Pandamic Hit Us Badly, We Bounced Back With Technology: Zee Learn

The Entrepreneur India has concluded the Education and Innovation Summit 2023 in Bengaluru, Karnataka where many industry leaders participated and imparted their knowledge into the vast sector which is witnessing the penetration of technology on a high level, changing the market scenario and competency.

The Show was attended by various leaders including Hari Krishnan Nair Co-Founder, Great Learning, Shantanu Rooj, Founder & CEO, TeamLease EdTech, Vinod Keni, Managing Partner, IAN Alpha Fund among others.

During the event, there was an extensive discussion over various sub sectors in the field of Education of which the most important was early childhood learning. The panel saw the presence of Vittal Bhandary, Founder & Managing Director, Learning Edge India Pvt. Ltd, Ritesh Handa, Chief Executive Officer, Zee Learn Limited and Alok Bhimesh Executive Director, Basil Woods Institutions. The panel was moderated by Ritu Marya, Editor-in-Chief, Entrepreneur India and APAC.

Speaking about the challenges in teaching children online during the pandemic, Ritesh Handa, Chief Executive Officer, Zee Learn Limited said that it was very important to develop certain child kits during the pandemic to make them learn as it is very difficult to teach children between the age of two and five online.

“Now the pandemic is behind us and I think everybody wants to come back to school and stay in the school. We need to make our children better citizen of our country and they are not going to become one if they sit at home and study online,” he said.

“Children who were born in the year 2019 have not gone to schools. Due to pandemic, we have gone back at least 10 years,” he added.

Speaking about the trends in the early childhood education, Vittal Bhandary, Founder & MD, Learning Edge India Pvt. Ltd said, “The early learning is the right of every child and we partner with parents to make them aware of certain skills before they go into the academics. I see a lot of awareness these times which was not there earlier but it is still not enough. If you take number of UNESCO, 37 million children don’t have access to the early child education.”

Opposing the technology he said, “I am totally against the technology in early childhood education. Early childhood means you have to introduce them to the practical learning. We don’t want the children to get into screen timing in that age,” he added.

Agreeing with Bhandary, Handa said that technology will not be successful in early childhood education unless we get the children into the physical environment and for that we have to go to tier 2, tier 3 cities to make the children aware of the education.

Joining them further, Alok B, Executive Director, Basil Woods Institutions said that we need a very high quality early education system. “If we have to strengthen the foundation of an individual, we need a high quality early education system,” he added.

Speaking about the teacher training, Handa said, “We have changed the teacher training completely because we have realised that demand from the parents is also totally different. We have started focusing on the moral values and we have started to train our teachers to teach the children that it is okay not come first in the class. We teach them how be confident and be least hesitant.”

Answering a question from the audience, Handa suggested that one should get their child off cell phones.  “I would suggest that let the child be and send them to park to play with other children and they will learn themselves,” he added.