Time is right to bring about profound change for all children, giving them opportunity to thrive

He was recently on a four-day visit to India as part of a high-level business delegation from Canada facilitated by Opportunity New Brunswick and Indo-Canadian Business Chamber.

- RITWIK MUKHERJEE

This certainly was not his first visit to India. But this time round, he realised that the time is right to really bring about profound change for all children in India, giving all children the opportunity to thrive.

J. Douglas Willms, the Founder and President of The Learning Bar Inc, a member of the US National Academy of Education, past President of the International Academy of Education and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, minces no word in admitting that India has made tremendous strides in the last 10 years, or last two decades really, in expanding access to education and enrollment. For him, it is particularly heartening to see how even private schools have begun focusing on the NEP goals.

Speaking to The Statesman, Dr. Doug Willms, Founder and President, The Learning Bar Inc., explains how the methodology and framework that he has developed through decades of experience and research can come in handy to Indian teachers, students and schools.

Excerpts:

Q: What was the basic purpose of visiting India this time? And what has been your experience visiting different Indian schools and academic institutes? If there are any key takeaways that you'd like to share.

A: First of all, all of our visits so far have been with private schools, it's a very different subpopulation. Nevertheless, schools have begun focusing on the NEP goals, so even though it came out five years ago, there was COVID in the road and so on. Now, all of a sudden, they're moving in that direction to say, we're going to embrace these NEP goals and that was consistent across the schools we visited.

The question is, who's going to lead that change process? I've been thinking since then, what are the steps in that process? I measure things, I like to measure everything, so can we measure that in a series of steps?