Education in India

Intel Chief Craig Barrett on challenges for Research & Education in the U.S.

[Via Emergic] Excerpts from SFGate.com' interview with Intel Chief Craig Barrett, where he makes a case for increased R&D spending, quantitative testing of student's abilities in schools, a larger role for charter schools and private schools.

Q: Are there any concrete things that you would suggest [to produce more talent in the U.S.]?

A: There are four things you can do in the United States to be competitive, and none of them is easy. The education system is first and foremost.

You need to fix the K-12 education system and have a higher influx of kids into college in the technical areas.

The second one is research and development, because R&D is the seed corn for products and services of the future. How much does the U.S. invest annually in agricultural subsidies, the industry of the 19th century? If you put food stamps in, you can get to a figure of $30 billion or $35 billion. If you keep food stamps out, you get $20 billion to $25 billion. How much does the United States invest annually in basic R&D in physical sciences? About $5 billion. Depending on how you count it, you spend four to six times more on agricultural subsidies, the industry of the 19th century, than you invest in producing the ideas for the industries of the 21st century. So, R&D spending is critical.

It's also infrastructure. It's not bridges or roads. It's communications infrastructure, information technology infrastructure. You know that the United States is a laggard in broadband. We're kind of a third-world country from a wireless standpoint.

And the last thing that you can worry about is the Hippocratic oath of "Do no harm," but not applying to doctors, applying to governments. California (is) a wonderful example of where government rules, (and) regulations and policies are not only restrictive, but detrimental, in driving business away. Other countries are aggressively pursuing investment, much more than the United States.

Q: On K-12, what would you do?

A: For about two years plus, I was a member of the Glenn Commission. Sen. (John) Glenn had a commission and came out with a report -- and the title of the report is "Before It's Too Late" -- in 2001.

The Glenn Commission addresses this issue of what to do with math and science education in K-12 as a series of recommendations. Everything from: Treat teachers as professionals, use technology, put meritocracy into the system, pay for performance, make it easier for people to become math and science teachers, etc. I signed off on the report.

Q: You spent a lot of time on it?

A: Monthly or bi-monthly meetings and other stuff for a couple of years. It was a classic government report. You have a problem, you assign a commission to study it, you get the commission's report, you accept it with open arms, tie a red ribbon around it, put it on the bookshelf and you never look at it again. Then you continue to ask the question, "So what shall we do?"

From my very simple standpoint, I would put some competition in the system, and I would quantify the system. I happen to be an Arizona resident. It doesn't make any difference. It can be a California resident or an Oregon resident or a New Mexico resident, there's an active debate in each one of those states about no child left behind, about quantified testing. You hear all of the arguments about how demeaning it is to schools, teachers and takes away from classroom learning. I'm an engineer. I don't know how to solve a problem unless you measure what you're trying to solve. ... I'm a big fan of testing and I'm a big fan of quantitative measures.

I'm a big fan of competition. Competition is charter schools or private schools. I don't think the K-12 public school system is capable of reforming itself in a required period of time unless it has some form of competition.

The 'Madras System' of schooling

During my graduate school days I had been a Teaching Assistant (TA) in the Physics Department at Cornell University. As a TA, I had been part of the team of TAs assisting the professor in the freshman physics courses which had 150-200 students. There was very little opportunity for students to interact with the Professor teaching the course during the lectures and most of the interaction (questions, clarifications, problem solving approaches etc.) happened in the smaller sections of 15-20 students in which the TAs met with the students twice a week in class. The TAs also announced office hours during which they would be available to the students.

I found that students learnt more in their interaction with the TAs (who were typically just 4-5 years older than the students themselves), than from the lectures by the professors, where they were one in 200 students in a huge lecture hall. The students were very comfortable with their TAs in admitting their lack of understanding even after they had had something explained to them more than once and asked thought provoking questions. On a few occassions, I found myself trying to explain concepts to students only to discover some gaps in my own understanding as well as new ways of looking at things I thought I knew very well. I think the fact that the students were being taught by someone in the same age groups as them (only slightly older) was a major factor in hastening their learning.

In the context of schools, it turns out that Rev. Dr. Andrew Bell arrived at the very same conclusion in the city of Madras back in the late 1700s and it has been institutionalised in many schools across the world. This method came to be termed the 'Madras System'.

