Will there be more number of Children in future?

The world population is 7.3 billion people and ever since the number has crossed 1 billion critics say that world cannot sustain more people. Well as of now they have proved wrong. But what will be future? When will the global population growth end?

My grandfather had 13 siblings while my father had 5 siblings and I had 1. About 99% of people of my father’s age group have no more than 2 children, even though they had more than 2 siblings. So what changed in one generation and why the average number of children in a house hold has fallen drastically?

I am a big fan of Prof Hans Rosling, who has numerous videos online explaining how the population will grow in future. He says that religion and number of babies per woman has little correlation. 

The important factors affecting the number of babies per woman are:

1.      Infant mortality

2.      Education of mother

3.      Income growth 

4.      Increased age at marriage

5.      Increase in working women

According to Prof Rosling the world population will peak at 10 billion and not cross above that number. He has various statistical models behind this number. However the interesting number is that we have reached the “child peak”. We are not going to have any more number of children than we already have. Due to increase in life expectancy even though we will always have 2 billion children the total world population will increase by 3 billion and stay there.

So for a school what is the future? If the number of children in the world are not going to increase why do we still need new schools and will they have enough children to sustain the infrastructure?

 The answer is in migration and change in the needs of parents.

70% of India stays in villages. In any developed economy not more than 25% of the country would stay in villages. So even if we hope in next 10 years we achieve 50% urbanisation we are talking of 24 crore people coming to stay in cities. So if they come and stay in top 100 cities it will be adding 2.4 lakh people in each city every year. They will bring children with them and they will need education. So schools need to be built in cities.

 

Another major problem is change in needs of the parents. Earlier Gujarati medium schools were in demand. Now English medium school are in demand. In metros people are preferring CBSE school so taking a job transfer from one city to another is not difficult. The rich prefer international schools which have a different standard all together. So schools will need to change themselves with changing times. Earlier having swimming and horse riding as part of school curriculum sounded far-fetched. Today there are few schools already providing that and in future small schools will close down and such modern schools will increase.

AC in School, a luxury or a necessity?

A school with proper fans, light and toilet facilities was a dream come true for most Indians few decades ago. I remember children coming from other schools to my school used to appreciate the number of tube lights / fans in the class.

These days the expectations of parents have increased. Today AC has become an expectation and several school across India are meeting that. Children themselves are used to AC more than ever before. Malls, airport and own homes are all AC. Its normal to get used to comfort and children get used to comfort of AC quite fast. Also the global warming has led to temperatures which are beyond the bearable capacity. To make children even play at such a temperature is difficult, let alone study.

Indian Railways launched “Garib Rath” in 2005 targeting at poor people, as mentioned in the name. Even that train was fully air-conditioned. This means that officially AC is no more a luxury but a necessity. Remember that was 10 years ago.

The founding father of modern Singapore, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew (who died recently -23 March 2015), mentioned in one of his interview that his biggest achievement in his life was doing all government offices AC. He said that AC for tropical climate was a boon and it boosted productivity. In his entire life he has not done anything more important than buy AC for offices!

So will AC help in schools?

I have interacted with a few school administrators and teachers who have recently implemented AC in their school. There has been a major improvement in student’s attention span. The children drink less water as they perspire less and they take less bathroom breaks. This leads to more time spent on education.

A major benefit of AC would be reduction of noise from outside the classroom. Air cutting noise of Fans make lecture delivery difficult also. So with AC teacher has to shout less and that way teachers get less tired which improves the quality of their work.

AC rooms will be closed so the entry of mosquitoes is less. As we all know the cases of dengue are very high and such preventive measures are required. Air pollution levels have also increased in India. Dust particles and pollutants are reduced in AC as there is an air filter which cleans the air.

I personally think that India is developing fast and the expectation of parents are changing fast. Even government has been upgrading itself as people are demanding it. I am sure the day is not far that it will be assumed that all A grade primary school will be AC. This will positively impact the academic performance of the students in the medium term, more than any other improvement in the school infrastructure.

Childhood Obesity : A life-long problem?

Obesity is recognised as the number 1 health problem in US. This is part of lifestyle diseases which come with the improvement of income combined with an unhealthy lifestyle. Primary reasons are not using up all the calories that one consumes, eating junk food and having less exercise.

Few people have been able to reduce weight and stay fit once they are diagnosed with morbid obesity. 10 out of 100 obese people have been able reduce weight and 1 out of those 10 stayed away from obesity for more than 5 years.

