 Hello everyone, my name is Ritesh. I am from Teach for India's class. I am in fifth grade. We are here from Music Basti. Music Basti, we are singing two songs in our dreamland and Orychiria. So good evening everyone, my name is Ritu and today we will sing two songs and our first song is Orychiria which is in Hindi and it is composed by Ram Sambod. And our second song is Dreamland which is composed by us and its theme is peace, love and unity. We hope that you will love our song and enjoy our song. Thanks. Thank you so much to the Music Basti group. They've really inspired us all no doubt this morning. A really incredible performance from them and no doubt the panel will draw on the voices that they've given themselves that was helped to give to them and for them to realise their dreams. They just spoke about their dream world. So if you could just remain seated though, we're about to begin our discussion and that will take about five minutes. I'll call some of our speakers up onto the stage and then we'll take it from them. So I mean what's incredible about the panel that we have is they're really on the front lines of fighting to get some of the most disadvantaged children into schools. Six million children in this country don't go to school. Two out of five drop out of elementary school before they can finish. So the statistics are alarming and our panellists are all really on the front lines of that. So if we can just get these chairs up onto the stage and then I'll call our speakers. But who better to tell us about all of this than Faith Gonzales for example who's the founder of the Basti Music School. She founded the school in 2008. Faith thank you so much for giving these children the hope that they have and we saw that inspiration there on their faces. And then we have Irmila Choudhury and Irmila's been in the education sector for about 30 years and again she works with communities, with their parents, with the children and the various people to make sure that children remain in school. Chris Skopal Krishnan he's the chairman of the Axelor Ventures. He's in the private sector and really helps startups through his funds. So he can tell us about the impact of education on the private sector and really give us a perspective of the importance of training and research. And Vinit Nayar he's the founding chairman of the Sumpark Foundation. And the Sumpark Foundation has really impacted 7 million children in 76,000 schools across the country. So he's got some extraordinary stories to tell us about ways in which you can keep these children in school. So if I can please call on our speakers to come up onto the stage now. No, please take a seat. I think they've put name cards down a bit. I think if we can move, sorry, I think I've preempted it. Yeah, so if you can find your names. So I'm just here in the middle. Don't worry, it's fine. So we can begin the session. But I'd really like to begin with you, Faith, because it truly was inspiring to see these children up on stage. But they've been part of your program for three years. What were their lives like before this began? We saw performing their sitting in the back there. So complete credit to the teachers who've worked with them. And they go to a government school and they are very privileged also to be part of our Teach for India program. So I think the quality of teaching and the experiences that they access are, they are privileged in a sense. So I think that being said, and we will hopefully hear from some of the students in a bit. Yes, they do come from difficult neighborhoods or difficult backgrounds and their access to education is limited. But with the right to education, they have been able to go to school. All of that being said, I think there's a lot lacking in the schools. Many schools now like we'll hear from other people on the panel as well. The opportunities are being created, but again, the problems are very complex. And programs like ours we believe play a very important role in offering experiences and learnings that otherwise are missing in the classroom or missing in the school or in the community or in parenting. The basis is to try and give life skills as well. Yes. So the confidence that we saw of these children is something that you work on with the kids. Absolutely. So while our pedagogy and our content is musical, our outcomes are very focused on building skills like confidence, creativity, critical thinking, skills that help young people become successful in today's world. A lot of these kids also are doing well in school, which is great, but that's not enough anymore. Not only are children typically in our system not doing well in school, they also don't have a lot of these critical skills to succeed. And that's really where we feel our programs like ours have an important role, because they really do help to nurture those skills. The younger you can start building those skills, the better. Because faith really talks there about the challenges that exist in these schools. Your first hand right there every day with these children, talking to their parents, talking to their communities and talking to the children. But just tell us about some of the challenges that you face on a daily basis. Yeah, I think the first challenge is quality, because we've managed to bring children into schools. But once they are in the classroom in school, there isn't anything much happening to keep them in school. To keep children in school you have to have parents who are invested, teachers who can engage children, who know how to engage children. An exciting curriculum and every stakeholder interested in keeping the children in school. And all of that is very hard. So why we started working in partnership with government, with the municipal corporation, is that they had a series of failing schools where they were finding it very hard to bring up enrolment. In fact, children were leaving schools. Why were they leaving? Because there wasn't anything much happening in school. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when there's not much happening in school, children leave as children leave and enrolment goes down, teachers do less because they are demotivated. So even to keep teachers motivated to teach, to do their best, you have to have children coming into school. So that's the first thing, to provide an exciting, engaging, interesting curriculum, things for children to learn, a challenging, exciting curriculum that keeps children in school. And for that, you need teachers who know how to do that, right? Vinita, I'll bring you in because you talk about this frugal concept. The NGOs and the government are at odds about how to provide for these children. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Because your programs have benefited about 7 million children. So first, I'll look at the numbers. You talked about 6 million children are out of school. Actually, there are 144 million children in the schools, in about 765,000 schools. And if you go by different reports, including the government reports, 50% of great five children do not recognize numbers beyond 99. Cannot construct simple sentences in local languages. And therefore, the motivation to stay in school will keep going down, predominantly because you're not understanding what's happening as you're progressing from school to school. Now, when we at Sampark Foundation started looking at this problem, we saw this problem, a scale problem, because there was some fantastic work which was happening in isolation in certain cities, in certain schools, in certain districts. But I think the problem is of 144 middle children. So the question was, how do you scale? And the scaling question brings, you know, in corporate life, when you look at Steve Jobs or when you look at even Mahatma Gandhi's innovation of nonviolence to try and get independence, the issue comes down to innovation. What is that singular innovation which you can bring in? And given the size and scale of the problem, it has to be frugal in nature because every innovation will be multiplied by 144 million. And that is the time we said that we can't do teacher training, predominantly because there are 3 million teachers, most of them are 10th dropouts or passouts, to try and enhance their teaching capability will not happen. So therefore, they will not be able to hold the interest of the child. The only way to do that is to do some experiments like this which will fail the scale test because if we have to go to 765,000 schools. So we cannot take computers there. A, it is very expensive, B, there is no electricity. So therefore, we came up with this audio box with a battery life of about three months. We were inspired by Vidya Balan's voice in Munna Bhai, MBBS saying good morning Mumbai. So we put in song, dance, music into their audio box in a Bollywood style voice to teach maths in English along with three dimensional kits. We trained the teachers for two days and the teacher became the mascot, Sampark Didi. She took this kit of goodies to the children and suddenly the class ignited. Suddenly there was interest, there was song, there was dance, everybody was learning and the pressure on the teacher went down because all concerts were taught through song and dance, through this Bollywood voice and she just had to do the exercise. So she was getting trained while this was going on. So initially launched in 5000 schools and then we went to 15,000 schools and now we are in 76,000 schools touching 7 million children and we hope we will reach to 20 million children pretty quickly. The other issue is that is the government interested in education transformation? The answer is yes but they don't have the resources because 90% of their expenditure is going into salaries, they can't do anything about it, they can't hire more para teachers and therefore they don't have the resources to bring about education transformation. So if we create more and more idea labs to make going to school an interesting opportunity for children without too much resource intervention, I think we can solve this problem of 144. You've given one example of the music box but something that Irmila was just saying, they just is lacking in any kind of quality to engage these children, keep them. So sometimes I think when the global community looks at India they think it might be an issue of labour, that's why the children are being taken out or it might be an issue of toilets, young girls don't have access to sanitation and while all of these things are correct it's also eye-opening to know that it's actually about quality as well. That's true and to give you a statistics, remember I told you that the government statistics is that 50% of the children, 52%, do not recognise numbers beyond 99 in grade 5, are statistics which is done by an independent party in four states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Haryana, is the fact that in grade 2, 82% can do division and multiplication today and construct 100 English sentences without problems. So the quality will improve dramatically if you make the classroom transaction interesting and make the teacher the hero and do not take the teaching away from the teacher. So do everything to enable that interaction to be attractive rather than remove that teacher because we cannot replace 3 million teachers. Well, you're sitting beside someone who is self-taught and self-made. Aarti, you