An article in The Hindu by S. Muthiah, the historian of Madras traces the story of how Dr. Andrew Bell arrived in Madras in 1787 on his way to Calcutta, ended up staying in Madras, came to found the 'Madras System' and went on to set up the Madras College St. Andrews on his return to England.

P2P filesharing to help teachers share one another's teaching resources

The Chronicle of Higher Education points to LionShare - a peer-to-peer file-sharing system will allow teachers/researchers to search their own and one another's digital collections of documents, images, and other material (residing on each other's computers).

The Internet itself was the first step towards that, but required each individual to put up his/her resources online and not many folks put up stuff they had. But now with storage being pushed back one level to each indivdual's own computer, all the interesting stuff residing on one's desktop can becomes available now to others.

Along with the benefits, the article also discusses the fears of the teaching community if they chose to share their files.

Challenges in looking at education as a scaling business

Education Week (registration required) carried an article (in August 2002) analysing the challenges in looking at education as a scaling business in the context of critiquing the business model and strategy of Edison Schools*, a for-profit publicly listed company in the U.S. in the school management business. The article raises some important and thought provoking issues.

Establishing 'Brand' and Growing Rapidly

Successful consumer companies establish "brand," allowing what they sell to be readily identified in the marketplace. But replicating a successful school at multiple sites is not like replicating a successful restaurant or bookstore. Schools' raw materials (students) are highly individual and unpredictable, the product of forces external to the school. The central control required to create schools that look and feel and educate like all a company's other schools stands in direct contradiction to the need for every school to respond to its students and community, its "customers."

School design and curricula are only the starting points of the complex and nuanced task of creating a successful school. There's the matter of finding the right leadership and faculty, and nurturing their understanding of teaching and learning and their relationships with each other, their students, their students' families, and communities. And once a thriving school climate is established, it requires cultivation and support.

The requirement for rapid growth further complicates the enormous challenge of establishing brand and controlling quality while responding to local needs.

The Demand for Profitability and the Illusion of Scale

The bottom-line demand of the market is profitability. But Edison has never been profitable. Since the company's earliest days, Edison executives have said that when it gets big enough their company will become profitable. While the number of schools said to be needed for profitability has increased over the years, the basic notion has remained: When we have enough schools over which to spread our overhead costs and negotiate discounted prices from suppliers, we'll show a profit.

The problem with this scenario is that economies of scale don't apply to the business of schooling. Economies of scale work in industries with uniform products. But as noted above, schooling is not one-design-fits-all, and individual school faculties and communities want input into their schools. In addition, while one can assume that Edison with its 130 schools can bargain a better price with suppliers than a school district with 10 schools, materials and supplies are not what make schooling expensive. Schooling is highly labor-intensive, with salaries constituting 80 percent or more of school budgets. Short of hiring cheap labor (underqualified teachers) or replacing teachers with computers, neither of which is recommended as a way to create successful schools, there's simply no way to dramatically reduce labor costs.

A key challenge is to enable each school to respond to its "customers" - its students and the community, and yet grow in terms of the number of such schools to be able to extract the economies of scale. Another challenge is to find a way for schools to generate enough income to pay for qualified, competent and committed and yet keep the education affordable for all its students.

A school business model I described earlier might be one way out. It envisages a whole bunch of Local Units rooted in the local community and responsive to the needs of the students, constantly innovating and experimenting with various different methods and a Central Unit which serves to consolidate purchases, co-ordinate the sharing of information and knowledge amongst the various Local Units and also provide all other kinds of support services to the Local Units.

To address the second challenge of generating enough income to be able to afford qualified, competent and committed teachers by paying the salaries on par with other professions, I think we ought to explore the possibility of the school's resources (the infrastructure, the teachers and the students as well) adding value to the community as part of the education proceess thereby generating some revenues for the school itself.
One such idea could be adapted to the school environment.
____________

* Edison Schools was founded in 1992 in USA, went public and listed on NASDAQ in November 1999, had grown to a chain of 108 schools in 2000, 130 schools in 2002 and had also expanded into UK in 2002. Since August 2002, Edison Schools has moved ahead. It merged with another company in July 2003 and went private and delisted. According to a recent press release (dated September 24, 2004),

Edison expects to serve more than 250,000 students for the 2004-2005 academic year -- marking significant growth over the previous year. Best known for partnering with school districts and charter school boards to operate schools, Edison will manage 157 schools in 20 states and the District of Columbia in 2004-2005

In 2004-05, Edison Schools UK will expand operations beyond Essex to serve approximately 15,000 students in 32 schools for the academic year 2004-05.

