India has always been ahead of the curve, setting up schemes for early childhood development while the rest of the world was just talking about it, says Arjan de Wagt, UNICEF India’s cross-sectoral coordinator for early childhood development. The Indian government’s department of social welfare launched the National Policy for Children in 1974, which highlighted India’s commitment to “provide adequate services to children, both before and after birth and through the period of growth, to ensure their full physical, mental and social development.” A year later, in 1975, India launched its Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme, with the help of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF). One of the largest and most unique integrated early childhood programs in the world, the goal of ICDS was to help feed, educate, and care for vulnerable kids and their mothers. 

ICDS services were offered through a network of anganwadis spread out across every region in India. According to the Ministry of Women and Child Development, every urban or rural community of 400 to 800 people has at least one anganwadi center. In each anganwadi centre, an anganwadi worker takes care of women and children, educates the community, and collects health and nutrition data on women and children. Data from 2017 states that anganwadis delivered preschool services to close to 33 million children.

Presently, official government data shows there are 13.77 lakh anganwadi centres operational in India, with a strength of 12.8 lakh workers and 11.6 lakh helpers. Each anganwadi worker is assigned to approximately 250 homes; this worker knows everything about her community-which family requires prenatal help, which household requires a supply of vitamins, how many homes have young learners, and how old each of them is. These are the people taking care of early education, nutrition, and health in rural areas. Anganwadi workers are connected to the community, to the parents, the children, in a way no other educator is.

Anganwadi centres face a host of challenges-multiple responsibilities of which early childhood education is only one, overpopulation leading to an unfavourable teacher-pupil ratio, crumbling infrastructure, among other problems-and still, anganwadi workers find ways to beat the odds and support their charges at all costs. *Read examples of how anganwadi workers (and other educators) are helping prevent a learning loss during the pandemic, here.

Anganwadi centres are the lifeblood of the rural educational landscape in India and can sometimes be the only foundation for learning these children will ever get.

Acknowledging the worth these centres bring to early education, food, and nutrition, The Women and Child Development Ministry, under whose jurisprudence the anganwadis fall under, plans to upgrade services and facilities at 2.5 lakh anganwadi centres over five years under the Saksham Anganwadi Scheme, according to an Economic Times report dated December 2019. 

The NEP 2020 too, recognised the anganwadi’s contribution, mentioning, “To prepare an initial cadre of high-quality ECCE teachers in Anganwadis, current Anganwadi workers/teachers will be trained through a systematic effort in accordance with the curricular/pedagogical framework developed by NCERT.“

What Can We Do To Support Anganwadis To Improve The Quality Of Education?

• Support from multiple levels/stakeholders: The anganwadi centres don’t exist in silos; they are an intrinsic part of the community and must be treated as such. Strong guidance and backing are required across all levels, starting from the homes and moving up to the policymakers. There is a need to understand each problem these centres face, address each one, and work on plans and schemes to improve the quality in each anganwadi.
• Develop their skills through training programs: To ensure better outcomes across anganwadi centres, it is imperative that these catalysts of change are exposed to holistic development programs. Take Square Panda‘s Anganwadi Workers Upskilling Program, for instance, which empowers them with knowledge of ECCE and methods to create a conducive learning environment, to make children school ready and transform the anganwadi centre to their fullest potential. Our trainers can even teach in multiple vernacular languages for optimal understanding.
• Create a more comprehensive support system using AI and ML: Technology can be wielded to develop tools and aids to reduce anganwadi workers’ burden. Problems and queries can be dealt with quickly and expertly, using multilingual applications that connect anganwadi workers with early learning experts.
• Develop the centres themselves: A positive experience in these centres could translate into a journey into formal schooling, thereby improving their futures. At present, many anganwadis suffer from a lack of essential architecture and resources, making them less inviting to impressionable young minds. Recognising the worth of developing these centres, the NEP 2020 has mentioned in its policy a plan to strengthen anganwadis with “high-quality infrastructure, play equipment, and well-trained Anganwadi workers/teachers.“

Anganwadis nourish our children in the most crucial period of their lives, a period when their brain develops the most; to ensure universal access to ECCE, these centres need all-round support and training in pedagogy, digital literacy, and foundational literacy and numeracy.

See how Square Panda works to upskill anganwadi workers, here.

The National Educational Policy (NEP) 2020 has highlighted what the pandemic has shown us-teachers, and educators, are the true heroes, devising various strategies and designs to make sure learning reaches those across all levels in India, even the grassroots. 

UNESCO reported that around 2.7 million teachers who were impacted by the pandemic, faced challenges while handling the new teaching-learning requirements. Despite the odds against them, educators across the Indian educational landscape have grappled with challenges the lockdown has brought and have come out on top, doing their best to significantly impact the lives of their students by making sure their learning continues. Today, let’s meet some of these inspirational educators:

#1: Anganwadi Workers Across States – The lockdown due to the COVID pandemic saw countless anganwadi centres temporarily closing their doors, and all their charges staying put inside their homes. That didn’t stop these amazing volunteers, who have been soldiering on since the beginning of the pandemic, hand-delivering educational material and involving parents in the learning process. 