Obesity is going to be a bigger cause of death than smoking. However addiction to smoking was easy to control, how can you monitor and control addiction to eating? It was found out that smoking if started before the age of 18 was almost impossible to get rid of, so selling cigarettes to minors was prohibited. Can you tell ice cream vendors to stop selling ice cream to fat children? Brain behaves same way whether its sugar or cocaine addiction.

Just like smoking if a child is obese most probably he will be obese when he becomes an adult. So urban families need to get awareness about obesity and ensure that children don’t fall into its trap at a young age.

Should developing countries like India and China worry? Yes. Chinese have a 1 child policy. The growing GDP is ensuring that mothers nurture their children too well. In the process they become fat. About 10% of children under 12 are obese in China. It would be difficult for such children to lead a healthy adult life.

We need to take care of children’s weight. India is passing through a phase where number of children per family is falling and moving nearer to China. The family’s disposable income is rising and so is fast food options available to them. All the elements of leading to an obesity epidemic are present. A little carelessness may lead to large scale obese children.

Till now India’s textbooks deal with malnutrition and balanced diet. By any criteria the number of malnourished children outnumber the potential obese children. So government cannot make the same kind of textbook applicable for entire board. The differentiation of instruction has to be done at teacher level where they have to make students aware the thin line of difference between malnourishment and obesity.

A parent can help by feeding their children home cooked food and incorporating physical activities in their everyday life. I am sure that if there is enough awareness among parents and children we can keep childhood obesity out of the country so that our future is fit!

Rich or Poor: You have to study in Charitable trust run Schools

So if you may be as rich as Mukesh Ambani but unless some benevolent person has started a school under a charitable trust there is no chance that you get your child educated. No matter how high the fees are or how good the facilities are; all schools in India are by law required to be run under “charitable trust” or section 25 company (which means its not for profit). These charitable trust cannot make profit and whatever surplus they have has to be reinvested in the objectives of the trust.

It doesn’t matter how much fees the school charges or the facilities it provides. The school may be in a congested city area or it can be far in a remote village. Wherever it is the formation of the entity has to be “not for profit”. There is a small except though- in the state of Haryana alone there is no such requirement. The schools there can be for profit and run by companies / individuals / partnerships. There are a few high end schools which have world class facilities which are based in Gurgaon.

Such entities are exempt from Income Tax provided that it spends all of the surplus earned in the same year (or the very next) there is no income tax to be paid. The Income tax authorities are debating why a school which serves to the rich should be exempt from income tax. An international board with all AC classrooms caters to Bollywood starts in Mumbai which charges Rs. 10 lakhs per annum. So should it be given tax exemption?  However any such move will be unconstitutional and will take a long time to be implemented.

Is it good to have such a law in India?

Both. Good because education is a difficult to measure service and unless its heavily regulated there can be a major cheating. Parents are unable to judge what is proper for their child and may get brainwashed with a lot of advertisements.

A counter argument that it is bad to run school “not for profit” is that it keeps investments low. Any investor would want to invest in a place where he can get return of money and income. If you donate money to a trust, there is no returning back. The money is gone for ever. This leads to shortage of good schools in the long run.

I don’t know what the right answer to this problem is. But one thing we all know for sure is that making a good school requires a lot of money and without attracting crores of investment in this sector we cannot provide high quality education to the masses. 

How much time do you spend in classroom?

By the time an average person post graduates and joins the work force reaches about 25 years of age. Professionals like doctors, chartered accountants take a few more years to join the work force full time. Of these learning years how much time does it go inside the classroom?

Stage of Education	Number of Years	Working Days	Number of hours	Total hours spent in classroom
Pre-School	3	200	4	2,400
School (1 to 12)	12	200	6	14,400
Graduation College	3	180	6	3,240
Post-Graduation	2	180	4	1,440
Total hours spent in the campus till completion of education:				21,480

By 25 years the total number of hours a person has lived is 2,19,000 hours. So less than 10% time of a person’s life is spent on the campus. Time at campus doesn’t equal to time in classroom. Exams, out of classroom activities, picnics, free periods, absence and “bands” even further reduce the hours by 1% - 2%. 

So by the time a person starts to work he is spending about 8.5% of his life inside the classroom. It is surprising that vast majority believe that education mostly happens in the classroom even though they spend so little time inside the classroom. There is abundant evidence that formal schooling and classroom method delivers best results. However it is wrong to think that education happens only in classrooms.

Experience is the best teacher.

Much more than classroom humans learn out of experiencing things. So field trips – general reading – social interactions and pursuing one’s interest are much more productive than mere classroom education.

