Reshaping education with entrepreneurial learning and lifeskills

Entrepreneurship education shapes young minds to master the skills of the future. With an uncertain future ahead owing to numerous reasons such as technological advancements and population growth, entrepreneurship can be seen as a significant career option among the current generation.

Entrepreneurship generates numerous job perspectives and contributes significantly to the economic growth of the country, because of which the young generation should be motivated to start businesses of their own. Entrepreneurial skill education will help them identify any upcoming opportunities to be successful entrepreneurs and teach them how to tackle the adversities successfully in the future.

In this article, the author talks about the importance of incorporating entrepreneurial and life skill development for the holistic growth of children. Entrepreneurship education teaches essential life skills such as critical thinking, empathy, problem-solving, and self-awareness.

Entrepreneurship education shapes young minds to master the skills of the future. With an uncertain future ahead owing to numerous reasons such as technological advancements and population growth, entrepreneurship can be seen as a significant career option among the current generation.

Entrepreneurship generates numerous job perspectives and contributes significantly to the economic growth of the country, because of which the young generation should be motivated to start businesses of their own. Entrepreneurial skill education will help them identify any upcoming opportunities to be successful entrepreneurs and teach them how to tackle the adversities successfully in the future.

In this article, the author talks about the importance of incorporating entrepreneurial and life skill development for the holistic growth of children. Entrepreneurship education teaches essential life skills such as critical thinking, empathy, problem-solving, and self-awareness.

It prepares children to face such uncertainties in the future and helps them emerge as solution finders. All these life skills define the personality of an individual and it is difficult to learn these skills through traditional book and classroom studies, instead, entrepreneurship education can be a fun, impactful, and engaging alternative.

Critical thinking

While there is a dire need to impart this skill to young minds, it is also incredibly difficult to teach. Entrepreneurs are the ones who know how to think critically and approach a problem in a way to understand and resolve it rather than becoming overwhelmed.

No matter what you’re doing, this skill is a must-have to any future employers. This skill is an added advantage when you are looking at even joining a large MNC as an employee because your mindset will be of a problem solver.

Problem-solving

It is important to differentiate between problem-solving and problem identification. While a problem-solving approach may be developed with practice, the ability to identify the problem in advance and take necessary steps to deal with it differentiates a successful entrepreneur from the rest.

Enhances creativity

Creative people make a difference with their out-of-the-box thinking approach to a problem. Entrepreneurship molds young minds by encouraging creativity, innovation, and collaboration to develop into abler individuals strong enough to face the reality of the outside world. It sets them apart from the mass with the much-needed experience to start their journey with a strong foundation.

Imparts leadership

The world is always in need of a good leader and the students who are interested to make a difference will certainly succeed in paving a different pathway. As the students learn about entrepreneurship skills at a younger age, they tend to incorporate them at every turn and start thinking like a leader.

Prepares for an uncertain future

The present scenario is very different than what it was a few years ago as the jobs that once existed decades ago are nowhere to be found. With new technologies emerging with each passing day, the market is highly volatile, with the current generation venturing into the future with uncertainties. In such times, it might take some time to master a skill and put it to practice but with time it might be of no use and result in havoc in student’s careers. Education in entrepreneurship will always keep one door open for venturing into if things do not turn out as expected.

Coaches how to deal with failure

It is very important to coach kids on how to deal with failure efficiently, and entrepreneurship education does offer the necessary exposure to handle failures and learn from one’s mistakes in one journey to success. At times, letting students learn from failures can be a good thing for healthy growth not only in entrepreneurship but also in life.

We live in a rapidly changing world with a generation that is equipped with more technical knowledge and advancement. The future belongs to the innovators and leaders and therefore, it is imperative that our education system adapts accordingly. Entrepreneurial learning programs will emerge as path-breakers and trendsetters thereby, proving quite a beneficial stepping stone for generations to come.

Article by Amit Mishra (Co-Founder, Kidzpreneur).

Education today needs more funds, not less

While it was expected that a separate allocation would be announced for the New Education Policy, much to the dismay of educationists, the Union Budget 2021 makes a 6.1 per cent lower allocation than the previous year. The allocation for school education stands at Rs 54,873.66 crore and is Rs 38,350.65 crore for higher education. This is a sharp decline in allocation to a scheme that aims at improving infrastructure and teaching in educational institutions post-Covid 19.

While the government is intent on implementation of the NEP that was introduced last year and aims at universalisation of education from pre-school to secondary level, the Samagra Shiksha Scheme, the main vehicle for implementing the Right to Education Act bears the brunt of the cut. From Rs 38,750 crore last year, the allocation dips to Rs 31,050 crore.

The new National Education Policy (NEP) launched in the second half of 2020 aims at overhauling India’s education system, but the prevailing pandemic situation has turned the academic calendar topsy-turvy. It is time to review how far the NEP can be made relevant to the new normal in education.

A UNESCO report explained the scenario: “Education system responded with distance learning solutions, all of which offered less or more imperfect substitutes for classroom instruction”.

With the lockdown, campuses across the country were shut; all academic institutions switched to virtual classrooms. However, most institutions lacked the infrastructure to take digital classes while a few had experience on the platform. Most teachers struggled to learn how to use the digital platform for teaching-learning process.

As for the learners, digital divide became a matter of great concern. A Delhi High Court judgement called for the responsibility of the government to directly address the digital divide. It mandated in its judgement and order of 18 September 2020 in Justice for All versus Government of NCT Delhi & Ors that the government has a responsibility and legal obligation to enable online education for EWS students ensuring free laptop/iPad/mobile phone and high speed internet for online classes through video conferencing to be provided free of cost to children defined under Section 2 (c) of the RTE Act.

