New Delhi [India], April 6 (ANI/BusinessWire India): Leading Indian Educationist and Padma Shri Awardee Gowri Ishwaran has recently joined the leadership board of India’s most promising new-age teaching and learning based educational institution.
VEGA Schools is one of the top schools in Gurugram and is the first Indian school to be selected by the Global Schools Alliance (GSA) for its progressive & globally aligned ‘Problem based learning (PBL) teaching methodology, making it one of the world’s most innovative schools.
The GSA is an alliance of 15 of the world’s most innovative schools from across the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Featuring in the GSA list as one of the best innovative and futurist teaching & learning institutions is no small feat for an Indian school that is leading the way forward while disrupting the conventional teaching practices prevalent across schools in India with their progressive ‘Problem based learning (PBL) teaching and learning methodologies.
As one of the most influential educators in India, Gowri Ishwaran has been credited with numerous accolades and has been responsible for mentoring, nurturing and enabling students with different skill sets, interests and capabilities to succeed beyond academics. The Padma Shri Awardee and Founder Principal of Sanskriti School is also an advisor to the Shiv Nadar Foundation and has joined the leadership board of VEGA Schools, Gurugram. As a true educationist, her mission is to mentor and nurture young people to evolve into ethical leaders and change-makers of tomorrow. Ishwaran’s own assessment of VEGA Schools unique PBL learning methodology finds validity and relevance for future change-makers to be nurtured and to succeed as she said, “I love the system that has been introduced at Vega Schools. To succeed in life you don’t always have to be an ‘A-lister’ where marks are concerned, but you have to be an ‘A-lister’ in other fields as well. And to succeed, just the content knowledge is not enough. It is how you communicate, how you deliver, what your thoughts are, your level of creativity and where your interests lie.”
The impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is being felt across educational institutions and schools across the world currently. However, it has already highlighted the challenges that lie ahead globally, as well as for the Indian job market.
As everyone moves towards a new world, the parameters of guaranteeing a student’s future success are now increasingly being attributed to superior development and application of 21st Century capabilities and skills, and not just on marks or grades alone as a measure of the future success of a student. Gowri Ishwaran further states, “In India, by and large, it has been a rote learning methodology. So, the kind of content you develop through rote learning doesn’t really give you any indication of the level of understanding. Success is not achieved only through marks. There are children who are academically inclined and will get good marks, and there are other children who are not academically inclined but have other talents. So you have to actually judge a child by the kind of ability or talent that he or she has. While there are students who have done very well for themselves, who have been academically bright and have risen to the top of their careers, but they have always been very innovative and creative, even in school.”
Highlighting the need to adopt progressive and innovative teaching and learning methodologies that will determine personal and professional success in future, Ishwaran provided insights on how exams and marks alone cannot measure future success. In a recent webinar with Sandy Hooda, Co-Founder of VEGA Schools, Ishwaran meticulously highlighted the need for overhauling the current Indian education system and how parents can help their children benefit via progressive learning methods like Problem based learning (PBL) here: https://vega.edu.in/what-is-the-correlation-between-exams-and-success-in-life/
With the pace of change accelerating in the 21stcentury, a key requirement to thrive is lifelong learning and the ability to acquire new skills quickly. To enable ‘learning to learn and to be able to continually reinvent oneself is possible only if it’s fostered in children from a young age. This can occur only if it is widely recognized by educators, policymakers and parents alike. Parents of today can help prepare their children to succeed in the future world if they enable them to embrace and learn real-world skills by enrolling their children in institutions that use progressive teaching methods and innovative learning approaches to make them excel in life – both personally and professionally. Dr Steven Edwards, a former advisor to the Whitehouse, United Nations and one of the Co-founders of Vega Schools, Gurugram says, “The Problem Based learning methodology at Vega is designed to enable our learners to develop the mindset, skill-set and values to navigate a rapidly changing world. Schools need to teach things that will lead to real-world success. We believe in the 40-40-40 rule. Our learners must not only learn for the next 40 days, but their academic understanding should also be such that they can apply what they’ve learnt over the next 40 weeks and 40 years.”
Embracing these changes in the current education system will be challenging and time-taking for a majority of schools in the country.
Vega Schools has already garnered many accolades and had recently won the ‘Top Education Brands Awards 2020’ in the ‘Innovative Schools in India’ and as one of the “Top 5 schools in Gurgaon” category that was presided by a jury of eminent leaders from the education domain namely – Dr R. Ramanan (Mission Director, of the Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) & Additional Secretary at NITI Aayog), Dr Manish Kumar (MD & CEO, National Skill Development Corporation), Lata Vaidyanathan (Director of TERI Prakriti and former Principal, Modern School-Delhi), Dr Pankaj Mittal (Secretary-General, Association of Indian Universities (AIU) to name a few.
Vega Schools Leadership board comprises highly qualified and experienced educators and diverse leaders from all walks of life. Besides Gowri Ishwaran, the board includes the likes of Rajan Hooda (formerly McKinsey), David Price (OBE), LeneJensby Lange (Danish designer of learning), Sunil Radhakrishna (Formerly DCM Shriram Group) & Dr Rajat Chauhan (former Director of Sports, Ashoka University).
Given the success of the PBL methodology and pedagogy at their first school campus in Gurugram, Vega Schools, which is now considered as one of the best schools in Gurgaon, is also launching a second school campus. The new K-12 campus that is coming up in Gurugram, will also become India’s first CBSE school that shall have classrooms with moving walls and which will be completely aligned with the NEP 2020 requirements.
To know about Vega Schools, Gurgaon and the NEP aligned pedagogy of (PBL) Problem based learning; you can visit www.vega.edu.in or call +91-9899330955.
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