public delivery of services that remain the ultimate benchmark of success K Sunitha, Commissioner, Dr Akhilesh Gupta, Secretary,

Directorate of Collegiate Education, Government of Andhra Pradesh

University Grants Commission (UGC) From 1953 to 2000, the higher education in India was growing at a slow pace. But then onwards there has been a sudden jump in the growth that was possible due to rising number of private institutions and universities. We are targeting to achieve about 25 percent GER by the end of the 12th Plan and 30 percent enrolment ratio by 2020. The enrolment ratio can be increased by the co-operation and involvement of the private sector. Our carefully planned schemes address issues related to increasing access and equity. We are trying to include the underprivileged class and communities like SC, ST, minorities, and women so that all of them get their share in higher education. We are introducing a large number of fellowships. Moreover, it is not only about the number of schemes, but also about increasing beneficiaries of each scheme. We recently started the Rajiv Gandhi fellowship for disabled students so that they also get the opportunity to pursue studies. We started this Special Assistant Programme and a number of universities and colleges are participating in that. In order to bring teachers excellence we have set up academic staff colleges in 66 locations. We will increase that number to 100 by the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan. Currently about 450 autonomous colleges are present in the country and we will increase their numbers and provide them more autonomy and additional funds. We have launched two interesting initiatives Joint Appointment and Student Entitlement. We are also trying to encourage teachers from universities to go and work in the research labs and the research scientist to come and teach. So, we have brought out new API norms and it is going to be helpful for many teachers in the country. We are forging several collaborations at the international level and several support systems have been created. We are bringing several institutional improvements and systemic changes, and new ICT programmes like electronic repository, etc.

In Andhra Pradesh we have around 179 colleges are funded by government. We also have private colleges in which around 3,00,000 students studying. From our experience, we have found that the aided colleges are the best performers because they have a mix of government infrastructure, financial help as the whole faculty is funded by the government and they have autonomy in working their management and academic policies.

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We have had a legacy of the phenomenon of divide whether that is rich or poor, digital divide or the government and private sector divide. In the first Five-Year Plan education was discussed only at the elementary level. Even then we did not talk about education for all, due to lack of resources. There was no target for secondary education and certainly none for higher education, which are part of our Five-Year Plans now. In the past decade we have aimed at universalisation of elementary as well secondary education and we have improved our GER in higher education even though it is still below the benchmarks. However, now the private sector has also started talking about the national agenda or national targets and is helping especially under the PPP mode. We also need to take up education and skill development for adults. At the government level, we need to have cohesive bodies that look after educational needs of a segment of population. For example, in the UK there is the Ministry of Young People, which is responsible for schooling or vocational training of population between 6-18 years of age.

Dr Veera Gupta,

Associate Professor, National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA)

Dr Nisha Mendiratta, Scientist F, Director, Climate Change Programme

(CCP), Department of Science & Technology (DST) have already launched a centre in IITBombay and another one in Hyderabad. These centres are dealing with the climate change science and another one is in the area of plant protection. There are two more centres, which we have supported -- Divecha Centre in Bangalore and Indo-German Centre for sustainable development at IIT-Madras. Major coordinated programmes which we have already launched include InterUniversity Centre of Glaciology in which four major universities are partners. Under the Indo-Swiss capacity we want to train 25 young scientists and we may provide them a career opportunity after successful completion of this course. The National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem (NMSHE) is about building and creating capacities specifically for Himalayan ecosystem and here we want to target 12 knowledge institutions for their strengthening and data collection. It is one of the important area in sharing for policy generation. So we are going to come up with a very big programme in which 25 or 50 universities, scientists, professors will be working for us to give a shape to the NMSHE deliverables.

