Moved by the pathetic picture of school education in India presented by the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) some years ago, a Boston-based technocrat Hridayesh Kant Gupta decided to do some research on the inherent gaps in the education system in India.
After traversing many areas of the country, the IIT Roorkee alumnus devised a simple yet efficient mechanism of education delivery which according to him enhances learning among the students independent of the quality of teachers. Six years later, the Kant process, devised by him, is being followed in as many as 150 schools in the country.
The parents of students of these schools are witnessing a remarkable change in the approach of their wards towards the studies.
In an exclusive conversation with The Pioneer during his visit to Dehradun, Gupta elaborated about his easy and low cost solution for enhancing the quality of education. “The objective behind this process was to engineer a solution for the lack of student engagement in resource constrained schools. In our process, we divide a class into three groups on the basis of their level. Every group comprises pairs of the students.
The students are placed before a TV set which displays a series of questions of different subjects within a short period of time. The students are supposed to solve these questions in their notebooks. At the end of the quiz, each pair of students exchanges answers and evaluates them with the help of the answers flashed on the screen,’’ he said.
Explaining further Gupta said that the name of the winner of the pair is placed on a board placed in front and the process is repeated. “This process minimises role of the teacher who now assumes the role of a facilitator. An innate urge develops in the child to beat his rival and unlike in a normal class where only top five to six students are involved in engagements, every student is involved in this process. We have innovatively designed the process for students of classes I to XII and for every class, he have ten modules. We have also set up an elaborate monitoring system in place,’’ he said.
Gupta claimed that the Kant process is an almost zero cost change to the existing education system.
“All it does is to change five minutes of a period from listening mode to engagement mode without any increased load on teachers. Even the quizzes can be pre-made and supplied. No internet or any other thing other than a 32 inch TV is needed for it. We provide the software and connecting a pen-drive to the television starts the quiz. The cost per student per month is only Rs 3.
The children love this process as it removes the fear of evaluation by teachers. For students used to video games, it is an engrossing activity. Students are able to manage the process by themselves,’’ he added.