• In Odisha, the Department of Women and Child Development in collaboration with UNICEF launched the ‘Ghare Ghare Arunima’ initiative in April. The anganwadi workers focused on the males in each household, to ingrain equal child responsibility, reducing the gender divide, and increasing family bonding in this time of adversity.
• The ‘Aakar’ initiative was introduced across Maharashtra and saw an incredible amount of father-led participation. Everyday learning activities are shared with parents over Whatsapp; anganwadi workers explain the details in person to those who don’t have digital access.
• The state of Chhattisgarh has come up with the ‘Sajag’ initiative, where a short audio message about specific learning tasks is delivered directly to the parents’ inboxes or explained in person by anganwadi workers.

#2: Jeyaishwari R Nadar – Another example of a teacher’s dedication is Ms. Nadar, a mathematics teacher at the Gandhi Memorial English High School in Matunga, Mumbai. Her inventive teaching style went viral on social media after a journalist picked up this story in June 2020. Ms. Nadar was pictured conducting a class with the mobile phone on a refrigerator tray, which in turn was balanced on two containers. She came up with this idea when, as a math teacher, she realised she needed her students to simultaneously see the board while she took online classes. While she had tried whiteboards and other tools to teach, she found this particular technique makes it easier for her to broadcast notes.

#3: Shyam Kishore Singh – A headmaster of a school in Jharkhand’s Dumka district, Mr. Singh saw how many of his students faced learning challenges since the lockdown commenced because they lacked access to smartphones. He came up with an innovative way to keep their lessons going-by April 16, he had put up several loudspeakers across Bankathi village, where his Upgraded Middle School is located, to make sure his students heard him teach. These speakers have been put up on trees and walls in different locations across the village, with high volume speakers present where the number of students is more.

Dumka’s district education officer Poonam Kumari lauded this effort, adding that all 2,317 government schools in that region should emulate this model.

#4: Sonia Relia – While many educators are reaching out to their charges and students to prevent a learning loss, others are focusing on developing new-age skills in their peers and colleagues, through professional development courses. Among those ranks is author and teacher trainer Ms. Relia, who shares professional tips and advice with her fellow educators, through webinars and other online methods. She also regularly conducts storytelling sessions and fun activity-based talks with parents, teachers, and kids, to enhance the homebound teaching-learning experience.

Square Panda would like to appreciate the efforts of teacher Ranjitsinh Disale, who has been innovating teaching and learning long before the pandemic forced students into virtual classrooms.

Ranjitsinh Disale, a teacher from the Solapur district of Maharashtra, beat out 12,000 teachers from 140 countries around the world to win the Global Teacher Award this year, which is awarded by the London-based Varkey Foundation. His contribution towards the field of education-he supports girls’ education, he has contributed towards building coded QR textbooks, and he puts in efforts to generate interest about education among children from rural areas-won him a prize worth Rs. 7 crore. The first Indian to win this award, Ms. Disale says he will share 50% of his winnings with the other 9 finalists for the award, to support their incredible work and thereby provide quality education to thousands of children in 9 countries.

These visionaries are setting a strong example, collaborating with other stakeholders in the educational process—volunteers, edtech companies like Square Panda, parents, and children themselves—to garner results. These novel approaches exhibit how educators’ dedication can transform education and professional development in revolutionary ways.

Yesterday, December 3rd, was International Disability Day. Promoted by the United Nations since 1992, the significance of this day is observed around the world. At Square Panda, we believe inclusive classrooms providing access to quality teaching learning opportunities for all young learners and educators is a step towards a nation without discrimination. The Indian education system is addressing the learning crisis via the NEP 2020, and is working to provide equitable access to education, particularly early education, for all types of learners so children from varying socio-economic backgrounds and educational needs don’t suffer a learning loss.

Bringing About Inclusivity And Equality In Education

Education that reaches even the most disadvantaged and vulnerable so that they learn in the same way and classrooms as more advantaged children, requires a joint effort by all sections and levels of society.
– At the community level: After eradicating stigma and discrimination from the society, each stakeholder (parents, policymakers, students, etc.), need to be educated about the benefits of inclusivity in the classroom, for them and for the future of India.
– At the school level: Educators need to be trained to handle developmentally varied needs in multi-age classrooms, along with equal access to quality teaching-learning tools that personalise as per individual learning needs.
– At the national level: While the NEP 2020 gave a great impetus to equality in the Indian education sector, this proposal must be followed by complete support during implementation of plans by each state across India. Before, during, and after implementation of NEP-aligned programs, regular and continuous evaluations and assessments must be conducted, to ensure all children across India are reached by the proposed services.

Square Panda’s vision follows this principle of equal education for all, right from our inception.

Square Panda’s Origin Story

Square Panda was born out of our CEO and co-founder Andy Butler’s struggle to find appropriate learning resources for his dyslexic daughter.

Andy’s daughter was in Grade 1 when she was diagnosed with dyslexia. Her parents had noticed her turning from a happy child into a moody and frustrated one, who also often struggled with reading. Their search for appropriate learning resources to help her led them to consultants, special educators, and due to his wife’s contacts at Stanford University, some of the top researchers in the field. At this point, Andy began wondering how parents who lacked access to the contacts he did helped their children. Andy realised he needed to democratise the learning, making it accessible to all parents and children globally. Today, the work we do at Square Panda is a personal mission of Andy to impact early literacy and early learning, whether the learners are dyslexic or not.