 I am not saying that classroom education is not important or required. I am saying its not enough. Relying on schools and colleges to build a career for your child expecting too much. Remember it only can motivate child to learn for the rest of his life. So what can a parent do in the remaining time?

A simple way is to give variety of experiences. Visit to historic museums along with learning about history will make the topic interesting. Zoo and aquariums teaches more about science if guided in proper manner. Actually growing a plant can teach a lot of science than text book picture of different stages of plant life.

Real world experience or real world requirement of education is a much bigger force than making them sit in class and teach.

Will Tablets Replace Books in Schools?

Tablet PC is a device which is somewhere in between a laptop and a mobile phone. It weighs about 1 kg and run popular software. iPad is one of the world’s more successful tablet PC and several companies have their products in the market competing with iPad, still 75% market share is of iPad.

Many technology fans thought that one iPad – costing about Rs. 25,000 each- could replace school textbooks, notebooks and workbooks. This would lighten the bag load and help students work faster, smarter.  The cost will be definitely high if we consider that iPad would need to be changed every year, but if it lasts more than 3 years it would be affordable even to Indian middle class.  

Taking this approach LAUSD – Los Angeles Unified School District- bought iPads worth $ 1.3 billion – Rs. 8600 crore. This program got the best hardware, directly from iPad manufacturer, Apple. Since its launch in April 2010 it has been getting a lot of attention. It practically gave birth to tablet PC industry. Selling about 2.6 crore units till now it is supposed to be a very successful device in history.  They also loaded the iPads with the best software from Pearson. It would help teachers teach effectively and students can do homework on the iPad. The program miserably failed. The FBI is currently investigating it whether there was any irregularity in the purchase decision.  The prime question in the investigation is, was this requirement driven by vendor or did the staff really required the technology?

So will Tablet PC ever replace textbooks in schools?

Let us get into the need of tablet PC. The school bag is heavy and tablets can reduce that. Humans can carry upto 20% of their body weight. School bags have sometimes 33% of body weight because of two major reasons – underweight children and unnecessary things in the bag. Now if we don’t address the malnutrition problem of underweight children, tablet PC is not going to be the solution. Moreover if students still bring unnecessary things to school which needs to be solved.

Having a tablet PC for each child will help him show richer media to study. Actual photos, animation, audio, video can help grasp the concept faster. However along with the good things come a big problem, distraction. Unfortunately with so much content loaded on the tablet PC which the child can easily access the concentration is affected, affecting the studies.

Looking to the above it seems difficult in near future that tablets will enter the classroom.

IT in Education: Parent Relations

An average sized school has about 1500 students, and about 2500 parents. To maintain cordial relations with each individual over 15 years (Nursery to Std 12) is an important task for a school Regular communication with so many individuals is not be possible without the use of IT.

Use of IT is done in several ways by a school to get the information across to the parent. Modern schools have emails and computers for each teacher. The parents are free to write to teachers and teachers are free to reply back. Parents can even write to Principal and Management. Some schools ensure a 2 working day response time to all emails. Several schools send weekly updates of their child’s progress over email, sometimes with photos.

Facebook is becoming a boon for school managements worldwide. The school posts their activities and updates on their own Facebook page. Parents see their children’s photos on such pages almost instantaneously. At times these updates are so fast that before the child returns home from the school, parents would have seen the photo of the activity they have done at the school. More so the parents like and comment on the update. This gives a feedback to school on what activities were liked and what were disliked.

Maintaining an up to date website is one of the best investment for marketing which the school can do for providing information to new and prospective parents. Printing a prospectus and charging for it is an outdated concept. Today’s school gets parents inquiries from across the world and before shifting to a particular city parents search for schools online. Hence using IT schools can market themselves across the world.

An important development which has helped school reducing communication time and cost is the WhatsApp. Most parents who can afford quality education for the child have smart phones. These parents are added on a “Broadcast” list and school can send messages to parents faster and cheaper. This kind of system is usually used in case of emergencies like closure of school due to rains, riots or any unforeseen circumstances. Also many parents use this medium to get small information they need from the school. The best part is that its one way communication so parents if they respond to messages send by school, only the school gets them, other parents are not aware.

WhatsApp groups also help parents. They are usually created by mothers themselves of particular class are helping to share information especially in younger classes where the students are not talking to each other from home. They are two way communication so if one mother writes something, others can read it.

All these technologies increase parent’s involvement in child’s education and also assures to the parents that the school is taking right care of the child.