Encouragingly, the NEP plans to set up a National Education Technical Forum to oversee capacity building, develop e-content and provide a platform for educational institutions and stakeholders to share best practices leveraging technology. Setting up of more virtual labs to give students remote access to experiment-based learning and virtual field trips strongly suggests that the policy promises a lot in focusing on experimental learning. It also aims at providing learning apps, satellite-based TV channels and teacher’s training to strengthen online learning.

NEP is set to include more online and e-learning platforms at both school and college levels to make education more technology-oriented. It also seeks to encourage research across a higher perspective of education by setting up a National Research Foundation.

It is very likely that remote learning and technology-based education delivery are going to become the new normal and will attract huge investment. Digital divide may only be bridged with requisite hardware and software networking facilities.

Realizing the desired emphasis on digitisation and virtual teachinglearning, a higher spend on education is desirable to upgrade digital infrastructure. Getting private sector spending may be a plausible solution. Instead of building new infrastructure in higher education institutions, the existing government structures could be rebuilt in modern mode. Public- Private Partnership could be reinvented in a better way so that equitable education opportunities to all through EdTech platforms could be extended.

Augmentation of quality of teaching goes hand in hand to prepare a pool of trained manpower for post-Covid campuses. In this respect the government may collaborate with private industry to ensure continuous skill enhancement of educators. EdTech has risen to the occasion during the prolonged lockdown periods.

It is feared that prolonged out-ofschool learning might lead to children staying away from school systems. India has 1.4 million schools, 2.01 million children (classes 1-8) enrolled in government schools and an additional 3.8 million children in classes 9-10. More than a fourth of the population are children and 19.29 per cent are in the age group of 6-14 years, being entitled to education under RTE Act, 2009.

In spite of increase in awareness to get children educated and their enrollment, India’s learning crisis remains critical. An interesting reason has been reported by the National Sample Survey as a reason for dropout (27.7 per cent) – “child not interested”, which is likely to be more emphatic due to pandemic and lockdowns.

As per an estimate, India’s school education system includes 10,93,66 contractual teachers at the elementary levels. The pandemic has made them uncertain about their continued employment. Added to this, lack of infrastructure in schools like safe drinking water, toilets, handwashing, electricity etc. may not allow them to reopen soon. Nearly 9.12 crore children are not able to get their midday meals during the closure. Less than 12 per cent of schools are RTE compliant. The present emphasis on tech- driven education may exclude many of them from continuing their education.

NEP 2000, which suggested a huge restructuring of the school curriculum, envisages learners through the school and higher education system being exposed to vocational education. Vocational courses through distance mode would also be encouraged. Skill based training is being prioritised with greater implementation of modern technology. There are certain challenges that the government is expected to address in order to expedite the implementation process.

In the absence of unequivocal operational guidelines regarding curriculum priorities, the education sector came up with different approaches recently to keep the show going. Some priorities concerned the academic skills and knowledge that students needed to maintain in subjects such as language, mathematics, science and history.

Keeping the pandemic situation in mind, the idea already in vogue is that students are hardly able to transfer the knowledge and skill acquired in school to everyday situations. The narrative can accelerate the idea that school is boring and less worthy in the making of an individual. It is worth mention that the OPEC has called for an effort to make education more ‘meaningful’ through revamped curricula that are more challenging and interesting for students.

The Council of Ministers of Education in Canada has stressed the importance of giving priority to global competencies within curricula that can be leveraged in different situations. The Covid situation has raised questions about the usefulness of certain curriculum content. The NEP can draw on the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals as a source of framing contextualised and authentic learning situations relating to challenges facing mankind.

If the new normal becomes the order of the day, NEP might require certain revisions in the areas of strengthening the normative framework of the RTE Act instead of restricting it. It will need to situate equity, inclusion and diversity accordingly. The one nation, one channel or one digital framework thereby may not be able to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

A country with nearly 50 per cent of its population below 25, India needs extra emphasis on education. Education, that happens to be on the Concurrent List, has seldom been a priority of either the Centre or state governments, The allocation for education in the new budget reflects the same trend and, like the previous budgetary exercises, lacks the components that can help the education sector take a giant leap forward.

The writer, a former Associate Professor, Department of English, Gurudas College, Kolkata, is presently with Rabindra Bharati University.

Education budget 2021: Move afoot to strengthen 15,000 schools qualitatively

The National Education Policy prominently features in the budget announcements made by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday with regard to school education. In August last year, Tamil Nadu had constituted a committee to examine NEP 2020.

Among the budget announcements is the proposed qualitative strengthening of 15,000 schools to include all components of the NEP. These exemplar schools in their regions will mentor other institutions to achieve ideals of the policy and this has been welcomed by several industry experts.

“The budget has touched upon the much-anticipated implementation of NEP with a mentoring model where 15,000 schools will be strengthened initially and in turn work with other schools to follow suit. Bringing in the changes proposed in the policy in this systematic manner would definitely bring in more emphasis and structure in the Early Childhood Care and education system in India,” said A.K. Srikanth, CEO, KLAY Preschool & Day-care.

In the annexure provided, the National Professional Standards for Teachers (NPST) is to be developed as proposed in the NEP.”We welcome bringing in professional standards for teachers. Two aspects, however, which need to be kept in mind are that standards are dynamic and need to keep pace with the changing environment. Teacher competencies are changing with the needs of the students. Secondly, India has a diverse educational landscape and these standards to have equitable design,” said Anjali Jain, Founder and Director, Centre for Teacher Accreditation (CENTA).

The budget also made an announcement about the revamping of the post-matric scholarship scheme and has stated that the central assistance has been enhanced in this regard with an allocation of ₹35,219 crore for the next six years.

The Tamil Nadu government had called for a restructuring of the scheme early in December before the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs made the changes to the scheme and introduced a new funding pattern of 60-40 for the Centre and States.