Square Panda’s Work To Promote Inclusive Education

Square Panda is at the forefront of the changing educational landscape, supporting the Indian government in its efforts to provide equal access to early childhood education.
In Our Early Learning Programs: Square Panda focuses on multisensory and inclusive foundational learning programs to meet students’ diverse learning needs. Our adaptive platform uses AI software to personalise learning to individual children, helping tailor curriculum as per the requirements of each child.
In Our Educator Empowerment Programs: Our unique training programs empower educators with new-age skills and technical know-how, along with an in-depth understanding of how a child’s brain develops as they learn, adding in an important element of neuroscience understanding. Each program also equips educators with a working knowledge of the English language, furthering their Listening, Reading, Writing, and Speaking skills for better professional development.

Read more about our programs, here.

An inclusive system of education values unique contributions by students of all backgrounds, allowing diverse groups to grow side-by-side. Square Panda is collaboratively working with states across the country to bring inclusivity into ECCE in India, with its robust teaching and learning programs.

The NEP 2020 gives some much-needed attention to the role of assessments in education. In their vision to better the Indian educational landscape, the Ministry of Education is moving away from the old method of assessing, learning and reimagining the entire system to make use of this powerful tool correctly.

Presently, assessments in India, particularly in ECCE, garner no clear data to show the actual learning outcomes at the lower grades, particularly at key stages of transition, from primary to middle school, and then to senior. Thus, there is no opportunity for correction, leaving these young children with learning gaps until much later in life. “Assessment is more than adding remarks to a child’s mark sheet. *Watch us cover insightful educational topics for parents and educators, each week, in the Square Panda Sundays Expert Talk series!

The policy mentions assessments as one of its foundational principles, stating that there is a need to ‘focus on regular formative assessment for learning rather than the summative assessment that encourages today’s coaching culture’. Essentially, for a sturdy foundational learning base where young students achieve appropriate developmental goals, the education system needs to adopt a more formative assessment approach, as opposed to the current summative format.

*Formative Assessment is a wide range of formal and informal methods teachers use to evaluate student comprehension, learning needs, and academic progress, so they can modify their teaching and learning activities to improve student attainment. Some common methods include quizzes, conversations, activities, and more.

*Summative Assessment is taken at the end of instruction, usually conducted at the end of each term. This pen-and-paper approach takes the form of Board exams and terminal exams.

What Will Change

– Report Cards: No longer the same ‘mark sheet’, report cards will include details of each child’s development in the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. It will also show self-assessment and peer assessment, and progress of the child in project-based and inquiry-based learning, quizzes, role plays, group work, portfolios, etc., along with the teacher’s assessment.

– AI-based Software To Support Students: The policy also supports the development and usage of AI-based software like Square Panda’s very own built-in assessment tool, which monitors real-time progress through our early learning platform, allowing educators and parents insight into each child’s learning process.

– School Examinations: To effectively track progress throughout the school years and not just at the end of grades 10 and 12, all students will take school examinations in Grades 3, 5, and 8, to test learning outcomes and application of knowledge in real-life, rather than focus on rote memorisation. Grade 3 examinations, in particular, will test students on the acquisition of foundational skills like early literacy, numeracy, and more. 

– PARAKH: A new National Assessment Centre called (Performance Assessment, Review, and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development) or PARAKH, has been proposed to be set up, to create basic assessment standards to be followed by all educational bodies. Coming under the purview of the Ministry of Education, this move could change the Indian educational sector forever, creating a new regulatory body for quality checks, and providing regular student data for better learning outcomes.

The Impact Of NEP-Reimagined Assessments

The aim of the NEP 2020 is to get in place a system of ongoing assessments right from the foundational level, to track and individualise each student’s learning. The potential impact such a system could have on the Indian educational system:

• Focuses On The Right Learning Outcomes: A formative style of assessment analyses critical thinking skills, clarity of concepts, and overall skill development, rather than simply checking memory stores of students at the end of the year.

• Stress-Free Learning: This new culture of evaluating the learning will help make the assessment process non-threatening for the students, reducing their exam fear to a great extent.
• Continuously Measuring Classroom Performance: A formative assessment style is typically periodic in nature, and involves an ongoing effort by educators. This showcases each student’s growth pattern throughout the year, while allowing the teacher to address individual children’s challenges in real-time, rather than wait for the year-end results.

There is a need for a robust system of assessment to help educators evaluate the progress of each student, and identify their strengths and weaknesses. This will help improve teaching methods as they identify the gaps in their teaching. The pace of learning for all the children is not the same and effective assessment tools will help educators understand the different learning levels of each child, which in turn will help them to customize the learning techniques as per each learner’s needs, something that the NEP 2020 is striving towards.

*Square Panda’s foundational learning programs and educator empowerment programs include continuous monitoring and assessments that are perfectly aligned with the NEP 2020’s vision.

What are your thoughts on the assessment system as the NEP envisions it? What would you like to see?

