Dr. Howard Gee, Principal Of DSB International School, Mumbai, India
We are in a country that has had a culture of organising large-scale education for a long time. Nalanda University, which I was fortunate to visit a couple of years ago, is at least 1600 years old. So, education is not a new concept here but perhaps we are thinking of its relevance in modern day. So, India is a fascinating country and a good place to be talking about education.
About 18% of world’s population lives in this country; despite that, we tend to think highly of international education. IB schools are high end and yet there are 185 IB schools in this country and that number is growing daily. It represents 8% of the population; India has already embraced international education. 400 Cambridge schools are functional in India, so international education alive and kicking.
When we look at the roots of ISC, CBSE, and even some state boards, the paradigm of education has a lot to do with colonial heritage. One of the things is the International Baccalaureate started out as a western concept of education but if you look at IB in India, it has been localized somewhat, rather like Chinese food, sometimes good and sometimes bad. I love manchow soup, so I am not complaining.
So, why am I here? There are about 10 principals who are international and some of them have a lot of influence on what happens in the school while others, quite openly, might describe themselves as whitewash. They are there to give the image of internationalism to the school but may not hold with many international philosophy or practices.
When you look at the range of international schools available in the city, you see a wide range. Some are passion projects of people who want something spectacular, who want to create and produce something to make the country move forward and equally some which have pride and ego. There is a wide continuum between those like me, who have influence, and a strategic direction of the school and the message it gives, and those who are basically made to stand in front and look pretty while actually it is the owners – whether they know about education or they don’t – who completely control the show and the discussion. And, as participants, one may notice that there are many differences in what is bracketed together and what is independent in international education in Mumbai and widely across the country.
If you look at the heart of international education in India, 180 IB schools are in Mumbai. so why should Indians be putting up with foreigners coming and running schools or working with the schools? And I thought that perhaps one of the things is that bringing people from abroad has a beneficial effect. Sometimes, they will challenge the morals of our own country and cultures that we haven’t perhaps thought about or not asked. So, as a British person living in India, this is something which is useful and something to take forward and I certainly know some of the international principals in this city who can contribute very strongly to the conversation around education. The conversation would be both beneficial for the future of the children and people might start asking more questions.
Speaking of the roots of international education, here is a picture of the first IB schools in the world: Atlantic College in South Wales, looks a bit European-ish and it is understandable that international education system in IB is focused on European or Western values. There is a valid point. Indeed, IB was created to provide an education system for students so that they have the opportunity to go to North America or British/ Australian universities.
IB was sufficient with a broad and focused curriculum like North America or Canada and British or Australian Universities. However, some of the very first IB schools, which perhaps aren’t quite western by root were in Iran before the civil war. It had thriving IB schools and the international school in Ibadan was the first IB school in Nigeria which was non-segregated. So, an interesting and definitely non-western perspective has been there for a long time. Even now, there is a healthy conversation about decolonising IB and thinking about other perspectives.
India needs to start thinking about where IB should be going and do interesting things; in Delhi, the Delhi Public school is looking for an IB-style programme. More importantly, if you look at education in India, a lot of ideas have come from international education. So, when I talk about international education as an opportunity or area of interest, Mark Tully, BBC correspondent, identifies the biggest problem with India – lack of education in Hindi. The aspirant class in India choose English education; we understand why because we understand the international value of English, but the simple fact is that in terms of developing complex concepts required to understand the different subjects from art to literature to science and math, it is causing a problem if the subjects are being delivered to children who are not capable of using the English language by teachers who are almost not certain of providing the quality of instructions required together concepts across.
So, when you talk about international education and when we talk about what I do, I value. I think it is important to talk about the energy that is aiming at people like yourselves who are comfortable with facilities like English, and this is not a solution for a larger number of people in this country who will be much better being educated in vernacular languages and not being forced to learn English by teachers who can’t speak English well enough to teach them. So, in south Mumbai, fortunately I have no difficulty in finding teachers who are excellent in English.
These are the things that are under-pinned when talking about international education, that the IB learner profile re-evaluates. These are the attributes which every single school in the country that runs IB will tell you that this what they do. So, knowledgeable, risk-takers, caring, reflective, balanced, thinkers, communicators, etc are a few things that are absolutely at the heart of what we are saying. The end-product is not at the end of the exams, the end-product is the young person that goes out in the world, equips most of the opportunities that they get, and is useful to give something valuable back, somebody who can make the first steps in employment or setting up their businesses because they have the ability and understanding that is important. I think this is what IB genuinely stands for – all-round development. When you start drifting eastwards a certain line, you see that not everybody abides to this. So, perhaps the conversation we need to open is that what we want from our schools.