Prof Darlando T Khathing,

Vice Chancellor, Central University of Jharkhand The government has given a lot of autonomy to new central universities and expects us to be model universities and thats why we are rather flexible in our approach. We are open to undertake partnerships or programmes like adjunct faculty or we can use ICT for faculty to deliver lectures, we can have joint

At the Department of Science and Technology we are looking at two missions - The National Mission on sustaining the Himalyan Ecosystem and the National Mission on Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change. We are trying to capture the knowledge available with all the institutions. In this the institutions and universities play a major role and we are trying to target the knowledge gap areas so that we can create a knowledge platform. Thus, this knowledge generated system should be utilised for possible policy directions, for adaptation and mitigation actions to combat the ill-effects of climate change. Here the capacity building for the education sector plays a major role. We

research work or programmes. We are starting B Sc, B Ed four-year integrated programme from this year itself and it is targeted mostly for school teachers. We have also been asked by the government to start Community Colleges. We will train Class X and Class XII dropouts and enable them to come to a degree level at anytime in their life when they would like to. They can also take a break and come back after a couple of years and there is no age bar for that.
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Role of Universities in promoting Inclusive Education

The idea of a university comes from universality of education, which means providing education to all and giving equal opportunity to students across cultural, demographic or economic barriers. Although there is widespread willingness and support for inclusion, but there are some challenges on how to implement it a policy level Pradeep Chaturvedi, Director
(IT), Rajya Sabha Secretariat, Government of India

Dr Gautam Bose, Deputy Director General, National Informatics Centre,

Dept of IT, Ministry of Communications and IT, Government of India A knowledgeable population can play a better role in the democratic process and economic progress of the country. The government has some definite policies for inclusiveness like Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Sakhshar Bharat, EFA goals, etc as far as school education is concerned. We try to include every child into the school system, but in higher education many things still need to be done. It should not be limited to social or economic inclusion only, but the differently-abled population should also be included. It should be part of our national as well as state policy to include everyone. In addition to this, all the services rolled out by the government should be accessible to all and people should be aware about various schemes or services and how can they be availed. We do have reservation policies or admission criteria but as more and more private institutions or universities are coming up, they should have some definite policies as far as their admission criteria are concerned so that they become all inclusive. The fees in these private institutions are very high, so there must be large number of scholarships to include the students from economically weaker sections of the society. Inclusion should also be devoid of any discrimination like separate classrooms, as there must not be a feeling of inadequacy among the students who are being included. There has to be a right curriculum, examination system and appropriate teaching methodologies. There must be specialised tuition and coaching like some of the IITs do, but such practices need to become more popular and thats part of the policy. Proper examination and evaluation systems should be made for the differently-abled people and other weaker sections of the society.

I believe school is a place where tomorrow lives and thus the concept of inclusive education should start right from schools. Also, from Ayurvedic era i.e. the Shruti (listen) and Smriti (remember), we have come to the new dimension now i.e. technology, so we need to expand it across the country to attain inclusivity.

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Prof B P Sanjay, Vice Chancellor, Central University of Tamil Nadu

Government of India towards expanding inclusivity has been achieved by setting up of these new universities. Similarly, IT policies should also look at the country as a whole and have an inclusive expansion of its resources so that every corner of the country gets integrated into what we call the national knowledge grid. Unless our country becomes inclusive with regard to expansion of the ICT sector on a broad and an equitable basis, the goals of inclusive education are not going to be achieved. Moreover, there has to be an inclusive perception of higher education. For instance, people in Tamil Nadu and southern states have a parental and aspirational perception that higher education means engineering and medicine courses. The number of such institutions in these states is evidence enough to understand that there is a skewed perception. But in this context it is important to make the aspiration more inclusive by having many other disciplines so that a university is set up in a liberal framework. By the end of next year the number of private universities is going to surpass the number of state and central universities. There may be criticism for corporatisation of education, but I think it also helps in increasing inclusivity because it provides opportunities for those who are willing to pay.

With the aim of expanding inclusive education to the states that hitherto did not have a central university, a common Omnivous Act was introduced in the parliament and 12 new universities came up in different parts of the country and Tamil Nadu was one of them. The first dimension of the policy of the

University

Mohammad Akbar Ali Khan, Vice Chancellor, Telangana

At our university, we have different socio-economic background based students, almost 95 percent of them coming from the rural or agriculture backgrounds and belong to the economically weaker sections. They have special needs particularly in which English language communication is a big problem. Andhra Pradesh nearly spends `6000-6500 crores annually on scholarships being given to students at higher education level. In our university 95 percent students get scholarships i.e. tuition fee, examination fee, hostel mess charges from the government as such. All this has been done to improve access and inclusivity. From 1950 to 2012, there has been a phenomenal increase in the number of universities and colleges in the country but when we look at the meager GER of around 18 percent then we realise the inadequate institutional development in India. As compared to the contribution of central universities to the GER, the state universities have done a better job in promoting inclusivity. In the 12th Five-Year Plan particular focus has been given to reflecting upon the disparities not only in terms of poor and middle class, but also on caste, ethnic, religion and gender lines and how to improve access to higher education.