India is a land of multiple religions, cultures, ethnic groups, and languages, which come together to give our nation its status as a diverse country. We also boast of the largest education system in the world, catering to more than 260 million children. Social mobility makes the crowd in the classroom more and more diverse by each year; with such a diverse population, a crucial need for inclusive learning arises, which can successfully cater to the diverse learning needs of each student.

The need for inclusive classrooms emerges right from early childhood, which is the critical period of brain development. 

The ASER 2019 report shows 90% of children in the age group of 4-8 years as enrolled in some type of educational institution. Of these, a large proportion of 5-year-olds was unable to perform expected tasks with ease, with children from less advantaged homes affected disproportionately. At this stage of development, early learning experts recommend students should be developing cognitive, social, and emotional skills as well as the conceptual foundations needed for formal schooling. While the recent policy released by the Department of Education (the NEP 2020) does mention a need to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030”, to create a force of literate future-ready youth, we need to translate the power of words into robust initiatives that can create a truly inclusive learning environment.

WHAT DOES INCLUSIVE EDUCATION LOOK LIKE?

The basic premise of inclusive education is that all children receive equal access to education rather than be segregated based on their individual, educational, social, emotional, financial, linguistic, or physical impairments.

Inclusive classrooms aim to bring all students together regardless of their strengths or weaknesses in any area and seek to maximize each child’s potential.

TODAY, WHAT ARE THE NEEDS AND CHALLENGES FOR ACHIEVING THE GOAL OF INCLUSIVE EDUCATION?

While the government of India has made strides in adopting inclusive policies to provide an equitable education for all, we still have a way to go before we can cater to multiculturalism and diverse learning needs successfully. The current education system in India faces some challenges for achieving inclusive education:

• A lack of trained educators.
• Large class sizes with multi-age classrooms.
• Linguistic diversity posing a challenge for educators.
• Marginalisation based on socio-economic, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds.

HOW QUALITY EDUCATION CAN BE EFFECTIVELY AND EFFICIENTLY DELIVERED FOR DIVERSE GROUPS OF CHILDREN? 

The need of the hour is to have equal access to high-quality education right from the foundational ages, across geographical and socio-economic boundaries. For this vision to materialise, the Indian education system needs to adopt certain practices:

Educator Training, Empowerment, & Education: An educational system is only as good as its educators. If learning has to be streamlined, yet personalised and adapted to individual learning needs, educators, anganwadi workers, and balwadi workers across India need to be empowered to recognise and instruct as per the diverse learning needs. The NEP 2020 recognises the importance of training educators, by adding this clause to its document: “The awareness and knowledge of how to teach children with specific disabilities including learning disabilities will be an integral part of all teacher education programmes, along with gender sensitization and sensitization towards all underrepresented groups in order to reverse their underrepresentation.”

Adoption Of Adaptive Software: From the ground up, educational institutions need to equip themselves with adaptive software and technology, to help teachers create a holistic blended classroom that allows them to personalise learning as per each student’s learning level.

Changing The Mindset: While educators work on imparting education from the early stages itself, a collaborative effort needs to be undertaken to involve parents in the teaching-learning process. All stakeholders in the learning process-the parents, the educators, the policymakers-need to work in tandem to see successful learning outcomes in inclusive classrooms.

Need For Flexible, Adaptive Curriculum And Learning Tools: Every child learns differently, and a one-size-fits-all approach is detrimental to the acquisition of learning. Something that the NEP 2020 mentions too, an adaptive blended curriculum that works with each learner’s learning level, can serve to assimilate students of all kinds and ages into inclusive classrooms.

“Education is the single greatest tool for achieving social justice and equality. Inclusive and equitable education – while indeed an essential goal in its own right – is also critical to achieving an inclusive and equitable society in which every citizen has the opportunity to dream, thrive, and contribute to the nation. The education system must aim to benefit India’s children so that no child loses any opportunity to learn and excel because of circumstances of birth or background. This Policy reaffirms that bridging the social category gaps in access, participation, and learning outcomes in school education will continue to be one of the major goals of all education sector development programmes.” – NEP 2020

Policies provide a good model to promote inclusive education. Presently, we need to transfer learnings from the policy to the education sphere. In a diverse nation like ours, a multicultural perspective in the education sector starting from the foundational stages is what will help us create a truly unified country that boasts equality across the Indian educational landscape.

WHAT IS EXPERIENTIAL-BASED LEARNING & TEACHING ?

The term ‘experiential learning’ is used to talk about learning that is gained by experience or ‘learning by doing’. 

Fun Fact: The experiential learning concept has been around for a very long time, and was first explored in the education and learning context by educationists like Jean Piaget, among others. It was made most famous by American educational theorist Professor D.A. Kolb, who showed that mastering expertise is a continuous process of experience, reflection, conceptualisation, and experimentation. 

In India, experiential learning can be likened to the Gurukul education prevalent since ancient times across India. The students learnt by performing various tasks under the guidance of the Guru (teacher). Schools across India have already been practising some form of activity and experience-based learning, but the Department of Education has taken this one step further by necessitating experiential learning including learning that has elements of enquiry, gamified, activity-based, story-based, in Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE), along with parallel teacher training programs to help educators understand the right way to impart such instruction.

