The aspirations of students are not limited by their geographical locations. A student based in Nagpur or Mangalore could be as aspirational as a student in Hyderabad or Delhi. However, lack of infrastructural facilities in schools, unavailability of well-trained teachers, unawareness and absence of guidance surely come in the way of their ambitions. In short, quality and access are the two roadblocks plaguing the K-12 sector. Thus, educators are trying to adopt innovative approaches to improve the learning experiences and outcomes in non-metro schools.
Unavailability of resources, — the dearth of motivated teachers, the absence of well-stocked libraries and lack of good tutorials, come in the way of the realisation of students’ dreams. Besides the inaccessibility and unavailability of resources, there is a shift in the consumer behaviour as well.
As per the study titled Online Education in India: 2021, jointly conducted by KPMG India and Google, students nowadays show higher interests in understanding the concepts and topics in depth than merely passing exams. Moreover, the report also suggests a rise in the purchasing power of people. Thus, parents do not mind spending extra money on their children’s education.
Running a school needs expertise: Running and managing a school is a strenuous task. For instance, a book is no more the sole teaching-learning tool available to students and teachers. Digital tools and experiential learning components such as hands-on activity kits have been introduced to the entire school gamut. Numerous schools nowadays prefer to fully digitise their administrative operations as streamlining both administrative and academic functions is a difficult task for a single person.
Different kinds of alliances: The current Indian education market portrays the following partnership models.
Franchise: This model enables a school to enter into a partnership with one of the franchises, thereby providing credibility to an aspiring school to attract student enrolment.
High-profile principal: As per this model, a person having a substantial experience of holding a strategic position in any renowned school in a metro city is appointed as the principal of a new non-metro school.
Education consultant: In this model, new schools seek the consultancy of a high-profile educator to manage their academics.
Academic partnership: This model runs on a hand-holding academic and administrative support process. The services included in this partnership are not limited to guidance on school infrastructure, academic management and operations, staff hiring and student enrolment.
Unlike the franchise model, an academic partnership programme does not require schools to be named as a partner school. Moreover, the academic partnership model does not bind schools in any way to enter into a liaison with the present partners if they decide to scale in future, i.e., open new school branches.
In case of a high-profile principal or seeking help from an education consultant, there is a possibility that the principal or the educator may choose to leave midway, jeopardising the academic and the administrative processes. On the other hand, a franchise model does not provide schools with an academic support or guidance, which are deemed immensely necessary, especially when a new school is trying to establish and sustain itself.
An academic partnership model is particularly useful because it helps schools with initial average resources meet global standards by providing them with academic and administrative counsel and services. Besides, the school management does not lose its autonomy, in the course of the partnership, in any way.
The writer is Beas Dev Ralhan, co-founderand CEO, Next Education