More often than not this country values themselves with top rankers and high academic achievement. The IB results are out on July 6th, and from July 5th my phone goes ping-ping-ping as lots of IB schools are first on the charts. Shouts about how loads of children have got 40-43 points. Marvelous! Yes, marvelous for the child but not marvelous for the child who doesn’t ever have the possibility of getting there. International school is for all children, all can benefit from it. The journey of education is valuable. The focus is on attributes and process. The journey doesn’t end when you are 18 or 57, it ends when you grow and develop.
So, we have to start thinking of education as more than just production. And certificates – all have the experience of having people who have wonderful certificates – how useful is it? If that is what they saw as the goal of their education, how useful were they when they moved to your office as a colleague or employee or also the boss? There are lots of people who get very good certificates who then sit and do absolutely nothing with it. This isn’t just in India, but it is here. The message we need to put in is that the certificate should not matter, it is what you bring to the table that matters and what you do in future. So, when a school is talking about what they are going to offer you, what you want to hear is learning – the job that they will be doing every day and you want to be hearing conversations around learning.
I looked to see what Forbes was to say about desirable attributes of employees and some of them are obvious like skills in IT, but they have to be up to date. Then comes creativity, foreign language. There is little emphasis on non-English languages yet giving a child the capacity of speaking another language, the ability to develop really helps in the international global business community. Data analysis and statistics – schools can teach that but if one is to understand it, you need to learn history. They need to understand that not all data is numerical and not all analysis is done through statistical calculators. However, you can always find some going around and mugging up things rather than analysing. So, IB schools are great but there is a way around.
Finally, I would say that there are several attributes that will become important along the way of life. These are the ones which researchers come up with consistently and say that these are the skills are generally what employers look for and we feel that we would like to have them, they are empowering skills. If you learn how to think critically, you need to spend less time learning because you can do it better. If you can problem-solve, you can take the information and work it out yourself. Teamwork and collaboration are fundamentals of the jobs, those are not to be taught by the system. Leadership is something that if you do the IB properly, if you give space to the students to develop, it is achieved.
When you are talking about choice of schools, please remember that it is the most important decision of your life to make. The cost itself is very phenomenal. So, how do you know? How do you work out for yourself and how will it affect the child? I think you need to know, if you want the kid in an IB school, you should expect the child’s education to be child-centered i.e., decisions based on learning and not on control. If the person cannot explain why they do something based on learning and students’ well-being, then they are not being authentic. So, opportunities for children to enjoy the learning. There is an ethical school that looks for all the stakeholders. So, you are looking for sustainability and you are looking for well-being.
There is a classic debate of rote learning and analytical learning. Your comments.
I am not against rote learning. I rote-learned my Spanish verbs but what you need to be clear is, are you learning? That factual memory recall is very important. It is to be correctly memorised but math is more about understanding and memorising won’t work there. So, we are trying to develop a numerical understanding.
Given that IB has proved to be well-rounded curriculum, why hasn’t the UK government taken this up right in the beginning?
Pure politics, the Conservative Party is committed to the A levels. They have some fantasy view and that is why they are not changing. You are right, the IB is way better.
How come you have a British head for German school?
It is like evolution, gradually they just died off and I got left behind. Anyways, when I started, we had 15 German students and now we have four.
In know that International Baccalaureate is considered fantastic, but can we adopt the one-size fits all approach in the country?
I do think that India needs to be involved in that discussion, but I think the discussion should be on de-colonising IB. The curriculum is far more focused on Western history, for instance. The explosion of IB in India and China is going to move the needle and the explosion in Africa will do the same thing.
IBs are still elitist, it has to be bridged properly to be available to the masses and for that it has to be delivered at a different price point. Do you think it can be done?
I don’t know how far you can go; we are expensive but there are people and trusts who fund students. I know people who are delivering high, IB-quality CBSE programmes for a lakh.
What is German about your schools?
We are a German trust. We were set up by German families in 1961 and, should we ever close, the residual money will go to the German Government to be spent in India on charitable things. Our article says that we are here to promote the German language; what we do is teach the language from Jr Kg upwards and we have one local boy from India studying medicine in Germany.
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