Prof G L Datta, Chancellor, K L University

We have students from different languages, communication skills, barriers, diverse academic preparations, etc. More importantly there are students with different motivational levels, intellectual calibers and learning styles that makes the whole thing very complex and hence inclusive education has a meaning in this particular aspect as well. To cater to students with low level of academic preparations, we have bridge courses at first year level. We have remedial classes because we have a system that monitors progress of the students, their academic performance, and participation in the classes, etc, regularly. Again at the end of the year we have summer quarter organised for those students who otherwise find it difficulties during the course. To identify students for these courses we have student councils and mentors and we have a system where these mentors identify the students who require special attention. We find that inclusive education at university level especially in professional courses has a very different relevance and this has to be done with respect to integrating the entire community of students into one level.

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Preschools in India Opportunities and Challenges

The preschool sector in India poses great opportunities, but at the same time there are the challenges too. Leaders from Preschool gathered and discussed on various opportunities and challenges in Preschool in India

Navneet Anhal, CEO, Zee Learn Limited

Amol Arora, Vice Chairman & Managing Director,

Shemrock and Shemford Schools Perception of parents is changing gradually and with RTE coming and banning of interviews in school, the role of Preschool have become even more important to lay a good foundation for the child. Lot of unlearning needs to be done in order to make staff more effective. It is a chicken and egg situation since industry does not pay that well so we do not attract the best of the talent. Market forces will ensure quality. If regulation aspect has to come it should come in the safety aspect not for increasing the paperwork. All good Preschool would want regulation to ensure that good quality Preschool sustain in the market because sometimes parents are not aware about good and bad pre school and end up sending their children to wrong pre school. For now, let us have self-regulation and let market forces determine quality. It is a reality that if we have to educate a country it has to be a dual effort of government, PPP and profit making private sector.

The biggest opportunity for those who are interested in pre school segment is to increase the awareness about preschools in the parents mind. Of late there are three segments of people first segment who think that pre school is a place where they can park their child for a while, second set of people think that it is important for their child to be in a pre school just to get into a good school, third segment of people,which is small but increasing, think and believe that by putting their child into pre school will help their child in learning and development. In all our communication, in our effort to design the curriculum and in our effort to counsel the parents if we can stress on the on the role of pre school in their childs life it will help in the active participation of parents. There is a challenge of safety of children, which is under the bucket of non-regulation or absence of governing body in this segment. There is a challenge of finding qualified staff that knows what is right for the child. If we work on all this it can flourish into a good business opportunity and more importantly early development of a child.

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Dharmesh Kapasi, CEO, Shanti Juniors Pre School Chain

Until the last decade there was the dilemma of declaring that whether pre school education should be considered as a part of education. We are still expecting an answer from the government of India. Today Preschool have become a point of start of childs educational career. We need to create lots of awareness among parents to make them understand that pre school is the most important part of childs educational career and how the need to take it seriously for a childs growth. Talking about population as a threat I am taking it as an opportunity. I find population as an opportunity for business. Another threat of no governing body can be taken as opportunity as it would give us freedom to offer the best quality education to children. Untrained human resources is a challenge for which we have started teachers training programme. We are working on technology and research to create good quality content, which is digitally enabled.

