Club1BR in association with NIE organised a special webinar on the topical issue of The Learning Gap and Strategies to Bridge it.
What is The Learning Gap?
The learning gap is the gap between what a child should have learnt and what s/he has learnt at any age. In India, all studies point to a significant learning gap in both math and language in early primary years. This gap widens with age – i.e. the kids who had a small gap at age 8 end up with a wide gap by age 15. This makes it crucial to identify this gap and address it as early as possible so that the child does not face the consequences.
The pandemic has made this worse because of the “learning slide” – a gap in education that causes the child to slide back. Azeem Premji University published reports on The Loss of Learning during the Pandemic. A striking statistic from the report: on an average, 92% of children have lost at least one specific language ability from the previous year across all classes. The percentage is higher at the younger age – primary classes than the older classes. This creates an urgency to address both the learning gap and the learning slide.
The Experts:
Bharat Dabholkar
Bharat is an adman, actor, director, playwright – the modern age renaissance man. He started out in the advertising world and is the man behind the marketing of big players in the industry like Amul, Videocon, Frooti, Appy, and Bailey among others. He dabbled in theatre, where he wrote and directed over 32 English musical plays including Bottom’s Up, the longest running play in the history of English theatre in India. Bharat Dabholkar went on to make advertising history with 14 awards and also created a new genre of ‘Hinglish’ advertising.
Dr. Radhakrishnan Pillai:
Dr. Pillai, fondly known as Chanakya Pillai, is a teacher, an author, a management trainer and conultant. His first book ‘The Corporate Chanakya’ created a record for the highest number of pre-release sales for the first book of an author. He was awarded the Sarder Patel Award in 2009 for his research on Chanakya and his Principles. With over 15 years of combined business experience in fields of spiritual tourism, publishing, jewellery, sports & music industry among others, he is effectively practicing the art management to solve all corporate crises- thus combining ancient wisdom with contemporary attitudes and situations.
Kavish Gadia:
Kavish is the co-founder and CEO of Stones2Milestones. He believes firmly in the power of reading. He believes that being an avid reader has developed his clarity of thought, boosted his confidence to explore and experiment, and strengthened his determination to ensure success. At the age of 18, he won the Chairman’s Gold Medal for topping at University and set up multiple businesses in various sectors – including a stock trading and commodities trading business. While at IIM Lucknow, Kavish realized that the difference between the haves and have nots are not due to wealth, but because of the accessibility to opportunities. This created a deep-seated desire to serve, foster equality and create opportunity.
Top 5 Learnings from the Webinar
- Accept that Digital learning is here to stay and adapt to a style of teaching and learning that will be both Physical and Digital. Teachers need to be more creative to use the technology to create an atmosphere of learning for the students.
- Every subject can be made interesting – Create a story in every subject and make it interesting for the children so that it makes the subjects interesting and gets them interested in reading more stories. It encourages the habit of reading in the children. Children listen to their teachers more than their parents. Teachers should use their influence to tell the children the importance of reading and physical activity.
- Learning needs to be a personalised experience for every children in the classroom. A teacher needs to make the classroom learning experience interesting for the advanced student and the average student in the classroom.
- Education needs to move towards a model of Infotainment – Information through Entertainment. Not just the learning process but the assessment process also needs to be made interesting and engaging for the children.
- Students need to be taught to not fear failure. They should know that it is all right to admit that they do not know and then learn the answer from experts. Failure and acceptance of failure will lead to greater learning.
Video link
Here’s the video of the webinar:
If you have only 2 minutes, then check out the segment at 30:50.
Club1BR
The Club1BR program is our initiative to create 1 Billion Readers by 2025. If you are a school that believes in the power of reading like we do, drop a comment with your school name and email id in the comments section and we will reach out to you.
fREADom App
A productive screen time app for ages 3 to 12, that focuses on improving English Language skills.
fREADom LIVE
Online English classes for ages 5 to 12. Proven methods for children to improve academic performance and confidence.