Read more about the crucial impact of teacher training on the NEP 2020 here.

Some examples of experiential learning in the classroom:

• The Rainforest Learning Centre in the USA includes experiential education in almost all aspects of their curriculum. Their daycare and preschool-age learners are introduced to environmental clean-ups and animal adoptions, where they not only clean garbage and play with pets, but understand the results of their actions on the environment and community.
• Square Panda conducted pilot studies with our early learning system across schools in India. We provided young students with access to our early literacy platform, where they were taught to start reading the English language using stories and activities. In a period of a few weeks, with no extra intervention at all, we saw a marked improvement in the students’ learning outcomes, in skills like word reading and sentence reading.
• Mahindra International School (India), takes its primary school children on field trips as a part of their academic learning programme. Incorporated during school hours, these trips introduce young children to physical learning environments like zoos and farms.

WHEN DOES EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING HAPPEN ?

True experiential learning takes place when learners get immersed cognitively, emotionally, behaviourally, while reflecting and processing each experience, which then leads to a change in perspective, comprehension, thought, and behaviour. The next step is the application of the newly acquired learning to real-time events, turning these students into individualised learners who are well on the path to future success.

WHY EXPERIENTIAL METHODOLOGIES ARE THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION IN INDIA

The pedagogical approach that is experiential learning has the potential to revolutionise early learning, changing the Indian educational landscape as we know it, for the better.

For Children:

• Future-Ready Skills: An experiential base of learning provides children with real-life experience to match textbook teaching, which can be applied to problems for more practical use of knowledge.
• Personalisation: Traditional learning in India works on a one-size-fits-all approach at present, which affects learning outcomes. With a more experience-based approach, the learning modules can be specifically catered to each child’s individual requirements, enabling better skilling.
• Increased Engagement: Fun stories, activities, games, music, and other aspects of experiential learning all serve to keep young children engaged and exhibiting high levels of motivation as they immerse themselves in the experience.

For Educators:

• Improved Teaching Skills And Competencies: Educators are a very crucial part of ECCE, being responsible for young learners’ development and growth in this foundational period. Personalised, experience-based instructions will help educators professionally develop at a much faster rate while strengthening their subject matter knowledge.
• Knowledge Of Experiential And Activity-Based Teaching Learning Techniques: When educators are trained using experiential methods, their capacity for imparting knowledge using those same techniques increases exponentially, improving the learning outcomes, creating a more holistic development of the students.
• Mindset Changes: Explaining to educators about various styles of teaching is vastly different from allowing them to experience it. Hands-on experiential learning activities have a drastic effect on the mindset of educators, allowing them to relate to the theory, and put it into practice in the classroom.

WHY BUILDING ECCE PROGRAMS USING EXPERIENTIAL TEACHING-LEARNING METHODOLOGIES IS A BETTER IDEA

To ensure a higher quality of foundational learning in ECCE programs across India, there is a need to incorporate the NEP 2020’s vision of a comprehensive experiential teaching-learning methodology. Here’s why we think integrating experience-based instruction into the early classroom has a higher learning outcome:

• Blended Classrooms Can Be The New Norm: Instead of rote learning and traditional classrooms, a new blended form of teaching takes its place, where digital learning is combined with physical instruction. Experiential learning will be interwoven with online learning, creating a virtual safe space for real-life simulations, increasing young children’s engagement, and overall learning outcomes. 
• Gamified Learning: An educational approach to get students inspired and learning via game-based elements, gamification increases the enjoyment of learning, and thereby, retention. When backed by a research-based curriculum, gamified learning develops critical and strategic thinking, supporting students across different learning levels.
• Educator Empowerment: It’s not just students who benefit from a holistic program that teaches via experience. Educators can be trained and empowered to deliver high-quality content, develop strong subject knowledge, and polish their professional skills, using experiential teaching methodologies.
• Playing-&-Learning Activities: “The importance of play-based activities, especially for young learners, cannot be highlighted enough. This approach to learning sees children develop essential life skills like critical thinking, gross and fine motor skills, and much more”, remarks the curriculum head for Square Panda India, Ms. Neha Shah, when asked about the impact this particular experiential learning method has on early childhood education. Even the NEP 2020 itself documents its importance, by stating, “The learning in the Preparatory Class (a class each young learner will attend before the age of 5) shall be based primarily on play-based learning with a focus on developing cognitive, affective, and psychomotor abilities and early literacy and numeracy.” 

This application of theory and academic content to real-world experiences within the classroom and other surroundings allows young children to learn, explore, and respond to situations appropriately. ECCE benefits from such experiential programs by promoting increased aptitude and cognitive development in the early years. India is shedding some much-needed light onto this teaching-learning methodology, increasing adaptation of 21st-century skills and techniques for a better, more literate India. 

Square Panda’s foundational learning program and educator empowerment programs have a holistic approach to teaching and learning, via experiential and activity-based methodology. These research-based techniques use multisensory elements, storytelling, music, play-based activities and other experiential elements to achieve better learning outcomes and optimal results.