grew up in a slum. Can you tell us your story? Yes, sure. Last nine years, I failed in 10 standard. I was a schooled report girl because my birth place is in the slum area and the situation was that my parents were not educated and no one was going to tell me to teach like this. So no guidance, no support and at the same time, my father's job was also lost. So at the same time, I had a lot of problems in 10 standard because there was a board exam and there was no financial guidance so due to this, I failed in that situation. And then I thought of doing some work for my studies but my father told me that you have to study, you don't have to work so my father is not allowed to go any outside and work. So I decided to work and earn money for my studies. So a few ladies from my school, like Nathalya's and Bangal's, used to come to work so I decided to make Nathalya's. I was making Nathalya's and every day I was earning money, only Rs. 9. So I worked for 3 years and worked as a telephone operator for 1 year and then after 4 years, I passed my 10th exam and when I was 12th, I realized that whatever life is in my life and in my education, it's the same situation in my community because there are a lot of girls sitting at home sitting at the drop-out, doing nothing, getting married getting married twice a year so this is not our life, we should study we should not depend. I took this decision and as a slumgirls, I didn't even know how to talk to people I can't believe that I have never attended a picnic in my life no birthday celebration so this was very new for me so I spoke to a friend circle that I wanted to teach girls but in reality, it's very important to teach then I just did a survey a basic survey on language and maths with girls then I realized that the girls of 7th standard don't know how to read except for the alphabet so they definitely drop out in 10th standard because if you don't want to study, then how will you pass? then once the confidence is lost then nobody comes to tell you don't just get up and study like I did in my life it was just the support of parents but no one wants to come and support girls education so that's why I started Sukhi means female friends and then I started with 5 girls I started with all my experiences I didn't have any books except for school I started with English books and libraries I had a lot of problems with money for which I rested for 4 years then I started saving bank activity after that, I was joined by other girls when other girls came then I started doing library I used to go home and read books with girls then I started nutrition this year with all these experiences so I didn't have 8 years only one women show I didn't know I didn't have any support for 4 years I used to do part-time jobs I used to do college and I used to teach girls so tell me in a short I had a big impact that I started with 5 girls now I have passed 300 girls so like I am living in Islam I am on this stage I want to tell all the girls that you can do it you are a change maker so you should get a platform like I got whatever platform I got I share it in my bus and those girls get confidence they get space we can do it so in these 9 years not a single girl has dropped out not a single girl has failed and my old student is a mechanical engineer so I am so happy everyone should get a space for the girls living in Islam like I got a Femina award and a young queen leader award a change maker award so everyone can get a girl but I need a supporter a guidance for them so I am ready for them and they are ready for others thank you Arti, how many children do you have today? I have 75 we teach them in 3 batch basic education life skill training and I had to call these girls in 2008 my mom didn't drop me now it is happening that my mom came to study so I started mother school from this year so I have 75 girls who run books bank we distribute books to 450 girls I mean Chris it is incredibly inspirational to hear Arti's story the change that one person can bring but the theme that I seem to be hearing right across the board is the lacking in quality how do you provide quality education to the public sector how can the private sector assist first of all as you said I am inspired by every one of these people it is a privilege for me to be on this panel it is not just the private sector I think every one of us have benefited and I feel that all of us must at least support one child at least not part of our family and all of us come forward to do that I think we can make sure that every child has the opportunity to get support and of course that is not sufficient we need teachers so what can corporates do what can individuals do they can fund support such initiatives and and help scale up this initiative the scale is required you know any there are many such great initiatives in India what happens then is how do you scale this to reach every single student in the country every child in the country because unless we have every child getting the opportunity to reach the fullest potential we cannot be a developed country that is to me the symbol of a developed country that every child has the potential to reach his or her fullest potential that is what we can do some programs I have been part of Infosys has been supporting etc one of the largest programs that we are supporting is Akshay Patra which is giving 1.6 million per day I believe in about 14,000 schools in 12 states it is probably the largest midday meal program you know in the country maybe in the world actually and through that study has been done the issue of nutrition has been addressed I think nutrition related deficiencies and illnesses have been has brought down to 92% there