Putting learning
at the heart of assessment
Cambridge Advanced Product and its importance in Indian Education System
Introduction
· There
is no doubt that internationally-focused schooling is rising up the agenda of
governments the world over. Countries are increasingly comparing themselves on
the international stage.
· In
India there are a relatively small number of schools that follow international
standard curriculum, though this was largely superseded by the ICSE stream
elsewhere. Some of these schools also offer the students the opportunity to sit
for the ICSE examinations.
These
are usually very expensive residential schools where some of the Indians
working abroad send their children. They normally have fabulous infrastructure,
low student-teacher ratio and very few students. Many of them have teachers
from abroad.
· Most
Indian schools have a strong focus on academic subjects, with little scope for
creativity and few or no extra-curricular activities. Traditional schooling
methods tend to emphasise rote learning and memorisation, rather than
encouraging independent or creative thinking.
So, at Cambridge
Assessment, what exactly do we mean by an international education? How best can
we prepare students for an increasingly interconnected world?
About
Cambridge Assessment in India
Cambridge
University Press IndiaPvt. Ltd. (CUPIPL) is a
100% subsidiary of Cambridge University Press (Holdings) Limited, UK. CUPIPL
publishes original academic and educational
books focused on India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and
Maldives. Many of the books published by CUPIPL under the imprint ‘Foundation
Books,’ are used in Universities and schools across the Subcontinent.
2. Why do AS and A level for schools in India?
· The
education system in India is geared towards testing knowledge at every level as
opposed to teaching skills. The "teaching a man how to fish" example
perfectly illustrates this concept. If I teach a man how to fish, he will
continue fishing even after I am long gone. But if I give him a fish to eat and
leave, he will not have the skills required to learn how to capture fish in the
future. This is not any different than the concept of education.
· In India, the best crammers for tests are rewarded.
In the West ones who learn skills, and more importantly learn how to apply them
are rewarded. Creativity, original thinking, research, and innovation are all
cultivated and encouraged from a young age (and the age seems to get younger
every year).
· All of this leads to one fact, that while students
from the West rarely apply to Indian universities for undergraduate studies;
Indian parents are willing to fork out 25 lakhs annually in order to get their
sons and daughters into the Western education system.
3. The benefits of Cambridge Advanced Product in
India (As and A level)
Schools
are and must be, ever changing. The best schools are those that plan their
changes, so they progress with a structured development plan.
“This is not a competition between being an
internationally minded person and nationally minded. It's a question of being
both." says Isabel Nisbet, Regional Director of Education (South East
Asia), and Cambridge International Examinations.
·
So,
how does the Cambridge Advanced Product fits in Indian schools?
“This year 27 new schools in India registered with
Cambridge International Examinations. There are now 337 Cambridge schools with
schools making over 59,000 entries for Cambridge qualifications in 2013, a rise
of 30 per cent since 2012.”
(CAMBRIDGE
ASSESSMENT Spring 2014)
Students:
· Achieving an international
standard level will help to increase the confidence of the student to progress
to higher levels.
· As the student progress to
higher levels the more advanced certificates are recognised for admission to
university.
· Student must be able to
think and learn themselves before they start the university to succeed in the
highly pressurised world of higher education.
Teachers:
· Cambridge International AS and A Levels are
internationally benchmarked qualifications providing excellent preparation for
university education. They are part of the Cambridge Advanced stage, thus a
very flexible method.
· Wide variety of interactive and non-interactive
resources for both students and teachers and printable resources with
accessible guidance to help your students achieve success at advanced level.
· The structure and administration of Cambridge
International AS and A Levels are also designed to meet the needs of Cambridge
schools and learners around the world. So, you can be sure that the students are
learning in a realistic methodology.
Parents:
Cambridge International AS and A Levels include:
assessment and test design; curriculum development; monitoring and
evaluation; quality assurance in assessment. So, it will help your child
to progress from one level to next through communicative methodology.
You can be
confident that your son or daughter is achieving international standards
of education.
The
Cambridge advance product stand for the encouragement of personal
development by recognition of achievement. Thus, the Cambridge approach is
globally recognised and will help your child to prepare for international
tests or overseas studies.
4. Product launch strategies:
·
Partnership with
Maharashtra education department (State education authority)
This can be beneficial in gaining necessary
approval for and delivering on requests for marketing communication in key
locations across Maharashtra/ India. This kind of partnerships will enable to
localise the global marketing campaigns for key locations in India.
·
Art Exhibitions/
conference/ Recognition :
This will help to support schools in their
marketing planning and to understand their communications needs. At the same
time, it will provide a platform for us to promote our marketing events in the
region.
·
Training and consultancy :
Training and
consultancy services can play an important role in raising awareness of events
and our qualifications and services. Furthermore, this is an effective way of
maintaining an influencer contact database among the education experts and
school leaders.