What is your take on experiential learning in the Indian classroom? How do you think it benefits ECCE? Comment below.

The continued growth in information processing, and the advent of technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in education, is a game-changer for education, and consequently, the educators. The people we entrust with our children’s education have a very important role to play in their futures and the future of the country as a whole; to accomplish this crucial task, they need to be empowered with thorough guidance and training, with complete assistance in developing 21st century-appropriate skills. To directly quote research studies conducted over the years, “Students succeed when intensive, comprehensive, and high-quality prevention and early intervention instruction is provided by well-trained and well-supported teachers”*.

At present, the traditional method of learning in India involves a blackboard and reading from the textbook, a method of rote learning that is outdated for the changing educational landscape. To enable the well-rounded development of children, educators (especially ECCE educators), not only have to function as high-quality content creators but also have to understand the neuroscience behind early learning and the ecosystem that comes into play when a young child begins to learn.

Unfortunately, the teaching profession in India is faced with a multitude of challenges:

• A basic level of proficiency: Currently, educators across India only have basic skills needed to impart education and train young minds to be future-ready. The onus at present is on developing high-quality educators who help mould a stronger generation of future citizens.
• One-teacher-fits-all: Students across different grade levels study together in one classroom or Anganwadi, with only one teacher explaining all the subjects. Here, subject matter expertise is a problem, along with the appropriateness of curriculum as per the individual learning needs for every child.
• Administrative duties: An already burgeoning workload is further burdened by a host of administrative tasks. For example, teachers are required to handle extracurricular activities, data collation to help with the creation of physical reports, and more, along with teaching their young charges.

• Availability: A less than optimal pupil-teacher ratio, existing training curriculum that requires an overhaul as per the changing needs, and more challenges, see many opting out of choosing teaching as a profession. NEP 2020 has allowed for multiple provisions and considerations in its approach to teacher education, but finding and retaining a high calibre of educators remains a challenge.
• Other problems: Those in the education profession are also bogged down by limited resources (hardware and funding), a vast geographical area with many remote places, a lack of support, and, due to COVID, a drastic and sudden shift of the traditional classroom towards a more blended approach, which sees educators struggle to embrace technology like never before.

The Department of Education, in its latest National Education policy, states, “In all stages, experiential learning will be adopted, including hands-on learning, arts-integrated and sports-integrated education, story-telling-based pedagogy, among others, as standard pedagogy within each subject, and with explorations of relations among different subjects. To close the gap in achievement of learning outcomes, classroom teaching learning methodologies transactions will shift, towards competency-based learning and education”. 

This policy reiterates adopting new-age skills into the existing teaching framework, adding important experiential methods including gamification, storytelling, art, music, and more. The new education sector as envisioned by the policy aims for holistic, all-round development of young learners by qualified and trained educators.

To see a substantial positive shift in the Indian education sector, particularly in ECCE, educators existing and new will have to be trained in the pedagogy of today’s changing world while also gaining an in-depth understanding of a child’s neurological development as learning is imparted. And, as the coronavirus pandemic has taught us, to adapt to the changing educational ecosystem, educators across India must develop a strong understanding of digital literacy. 

The Impact Of empowering the Educators On Indian Education:

• Impact On ECCE: Robust educator training and empowerment programs have a strong impact on early childhood education. A deep understanding of subject knowledge coupled with an awareness of the neuroscience behind early learning results in powerful skill development in the young learners,  building a strong foundation for lifelong learning, setting them on a path for success. For example, an English language teacher who knows their subject can easily explain topics ranging from phonological awareness to idioms and puns, without any loss of understanding on the part of their students.

• Developing New-Age Methodologies Of Teaching: The National Educational Policy 2020 describes a whole new way of teaching, including a host of 21st century skills like ‘experiential learning via gamification and apps’, ‘holistic learning’, and more. These new techniques will entice learners more, enabling an improved attitude towards education, which results in an improved and enhanced academic performance.
• Subject Matter Knowledge Improves: A stronger grasp of the subject in question will see educators being able to explain concepts and ideas better, increasing the comprehension by students.

• Improved Performance Of Students: Studies have correlated teacher training to stronger student test scores, adding that the main reason for the improved performance was because the teacher had a better grip on the subject matter.
• Contribution To Economic Prosperity: High calibre educators who are trained, professionally developed, and dedicated, form the backbone of society, transferring knowledge and culture to batch after batch of learners. Forming an essential part of the radical changes we wish to see in our nation, these educators contribute a lot to the economic prosperity of a country.

“The quality of teacher education, recruitment, deployment, service conditions, and empowerment of teachers is not where it should be, and consequently the quality and motivation of teachers does not reach the desired standards. The high respect for teachers and the high status of the teaching profession must be restored so as to inspire the best to enter the teaching profession. The motivation and empowerment of teachers is required to ensure the best possible future for our children and our nation.” -NEP, 2020

A well-trained educator can not only mould a child’s entire future from the early years itself, but they also enhance their talents, helping them thrive in tomorrow’s world of work.

Square Panda is working towards the empowerment of educators via robust and innovative empowerment programs. 

