He was six when he was sent away to boarding school for the first time and it troubled him “for the next six years”. And that harsh experience turned into a business idea for him 20 years later.
Chaudhary Group (CG), his 250-million dollar corporate giant, just recently partnered with Manipal K-12 Education and started investing in school education in Nepal.
“The trend is still on today. Hundreds of parents send their children away for a better education. It’s very hard for parents to send their children away and as much of a bitter experience for the children to be away,” he says speaking of his own experience.
“We want to change that. We want to provide the best education at an affordable price right here inside the country,” Chaudhary proclaims. “It’s something personal if you like.”
And they started with the buying of the Campion group of schools.
“We have just acquired the Campion group of schools: Campion Academy, Campion College, Campion Kathmandu School and Kathmandu Valley High School.” The reason, “relatively good brand image in Nepal.”
“We saw huge potential in it. The founder of Campion wanted to give the institution that he had built to someone who he thought would do justice to the schools and take them to the next level,” says Chaudhary, executive director of CG.
The new management will retain some of the old team. They say they are already in the process of “revamping the operation, introducing new technology in learning and shuffling of some staff.”
And this is just the start. The plan is to exponentially increase their presence in the education sector, either through management or further acquisitions.
“We are making investments to ensure that a child gets a proper education and the best in schooling. They are all equal inside the premises and each one will be given equal treatment and the best of services for whatever their parents have invested in them. It will be affordable for a middle class family. It’s our prime objective,” Chaudhary says.
NEW VENTURE, NEW EXPERIENCE
In Nepal, six million students study in around 29,000 schools, including both private and public schools. Private education organizations claim there are at least 8,000 of them. More than 1.5 million students study in private schools. CG’s investment is the biggest in the education sector by any corporate organization.
This is not the first time CG has invested in schools. But Chaudhary says it’s going to be different this time. “We invested in Chandbagh School as we got one of India’s best schools interested in it. It was a joint collaboration but it was not sustainable. It remained stagnant,” Chaudhary confesses.
The halt in the investment, he says, was an internal strategic decision. And this time, it’s going to be different because the group feels this is the right time to enter into Nepal’s education.
The investors are not ready to declare as yet how much they want to invest in the education sector but say it’s going to be opportunity-driven. “It’s not a one-time investment we are looking at. The investment is going to be driven by the opportunities that come across and the sky is the limit,” says Umashankar Vishvanath, president of Manipal’s K-12 program and partner in the joint venture.
They plan to start new schools or take over an existing one to reinvest and refurbish it. “Or if there is a reasonably successful school that wants to make it to the next level, we will manage it for them,” says the optimist who wants to have a pan-Nepal presence under the CG-Manipal banner.
“Technology improvement and investment, training of teachers and uplift of faculty, and development of school infrastructure are some of the dynamics we are going to invest in,” Chaudhary adds.
TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
And they have ideas about how to build an ideal school. It has to be a place where a child enjoys going and does not have to be forced. “It has to be a cheerful place where a child wants to go every day, not where it is taken kicking and screaming,” says Vishvanath, who is here to see their joint-venture hit the road.“Up to standard eight, it should be fun combing extracurricular activities with enough focus on academics,” Vishvanath says. But since the South Asian education system demands an exam-centric approach after the eighth grade, “you have to do well in exams and thus the fun element is going to be reduced gradually.”
“Each child needs a different approach and priorities. Some want music, others are good in dance or sports, along with academics. But you have to balance the academics with other activities,” adds Chaudhary who says his learning experience during college life at Kathmandu University helped him understand the Nepali psyche and education system.
MIDDLE CLASS TARGET
Chaudhary feels the other way. He wants to cater to the middle class. A numbers of schools provide good education but at a price. “And we want to provide the same quality of education at an affordable price,” Chaudhary says.
“We could have been another Ullens or Lincoln School, but we chose not to. We are very clear that we want to be affordable for an average middle class family,” he adds.