The Edison UK program, which was developed by a joint team of UK-based educators in conjunction with Edison, is designed to support teachers, motivate students, eng age parents and the community, and raise student achievement levels. Schools retain their autonomy, and benefit from Edison's expertise in helping teachers and school leadership accelerate learning through a core skills curriculum, assessment for learning tools, strategies for parent school engagement, and for creating a positive learning environment

More on the Varkey Group's presence in India

The Varkey Group has announced plans to set up 100 schools across India. I looked for some information on their presence in India. Here's all I managed to find.

The personal web site of an educational consultant states that

Goswamy was the C.E.O. (India) of Global Educational Management Pvt. Ltd., UAE and As the CEO and Head of Operations of Varkey Educational Services (Multinational based in UAE) [his responsibility was to] plan and implement operation of educational management, computer education, counseling services and academic selection & recruitment for the schools under the group.

Goswamy has also done some consultancy work for Varkey Educational Services Pvt. Ltd (VESPL)

A quick check on the web site of the Registrar of Companies provides the following information:

• Varkey Educational Services Private Limited was registered as a company on May 06, 1991 in the state of Karnataka.
• Varkey International Schools Private Limited was registered as a company on June 24, 1993 in the state of Karnataka.
• Global Education Management Private Limited was registered as a company on January 01, 1997 in the state of Delhi
• Global Educational Management Systems Private Limited was registered as a company on June 24, 1998 in the state of Karnataka

I'm not sure which, if any, of the above companies are owned by the Varkey Group, which is supposed to have set up office in Pune, India.

According to a news report on GEMS plans for global expansion,

As part of its international expansion plans, Global Education Management Systems (GEMS), a member of the Varkey Group, has expanded its management team by hiring John Marshall as Business Development Manager and John Mason as Head of Asian Schools-South Asia and Middle East.

Mason has more than 35 years of experience in education, including seven years as head of the Doon School immediate preceding his appointment to GEMS. He also spent four years as Principal of The Modern High School in Dubai, a GEMS-managed school, and 14 years as Head of the St. James School in Calcutta. He was a member of the Standing Committee on Examinations at the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations and author of a number of textbooks published by Oxford University Press.

Varkey group plans 100 schools in India and many more across the world

The Economic Times (August 25, 2004) reports,

After taking Britain’s education market by storm with ambitious plans to build or manage 200 schools in the next five years, the Dubai-based Varkey Group’s Global Education Management Systems (GEMS) is heading back home, to India. Sunny Varkey, the Indian chairman of the Varkey Group, plans to have 100 schools in India under the GEMS banner in the next few years. “We are now looking at establishing a network of GEMS schools in both India and the United States and are speaking with a number of individuals and organisations who would like GEMS to manage schools in India,” says Mr Varkey. The group is also in talks with potential partners in countries including some in Latin America, Europe and China. “The opportunity for private education exists everywhere in the world,” says Mr Varkey, who claims that the group is probably among the largest education companies in the world.

GEMS has already begun to make inroads into India with agreements to manage a premium school in Noida; another in Peddapuram, Andhra Pradesh; and a girl’s school in Jalandhar. This apart, it is building two schools (in Gurgaon and Bangalore) as reference sites to showcase GEMS education, practice and quality assurance programmes.

The group has also been approached by the Delhi government to develop a quality framework for publicly-funded schools. Considering the huge global shortage of teachers, a teacher training college in India is also on the cards. “We are speaking to the University of London to work in association with us on this project,” says Mr Varkey.

I haven't been able to find any information on their schools in either Noida, Peddapuram or Jalandhar or their work for the Delhi Government.

Initially, GEMS schools will focus on the premium end of the market as “India has entered a new era of economic growth, and with that comes an increased need for providing world class, international education, within the country,” says Mr Varkey. However, it will develop schools targeted at the middle-income segment in the second phase.

Most other groups too have entered the field of education (DPS, Reliance, Birlas and others) by targeting the premium end of the market. The Tatas are the only ones looking to target the middle-income segment by providing quality education at an affordable price.