*Reference: (c.f. Al Otailba, Connor, Foorman, Schatschneider, Greulich, Sidler, 2009; Al Otaiba & Torgesen, 2007; Rashotte, MacPhee, Torgeson, 2001; Shaywitz & Shaywitz, 2006, Torgesen, 2007; Vaughn & Wanzek, 2014; Vellutino & Fletcher, 2007.).

The fundamental ability of being able to read and perform basic operations with numbers is an essential requirement that serves as the cornerstone of all future learning. This acquisition happens when the young learner is between 3-7 years of age, a period known to be critical to brain development. The skills developed in early childhood will create a base for the enhancement of greater cognitive development, socio-emotional skills, reasoning, and more.

Around 260 million children are studying in more than 1.5 million schools across India at present. From these, over 70% of children in Class 3 do not have basic reading and arithmetic skills. Data shows that each year, an estimated 6 million children complete 8 years of compulsory schooling in India with alarmingly low learning levels. Such worrying trends in the formative years of schooling, when the cognitive skill development is the highest, can greatly destabilise a nation.

Without the basic skills of foundational literacy and numeracy, the benefits of all future learning and future success are lost. To truly become a self-reliant nation, India needs to turn the spotlight towards strengthening the existing ECCE programs to highlight foundational learning from the teacher training as well as the curriculum perspective.

Foundational skill development includes young learners being able to:

An investment in quality ECCE to boost foundational learning improves the attainment of the above ‘gateway’ skills, which pave the way for bigger long-term benefits like stronger future learning prospects and employability. Providing foundational skill development across the grassroots levels is an effective equaliser, allowing for inclusivity in early education, leading to better economic gains for the country as a whole aside from improving the learning outcomes of individual children. 

The second-most populous country in the world, India has a high rate of unemployment, a decline which began even before the pandemic hit. A clear long-term growth plan with strong benefits across sectors needs active empowerment of the upcoming Indian youth of tomorrow, right from the foundational stages. The new and improved workforce will find it easier to use new technologies and software, think creatively, adjust to the changing employment landscape, and generally be more accomplished as workers. This well-equipped generation, will, in turn, perform better. Ultimately, the GDP of our nation will reap the benefits of a good early education system. The guiding hands of our country’s economic development, our youth, need to be empowered so they can explore all available opportunities. We can take advantage of the shortage in manpower faced by countries around the world, and use our advantaged and educated youth to fill that gap.

The NEP 2020 is taking steps in this direction, guiding ECCE programs and development towards the goal of a more literate India. 

Foundational literacy and numeracy have been accorded a high priority by the NEP 2020, with the policy stating ‘Strong investment in ECCE has the potential to give all young children such access, enabling them to participate and flourish in the educational system throughout their lives. Universal provisioning of quality early childhood development, care, and education must thus be achieved as soon as possible, and no later than 2030, to ensure that all students entering Grade 1 are school ready’.
Watch India Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi speak about the Indian government’s push towards empowering our nation by increasing initiatives towards early childhood education, below:

Effective implementation of the policy demands wide-scale initiatives, especially training and support for teachers, to help them impart high-quality foundational literacy and numeracy to their charges. These programs also need support from innovative and holistic academic programs for children, right from the foundational stages itself, in order to see long-term benefits. The role of each stakeholder-including institutions, educators, Anganwadis, and even households-needs to be leveraged to develop an integrated and holistic approach to primary education. 

Square Panda is focused on impacting learning and raising a generation of independent confident learners, with our innovative and impactful foundational learning and teacher training programs.

Come back next week for an in-depth discussion about teacher training, and how it affects the implementation of the above mentioned initiatives.

In recent years, a new teaching and learning technique has swept the educational landscape of India, making inroads into the previously predominantly traditional sector. Adaptive Learning, or Adaptive Teaching, as it is called, provides personalised learning via data driven systems, adjusting the path and pace of learning to suit each learner’s needs. Adaptive learning can be divided into two categories, adaptive instruction and adaptive assessment. This technology makes learning more personal, adjusting to a student’s unique needs, offering customised course delivery with technology-assisted insights and analytics.

How Does It Work?

How Does It Help?

Did You Know? Because it is not only transforming the way students learn but how instructors teach, adaptive learning is also known by another name – adaptive teaching. Teachers’ skills are developed via technology to drive learner pathways and re-define learning outcomes. See the benefits…

To Students: 

– An adaptive technology presents students with the appropriate content and learning materials at the right time, increasing engagement.

– Because they are learning at a pace suitable for them, each child is more comfortable while learning, increasing the overall learning outcomes.- The dynamic feedback that allows teachers to cater their teaching style as per the need, and the digital rewards with positive feedback that are offered by the adaptive learning technology, serve to instill confidence in children, particularly struggling students.

To Teachers:

– Adaptive learning arms teachers with deeper insights into areas of struggle for students, while teaching them new pedagogy that aligns with their teaching styles.

– Allows instructors to engage more with students, by reducing the sheer amount of administrative tasks and increasing active learning experiences.

-In pre-primary & primary schools, teachers  often teach students of more than one grade level and different learning levels, in the same classroom. These ‘multi-age’ and ‘multi-level’ classrooms present a unique challenge; how to recognise specific students’ learning needs and then address them, while managing the class simultaneously. Adaptive technology can be used as a tool to teach such ‘multi-age’ and ‘multi-level’ classrooms.

