We can make high-quality education available , accessible, and affordable by combining technology with micro-entrepreneurship .
TeachtoEarn is a PPP model ( Public-Private-Parents Partnership ) Entrepreneurial parents will be able to set up their own learning centers school , to devise customised solutions that work for their children, in their own community!
These micro-entrepreneurs will run paid community-based learning pods to educate their own kids and their neighbourhood friends using PCs loaded with free, high-quality content mapped to the syllabus. They will charge fees and thus become financially independent while educating the next generation, thus creating a sustainable positive virtuous cycle.
These parents needn’t be trained teachers . They are parents who care about giving their kids the best possible education . They will provide coaching ,love and guidance. The educational content will come from a wide variety of sources ,such as magnetbrains.com , diksha.gov.in, khanacademy.org, www.missiongyan.com and nios.ac.in. This will be in local languages and English as well, so students are free to choose what works best for them. We know this model works because we have set up over 50 of these community centers all over India at http://www.apnipathshala.org
If the parents need help ,they can reach out to experienced teachers on Zoom calls, who can guide them so they can help their students to become self-directed learners . Technology plus a caring human in the loop is the magic sauce . Kids will work hard to please an adult they respect and trust. A loving , motivated mother is far more effective than a bored, mediocre school teacher because they have a lot more skin in the game !
This would be valuable for remote villages, urban slums as well as high-end gated communities. We need to go to where the students are , instead of forcing them to commute to schools. Most communities have buildings and spaces which can be used for this purpose, such as panchayat halls, community centers, places of worship and under-used school buildings.
Parents will be much more holistic in their approach towards helping children learn real life skills ,rather than obsessing over completing the syllabus or scoring more marks in exams that only test memorization and not understanding. These pods will also be much more culturally friendly, because they are embedded in the community. Kids will learn far more in these neighbourhood schools than they would in a Govt school or a for-profit traditional school.
These kids will have better social skills too because they will learn from each other. Single-room mixed-age safe learning spaces allow older kids to teach younger kids, and peer-to-peer learning is sticky and impactful. They will also have more opportunities to learn from the real world, because they won’t be locked up in school classrooms , listening to boring lectures .
Attendance is optional , which means the parents who run the pod will have to work hard to keep the kids engaged to ensure great learning outcomes, which they will have to demonstrate to their neighbours who pay fees who send their kids to the pod. These parents will have to be accountable, answerable, responsible and transparent ( unlike most school teachers today !)
This model will spur creativity , rather than force everyone to follow a one-size-fits-all template, which never works . Parents will adapt the model to suit the needs and wants of their own community ( for example , curriculum, content of lessons, class size and timings ).
The parents who run the pods will get paid for doing this, which means they are motivated and incentivized to provide high quality services. They charge fees from the other parents who want a better alternative to Govt Schools, and the well-run pods will attract more kids ! Ambitious parents can franchise their model if they want, so this can spread at the grass roots level.
The students will use a PC to access the world’s best educational resources which are available free online. The number of kids who share a PC will be between 2-4 students per PC , to optimise social learning, based on their age, and the resources available. I am happy to subsidise the purchase of a fully featured, education PC with a 3-year warranty, for Rs 10000 only at https://www.teachtoearn.in/praho-purchase/
There are still many unanswered questions.
What will the timings be ? Will it be after-school hours only ? Or will it replace school ?
How much space is needed to run this ? How many parents are needed to run this ?
How will the school earn credibility ?
What other facilities will the school provide ? A library ? Gym ? Access to playgrounds ?
How many kids will be enrolled at the school at one time ? What ages will they be ?
What are the fees that will be charged ?
How does the school document improved learning outcomes ?
Will each student have their own online learning portfolio to showcase their strengths ?
How will the school use community facilities ?
How will it interact with traditional schools ?
Will students have to give exams ? Will they prepare for the NIOS ?
Will they be given skill training as well ?
There are no fixed answers , because one size doesn’t fit all . We need to run many pilots to find what works and what doesn’t.
Each micro-entrepreneur will have to create their own solution, based on the needs and wants of their own community !
Each of these pods will be different , and by sharing stories publicly, others will learn from their experiences and benefit from them.
Yes, some will fail, but we will all learn from the positive deviants, so we can create more success stories.
What are some of the major challenges ?
For one thing, parents crave security and safety when selecting a school for their child, because they don’t want to take any chances. They would rather send their child to a traditional school, even if they know it’s useless and their child is learning nothing, because it’s the socially accepted norm to do so.
Also, it’s important to be able to offer some sort of certification which is recognized by the Govt , to get official recognition ( even though this doesn’t improve learning outcomes). One possibility would be to tie up with the https://nios.ac.in/
Some of the operational issues are going to be
1. Identifying & training/mentoring entrepreneurial parents to run the pods in their communities
2. Establishing credibility & attracting early adaptor students/parents
3. A sustainable business model to account for both operational & capital expenses
Some of these questions are answered at http://www.teachtoearn.in and https://handbook.microschools.in/
If you are interested in exploring this, please email me at malpani@malpaniventures.com.
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