‘When you exchange views, you learn a lot of things’

Birla Public School principal A K Shrivastava

speaks to Usha Desai about the importance

of keeping pace with the times in education

A K Shrivastava, the principal of Birla Public School in Doha has been recently appointed as the chairman of Council of CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) Affiliated Schools in the Gulf region for the year 2013. CBSE is the leading board of school-level education in India. The Gulf council has 130 full-time members and three associate members. Shrivastava launched the council’s website last year. And now in his bigger role as a leader, he has other interesting plans for the council, most importantly organising exclusive workshops for the teachers in the Gulf and implementation of Radio-frequency identity cards (RFIDs) for the students.

Shrivastava is a recipient of the National Teachers Award in 2007 from the President of India and has years of academic experience and leadership acumen. In an interview with Usha Desai, he shares his vision for the Council as well as his views about the current challenges in education.

Excerpts from the interview:

Can you tell us about the functioning of this council?

The most important thing is it is a kind of ‘Sahodaya’ schools complex back in the 1980s in India (a concept literally meaning ‘rising together’ to facilitate synergy of ideas among the CBSE schools). If you look at the genesis, you will find that in 1986 there was a conference in Delhi and seven principals from the Gulf attended it. Later they thought, why not have a Sahodaya of Gulf schools? That’s how this council came into existence. The first conference was held in Dubai in 1988 when there were just 15 member schools.

We have six countries under this council. Yemen is also there but it falls under UAE chapter. We have Chapter Convenor in each country who organises meetings regularly. For example, presently Jai Gopal Jindal, principal of Doha Modern Indian School is the Chapter Convenor for Qatar. Every month we principals religiously meet and discuss various issues and share our experiences.

Two years ago there was a very unfortunate incident in Doha where a child died in the school bus. At that time the Indian ambassador constituted a committee to look into the safety issues and a booklet was brought out on safety guidelines. We all shared our ideas in compiling this booklet. I shared one aspect — we don’t lock the doors of our school buses after dropping the children at school. So, even if, God forbid, a child is left behind, he or she can come out of the bus.

The council also organises various workshops for teachers and sports for children. It holds Gulf Olympiad exams besides the Sahodaya exams for Grade XI.

Is it mandatory for the CBSE-affiliated schools in the Gulf to become members of this council?

No, we are not asking the schools to join us. But people see reason in joining. When you sit together and exchange your views and ideas with others, you learn a lot of things.

I recollect that at the council’s annual conference held in Qatar last year, as part of a session, we had asked the principals to share their best practices with the audience. One of the principals told us that the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) of Dubai, had rated his school as a ‘poor school.’ His school thought about what was so wrong with them that they were rated so poorly. Subsequently, they implemented the required corrections and the next year his school was rated as a very good school!

How did this transformation happen? The principal shared his best practices with us. When you share such type of information, it helps others to learn from their mistakes.

What would be your role as the chairman?

You start with a vision that you want to achieve certain goals. But, over the years, those things get diluted. As a chairman it is my responsibility to revive those ideas.

Last year I introduced the council’s website. I developed it with the help of one of our teachers. Today it is fully functional where one can have information about various sections of the Council.

Soon I’ll introduce a calendar for the coming year so that the members have information about the various activities beforehand. The launch of a blog is also planned.

I have already spoken to the CBSE chairman regarding holding teachers’ workshops this year and have written letters to the agencies empanelled by the CBSE for this.

We must be having thousands of teachers in the Gulf and it is not practical for each one of them to attend such workshops in India. Therefore I have put forward the idea of having these workshops thrice a year (in March, August-September and December) in three different countries in the Gulf region itself. This has been decided after consultation with the member schools.

How important are such workshops?

Exclusive workshops in the Gulf were held in the past but over the years, the practice has ceased. I am trying to revive this practice as I see a reason to it. I am attending such workshops and conferences for the past few years and ever since my thought process has changed. It has lot of benefits provided you attend them with an open mind. You have to do it because you have to keep pace with the changing times. Our days are gone but we have to prepare our children for the present as well as future.

In these workshops, you learn new things which can be implemented for the betterment of your school. For example, in Qatar, we are in contact with many vendors for active RFIDs (radio-frequency identification). Right now the proposal is at the governmental level.

Each child will be given an active RFID which can be used in many ways like you can locate a child anywhere in the school, the child can use it at various places like the library or canteen. Birla Public School was the first school to sign the memorandum of understanding for active RFIDs.

How successful has been CBSE’s International (CBSE-i) curriculum?

Right now there are just around 20-plus CBSE schools in the Gulf and a few in Malaysia, Singapore and Japan who have international curriculum. The CBSE chairman has asked us to follow our best practices and I have seen that he is very open to new ideas, suggestions as well as criticism.

Our major concerns were regarding the workshops and the requirement of text books for CBSE-i curriculum. The chairman has accepted both these requests.

Present-day teachers have gone through the typical old curriculum. So it will take some time for the major changes to occur. The most important thing is that the children are happy, their parents are also by and large happy. In our school, all the CBSE-i curriculum classes have been oversubscribed.

The fee structure for this curriculum is steep compared to national curriculum in Qatar whereas in the UAE for example, both the curricula have the same fee structure. Why?

The national curriculum fee itself is quite high in UAE compared to Qatar. The CBSE has kept the registration fee as Rs2.5 lakhs for the international curriculum where as it is Rs15,000 for national curriculum. In the CBSE-i curriculum, all the classes are equipped with modern technology, latest software and the teachers have to be specially trained. A few of them are sent to Dubai every year to attend the workshops. They are paid more salary. All this requires money. We worked out the economics and accordingly the fee structure was decided which has been approved by the Supreme Education Council in Qatar.

Many parents also feel that the text books are expensive in CBSE schools in Qatar. Can your council take action against those schools which are overcharging for text books?

The books are procured from India and sent to us. I think including overheads and other factors, at our school we add just 10% more to the price of books.

Regarding the overcharging complaints, no, the Council doesn’t have a say in this issue — simply because each CBSE school has the choice to select its own text books.

Any issue related to a particular school is not under our jurisdiction.

Phenomenal growth

While he may have taken the reins of the Council of CBSE Affiliated Schools in the Gulf Region as its chairman only recently, A K Shrivastava has been at the helm of affairs at Birla Public School all through its journey from a small school in 2004 with a couple of hundred students to a successful educational institution today, boasting of three campuses and 6,000-plus students.

Obviously feeling proud about his school’s phenomenal growth, soft-spoken Shrivastava said that no single person can take credit for this success. “It’s a joint effort of so many people and the most important being our management. I just have to tell them what we require and they provide their full support. But when it comes to academic decisions, they insist that only I should handle them. That’s a very positive way of looking at the things and it has been the reason why our school has grown so fast.”

Speaking about the salient features of his school, Shrivastava considers discipline and value education as their top priority. “You can see our teachers in the corridors even during the break time. If there are any disciplinary issues, they nip it in the bud itself.

“We have around 330 teachers and more than 250 support stuff. Their collective efforts are responsible for our success as a school. By God’s grace and parents’ support we have come so far.”

The school is now thinking of further expansion. “We are unable to accommodate more students. So we wish to go for additional campus which will be our mission for the next two years,” informed Shrivastava.

Going by Shrivastava’s ambitious plans for his school as well as for the CBSE Gulf Council, one can relate his vision to what the author Jack Welch has said, “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.”