A S Ganesh, Managing Director,

Smartkidz Educare India

Vittal Bhandary, Founder and Managing Director, Liitle Elly Play schools
There are three models of preschool prevailing in India. The majority of preschools are in the unoragnised sector with 70-80 percent market share. The second model is organised preschools that are relatively small in number. Another model that exists in India is a school feeder model. A lot of K-12 school has preschool inbuilt in their campus itself. The preschools in the organised space are making a total difference in the spectrum as they offer a scientific basis for their execution model and offer personalised and professional approach. These schools have a research-based curriculum, which is constantly upgraded towards better delivery of education and development. These organised preschool chains have standard operating practices (SoP) and business practices and that is where they make a difference. Today opportunities in preschools are increasing due to the increasing awareness of parents about the need of preschool in a childs development. Another reason is shrinking families that are looking for the options for their children. Also, the ability to pay for quality education has improved in India in the last few years. Now there is a demand for better facilities and trained staff coming in. Earlier preschool means parking the child when you do not have anyone to look after them. Now parents are looking at preschool beyond this.

The Indian pre school market is one of the most upcoming markets in India. It is highly under-penetrated. Only one percent of children are enrolled in Preschool currently in India whereas in France and Scotland 100 percent children go to Preschool. Only 17 percent of the Indian pre school market belongs to organised sector. So there is a huge potential available. This segment is attracting investments from private players as entry barriers are very low. Parents have started to understand the importance of pre school to enhance their childs emotional and intellectual growth but still there is much more to be done in this regards. We conduct positive parenting workshops in all our branches to bring about awareness about the importance of Preschool. Also Increase in disposable income has led to more spending on education. The challenges in this segment are lack of awareness amongst parents and non-availability of quality teachers. Retention of quality teachers is another challenge that the industry is facing.

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Creating Excellence in School Education and the Role of ICT

Hyderabad

Anjum Babukhan, Director, Glendale Academy,

As an educator we need to keep in mind that there are certain windows of learning, which we need to optimise. Also we need to avoid pushing down the curriculum. In India we have tendency of introducing things earlier the better, which is not necessarily brain compatible. We need to keep in mind the age and stage of development. ICT has created a world of opportunities for children to utilise the technology by sharing what they are learning. We have Internet, teleconferencing, audio visuals, webinars, etc all types of digital learning tools. Living in the information age there is an abundance of information, we just need to know what is comfortable to use.

Bkannes School,Gujarat

Virender Rawat, Coordinator- India, Director,

In green school concept we believe that if we want our children to flourish we need to connect them to nature before we teach them to save it. The environment is only guiding us to go further. We follow Panch Mahabhuta i.e. Prithvi, Agni, Jal, Vayu, and Akaash practice for sustainability. We have a green teacher programme in which we have merged CBSE programme to the Green Teacher Programme. We have also transformed CBSE curriculum to Green Curriculum. Our goal is to reduce, reuse and recycle all the resources. The Government of Gujarat has planned to open 70 green schools in the coming year.

Kalpana Mohan, Principal, Vidyashilp

Academy, Bangalore Globalisation cannot happen without introduction of ICT into education. In todays world students are expecting them to be taught in a different way. In a child centric education we need to take the perspective of the child into consideration. If education can not keep pace with todays children who are tactfully, technologically and information ridden, it will become less appropriate and significant. ICT should not take over the teacher rather it should be supplementary and complementary to the teachers.

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B A Wahid Newton, Programme Manager Education, BRAC

Technology integration is an endeavour to make text content easier, interactive and stimulating by adding visualisation. Technology allows teachers to access good resources for better planning of classroom pedagogy. Technology helps in increasing the level of enthusiasm among students to attend classes. We have seen some encouraging results after implementing ICT in our schools.

Nagendra Goyal, Deputy Commisionar , Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan

Usha Reddy, Principal, Meridian School

If the brain has to retain it needs novelty. Joint productive activity as instructional pedagogy in the classrooms to enhance quality is a joint effort of teacher and student and aimed at enhancement of learning outcome. It is not the teacher driving the classroom but it is the partnership between teachers and learners. The teacher apparently turns into a learner but at the same time she will also become silent spectator and a motivator. To carry out such activity they need to have joint goals and outcomes that are clearly indicative. Children along with the teacher are going to design how they are going to implement about it. When children are left in the free atmosphere to learn that is when maximum learning happens.

School, Hyderabad

G Prabhakar Reddy, Principal & Administrator, Bhadrachalam Public

Definitely there are more reasons than one that ICT has an integral role to play in teachinglearning process. Reasons for the use of ICT in education are continuous learning, digital and informational competence of students, communication action in cyberspace, increased productivity of a person and group, and methodical innovation. ICT has an impact on students, teachers as well as parents. Introduction of ICT in teaching-learning and administration has proven valuable. ICT has made the learning process more interesting and easier. Using ICT effectively is more important than changing resources.