– The real-time feedback adaptive learning provides helps teachers incrementally calibrate their own instructions to meet individual learners’ needs, gradually aligning with the bigger framework of solving foundational learning. This personalised guidance for teachers and educators will help them achieve their goals of a better, more literate India, as envisioned in the new Indian education policy.

To The Government: 

– India has one of the world’s largest education systems ever seen, with more than 1.5 million schools providing education to around 260 million students. Adaptive learning can be changed in size or scale to meet the evolving needs of the entire educational landscape.

– Adaptive software makes assessments possible on both the micro and the macro levels. Real-time dynamic feedback that allows for actionable plans and a mastery-based approach rather than a traditional one-size-fits-all learning model creates a robust education system that can stand up to any global curriculum.

An example of adaptive logic, using Square Panda:
As a child plays and learns on Square Panda’s early literacy platform, activity data is generated. Our adaptive engine picks up this data and decides what content the child should have access to next. Whichever educational game or program the child is learning with reflects this suggestion, only showing content as per the individual child’s learning level. Special ‘cooldown’ periods are built into Square Panda’s platform, ensuring adequate repetition so that children practice without getting bored. Square Panda’s adaptive engine is constantly changing to add more skill masteries, more types of assessments and filters across the games, to tailor learning to specific learner profiles.

Adaptive learning and technology change the way learning happens, and that is a powerful thing. The transformation in the early learning system in India will happen when we embrace adaptive learning, using it as an intrinsic part of early education to enrich the teaching-learning experience.

Stay tuned for more insightful articles that delve into foundational literacy, and other hot button topics from the Indian early education sector.

The 2011 Census states that anyone over the age of 11 who can read and write is ‘literate’. Literacy has been marked as a strong factor in employment, with a study by Bynner, J. and Parsons, S. in 2001, citing, ‘both literacy and numeracy skills have been shown to be crucial in gaining employment and retaining it (…)’. Literacy is the backbone of developing nations like India, and foundational literacy is its base.

Research attributes 80% of brain development to the early childhood period. This fertile period is also when the precursors to language learning are developed. These foundations later become predictors of a child’s reading ability in later grades. Unfortunately, many children (in India and worldwide) are consistently unable to read at their grade level. That is a problem because these children then fall further and further behind with every grade i.e. it becomes tremendously difficult for them to catch up. Not being able to read has grave implications ranging from not getting into college to unemployment.

Why Square Panda Focuses On Developing Foundational Literacy Skills:

The reading skill is crucial to perform well in academics, as well as in regular life. An early reading ability not only influences a future reading habit but also paves the way for future success and quality of life.

The current educational policy has refrained from highlighting any particular mode of instruction as the ‘primary’ mode, choosing instead to leave the decision up to the respective administrations. What is a game-changer for the Indian education system is the addition of ECCE into the new policy. Where once early childhood education was not looked upon as formal education, it is now being given a rightful place in the educational landscape of India. Early education is also at the core of Square Panda’s multisensory platform, with a focus on early literacy.

Square Panda’s mission is to empower all children to reach their full potential by launching their educational journey with the power of literacy and languages and we support that journey through our unique, personalised learning system.

Square Panda wants to drive development and education in India to be on par with our global counterparts, using a platform that enables foundational English language learning, from the grassroots level itself, starting as deep inside the educational system as Anganwadis and Balwadis. With a strong educational team to back the constantly evolving programs developed by Square Panda, we are turning the focus towards training Anganwadi workers to handle early education, work with our systems, and skill themselves, to enable a better learning environment for children at the very heart of India.

The disparity of educational resources across India sees an imbalance in the distribution of basic amenities like teachers, educational materials, and even study books. The gap further widens, due to factors like high pupil to teacher ratios, a lack of appropriate curriculum, infrastructure shortages, poor quality of teaching staff, and declining monetary resources. While there is a facility for free education, especially in the younger years, enforcing this is difficult. Educational technology reaches the places these resources cannot, making edtech companies like ours the perfect collaborators to the government, to enhance foundational literacy across the educational landscape in India. 

“In a country like India, where we find children of different learning levels and capabilities, edtech is a valuable resource to cater to different needs, allowing for a greater personalising and adaptiveness,” opines Mr. Jhalani.

Square Panda’s self-guided adaptive platform allows for an enhanced and holistic early learning experience; the teachers and educators can operate our system with a minimal amount of technical knowledge.

As a future global superpower, we want to see India succeed in its goal to achieve 100% literacy. Square Panda provides an all-round solution to the early literacy problems plaguing the Indian education sector at present, with a blended offering combining digital tools and multisensory physical learning materials.

“The goals Square Panda has is to make education and literacy affordable and reachable to the masses across the world, may it be in China, may it be in India. We want to make sure that every child gets an opportunity to be literate, learn the language of English—which is a primary language across the world—and find better jobs as they grow up.” – Mr. Ashish Jhalani.

Square Panda believes in the need for a robust early education system, along with efficient teacher training programs to enhance quality of education across India, and the globe.