Ø
Workshop/ Case studies
Ø
Contact the key decision makers among the media,
Ø
education experts and school leaders
|
6. Target Audience:
School Principals:
School principals will be a key decision
maker who can play an important role to position the Cambridge Advanced Product
in their schools and the collaboration with school principals will be very
helpful to roll out Cambridge programmes and qualifications. Furthermore,
mostly parents rely on the advices of the school principals for the academic
future of their children.
Education Experts:
As experts in this group can play an
important role to influence debate on education strategy and policy that will
provide us a platform to discuss the educational issues with the policy makers.
Education experts can help us in various
initiatives in areas like product launch, research support, and in creating
awareness such as about the Cambridge profile in India. As experts this group
can promote the Cambridge programme as per the strategic framework.
The Schools Development team:
The school Development team in India works with
different educational trusts/societies to assist in setting up and managing
schools across the country. Through
the experienced educators and the consultancies led by the group, the Cambridge
Advanced product can support the school education landscape of India
through the promotion of professional standards, setting up excellent schools,
and educational research.
Hence, with the collaboration the
Cambridge Assessment can support
schools in India in their marketing to understand their communications needs
and support them appropriately.
Examples:
|
Ø Learn Today
Ø Mentor Me India
Ø Asha for Education
Ministries of Education
The work with education ministries in India
will further strengthen the presence of Cambridge Assessment in India to bring
the global expertise and knowledge. The association can also help in case of
educational reform or the pressure of the changes to the regulatory system and
market generally.
Social Media:
Social media is quickly becoming a main focus of marketing for businesses. Social media can be an excellent tool to build a
community around your product or service, expand your target market, and to
listen to what your customers want. (tweakyourbiz.com, 2013)
Linked In:
Linked
professional network provides a platform to its members to stay up-to-date with
the market trend and knowledge with facilities like have your say, building
personal images of professional working in different business areas. More
importantly, it allows users to build and maintain relationships with
like-minded professionals.
So, I can open
LinkedIn and run a search on the schools name, the key person of the
organisation and with the search result I can find a reasonably close estimate
of the percentage of the people currently associated with the education
industry in the region. Thus, I can create a quick contact data base of the
targeted prospects.
Facebook:
·
India to have the world's
largest Face book population by 2016: Study
·
With more and more Indians logging onto
social networking sites, India has recorded the highest growth in their usage
and is set to control the largest Facebook population worldwide by 2016.
(IBN
News 3rd June, 2014)
TweetDeck:
·
TweetDeck is an effective and useful tool that allows
you to arrange feeds from all of your social networks in one place using the TweetDeck dashboard.
·
You can also schedule tweets and set-up
customizable feeds for your social search needs. Lists can also be created of
the people you follow. These lists can allow you to manage different target
groups you want to interact with and keep an eye on what’s being tweeted about.
Hootsuite:
·
It’s easy to use and allows you to organize and
execute campaigns across multiple social networks from one secure, web-based
dashboard.
·
Hootsuite enables
organizations launch marketing campaigns, identify and grow audiences.
·
Key social network integrations include Face
book, Twitter, Linked In, and Google+ Pages, plus a suite of social content
apps for You Tube, Flicker, and more.
WHAT’S
IN FOR ME IN SOCIAL MEDIA ACTIVITIES?
·
According to media reports, Indian
organizations use social media much more than the global average and their
counterparts in emerging economies.
·
Social media-savvy organizations are
very optimistic about the role of social media in their organizations. It plays
an important role in generating insights and engaging with customers on a
continued basis.
·
Social media has helped organizations to
create their own communities of fans, customers or prospects.
(Social Media Marketing: India Trends Study 2013 A
study by EY)
Thus,
by developing and managing the relations with the media in Indian market we can
successfully set up our global key messages and themes in the Indian market
context with an easy monitoring of media coverage.
Event
Activity
Training Event:
Training event can give an understanding to the
prospective teachers, students and parents about the various factors that will
affect
reliability, and potential methods of making assessments more reliable. This
can be supported by developing and delivering social media activities as per
the Cambridge Assessment strategic framework.
Seminars:
Seminars
to focus on implementation issues around the new qualifications of AS and A
level along with the topics for discussion how well the qualification will
prepare the students with knowledge and skills for higher education and future
employment.
Assessment Conference:
Conference
with key themes like the meanings
of international education, the place of international education in national
curricula the role of assessment and qualifications will be helpful
in developing and coordinating the PR activities in Indian market. It will
promote the awareness of Cambridge Assessment qualifications and services
THANK
YOU
References:
http://www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/Images/167104-achieve-spring-14.pdf
http://www.cambridgeindia.org/about.asp
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