It is not that before the emergence of ICT teaching-learning was not happening. There were wonderful students, good learning and excellent teachers or results. It is not about the results or learning but it is about the experience of children in the classroom, it is all about the experience of the teacher in the school where ICT is making an impact. ICT has made things easier and simpler for teachers to elaborate things better. KV has made lots of attempts in this regard. KV has got into e-classrooms. Every KV has at least one e-Classroom, interactive device. A lot of e-content has been developed by KVs for students which is available online and offline. We are going to inaugurate a portal for the e-content soon.

Mona Mehdi, Principal, Orchids

The International School We have a total e-campus in our school. When you enter the campus Wi-Fi provides Internet access in the campus and all of our classrooms are digitised. We have a curriculum based on CBSE and Cambridge. Teaching methodology is entirely digitalised. ICT has been proved as a boon for all the stakeholders. We would definitely like to think about the Green School Concept.

Seetha Murthy, Principal, Silver Oaks School, Hyderabad

Excellence in school by emphasis on maximisation of learning is an excellent approach. Technology is merely a tool to assist the cause. Learning is the ultimate purpose in any school. Sustainability is the need of the hour. I had visited the green school in Bali, which is a wonderful concept. In the digital age, we are the digital migrants using ICT tools to teach students who are digital Natives. ICT can help teaching-learning to happen in remote and difficult situations.

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Emerging Models for Setting up New Schools

Starting a private school is a time consuming and complicated process. The panel having the industry veterans discussed emerging models of setting up new school. It also highlighted the importance of marketing in todays scenario

Vipul Reddy, CPO, Global discovery

Academy We are network of affordable K-12 schools and targeting families in middle income group who have very ambitious goals for childs education but are not necessarily able to find a fit for them. For example International schools because of price points associated with those schools. We have a platform called Roadmap to my Dreams, which differentiates us in terms of what we are actually offering to them. One thing what we offer is end to end accountability for the schools that we build. We do actually go with partners in terms of funding the schools, the growth of the company and network of school. But do take accountability and hold ourselves responsible for everything that goes into school whether it is hardware, software, building, people, process, and training. At this point of time we have seven schools in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu. For this academic year we are in the process of setting up more schools for the next academic year, which we will announce in the future. If we do things right we do hope for change.

Ryan Pinto, Ryan Group of Institution

In todays times as the need is changing and the aspirations of youth are also changing. What we really need in the country is changing. Earlier we had to build brick and mortar school building, but today with technology advancement, we do not really have to have that. Yes, we need them but we can leverage the use of technology to reach out to a number of students, educators, and parents. We have emerging models like Public Private Partnership to build schools. Now there are different segments of school like we have pre schools, K-12, pre college centres and that itself is the new emerging way of setting up new school or centres of learning. So innovative thinking is required as there is ample need for good institutions. There is a lot of interest from all sectors of society and everybody has its own motto of getting into education. As an educationist, I personally believe that education is the best sector to be in. Today in India people talk about education and health care being sunrise sectors. Yes, they are as whatever you invest in school means you are not investing into building or land but investing in children, life and future. The return we get out of that is immeasurable. You can measure it on graph not on papers. I welcome everybody in this sector. If you are coming into education I really encourage you to check your motives and passion. Education really requires sacrifice, dedication, commitment and patience. It is not easy where you can sit and plan but here execution is to be on the ground, be in the classroom and deal with children on a daily basis along with the issues that we have today.

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Chandrashekhar, CEO, Jain Group of Institutions

education system always focused on two Es. First is the Expansion. When we got independence in 1947 our literacy rate was 17 percent and today it is said that it has expanded to 74 percent. We have expanded from a handful of colleges to 33,000 colleges and 30 universities to around 700 universities. The Next E is Equity that is reaching out to every nook and corner of the country irrespective of caste, creed, religion and gender. The literacy rate during the independence period had only 8 percent of literate women. Now that figure is 65 percent. So the Indian Education system has come a long way from 1947 till where we stand. There are two Es that we are neglecting. First among two is employability. Outlays have to match outcomes. We are investing lots of money, resources, and energy in educational institution but what is coming out is not what is needed by the society. We do not need degrees we need education. Is the education propelling employability we have to work upon? The next E is excellence. This is very easier said than done. It has been said that if the rate of change inside the institution is less than the rate of change outside then end is inside. It is time for us as an educator to sit back and think that are we focusing on excellence.