are more children coming to school in school because of the meal that they are getting there through Infosys Science Foundation we are supporting teacher training especially in science we have program we bring scientists in touch with students so that we can inspire them to take a career in science but you know the thing is you get overwhelmed with the challenge and that is why I am inspired by all these students they are actually doing it they are involved they are helping a child transform himself or herself when you saw the children confidently standing here and singing I was reminded my childhood I would not have been able to do this but they are able to do that they have a future ahead of them and we must make sure that that fullest potential is achieved prioritise these disadvantaged communities you have worked in both the private and the public sector how does the country, the nation as a whole prioritise these children who are not going to school or are dropping out difficult question because obviously you know we need to reach out to every disadvantaged marginalised community the problem is of bandwidth how many people are out there actually working with communities to bring children into school because as we know it is not enough to have a school it is also very important to invest parents in that school for parents to feel that it is important for their children to come to school so we actually just go out into the communities and we talk to parents we try to prioritise the children who are not yet going to school for some reason the parents are keeping children at home so we talk to them about the importance of their children coming to school and we beg them literally to send their children to school sometimes parents don't see the point of it but once the children start coming to school and they see that they are really having a good time they are learning the hours in school are constructive productive, useful then the parents also get invested and it is also very hard to get parents to understand that they also have a voice for too long school and parents have been kept apart parents don't feel that the school is their school, their children's school they are as much a part of it as their children are and they have a voice to ask for things to ask for a certain kind of education to ask for quality and excellence my organisation I work for Arc India till recently called Arc India now we are called People that's our new name we focus a lot on giving parents that voice we have regular monthly meetings with parents it's an open house the time can walk in it's just conversations over tea very free flowing but just to get parents to understand that they can question the teachers and the school leader initially we just had maybe 20-30 parents turning up now we have so many parents who want to be a part of this Chai Pebat Cheet that we've had to have over a period of a week groups divided because you can't have a meaningful conversation if it's too many people it also becomes a forum for parents to exchange ideas on their aspirations for their children we worked a lot to just invest parents as well as motivate teachers and make the curriculum exciting, enriching and that's where faith has also been a huge amount of help so her program is being run in our school how much faith has art and technology helped in engaging with these young kids to stop them from being bored, have them come to school for them to want to come to school I think it plays an important role I mean in ARC we have most of our all of our classes actually after school hours a lot of the schools we're working in right now are piloting in working during school hours the students you just saw perform they stay back for a couple hours sometimes after school this week actually they've stayed back every day including yesterday that was a holiday to rehearse so yes it definitely brings children to school, technology technology does have an important role but schools again are poorly resourced often and then we are taking in things like laptops or using projections and all of that ourselves but typically that's not something that's available mobile phones have been great in this respect kids can access music and media and all of that almost for free or if not for free now so things are changing dramatically but again I would just come back to that same point that was raised earlier but how is that technology and all of this being curated how are they accessing it is it really what purpose is it serving those are important questions to think about with programs like this I'd like to open the floor up for some questions so that you can engage with our speakers here but before I do that actually I'd love to hear from some of the kids from your school but I'm not sure if they're there anymore actually I do see Ritu so I would go and just have a chat to her and see how she's enjoying the Busty program thank you so much Ritu for sharing your songs with us tell me what do you like most about the Busty school there are so many things which I like about music Busty things like whenever I go to school to join music Busty class there are my friends and my teachers who really cares about me and whenever I want anything I just ask them to give me and they give that and whenever we are having a music Busty class we enjoy and dance and whatever we want to do we do that so that's all and so many things are there which I really want to tell you but I don't know how to why did you tell us what do you want to say I think however we have music class I think that should happen in other schools also so that however we are enjoying so I also want that other kids also enjoy that time with their