In spite of numerous advancements in technology, the system of Indian education is largely still focussed on examinations which is very different from the situation abroad. The primary concentration for Indian should be on the strengthening of basics as well as on teaching children to be able to identify the more important things in education.

 The Managing Director of Bluefish Capital, LLC as well as the TiE Global Board of Trustees Harish Mamtani spoke about how this concept of reorganizing how India thinks about education is crucial. He said that through the SEED Education Corporation this is exactly what is being tried with the aim of really shaking things up.

What is being done

Launched in March of 2013 in three of Hyderabad’s private schools of low-cost, The SEED Education Corporation has been working right off the bat to improve the standard of education in these very schools. Providing help regarding infrastructure changes, the retention of teachers as well as other more salient services as how SEED works to help management at schools work towards a more vibrant education system. The company promotes the use of technology to teach most classes in the schools they work with, this is especially true for subjects like English and Maths. Conventional teaching methods are replaced with modern ones by retraining the teachers to engage the students through more modern techniques like the use of Power Point Slide Shows as well as even more interaction oriented tools which end up making classes interesting. The focus is always on making sure that students’ basics are uncompromised in terms of learning.

A lot of focus is brought down on major extracurricular activities like music, art and sports. Countries like the United States have education systems which focus much more on the extracurricular aspects of schooling than we do in India. A much broader view which spans a longer timeline is taken when looking at school education in foreign countries than in India, where only the results of examinations seem to be of concern. This drastically changes the way students tend to approach situations in life. Through such activities children see a lot more value in schooling than just the burden of taking and being expected to score in examinations. Seed Education aims to bring similar foreign positive concepts to these simple schools at a very reasonable cost.

This task however, has not been an easy one for the corporation. Students tend to be very open and accepting of such ideals that put them first, however, the parents of these same children remain unconvinced of whether extracurricular activities could be as important as scoring exam marks. SEED does not give up however, and they spend a lot of their time and effort on making parents understand what they are trying to do.

An expansion plan which would consist of adding over 30 other schools to SEED’s network and programme over the span of the next four years is in the pipeline for the company. An investment of Rs. 8 crore has already been made towards the construction of technology related infrastructure in schools.

Harish Mamtani is in addition, the founder and CEO of the young start-up company YrReport which is a citizen’s daily issue reporting platform for smart cities.