New school board, startup ecosystem in schools next reform agenda: Sisodia

The Delhi government has been talking about investment in education. Give us three major results.

Whatever change you want in the country or economy, you have to do it through education. This is the foundational vision of our government. First thing, public confidence in government education: We fixed the basic challenge and facilities, which was a worrying issue for almost 99% of the schools in 2015. We now have respectable facilities and infrastructure. Second, the confidence of the teachers, and the desire to achieve success for the students by investing more time, energy and effort now. The third milestone was the board result. Now we have good results, high rank success, and almost 100% success rate in exams. Facility, teachers and results.

so what next?

Now, we have started working on the Mindset curriculum. From Pre-School to Class VIII, we have started addressing the Emotional Mindset through efforts like Happiness Curriculum and from class 9th to 12th we are trying to develop the Entrepreneurship Mindset. Then, we have our own school board, which is a reform agenda.

New school board for Delhi away from CBSE? Why?

CBSE has done a great job in facilitating quality education in schools. Now, we want to take this much further: When we are talking about pass and fail, CBSE has done a good job in ensuring quality. But we want to test the mindset of the students, CBSE doesn’t have that. We want to test the learning outcome of the students, CBSE does not have this facility. I want to assess and revise students’ understanding, applicability of their learning. Therefore, we have partnered with the IB Board as our partner. The syllabus design, training of teachers, exam pattern and testing will be done by IB. This is not a board for class X and XII students. We are looking at continuous evaluation. That’s why we made a new board.

We are starting with 30 schools this year. The new board has taken over the running of 30 schools. Every year, we will add schools to it. We are not forcing schools, they are free to stick with CBSE or come up with a new board. In two to three years, the quality results of our school board will be public. With IB as our partner, it will be high in its quality results.

You said you wanted to nurture an entrepreneurship and startup ecosystem and offer small seed funding for students to work on business ideas. Please elaborate.

It aims at eliminating the hesitation in implementing the business ideas by enabling the students of classes XI and XII to work on their own business ideas. It is like a learning investment plan for our students. We have already piloted in a school. We are expanding them to all 350,000 students of class 11 and 12 and providing every student ₹2,000. A single student can come up with an idea or a group of 15 can come up with a huge amount ( ₹30,000) for their collective business idea. It is a structural reform from the school level itself. Therefore, we are creating an ecosystem of over 300,000 business ideas or start-ups. Even if 30% succeeds, it will still be a huge number.

The challenge of employment is before us in India. But our education system is creating job seekers, not job creators. This requires structural change. Unemployment will not go by political promises but by structural efforts. We also had a mentoring plan for students by entrepreneurs and local businesses and Covid-19 hit it a bit, but this year, it will pick up pace.

What next for students who start a micro enterprise?

Firstly you learned failure and success at school level through this seed fund and hand holding. The best business plans from each school will compete through a budding entrepreneur competition at the district level and then at the state (Delhi NCR) level. Based on that, we’ll take the top 100 ideas to an entrepreneur carnival – it can be 100 students or 100 groups of students. These budding entrepreneurs will sell their ideas and future plans to the investors of Delhi. Hence, we are creating an ecosystem of start-ups led by school students.

We will admit 10 groups of these students (up to 100 students) directly into their undergraduate business degree programs at our universities such as Delhi Technological University, and Netaji Subhash Technological University.

Beyond business ideas, how is your entrepreneurship centered in secondary and senior secondary students?

It is for 9th to 12th class students of all streams. 10 to 15 entrepreneurial stories from MDH to Flipkart, Facebook to ‘Dabbawala’. The idea is not to tell their stories, but to cut through and tell the mindset behind these ventures. Our entrepreneurship teaching covers enterprises set up by different sections of the society – people from poor backgrounds, expatriates and successful and high-profile people. So, in four years, these students have started learning about 40 to 45 entrepreneurs. What we are trying to teach and explain to them is growth, risk, certainty, peace of mind associated with different areas and types of work. So by the time someone has dropped out of school, he or she has researched 20 to 40 entrepreneurs.