By Shaik Zakeer Hussain, TwoCircles.net,
Bangalore: On 8th February Burooj Realization, a non-profit education research organization, will hold a first of its kind conference for Muslim educators in India. A one-day event, the conference will examine some of the current challenges facing Muslim run schools in the country, and come up with solutions to overcome it. Called the ‘Milky Way Education Summit – 2014’, it will bring together teachers, educators and researchers to consider challenges, exchange ideas and best practices to address school needs through a collaborative approach.
Speaking to TCN, summit convener Ovias Siraj, says, “A lot of people are doing great work in different areas, but somewhere there is no collaboration, so the whole idea of this conference is to get people all over India to one platform.” According to Siraj, they have reached out to almost 6000 Muslim run schools in India, and says some 500 principals and decision makers from these schools will be participating in the summit to be held in Chennai.
He says that most schools, are busy with the nitty-gritty of the day to day management of their affairs, and though they start off very well, but become cemented down the line. So the question which Siraj says arises is, how do we think beyond it? Citing a recent survey by the multidisciplinary research organisation C fore, he says that out of the top 100 schools in India, only one is Muslim managed school. “We want these schools to have a standard on which to raise the bar, we want them to think higher and achieve higher.”
“There are three areas in education: the environment, the educator and the educated (students). We are focusing too much on changing the environment, rather the focus should be more on the students and the teachers; meaning the quality of teachers and the corresponding confidence that brings in, so that children can achieve more.”
Further explaining Burooj’s method of bringing in change in the education system, he says that as an organisation they “travel a lot and reach out to some of the latest factors in education. Though the fundamentals remain the same, but the way of delivering it, changes with time. Be it teachers’ training or managing HR policies, there are lot of changes taking place.” For Burooj, it is the adaptation of these rapidly changing methods that would keep the equilibrium between Muslim run schools and other schools.
Siraj also clarifies that, though most schools in India, irrespective of who runs, have more or less the same issues, but according to him non-Muslim run schools have started to adapt knew methodologies, whereas Muslim run schools haven’t. A summit like this, he says will get these schools to think in a “new direction, and give confidence.” “Different schools are good at different things, some are good at science, some at sports and some in another activity, so our summit will bring in the best practices from these schools to the centre stage, to have others learn from it.”
“There are schools working in the same city for decades, but there has never been any communication between them,” ‘Milky Way Education Summit – 2014’, he says will try to bridge these communication gaps.
The summit will see a range of topics for discussion. These include ‘Bringing FINLAND Home’, which Siraj explains is about the methods implemented in the Nordic country, which has the best education system in the world, then there is ‘STEM: Where has the curiosity gone from Science?’ which is about application based science, among others. He adds that because this is Burooj’s first summit, they don’t want to force participants with too many ideas, “If people can have one or two take backs, which they would implement, then we would consider this to be a success”.
The conference will also see keynote addresses from the founder of EduMedia, Sultan Syed, Rais Mukhtar, chairman of Rais Institute of Management, Danish Aga, former VP at Merrill Lynch and others.
Burooj Realization was started in 2004 by Dawood Vaid, as an Islamic educational research centre, and works in “12 verticals including Teacher’s training, Teenage workshops and Curriculum design and has since conducted 500+ workshops, quizzes and seminars across the globe including Singapore, Qatar, Oman, UAE, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and across 40 Indian cities.”
‘Milky Way Education Summit – 2014’ will be held on 8th Februaury 2014, between 10 to 6 Pm at The New College, Peters Road, Royapettah, Chennai.
To register for the conference visit: www.milkywaysummit.com