VIJAYAWADA: Is it possible to make quality education affordable to a large number of parents? Or, will the parents have to reconcile to the idea that what they could afford may not necessarily have quality?

Seeking to bring quality and affordability together for the benefit of students of private schools affiliated to the State board of school education, Hyderabad-based Rumi Education, an initiative of Singapore-based organisation R.F. Chandler, conducted a workshop here on Saturday on ‘Making quality education affordable'. Principals and representatives of some of the private schools in the city were explained how this could be achieved.

Amit Sinha, Assistant Vice President (Operations), Rumi Education, said that as many as 14 schools in the city were already under the umbrella of Rumi Education with the idea of making quality education affordable to the students studying there. Rumi Education was ready to partner with the schools interested in realising the goal of making quality education affordable to its students, by standardising teaching methods and training the teachers in using certain teaching tools. A personalised academic strategy and annual academic calendar would be prepared.

Employability skills

Mr. Sinha said that quality education should lead to employability skills, for which schools would be made to focus on trained and experience teachers, well-designed and structured lesson plan with standardised delivery in classes, simple activity tools to clarify concepts, computer and technological programming, spoken English and personality development, continuous training and development of teachers.

Writer and personality development trainer Yandamoori Veerendranath suggested to teachers to help students acquire wisdom too in addition to knowledge. Teaching syllabus alone was not enough. Students must be able to have lateral thinking skills as well, he said. “Intelligent parents do not want their children to study in prestigious schools, but in good schools,” he observed.

Senior journalist C. Raghavachari felt that good education must be quality education that could be afforded by many and useful as well. Representatives of two schools that were working with Rumi Education – D. Surendra (Vishwashanthi Talent School) and K. Venkateswara Rao (Nagarjuna Public School) – spoke.