Vishvanath believes that education being provided by the state is a “fantastic idea but it hardly works.” Chaudhary argues that capital is not cheap and when you invest you expect a return, but with a moral obligation. CG Corporate Vice President and business professor Pradeep R Pandey thinks that as long as the institution is able to deliver quality at an affordable price, there should not be any targeted scrutiny. “But if the whole country changes, we will change with it.”
RIGHT THE WRONG
The way the joint-venture looks at schools is slightly different from the orthodox way of teaching in Nepal. Pandey says the Nepali education system is on the wrong track because it is “rote-based rather than understanding-based”. “Less importance is given to understanding values, presenting opinions, expressing ideas. Teachers give notes, everyone copies and that’s about it. Nobody asks questions,” Pandey opines speaking from his experience.
“Our culture of learning is to do as you are told. That trend needs to end.”
Another problem with the Nepali education system is that more than 90 percent of teachers have no permanent tenure. “Part-time teachers go from one school to another to teach. They do not have commitment to a particular institution, towards the children’s learning. That impacts the way a child learns,” says Vishvanath.
Nepal’s education is in dire straits. The quality of teaching may not be the worst but classroom practices are not up to par. The CG-Manipal project is going to change the very idea of teaching and the quality of the educators. “We will have a two-year teacher training program. Each teacher will go through the program which will be an in-service thing,” says Vishvanath.
The program, according to him, is modeled on the Oxford Groups program and has also taken ideas from the Harvard University graduate program called Project Zero. “It’s not about teaching a particular curriculum or subject, but how to teach in a class,” says the president of the Manipal K-12 programme.
“Any country you go to and teaching is not considered a good career option. The brightest people do not become teachers and thus finding good teachers is a huge problem,” Vishvanath says.
In his opinion, you have to provide education and tools to an average teacher so that the teaching improves. “Those two are going to be our focus. Technology will help boost education quality. We will keep investing in teachers,” the eduprise entrepreneur told Republica.
TEACHERS LEARN FOR CLASSROOM
What happens inside the classroom has seen a gradual change. The teacher no longer stands there and teaches. Teachers are no longer the fountain of knowledge and information.
“We are moving away from an era where a teacher is all-knowing. And now it’s more participatory learning, collaborative learning. The teacher is more of a guide and facilitator,” the 50-year-old responsible for setting up the new eduprise opines.
One of the modules in teacher’s training, for example, is safe classrooms. How do you make the classroom safe for a child, not just physically but mentally and emotionally as well? “Children should not feel intimidated in the classroom. Emotional stability and mental wellbeing are primary in learning. Understanding the emotional needs of a child and providing for those needs is a key,” says Vishvanath, who has been in the education business for more than six years.
One of the technologies that eduprise plans to introduce in the new venture is Edurite. It is the largest digital content provider in India and it has built a huge repository of educational curriculum content across different boards, subjects and classes. “It’s the entire course material blended with graphics, animation, videos, audio and text in an obtainable presentation manner,” says Visvanath. “It’s a new way of learning. This will change the dynamics of education and how students are taught,” he says.
“Children’s attention span is very shot and they could lose interest very easily. With movement, sound, text, figures and pictures, it goes back to the fundamentals of learning. The new theory of learning says it has to be multi-sensorial. Each person learns differently and Edurite in the classroom helps children learn,” Professor Pandey says.
The venture is stashing Nepali content into Edurite to introduce it to Nepali schools.
The reason Manipal decided to join hands with CG was because they wanted someone who is well established and understands the market. “Because of their FMCG market and others, they understand the average Nepali. They understand the aspirations of the people and know the business presence,” Vishvanath says of the collaboration.
“And our belief system is similar. We want to provide education at an affordable price,” he says.
For CG, Manipal’s “understanding of the culture of education in our part of the world” did it.
“We believe in Manipal’s core competency and their international achievement and recognition. They have a proven track record and the technology and we are inspired by what they have done in India,” says Chaudhary.
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