Why India’s schools must be fundamentally redesigned
Sandeep Rai
This piece looks at what it would mean for schools to be redesigned. While the previous two sections look at what design is and how it can be incorporated in the classroom, this piece zooms out and locates design as an intervention that can change what schools do. As curators of this issue, we are creative practitioners invested in learning and the role it will play in the times to come. We see intersections between learning and creativity that is not limited to what design can do inside the classroom but also outside of it.
With this piece we hope our readers will be able to see the potential and opportunity in thinking about redesigning learning as we know it and get some insight into how this can be done.
We are witnessing a new era of humankind. It’s one that’s marked by rapid changes in technology coupled with the emergence and shuttering of new industries. The world is watching innovations rise – across sectors that are inclusive but not limited to Artificial Intelligence – at a rate faster than anyone has ever seen.
At the same time, we are all simultaneously seeing a new order of challenges that are confronting and testing the very existence of the human spirit. Citizens in every country are beginning to see the imminent threat of climate change. They’re grappling with the real consequences of lingering inequality. And they’re watching societies unfold with increasing polarization and division.
This new era – filled with opportunity and challenge – is already beginning to have tremendous implications on young people, especially here in India. We have more than 700 million people under the age of 25 and house the world’s largest share of students under the age of 18.
Our students are watching the world rapidly change. And yet, they’re seeing the schools they attend remain stubbornly obstinate, tied to a relic of the past that is quickly becoming obsolete. Consider this: in five successive years of company surveys, more than 75% of India’s employers have repeatedly stated that graduates are no longer prepared to enter today’s workforce. Hiring managers are increasingly demanding new skills: communication, collaboration, empathy, and creativity are rated as the most sought-after entry-level competencies.
To keep up, our country’s young citizens must not only thrive amidst disruptive change, but they must also shape it. They must be equipped to solve some the world’s biggest challenges.
But here’s the question we all must hold: which of those most-demanded skills are actually taught in the vast majority of India’s schools today? Our most privileged, those in the top 20% of family earners, are likely finding ways to adapt. But what about the rest?
Most practitioners and policymakers will point to a breakdown in implementation. Their arguments go something like this: If only we can better train our teachers to implement our well-designed policies, our schools would look fundamentally different. We just need to put our heads down and get better at executing the existing strategy.
There is undoubtedly truth to that axiom. We indeed have a breakdown in implementation. But will better execution alone fix a misalignment of this magnitude? Or do we need to start over?
I run an organization called The Circle. We exist to reinvent the state of India’s schools, so that they work better for the overwhelming majority of India’s students – for the hundreds of millions who can’t yet afford to experience the latest innovations.
We believe that the work of reinvention must start with a fundamental redesign; it’s one that sits at the center of multiple axes.
We have to redesign the very purpose of schooling. Doing so demands that we first acknowledge that schools were never designed to be vehicles of economic and social mobility. They were instead designed to perpetuate the status quo. In our country’s 75-year push to democratize schools, we have, in the process, accepted that schools are inherently inequitable institutions. Most students who enter schools wealthy will, by and large, graduate and grow up to be wealthy. Conversely, students who enter schools poor are, more likely than not, destined to remain poor.
What would be possible if we redesigned our schools, instead, to intentionally enable students to climb the social ladder? And yet, doing that alone would be significant but not nearly enough. The purpose of school must extend well beyond the creation of wealth.
UNESCO, in 2021, established an International Commission on the Futures of Education, a group consisting of policymakers, futurists, industry leaders, and educators. Their most recent report makes a compelling case for a new social contract in education. Schools were originally designed, they argue, to fuel national economic development and prepare students to be productive, nation-centric citizens.
Yet, students growing up in today’s world are confronting a litany of shared challenges that transcend national borders. Those challenges will likely outlive most adults, including myself. Our children will bear the immense task of solving them, as they will soon discover that much of the human spirit rests in the balance. If they’re going to have any shot at successfully tackling this new world order, our schools must evolve and prepare them to do so. That reorientation demands that schools are no longer merely vehicles that create better individuals. Instead, they must be vehicles that create better communities of changemakers who are excited to build a better India.
We have to redesign how schools operate. Realizing a reimagined purpose of schooling demands that we’ll subsequently have to rethink how schools operate. In the process, a new set of questions arises. Is the role of the teacher, first envisioned in its current form more than 150 years ago, still relevant? Are the spaces of our schools, initially designed to mirror industrial-like factory settings, serving a dynamic 21st century world?
Don’t get me wrong. Teachers undoubtedly have the most important role to play in a reimagined version of school. But gone should be the days of a teacher standing in the front of a classroom, transmitting information to a compliant and seemingly eager set of students. The transmission of information is much better delivered through newer, more engaging technologies. Similarly, gone should be the days of students sitting passively in rows. Classroom and school designs should begin mirroring a more collaborative and agile world order.