teachers and have fun thanks do you tell your friends about what you're learning at music Busty about music Busty yes whenever I tell about music Busty to my friends they also think that I wish that I was in music Busty so whatever fun you are having there I wish I would also have that great thank you so much Ritu I might come over here to Ritesh Ritesh can you tell me what did you enjoy most about today's performance I enjoyed that everyone was starting their music in one time and they were singing at the right lines so did you do a lot of rehearsal before you came today you did a lot of practice before you came yes I did a lot of practice tell me what you like about music Busty I like that in music Busty we all enjoy that much we can't enjoy any subject or any activity and is your mum and dad happy that you are part of music Busty yes what do they say you can go to that function and you also can join them because you will go more you can make their names thank you so much Ritesh I don't know if there's any questions here we've got a question right here why don't you ask a question can you give it to me yes what are the most marginalized communities in India people with disabilities most schools are not accessible to them they don't manage going towards inclusive schools so I would just love to know if Urmila of faith and the others how many people with disabilities have you seen or how many case studies have people with disabilities in your initiatives and what more can both nonprofits, corporates and the government do to encourage inclusive education so you're absolutely right the government school buildings are not accessible they are built on a very old plan and we are working with government to make them see that we need to make the school buildings disabled friendly it's a long road everyone knows it has to be done everyone says the right things but actually to get the project approved signed to happen there are so many government schools which have already been built according to a certain structural plan many many years ago so transforming all of those schools into disabled friendly schools where there are ramps going up all the way to the top floors ground floors can always be used but top floors are often inaccessible again it's the same thing so you can do anything you want on the ground floor you can have teachers who have disability, children who have disability but if the building is not fully equipped to deal with everyone then how do you manage so it's a long road it hasn't happened yet I think the way we see it is that it has to the three problems here number one the government is really not interested because the community number is small compared to their board bank and they have their hands full with all sets of problems so this problem has not become center stage for them to try and resolve the second problem is that the kind of infrastructure funding which is required to try and solve this problem at scale not in few schools is not available but I think what we can solve and that is where we are attempting to solve it is to change attitudes so if you change attitudes of the co-students and change attitudes of teachers then within that small cohort of community you can overcome the infrastructure constraints it may not be great but at least there will be some help available and some understanding available some appreciation available and that is what our attempt is and I think if we can focus on that which is not very resource intensive but change people's attitude and change people's way of approaching this problem and solving it in the local community I think will make significantly more progress rather than pushing the government to try and create the infrastructure which I think is a long road we've got a question right here first of all thank you for your presentations and congratulations on all the great work that you're doing my question is really to faith it's not a question it's more a general comment is that congratulations on the work you're doing and that music and activities really helping engage the students and that's something that I think Vinit you've also found you know my concern is that a lot of these programs engage children they end up becoming after school programs what that does is it always feels like an add-on and it feels as though it is less important which is why it's an add-on and it's almost optional so it almost de-validates it and euphemizes it which is a mistake if we understand that this is such an important key for engaging children and activity based learning is an old pedagogic principle then we should be and I would suggest that you work hard at getting the schools where you're working to integrate it in their normal school day as part of their math and English and other learning which is what I think you're doing Vinit which is an excellent idea lots of this including life skills programs they're successful everybody knows it but they end up becoming after school when we know that the important thing is to change what's going on in schools too much of the conversation around education it stops at oh we must get children into school then we talk about quality but even quality is not the conversation isn't deep enough so what do we, yes they must learn to read and write well all these sentences etc what sentences are they reading should they not be learning to think and feel well and so that's the step to take forward I think so I would recommend that all these programs then what are we doing to get them integrated into the formal school curriculum and into the formal school day that's my thank you thank you what we might do is just take the three questions here yeah did you want to