The Hindu Business Line : Making young minds work

"The preschool set-ups in India are not governed by laws and standards. The industry is fragmented and a majority of the players are not educators in the true sense, so the quality gets compromised." Lina Ashar

Harsh Kabra

Preschool pep: A ‘workday’ at Brainworks.

Harsh Kabra

During a conversation with Sachin Tendulkar a few years ago, Lina Ashar learnt how the ace cricketer owed his much acclaimed ball-spotting abilities to a simple game he had played as a child: His grandfather would swing a ball suspended from the doorframe and have the young Sachin flay his bat at it.

As the Founder-Director of Kangaroo Kids Education Ltd, a leading education chain, Lina was quick to glean the message from the anecdote: “Knowing the ‘science’ behind learning is crucial to the development of curriculum.” An extension of that thought is Brainworks, a chain of preschools launched earlier this year to provide a brain-based learning environment and scientific, research-driven curriculum. “Studies say that more than 50 per cent of a person’s ability to learn is developed in the first four years of life. The Brainworks curriculum is a results of years of research on how the brain best learns,” says the 44-year-old Lina.

“Our aim is to maximise children’s ability to learn and gain a head-start in life. Our daily activities encourage the development of ‘tracking’ skills, which also form the basis of pre-reading skills. This is based on the prediction that with man having outgrown the agricultural and industrial ages and now moving into the age of information, having ‘content’ in one’s memory is going to be far less useful than surfing the Internet for content. One who ‘tracks’ faster is going to be able to skim text and process the information at greater speeds and will enjoy a definite edge.”

She feels that there is lack of goal setting during a child’s early development. “In India, despite 70 million children being less than five years old, preschool education is the most neglected sector,” Lina says. “The preschool set-ups in India are not governed by any laws and standards. The industry is fragmented and a majority of the players are not educators in the true sense, as a result of which the quality gets compromised.”

Preschool teachers are paid arbitrarily and because preschool teaching careers is an option between education and marriage for many, attrition is high. “Besides, there is no prescribed curriculum and the content taught cannot be monitored for its appropriateness and learning outcomes.”

But these days people are becoming more conscious about quality and need for a structured curriculum.“The Indian consumer is focused on ‘value for money’”, she says. According to her, Brainworks aims to provide this along with quality education via a structured and researched curriculum, lively and thematic classroom sessions, cost-effective educational toys, a wide range of associated educational books, and teacher-student ratio of 1:20.

Lina Ashar

“Our curriculum is based on the principles of Brain Compatible Learning,” she explains. “Research suggests that the ability to learn is not fixed. Each child’s brain and learning experience is unique. Children develop preferred ways for learning and their learning changes the physical structure of their brains. Our curriculum caters to the different learning styles and multiple intelligences, enabling them to pursue their special talents and demonstrate areas of strength.”

The emphasis is on teaching each child in a manner in which s/he learns best. “For example, an auditory learner is taught through listening to music or stories, while a visual learner is taught through pictures,” she says. “The approach involves plenty of physical activity, and opportunities to explore nature and social interaction along with traditional academics such as literacy, math and science.”

It is in the first few years of life, explains Lina, that children are stimulated by a learning-conducive environment and develop many of the main ‘synapses’ or specialised junctions where transmission of information takes place. “Brain density, rather than brain size, translates into learning potential for children. For a synapse to become permanent, repetitions are very important. Children are given many different opportunities to practise new skills. Rather than jumping from one topic to another, our curriculum allows children to explore concepts over time,” says Lina. Clearly, the accent is on experiential and hands-on learning. “A child experiences through all his senses. This leads to the formation of brain connections or circuits that become permanent when enriching experiences are provided repeatedly.”

So, how is Brainworks developing teaching skills entailed by the new model? “We train our teachers before they start teaching and conduct regular workshops to sharpen their communication, behaviour management, observation and other soft skills,” she says. The teachers are also trained to impart real-life skills such as leadership, self help and so on to children and also apply those to themselves through self-study, self-paced modules and face-to-face sessions. “A career path for teachers based on the completion of certain modules will help us retain them and also provide a platform for them to grow.”

“Our fee structure is economical. And while we cannot offer our services at the same price as that of the unorganised players due to our quality standards, we are not far off from them in terms of pricing, which varies based on location and competition” she says.

Brainworks has already started 15 schools in Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur. “Despite starting in the middle of the academic term, we have received a fairly good response and are confident of exceeding our targets for the December batch of admissions. Besides, we also plan to increase the number of training centres to groom talent for Brainworks as well as Kangaroo Kids schools,” Lina signs off.

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