On the relevance of Peepul Consulting ten years hence
Our work is to revitalise government schools and turn them into centres of excellence, raising the bar for quality education for all children. Our work will continue to be relevant even ten years from now, as we will keep resetting the bar for what quality education should be.
Ideally, we would be able to drive a significant change in government education systems, to spark new ideas and innovations for how we can provide quality education to all children, and especially those from the most vulnerable and the poorest communities. Our organisation believes that destiny need not be determined at birth – the right school and education can open up opportunities for children.
On how rapidly the business is evolving
The skills that future generations may need at the workplace may be fundamentally different. What we teach in the classroom may change. However, we will always need to teach effectively (the learner will always want to acquire information and knowledge effectively and the system should enable this learning efficiently) and ensure that we get the “how” right. I see technology as an enabler of efficiency and supporting specific areas like remedial teaching, but our focus will continue to be on great teaching and learning in the classroom, especially for primary grades.
On niche business areas
There is certainly a lot of focus and interest in ed-tech. Within education, there are niche areas like assessments, school evaluations, teacher training, education technology in the classroom and with teachers. There are innovations in all of these areas but I see the most experimentation in ed-tech solutions. However, it is important to pilot and test the impact of these interventions and innovations before scaling them, because we are dealing with learning outcomes of children, which should not be experimented with.