In India we have an additional requirement of 200 thousand schools and it makes absolute sense that we are discussing the emerging model of establishing schools. The Indian

Manjula Pooja Shroff, CEO, Calorx Group

There are some emerging models of building schools and there is a lot of private equity money flow in the sector. That is an asset like model. Some people say ownership of land is very important, but private equity would like asset model, which means lease is becoming widely accepted. The CBSE, ICSE laws are also flexible. They allow you to take land on lease for 30 years and give you affiliation. The manage model is basically if school is not doing well, you want to change it from vernacular medium to English medium or state board to national board here private players come in and manage the school. The COCO or COFO are the model completely accepted in the market. Creating a good quality K-12 school costs more than 20 crore and no individual can pump in this much money so money has to come from some external source. The best way to grow that anybody can tell you is debt management-take a bank loan. Mortgage your property and then build but the bankers will not give you money when you need it, they will give you money when you have money. So it becomes difficult for people to start with debt but it is the cheapest way with cost of finance around 10-12 percent. If you go through equity you get the money much faster through angel funding, venture capital, or equity funding are options for entrepreneurs. These are the funds that will come to you when do not have it because they trust you as a promoter, they trust your capabilities and they want to see growth. But it will enhance your cost of finance from 16 to 28 percent depends on what they can negotiate with you. In conclusion I will say education is the sunrise industry and going forward in next 5-10 years they is no looking back. But I will suggest you to check your intentions because it is not the field, which will give you quick return. It is capital extensive and has a high gestation period. However, it is extremely gratifying if you love children and have a passion for the job. If your intention matches with the industry intention or the growth of the industry this is the great place to be in.

Herve Merchet, Group Chief Technology Officer, GEMS Education

What is the use of promoting devices and technology where there is no access? We have a mandate at Gems to make sure that in any location around the world when we will build the school we will build technology around the bandwidth available at that area. If the bandwidth is poor we will build something that can work in poor bandwidth. If device are difficult, expensive, or unaffordable we will build a school with our own device. May be it would be one device to but if the usage is good that is not the real issue because they will have real access. There are a lot of people who want to just copy paste what is working in one place. You need to make sure that the solution is adaptable according to the location. Not only we have the device but also we have to good content, right usage, and experience.

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Nurturing School Leaders of Tomorrow

The session highlighted organisational leadership and management skills for principals. It also threw new perspectives on the role that ICT can play in school management

Swami Swaroopananda, Director In-Charge, Chinmaya International Residential School, Coimbatore

A Murali Mukund, Chairman, Jubilee Public School, Hyderabad

A good institution should have four things those are vision, strong leadership, good teacher effectiveness and good student learning. A good teacher need not be a good school leader but a good school leader essentially has to be a good teacher. A School leader should have a clear vision to lead the staff, to implement the management policies for delivery of quality education to the children. Passion and commitment are two key aspects to become a good leader. Teacher, trainer and team leader are the key roles of a leader.

Leadership is something that people say is inborn. Yet all are not born leaders and yet everyone is leader in their own space. Best leadership is always through example. To create leaders out of people all we have to do is make them people of some values. People find something in them which they are inspired by. Common answer given by students on asking as what they are missing in the education system is that they do not have role models. It became a task that at least that they look up to their parents and teachers as role models. It has become a challenge to make teachers as role model. We began to empower people in order to make them leaders. Recognising the talent and allowing them to express freely whatever they are good at. Discipline, which is selfdeveloped, is always constructive.

Dr Kiran Singh, Principal, Mandsaur International School, Mandsaur

Nurturing the future leaders in such a way that they get enough time and space to cultivate the values and required qualities to pass it on to the next generation. We need to reduce the gaps between school and parents, parents and teachers and students and teachers. Leadership is an action not a title. It is a promise, which we make to the people. HR development is very important aspect in nurturing leadership.

