Mumbai, Maharashtra, India:
For the last four years, Vishwajyot High School has been steadily climbing the rankings to become the best national curriculum school in Mumbai. In the recently released Times School Survey Rankings, it is ranked #1 in the Navi Mumbai region, for the fourth year running while reaching #7 in the Mumbai region, from #8 a year earlier. Vishwajyot has managed to punch well above its weight while competing with some of the older and better-known schools. It owes this success to its unconventional approach towards education and its commitment to personalising learning for every student.
While many top schools in India and across the world talk about personalisation, Vishwajyot has built systems that enable this to happen as a matter of course. The first ingredient towards a personalized school is to be data-driven. Vishwajyot has a student learning data collection system that tracks the progress of students as they move through an academic year. “Every student learns at a different pace. It becomes important for a teacher to identify the level and the pace, to differentiate who needs help, from the ones who do not,” says Vanita Gambhir, Principal Vishwajyot High School. “Student learning data helps teachers to strategize their lesson plans by breaking down their classrooms into smaller groups”, adds Mrs. Gambhir.
In the primary grades, teachers use the student data to personalise classes, they maintain a tracker that records the learning levels of each student. These trackers are updated weekly to get a realistic picture of how each student is progressing in a particular subject. Teachers use this data to form level-based groups in their classrooms. This does not mean that there is a permanent divide within the classroom, in fact, these groups are very dynamic and keep changing every week, depending on how students are progressing in a particular concept, for different subjects.
As the students proceed to Middle School they are also encouraged to use their own data to take control of their learning. Middle school grades actively integrate platforms such as Khan Academy in the classroom, where students learn, practice, and test their proficiency in different concepts online. Teachers use the test results shown on Khan Academy to assign personalized practice and students use it to request personalized doubt solving, which really helps them excel.
In high school, students take the lead in their learning. Exams, for example, are not designed for the teachers to test how well they have taught a concept, but rather for the students to gauge how well they have understood it. Senior students perform a thorough analysis of each of their exams, to find out the areas that they are good at and the ones that they need practice in – this method is called Self Assessment. The entire exercise is executed using sophisticated digital tools and develops a sense of ownership for learning in each student. The performance data is used to create revision plans that are unique to each student, post which teachers coach them individually to achieve their targets. This explains the impeccable results that Vishwajyot High School has managed to achieve year over year.
Undoubtedly, Vishwajyot’s continuous progress and high ratings are perhaps a testament to many such systems that it employs in the school.
“The fundamental belief with which we build this organization is that there is a genius hidden in every child, and it is our job to unearth it and make it visible to the child and his parents, to give wings to that genius and explore their full potential. This will help them discover the extraordinary within themselves and around the world,” summarizes Prasad Dhumal, CEO, Vishwajyot High School.
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