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It’s a question that education experts are trying to answer.
How do we prepare children for a technologically advanced world where 65% of today’s jobs will disappear?
Riverside School in India believes it has the answer and has started exporting its model around the world. With the motto ‘I Can’, children as young as four work with local organisations to solve real problems and graduate believing they can achieve their dreams.
Pupil Preya Patel sot
Students have successfully rebuilt a new butterfly garden for the community, helped with a local sanitation problem and created a new ice cream flavour which they marketed and sold, donating profits to terminally ill children.
Teaching methods involve getting the pupils to experience topics first hand.
Riverside teacher Niall Walsh sot
The strategy has the full support of parents who say their children are responsible, mature and ready for life’s twists and turns.
Parent Shweta Garg sot
Riverside pupils have not only been successful in improving the world around them, they have also outperformed most of their peers in India for over a decade. The school is now expanding to China and is in talks with schools and governments in Jordan, Singapore, Malaysia, Israel, Lebanon and the US.
This week it was held up as a blueprint for the future of education at an international Government conference in the Middle East.
Author and education expert Marc Prensky sot
While doubters might see such a project as too local and limited to such a small community, Riverside says its principles are universal and can be easily adapted to communities around the world.
The students themselves and the growing international interest, they say, speak for themselves.
Background
A leading school in India is exporting its award-winning model around the world to improve children’s chances of getting jobs in an advanced digital age.
Experts estimate that around 65% of jobs will not exist in the future due to technological advances which will see machines replacing roles in the workplace.
Children as young as four at the Riverside School in Ahmedabad are now collaborating with organisations to find solutions to important environmental problems, food shortages and issues in their local community.
School leaders believe that by putting children to work on issues from a young age, they will be better equipped to find jobs. Teachers focus on making children self-aware, adaptable and resilient so that irrespective of technological change, they will have the growth mindset to learn, unlearn and relearn if required.
Community successes include raising awareness of the need for good sanitation in less privileged areas and redesigning a butterfly garden for the community. Other students teamed up with a local ice cream brand and created a new Christmas flavour. They marketed and sold the ice cream, donating a percentage of their earnings to terminally ill children.
Riverside pupils have not only been successful in improving the world around them, they have also outperformed their peers in most of India’s top schools for over a decade.
The award-winning school was held up as a blueprint for the future of education at a conference in the Middle East this week.
Over the next two years three schools in India and two in China will be set up. Organisations and governments in Jordan, Singapore, Malaysia, Lebanon, Israel, the US and Spain are also interested in the model.
The school was set up in 2001 to empower children to help their communities and make positive changes once they graduate. It is one of a small but growing number of schools working in this format.
The ambition is to train large numbers of teachers from around the world and offer online support.
Leading education expert Marc Prensky, from the US, has endorsed the Riverside model. He said there are millions of untapped creative young brains which could help solve community and global problems if children are allowed to work on them.
Education experts and decision-makers have gathered in Sharjah, UAE this week at the International Governmental Communication Forum to discuss, amongst other topics, the future of education and how to best educate children to work in an advanced digital age.
ABOUT IGCF 2019
Under the guidance of His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, UAE Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah, Sharjah launched the inaugural edition of the forum in 2012.
A first-of-its-kind event, the forum aims to build a platform for better communication between governments and their stakeholders to support the government of Sharjah towards creating a participatory dialogue and to develop government communication mechanisms for the benefit of government institutions in the UAE and the region.
Hosted now by International Government Communication Forum, the event witnesses the convergence of local, regional and global media experts along with government thought leaders from all over the world in the emirate of Sharjah. By internationalising the title to ‘International Government Communication Forum (IGCF), the forum is set as an annual event to benchmark Sharjah’s media and communications mandate against global best practices, aims to bring the latest professional standards of various governments’ communication methods to the emirate, seeks to address and embed macro topics to develop a collaborative and participatory dialogue with opinion leaders, heads of government institutions, and other officials.
In addition to a series of panel discussions and workshops, the forum highlights Sharjah Government Media Bureau and its role in developing and overseeing best practices in the field of media relations and communications for government institutions.
B-roll and other materials including images will also be made available on Red Robots
MediaGRAB: https://www.mediagrab.press/presskit/International%20Government%20Communication%20Forum
IV with pupil Preya Patel
IV with teacher Niall Walsh, Riverside School India
IV with parent Shweta Garg
IV with Marc Prensky, education expert
GVs of school
GVs of IGCF 2019
Panel discussion
Audio is split track
Track 1 Voice Over
Track 2 Nat Sot
21 March 2019