respond sure I just wanted to say first thank you for your comment and what you shared is really important and it's completely true and what we've already and we absolutely believe what you have suggested what we have begun this year since we're trying many different things through the course of this pilot we have already started we don't this is not supposed to be an after school program or a hobby program I completely agree with those you know those words so what we have already begun doing is approaching schools really negotiating is the word with the principles to integrate the program where it's not an optional program all students participate so we launched now in class one classrooms where every student is participating in the program including at Urmila M. School we have grade two and three the entire grades are in the program and they have different classes through the week because that is the model that we want it is not intended in any way to be a talent program and it's great if the kids are talented and if they perform well but it's not that kind of program it's for every student so that's what we would like we'll take these three questions because we've just got about four minutes left so I'll take them all at once and then we'll put them straight to the group excellent thank you it's really inspirational to see the children and all the contribution that every one of you are making towards what I feel is really the ultimate level of society my question is to Mr. Nair and Mr. Gopala Krishnan who've built very successful corporate careers and now have gone back to giving back to society you know India maybe at times gets unfairly accused of or Indians get unfairly accused of not giving back to society enough what's your take to society a sexy thing to do something that people should do feeling very good about I think there is a change but I think it's also cultural in India that even when we do give back to society our tendency is not to talk about it and how can we make that change because that viral effect can create a huge surge in the resource constraint environment that India is and Mr. Nair as you rightly point out is focused on so many other different things I think it becomes back to society at large to solve for this very basic challenge Yes, so the question is how do you make giving back? I love the comment, three quick comments number one, we as Indians know giving better than anybody else in the world because our mother has been saving that one rupee from the ten rupees under the Mandir and that goes to a poor man or a poor cow or a poor Mandir we know how to give better than anybody else we don't know how to talk as well as everybody else, point one Point two, the richness in India is new rich, IT industry is created a lot of new rich, pharma is created so therefore more and more people are coming out of the cupboards and doing more right, so you will see them more and more as more and more people get the kind of wealth which is there in the west as industry does well, more entrepreneurs more startups do well, you will see more and more people coming out of the cupboard and really contributing to the places where they should contribute I think the third aspect I just want to add to you it's not just the wealth, it's also the time I just hope they give up, when they are 50 or 40, they give up their corporate life they've earned their millions, we need time these ideas are brilliant what you are seeing on the stage we need them to take this, they know how to execute it at scale, they should take this they should collaborate with MusicBusty and take it to 765,000 students so that's what I'm hoping will happen because money will come today or tomorrow it will come but their time will not come we need that intellect, we need the talent we need that innovation to come into the social sector Chris, did you want to respond to that as well? See, it will happen one school at a time one student at a time and that's why I said every one of us must get involved time actually is more valuable than money, money will come and go, you can earn it again time will not come back so I firmly believe that somebody giving time which takes it away from their family, friends their hobbies is actually more valuable than money itself so we must give and the change will happen at one school at a time government has the ability to scale private sector may have but it does not have, so can we now one by one change every single government school because that's where unfortunately the disadvantaged students go all of us focus on private schools I'm a product of government school I've never studied in a private school I went back to my school it was going to be shut down I was so saddened that I said I will try and help rebuild this school in last three years we have been able to convince and help transform the school back now most students are coming they have electronic classrooms and suddenly the school has been transformed I think we need to get involved and make this change happen one school at a time one student at a time Thank you, we're actually run out of time but I'm sure you can ask our panellists some questions at the end of this session so we've spoken about the importance of quality in these schools engaging with the community teachers as well as the students and also we've seen firsthand and witnessed the importance of the arts in motivating these students giving them the confidence and I think we've come away from this with some great suggestions as to how to spread this across the country and get more children in schools so thank you for joining us here and please thank our panellists for all their fantastic comments and suggestions