A holistic education revolves around the idea of not being bound by a particular syllabus and focusing on the all-round development of a student, ensuring mastery over all of one’s mental, physical, emotional, spiritual and social aspects. In recent times, we have witnessed a major shift in the educational approach prevalent in the country as more educators and parents realise the importance of holistic education. As a result, the demand for educators who can provide holistic education has increased to a considerable extent, where parents are looking for schools that can turn their wards into capable leaders of tomorrow. One such premier group of schools that strives on all aspects of child development, and is unique in its own way is National Model Group of Schools, with over 3 decades of excellence, is envisioned towards providing the best up-to-date education, irrespective of the socio-economic status.
Founded under the aegis of the PNP Educational Trust in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. In the National Model Group of Schools students are given a world-class environment to grow, an environment with every facility and amenity needed by students of today. Students are not only prepared for entries into ivy league colleges in India and abroad, but also are provided a supportive environment where they feel valued, grow in confidence, fulfill their potential and develop holistic – academically, morally, socially and physically.
Hybrid Model of Teaching
Due to COVID, many changes came to the world, and it took time for everyone to adapt. Education was one segment which got impacted the most. Schools had an immense task of re-imagining education, and soon saw a culture of online learning and teaching becoming mainstream, and with it came its benefits and enormous challenges. However, National Model School realized early on that quick changes need to be made irrespective of the scenario outside, and thus, the school emphasised on making teaching and technology a synonymous operation, ensuring adapting to ICT-apparatus was effortless.
With the students returning to the school after 2 years, another stage of transition has begun at the National Model Group of Schools, which is the transition into a Hybrid Model of teaching and learning. In this particular setup, the school continues to use online teaching to supplement learning along with the regular face-to-face experiences, also, helping students to transition back to school smoothly and at their pace. Hybrid Education has helped the school to blend the best of both online and offline mode and create a singular learning experience without any weak-spots. Also, ensuring a flexible learning schedule, teaching modes, learning materials, and flexibility in collaboration and communication between peers and their instructors, a sense of belonging is felt across every endeavour carried out by the school.
“Our emphasis is on developing skills like critical thinking, creativity and stronger conceptual understanding to encourage students to become self-motivated learners. This is much needed for students to prepare them for the unseen jobs of tomorrow”, shares – Dr. P. Mohan Chandar, the Chairman of the school, elaborating on how the management and the school has worked relentlessly towards adapting to the norms laid down by the NEP 2020, and how it is indeed helpful for all. Through the conversation, we also learnt that the school always has an inclusive and a balanced outlook, laying equal emphasis to inculcate cultural awareness, values, empathy, arts, creativity among students, which also now is one of the vision of NEP 2020.
Flexible Curriculum Choices
For the National Model Group of Schools, COVID has resulted in one positive thing – it has given the parents an insight to the high quality of teaching that the schools offer. Though most other schools failed in that regard, the National Model Group of Schools came out with flying colors, because of the core focus on teacher training and enablement from the beginning. In the future, the school plans to continue to resource and train teachers, along with introducing new and best practices in education. Their in-house research division has rigorously researched new theories, trends and patterns in education. As part of their goal of providing international curriculum choice for the students, they have affiliated a few of their schools to Cambridge. Likewise, the school is toiling with an idea of a teacher training program based on Finland Education.
Adding to his above statement, and explaining about the detailed curriculum the school offers, Dr. Chandar, stated – “We have a very flexible curriculum offering, which caters to all strata of society, offering CBSE, Matriculation and Cambridge (International) curriculum to our students to choose from across four of our schools. Our dedication to innovate, and enable our teachers will always ensure quality education for our students”. An epitome of great efforts, that are guided towards orienting and training the teachers, especially new members, all the new faculties go through a mandatory one week orientation and training programs. These programs not only cover pedagogy related training but also methodologies, board related and technology related training, where all the training is designed based on need-based-analysis to understand what training and development programs are required by the teachers.
Lastly, their in-house research division has continuously experimented with new ways of teaching and learning. One such initiative the schools started is “Toys – Tools for learning”, where a teaching and learning program is created using toys. Teachers use toys to help students entertain themselves, while simultaneously using them to explore the world around them, educating themselves, role playing and learning to express their emotions. The school also participated in the first ever “National Virtual Toy Fair” (Feb 2021), which was organised by the Ministry of Education along with 7 other ministries and the school stands to be one of the 63 CBSE schools that participated, and were the only school from Tamil Nadu.
Dr. P. Mohan Chandar – Chairman
Dr. Mohan is the Chairman of National Model Group of Schools. He finished his MBA in 1989 and has a PhD in Primary Education. On the account of being extravagant in his ideologies and having a subsequent vision to proclaim in the field of unconventional education, he wanted to invent and maintain a unique, constructive and functional way of imparting the knowledge to the community. Education is not meant only to drill the brain, it goes beyond to develop a wholesome child. With this thought dwelling in his mind, Dr. Mohan took the reins of National Model School in the year 1987. The objective was to break the monotony of conventional methodology in teaching, and introduce constructive and functional ways of learning. Though not hailing from an educational background had its setbacks, it allowed him to try various experimentative and innovative approaches to education. Thus helping set a strong foundation, the fruits of which are being enjoyed today. Dr. Mohan always wanted teaching and technology to go hand-in-hand, which made him introduce cutting edge technologies in his school, like ultra-short throw projectors, visualizers and interactive panel boards inside every classroom.