To develop GEMS in India, the group has put together a team of professionals including John Mason, former head of the Doon School; and RC Bhargava, former MD of Maruti Udyog. “Like we’ve done in the Middle East, we are looking at a long-term commitment to developing quality education in various parts of India,” says Mr Varkey.

A news report (dated September 10, 2003) says GEMS opened an office in Pune in India.

As part of its international expansion plans, Global Education Management Systems GEMS, a member of the Varkey Group, has expanded its management team by hiring John Marshall as Business Development Manager and John Mason as Head of Asian Schools-South Asia and Middle East. Earlier this year, GEMS launched its UK and European operations with the opening of a London office and augmented its activities in India with a new office in Pune.

Another article in The Economic Times (September 24, 2004) has more.

Where [Ray] Kroc [founder of McDonald's] saw assembly lines of hamburgers, Varkey sees a network of hundreds, and eventually thousands, of schools criss-crossing the continents — from the Americas to Afghanistan, Britain to India and China. In the next 20-25 years, he’s targeting over 5,000 Varkey group schools.

“I believe the opportunity for private education exists everywhere in the world. Parents and students are looking for alternatives to publicly-funded education... there is tremendous scope,” says Varkey, speaking from his suite at the Dorchester Hotel in London. “We are primarily interested in managing schools. We will follow a franchising model, but we’d like to manage it (the schools) as we’ve built a lot of goodwill over the years.”

The Varkey education empire, to which over 80% of the group’s business is dedicated, began in the early 1980s when Sunny took over management of his parent’s Our Own English High School in Dubai. At the time, the school had 720 students and 27 teachers. Today, he oversees a growing network of 35 international schools employing over 4,000 professionals and providing education to more than 45,000 students. The Varkey group is one of the largest non-national business groups in the United Arab Emirates.

Following the hotel industry model, GEMS schools will be categorised literally as three, four, or five-star. “We have developed school models that are designed to deliver quality education combined with facilities and fee structures to meet the requirements of any community,” says Varkey. The schools all provide the same standard of quality, differing only in the levels of facilities offered.

Another hallmark of GEMS’ education will be its emphasis on communication and interaction between school and home. In the UK, for instance, parents will not only get weekly or fortnightly e-mail on their children’s progress but breakfast clubs and after-school activities will match parents’ schedules with their child’s.

Varkey has perceived the school education opportunity well and seems to be systematically going about setting the foundation for his company to exploit the opportunity. The credibility and experience they have gained by running the chain of schools in Dubai mean that they are a serious player and not someone who is jumping in without a clue. While there are global majors in other infrastructure sectors, it is surprising that there are none yet in the Education sector. Varkey seems to be the first player to set his sights on the global market and is already one of the biggest education companies in the world.

This raises another interesting question. School education in particular needs to be rooted in the local cultural and social milieu. Is the inability to appreciate the local educational requirements of other countries one of the reasons for American education companies like Edison Schools (set up as far back as 1992) failing to expand beyond the U.S. and U.K. (Edison Schools UK was set up in 2002)? By the same argument, does the Varkey Group's background - a group managed by an ethnic Indian, running schools delivering curriculum from US, UK, Europe, India and the GCC, to students of multiple nationalities (expats) living in Dubai - give the Varkey Group an edge in expanding globally by virtue of their ability to appreciate multicultural local issues better?

A previous post had described Varkey Group's expansion into the UK, where they have opted to enter the middle segment of the market by providing affordable (£6,000 a year) school education on par with the costs of education in public schools and far below the costs in other private schools.

Other links to Varkey Group sites include their global web site - their global web site, their UK web site and the Varkey Group web site.

GMR Foundation looking to hire a Director (Education)

GMR Foundation runs an engineering college - GMR Institute of Technology, a college - G.C.S.R College, which offers B.Sc., B.Com. B.A., B.C.A., M.Sc. (Computer Science) besides advanced courses in Computer Science, Electronics, Environmental Science and Vocational Courses in Commerce and a school - Bhavan's Varalakshmi Vidyashram in collaboration with the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.

GMR Foundation is looking to hire a Director (Education).

According to an ad in Business Standard (print edition dated Thursday, September 23, 2004, p11),

GMR Group is one of India's leading infrastructure organisations, with an asset base of over Rs. 2,500 crores with interests in Power, Transportation and Manufacturing.