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Sameer Bora, EVP, Research &

Development, Next Education

Dr Nripen Kumar Dutta, Founder and Principal, Miles Bronson Residential

School, Guwahati There is a transformational change over the last 20 years because of the technological change, innovation, globalisation, migration, the landscape of school has changed where the old model of administrative style has been replaced by the new public management style of learning. A paradigm shift from that of intervention to prevention is happening. This shift has made the role of principals different, which is based on action and behaviour. Instructional leadership has become more relevant. Old system and new system can blend and club together in attaining goals. Teacher quality, rigour of content and students as learners are the core of the system and there should be an interaction in the system.

Digital learning has to blend with conventional way of learning. It is not a substitute to conventional learning. We look at the teachers as catalysts and we do not seek to replace teachers when we are designing tools. Educational data mining is an important activity, which helps in making big decisions regarding students. It is important to figure out how the teacher views the technology. It can not be the case that you built a technology and force teacher to a very steep learning curve, which makes them uncomfortable in front of the class. Content must be such that the teacher must add value rather than replacing teachers.

Lt Col (Retd) A Sekhar, Principal, Atul

Vidyalaya, Valsad The need of the hour is to enhance the role of teachers in the teaching process. We have to provide them better education and better tools to enable them to bring further improvement in the teachinglearning process.

Shivananda R Koteshwar, Director, The Amaatra Academy, Bangalore

Leadership is all about getting into a state of a resonance. With resonance I mean that gets created when staffs aspiration, institutes requirement and learners interest intersect. This state of resonance is a real leadership. Difference between a manager and a leader is that manager says go and the leader says lets go, which means the leader is involved in things. Manger knows how to do things where as leader knows what things to do. The manager gets others to do and the leader gets others to want to do. A principal requires a coach, a structured plan and absolute management support for implementation of planning.

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eINDIA
1.Siddaganga Institute of Technology, Tumkur, Karnataka being presented the Public Choice Award for Green Campus Initiative by Higher Education Institute

Awards 2013
4. UP Electronics Corporation Ltd being presented the Public Choice Award for Government Initiative in Education 5.Aditya Birla World Academy, Mumbai, Maharashtra being presented the Public Choice Award for Use of ICT in School Management 6.Hindustan University Green-Yuvatharang being presented the Jury Choice Award for Green Campus Initiative by Higher Education Institute 7. KiiT International School, Bhubaneswar, Odisha being presented the Public Choice Award for Use of Technology in Teaching-Learning 8. Ryan International School, New Delhi being presented the Public Choice Award for School of the Year 9. PSNA College of Engineering and Technology, Dindigul, Tamil Nadu being presented the Public Choice Award for Use of Technology in Teaching Learning

2.SAL Institute of Technology Engineering Research, Ahmedabad, Gujarat being presented the Public Choice Award for Industry-Academia Collaboration Initiative 3.Department of School Education, Government of Punjab being presented the Jury Choice Award for Government Initiative in Education

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10. Edmatix Information Systems Pvt Ltd being presented the Jury Choice Award for ICT Initiative in Education 11.B-KANAE School, Modasa, Gujarat being presented the Jury Choice Award for Green Campus Initiative by School 12.Vidyashilp Academy, Bangalore, Karnataka being presented the Public Choice Award for Innovation in Global Collaborative Learning 13.National Institute of Science and Technology, Berhampur, Odisha being presented the Jury Choice Award for Use of Technology in TeachingLearning

14. Indian Institute of Banking and Finance being presented the Public Choice Award for Solution for Testing & Assessments 15. Lovely Professional University, Phagwara, Punjab being presented the Jury Choice Award for IndustryAcademia Collaboration Initiative 16. Kushal CREDAI Pune Metro being presented the Public Choice Award for ICT Initiative in Education 17.O P Jindal School, Raigarh, Chhattisgarh being presented the Public Choice Award for Green Campus Initiative by School

18. Orchids International School, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh the Jury Choice Award for Use of Technology in Teaching-Learning 19. Glendale Academy, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh being presented the Jury Choice Award for Innovation in Global Collaborative Learning

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