A Post from the battle front – Protsaah 2009

Protsaah 2009 gets underway at Indore in a few minutes as I sit down to write this after an early morning round of tennis, cold coffee and a bunch of newspaper.  I saw this post in my mailbox from Ashish Bahri as I sat down.  I thought it may not be a bad idea to share this in my ‘satyaspeak’ for this weekend. Read more

Practicing and enabling entrepreneurship – The raison d’etre of IWSB

Youth is a heady concoction. The power of being young is blinding.  Charmingly so ! She knows no fears. She cares not about authority figure.  She has no time for niceties and conventions. While we see the manifestations of these in various aspects of life, I will limit myself to the less glamorous subject of entrepreneurship for today. Read more

Multigrade is omnipresent. Lets not live in denial.

Have you ever walked into a class and found every one of equal attainment even if they are of the same age ?  I am sure you do not have to be a teacher with years or decades of teaching experience to answer that question.  Even more ludicrous is the mathematical concept of ‘an average student’.  No one with that description exists in flesh and blood and yet we design all classes to cater to this imaginary creature. Read more

A School’s Promise - providing joyful learning and successful career building

A School’s Promise - providing joyful learning and successful career building

Would you not consider IWS as the only school that understands the joy of learning ? and sure the only school that understands building great careers….. ?

While we spend of time and energy building IWS into a noted institution of repute, the challenge of messaging appropriately to the market place is a challenge of highest priority. The message has to be unitary. The promise has to be simple and must coincide with the biggest needs of the customer group – The parents and the grandparents who are the decision makers. The message has to be consistent with our real offerings to ensure robust and sustainable promise delivery.

The Current Scenario:
The greatest myth in the world of school education is that the parent has to make a choice between either of the two schools – One that understands the child and the needs of the child, provides for the freedom and the joy of learning. The Rishi Valleys, the Mirambikas belong to this genre. On the other hand, they could choose a school that is hardcorely focused on turning out so-called successful students at the end of their schooling careers – scores in Board Exams, getting into IITs / Medical schools etc,….. are the measures of these schools. The Narayanas, the Chaitanya from the South or the Market-Savvy DPS RKPuram belong to this category.

The IWS Opportunity :
IWS genuinely believes that the joy of learning and an unhurried engagement which is led by inquisitiveness ensures a sound fundamentals for the child. With the child being at the centre and always under focus and attention, we are more likely to detect the child’s talents, special gifts and so on.

By the time the child enters grade VIII, the distinction that IWS can provide is not an ordinary one. There is no parallel to what IWS can bring in to weigh for the child and the family in terms of wholistic and cutting-edge mentoring with regard to the students’ careers.

As the architects of BRAND IWS, we need to be all aligned and deeply focused on taking this message to the market place. This is particularly true as the child travels thro Jigyaasa and the parents begin to worry more about their child’s future.

IWS comes from the stable of Career Launcher. While we are aware that CL is behind IWS, I am quite certain that we are yet to bring a whole of the credibility and track record of having mentored and coached students into the hallowed portals for the after-school careers. Let me illustrate my point.

This year alone, over 250 students are on their way into the IITs from CL. 7 out of every 10 National Law School entrants are from CL. Dozens of aspirants are getting their visas ready to join places such as Oxford, CMU, SMU, Stanford etc,. Many more would join the leading Indian colleges such as LSR, Stephens, Presidency, NIFT, and so on. I am not even speaking about our stories at the PG levels – IIM, GRE, GMAT, etc,.

We intend to bring these competencies into IWS in a sure-footed manner. IWS-Indore will be ready to offer the foundation courses in the area of aptitude building etc,. that would be of value to the students for a lifetime.

The Board related commitment is a hygiene. The child’s future related commitment and deliverables would the real measure of our success. We are going to be measured by our ability to identify the talent and nurture that into a successful career launch by the time the child graduates at the age of 18.

I am sure you agree that this is the real yield that a school can promise. If a child is dance-talent or science-talented, the school must endeavour to make it happen for the child and the family. If that is the yield we are going to be measured on, we need to grow those competencies. Many of those strengths are available at CL. Those that are not (Music, Dance, etc,.) yet need to be built purposefully by IWS.

The task of Outreach :
One of the tasks of our Outreach team is to create a strong messaging and mechanism to make IWS a sought-after school of the city. We need to compete for the best set of parents and talented children. The best way to compete in the market place is by creating the ‘pull’. We need to this at every IWS location from Mandi to Ahmednagar. From Raipur to Indore. We need to bring a lot purposefulness and local innovation/customization to make it work better for your city.

‘Protsaah’, an annual talent and means based scholarship program that we intend to launch shortly tries to address this task of creating the ‘pull’ for IWS. While you await for a detailed concept note shortly, it is appropriate that I share a couple of core details here and urge you to go all out to make it a success.

In a nutshell, we are intending to give away scholarships worth almost Rs 50 Lakhs (or more) spread across all our schools. In each grade there are 12 students earning scholarships of varying levels (from 100% to 25%) of the fee. This is applicable to our students as well as outsiders and will be an annual feature at IWS. We would measure the academic talent as well as other talents as part of the process.

Messaging and visibility is a task:
Even the best of ideas needs a strong commitment to execute effectively. As they say, the devil is always in execution and not in conception or ideation. APPLE is decidedly far superior to MICROSOFT as a product. But, a thing or two that Bill Gates did and believed in doing took at far ahead of Steve when it came to successful growth of their entities.

We want to build a school that is a mainstream success and not a ‘side story’. Let us make every endeavour to make it happen for IWS. In many ways, while IWS Indore is our Litmus test, being at the threshold of Sadhana, we have no time to lose for any IWS location. Our arrival itself must be felt by the citizens and families in a telling manner – through an academically engaging fashion and make IWS an aspirational place !!

The time of reckoning is here !
Satya

CHEH SOU TEEN KI KAHANI

The Story that is sharply contrasting. The true joy for a teacher !

The past week has seen the announcements of the results of IITJEE and AIEEE, the twin engineering entrance exams of the country. Nitin Jain, a young lad from Faridabad ( a town adjacent to Delhi), has topped both the exams. It is rather uncommon to see the same student cracking both these entrance exams. At least, I cannot recall any other over the past decade or so. Read more