GMR Group believes that social infrastructure is as important to a nation's development as physical infrastructure. It was in this light that GMR Foundation was set up as a service-oriented, non-profit organisation, thirteen years ago by the Group. GMRF's charter is to help build India's social infrastructure and to share prosperity with the community. The Foundatoin follows the Group's philosophy of combining passion with excellence in every area of its activity.

Currently the Foundation is actively involved in Education, Healthcare, Hygiene and Empowerment of Rural Youth. Other activities include providing basic amenities like food and water. The Foundation has been active in touching and improving the lives of the rural and urban populace in Rajam (Srikakulam District), Bangalore, Mangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Rajahmundry etc.

The GMR Foundation is looking for:

Director Education

The Director Education will oversee efficient and effective functioning of Engineering college, Degree college and Schools all of which come under the aegis of GMRF. A self-propelled professional with the ability to develop, motivate, and supervise academic as well as administrative functions will be the ideal person for the job. His/Her academic leadership will be reflected through the ability to develop progressive and innovative pedagogical methods, recruit and retain high calibre faculty, set highest standards of academic excellence and develop vocational curriculum.

A Post Graduate in Engineering, not over 45 years of age, who has served in the capacity of a Registrar or a similar position in a well-known institution for a tleast 10 years will be preferred.

The remuneration package will be attractive. Interested candidates may forward their CVs with details of accomplishments within 15 days to the address mentioned below or email to srinivasanc@gmrgroup.co.in

GMR Group - Corporate Office: Skip House, 25/1, Museum Road, Bangalore – 560 025, Tel: 91-80-2207 0100 Fax: 91-80-2299 0577

The same ad also advertised for the post of Chief Executive Office for the GMR Foundation.

Corporates look to set up private universities - mergers and acquisitions a possibility

According to a report in Business Line (September 06, 2004),

Keeping in line with its plans to set up its own University, computer hardware and networking institute Jetking is mulling purchasing an existing private university in Uttaranchal or Chattisgarh. "We are considering opening Jetking University. We will do it either by purchasing an existing private university in Uttaranchal or Chattisgarh, or by setting it up on our own," Mr Suresh G. Bharwani, Chairman and Managing Director of Jetking, told Business Line.

He said that investment for the venture was estimated at about Rs 12 crore to be partly funded through internal accruals. "About 25 per cent of the investment would be supported by internal accruals. The balance would come through a mix of equity and debt. We plan to go for another public offer and also take loans from banks," he pointed out.

He said Jetking was already in talks with two private universities, one each in Chattisgarh and Uttaranchal, but declined to divulge the names. "It may not necessarily be a 100 per cent buy out. The deal could be a majority purchase," he pointed out.

Jetking University would offer IT education encompassing hardware and networking, security and telecom curriculum. It may also include bio-informatics, at a later stage. In the first phase, the proposed University would offer Bachelors degree in IT.

He hoped that Jetking University would be established by next March.

Mergers and Acquisitions are beginning to happen in the private university sector! But one thing still puzzles me. How are for-profit companies planning to make money off private universities? By law, any educational activity in India has to be run on a not-for-profit basis and a Supreme Court court judgement has reinforced that.

Business Line (September 20, 2004) describes the plans of IT majors - Aptech and NIIT - for private universities.

Building on the strength of their knowledge and expertise in IT training, these companies are taking a step that could be seen as a logical extension - setting up universities. Aptech has launched its University and is in the process of setting up its campus at Raipur, Chattisgarh. Online entrance exams have been held for students wishing to pursue courses at the University and the admission procedure at its colleges at Chennai and Mumbai is in full swing.

"Aptech University will aim at ensuring industry-relevant courseware, technology-enabled teaching methodology, internships and industry-alliances. Students will be better prepared to gel with industry-requirements. We intend satisfying all UGC norms at the minimum in the run-up to forming a world-class University," says Khera.

"World over, education is a $2-trillion industry and in India too, the potential for the education sector is huge," says Khera. The company plans to invest Rs 8-10 crore over the next 12-18 months and Rs 20-25 crore over the next five years. Aptech is looking at enrolling over 1,000 students in the University in this academic year in various courses.

As for NIIT and its plans, a company spokesperson says the Madhya Pradesh Assembly has approved the necessary legislation.The procedural formalities that follow are under way. While the details of the proposal were not available, NIIT expects the completion of this process in the 'near future.'

IIM - an accidental brand.