Within those archetype changes a new form of pedagogy is born. Instruction now has an opportunity to become more personalized and tailored, instead of merely catering to the average. Students have the opportunity to begin solving real-world problems in the classroom, instead of preparing for 15 years to start creating. The act of learning has the opportunity to transcend passive admission to repeated beautiful acts of creation.
We must redesign where learning occurs. India’s population has blossomed over the last 40 years. To keep up with increasing demand for education, most schools now operate in two shifts. Students in India, as a result, receive less than three hours of instructional time per day; that’s less than half the global average of seven hours per day. Population declines in India aren’t anticipated anytime soon. In addition to building additional infrastructure, we should be asking a deeper question: why are we assuming that learning only happens in school?
Most adults look back at their childhoods and recount deep learning happening in countless places outside of the school building. We can all recall lifelong lessons we encountered chatting with family members or playing with friends. That’s because we’re actually learning, all the time. Fast forward to today’s era – a time when technology has democratized the transmission of information. Learning in all forms, both academic and social, is available for human beings anytime of the day.
Acknowledging that learning has already transcended the four walls of a classroom invites an opportunity to design experiences that can be digested, anytime and anywhere. What if students, like those learning at Thicket Tales in Bangalore, started learning about climate by visiting local parks and exploring AQI averages in different parts of cities? What if we learned about geography by tracing natural rivers? And what if students were to spend time learning real-world content by shadowing industry experts, instead of reading about them in outdated textbooks?
We, at The Circle, have helped launch more than 15 schools and programs like Thicket Tales that are leaning into several of these reinvention axes. We can now point to institutions that are pushing the boundaries, in India, for your everyday citizen.
Panaah Community Centre, located in the heart of Pune, serves 900 students who are at risk of dropping out from government schools. After school, every day, these young people voluntarily show up to access an additional three hours of learning time. They’re spending their days remediating on core subjects via community-driven tutors. They’re also spending time in makers’ stations where they’re grasping real-world skills through media labs, digital literacy centers, and art stations. And throughout their time at Panaah, they’re working on service projects that are solving relevant problems for their surrounding communities.
GSK School, in the Gurdaspur district of Punjab, caters to a socioeconomically diverse population. Half of the students here come from upper, middle-income families. But the other half are the children of daily-wage earners and laborers. The school is striving to be a microcosm of a more diverse, integrated India. It’s also striving to be a model of schooling that can revive rural Punjab. Students are spending each day reconnecting with agrarian livelihoods. And they’re embracing a hands-on curriculum that has them discovering the world around them.
These schools and programs, located across India, are now reinventing what school can be for thousands of children from low-income communities.
We must acknowledge, as a country, that this fundamental redesign is no longer a luxury. It may be the most important development necessary to keep our children relevant for a rapidly changing world – and, ultimately, to shape and build that world. The country’s most affluent schools have already adapted. We must now democratize those adaptations, so that all Indians get the education they both need and deserve.
While such rapid change may seem frightening, we have a massive opportunity ahead of us. For too long, schools and educational institutions have mirrored our current society. And they have, as a result, been marked by the flaws and biases that plague all of us.
What if we redesigned a new wave of schools to be microcosms of the India we all want to see – not of the one that exists today? And what if our schools acted as institutions that ushered in this new era, instead of merely playing catch up? What if our kids, in the process, showed us what that new era could be in its fullest, most unadulterated potential?
Sandeep Rai started his career as a Teach For America corps member, teaching seventh and eighth grade science in Washington, D.C. In addition to championing multiple school-wide reforms, he led his students to dramatic gains across literacy, mathematics, and science. That experience, in a low-income government school in the inner city, cemented his resolve to eliminate educational inequity. In 2008, Sandeep moved across the world to help launch Teach For India, a nationwide movement that spans operations across eight regions. The organization houses 1000 Fellows who impact 32,000 children; over the years, it has graduated more than 5000 Alumni who are now reaching 33 million children across India. Sandeep played numerous leadership roles at Teach For India, including serving as the Chief Program Officer and the Chief of City Operations.
In 2022, Sandeep founded The Circle, an organization reinventing a network of schools, after-school programs, and teachers working to improve the lives of students from low-income communities. The organization has launched 18 programs serving 5000 students and worked with 8500 educators across India. Since his time in India, he has published multiple articles and works, including Grey Sunshine, a recently released book on the truth and hope of India’s educational system. Sandeep sits on the advisory boards of Saturday Art Class and Teach For India; he’s also on the governing board of iTeach, a school chain located in Pune.