R Jagannathan, writing in the Business Standard (March 23, 2004) argues that the IIM brand is accidental and I agree with him.

My argument is that the reputation of the IIMs has been built on the quality of its students and alumni - not the other way around. This fact can be easily checked out: Indians with means would any day opt for a Harvard or Wharton - and they would even find it easier to get admissions.

If at all the IIMs need to be complimented on anything, it is the huge entry barrier they have put up to prevent average students from getting in.

And if I were a corporate, I wouldn't look beyond the CAT preparatory schools for recruits. If you merely want candidates who have the right mental skills for success, a CAT ranker is as good as an MBA - and without the arrogance.

Why wait two years for him to earn an MBA, spend another year teaching him business realities, and live all the time with the fear that he may abandon ship at the slightest opportunity?

Groups as big as the Tatas or Birlas may actually find it cheaper to put candidates through simple IQ tests, organise customised learning on the job and create an internal campus where the faculty would be a mix of in-house managers and academics who understand the Tata or Birla ethos.

Such students would also come cheaper, since they would not have wasted two years trying to acquire an MBA that's far removed from reality. I wouldn't be surprised if many corporates start thinking along those lines shortly. The growing popularity of executive MBA programmes is a foretaste of things to come.

Quite clearly, if the IIMs and other B-schools are to be relevant at all in the Indian context, they have to reinvent themselves. They are succeeding today only because the people who buy their products - corporates, primarily - are too lazy to do the job themselves.

The issue before both the government and the faculty is simple: accident or otherwise, they have a good brand on their hands. Should they acknowledge their undeserved good fortune and make joint efforts to make the IIMs really worthy of their reputation or should they destroy it, since they did little to create it anyway?

As Jagannathan points out, the IIMs are truly exclusivist brands (which is probably one of the things that got Murli Manohar Joshi all worked up) not so much due to the fees (which Joshi thought was the cause) but more due to the fact that supply of IIM seats is far lower than the demand out there. The same applies to the IITs as well. I had written earlier about a way for the IITs to leverage their brand and the IIMs could try something similar as well.

FC Kohli's educational experiments

Business Week interviewed Faqir Chand Kohli, former Chairman of TCS, who spoke about his interest in the area of education and his efforts to develop

• A computer-aided adult-literacy program

  [For years,] the Indian government has been spending a lot of money and resources on adult literacy. It has been using conventional methods. While there has been some progress, it's inadequate, considering that about 250 million adults in India are still illiterate. There are constraints: You need 200 hours of instruction for full literacy, and you need trained teachers to teach. If I'm 25 and working in a field or as a housewife, how will I find those 200 hours? As for teachers, we need 500,000 trained teachers to come to 500,000 villages. Where will they come from?

  So I started thinking: How can we learn, recognize images, retain, recall. I found that we usually look at images and icons -- pictures, faces, and words are all icons -- and relate it to a sound pattern. Then it sticks. Maybe someone in the world has tried this out, but not in this manner. The key was, when done with the program, the person should be able to read a newspaper in their own language.

  It needed a vocabulary of 400-600 words. So, starting in early 2000, three or four of us -- three TCS engineers and a linguist -- prepared a vocabulary of 500 words. And we prepared the lessons in a month or so.

  Then we experimented, and the first lesson was in a village called Medak, outside Hyderabad. We upgraded the keyboard in Telegu [the local language]. And we got 20 volunteers for lessons, thrice a week for 1.5 hours each. After 8-to-10 weeks, people started reading the newspaper. Our major experiment was in Guntur, again in the same state. We had the same results.

  We have experimented in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, and Bengali with the same results. Our experiment was complete. We've told the government to take over. We've shown what we can do with a sampling of 50,000 people in five languages.

  We have a social message: We want people to not just read the newspaper, but read their land records, the political manifestos -- not just hear speeches during election time. People are reading their children's books now.

  More information on the Computer-Based Functional Literacy programme (CBFL) is available here.

• A new model of learning for public schools

  We're now experimenting with the public school system, creating teacher aids, and computerizing the extra coaching classes that all teachers here give. Students will pay money for the coaching program and see the teacher once a week to complete it. And from 8th grade on, everyone must get some vocational training -- it's not necessary for everyone to go to college. There are solutions [for everything], but we have to work on them.

I'd written earlier about another of the Tata Group's initiatives in education to develop a model to provide quality school education at an affordable price.