A leading online school in India for globally mobile families

For many globally mobile professionals the world over, achieving alignment between careers and raising a family is not easy. One of the biggest challenges professionals face is the disruption to their child’s education caused by relocation or projects away from home.

A 21K student studies
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While the adults in the family are fine with moving, schooling for younger family members is almost always a concern, particularly when moves need to happen during the academic year, a time regarded as sacrosanct.Yet India, a forerunner in adopting technological advancement, has until now lacked a proper solution for the common pain point of how to keep children’s education intact during extensive globetrotting.Preethi Janji, a change manager in one of the UAE’s top companies, had to pivot from a promising career just because she didn’t want to change her child’s school. Working as an ERP consultant in 2010, she was offered an implementation project in Kenya. It was a big opportunity, but needed her to relocate for 6 to 12 months. As a consultant, it was her dream assignment. However, she rejected it so that her child’s school routine was not affected.Online classes didn’t exist in those days. She rues, “Today my son in practice gathers most of his knowledge from online channels and his studies have become more assignment/project-based, instead of the ‘set’ syllabus. If these options existed earlier, I would have been able to take up the short-term assignments.”Zuana, working with a prominent NGO, prioritised the work she was doing for the different tribal communities in India. Unfortunately, her son Aditya had to face a lot of difficulties every time they had to move as the different schools had different syllabi. “Online schools would have been the perfect solution to my child’s education as he could have followed the same syllabi instead of shifting between the state, central and even IGSCE at times!”21K succeeds at solving this problem for relocating parents through its online education platform, bringing education to the child instead of the other way round.

The size of the school community and its expected growth

With about 32 million NRIs (Non-resident Indians) and about 2.5 million more joining them every year, Indians comprise the world’s largest diaspora. With more and more parents either returning on a permanent basis or testing the water in India, it can be safely predicted that this section of the international education market is on a growth spree. Parents are looking at educating their kids in a syllabus and environment that is constant, given that their ecosystem is often changing in the physical world.IT professionals and others working in blue-chip companies often find themselves staying in one place for the sake of their child’s education, with some even sacrificing their careers. Online education is the only answer to this problem.But it can be a solution only if the education provided is of very good quality. 21K is the perfect solution, offering different syllabi like the Indian curriculum, American curriculum, and British curriculum. The school has international accreditations and partnerships with Cambridge Assessment International Education, The Keystone School, MSA CESS, Cognia, Stride, Inc. and Pearson Edexcel. Lesson delivery and pedagogyThe lessons are delivered through live and interactive classes. Class recordings are available and can be accessed anytime. Chat boxes and message centres also help students interact with the teacher all through the day.The 21K School prides itself in not just adopting technical advancement but actually spearheading them through gamification, AI and more. We recently became the world’s first school to transition into Web 3.0.At 21K School, we are immensely proud to reimagine education with emerging technologies like Blockchain, Metaverse, NFTs, and more to instil learning, thinking, and creativity in the DNA of our students. We are the world’s first Web 3.0 school to be implementing an NFT Marketplace, so children can have the opportunity to understand how cutting-edge technology can help them turn their creativity into financial empowerment.We have not only inculcated the love of learning through constant and exciting games, but also given children a feeling of creativity and independence by actually rewarding them through ‘Learn to Earn’ model which can be used to pay the fees or redeemed in other ways. 21K School is also introducing gamification within its classrooms, where students can complete their homework and assignments in a gamified manner, driven by the digital school’s artificial intelligence enabled Learning Management System. This will not only create deeper engagements for students, but will also encourage them to finish their given tasks with perfection.Based on the 16 attributes called ‘Habits of Mind’ by Costa and Mallick, 21K School works toward also developing the all-round child to make him or her future ready. With the Methodology Learning Mechanism, we encourage children to learn through application rather than merely theoretical rote learning methods.

Pupil engagement and interactions in the class

Classes are streamed live by teachers who are trained to interact with kids online. An environment of friendly engagement and exchange is created with constant monitoring.21K offers a ratio anywhere between 10 to 18 students to one teacher, which enables the teacher to interact one-on-one with each child. The Curriculum is designed to be mindful of the varied pace at which different students assimilate and understand content. This means that every single student gets to set his/her own pace of learning and achieve academic goals. Plus, our anytime-anywhere learning model goes beyond geographical boundaries, offering flexible learning schedules.Apart from the classes, the platform enables personalised chat and message centres along with interactive thread discussions. The class sessions are recorded and the videos are uploaded so they can also be referred to at a later stage. Parents can access realtime information about their child anytime, anywhere, over their mobile phones.Around 3,500 families around the world are 21K success stories. Children from over 35 nationalities are educated together in an environment that supports excellent cross-cultural learning, by over 200 teachers whose teaching quality is rated at an sector-beating 96% approval.

The community for students and parents built by 21K

The 21K School is all about students. The student-centric ecosystem does understand that parents and the household form an important cog in the students’ life and so believes that supporting the parent is an integral part of supporting the child.Parents can track their child’s progress from any part of the world at any given time. All kinds of reports can be generated and parents can get a summary of whatever they are seeking to know about their child.Most importantly, we ensure data privacy and give the parents the peace of mind that they seek. We also arrange parent counselling with experts on a regular basis and other workshops on different topics revolving around the parenting and education.

21K school's rounding up the extra-curricular activities

With personalised learning technology we collect the data points to develop a child’s interests on a virtual level and customise the feed according to the child.With Century Tech, E library, Coding Kit and Virtual Labs powered by partners like Cava, Franklin Covey, Raz Plus, and Century, 21K is able to provide science labs with interactive experiments and simulations using AR/VR and 3D. With constant monitoring of each child’s progress and potential, a tailormade learning path can be carved. Capstone courses, summer school programmes, and many other opportunities that include yoga/mindfulness, photography, poetry, drama and theatre, robotics etc are also available.

The admissions procedure

All admissions can be made online. We give regular webinars to provide information and walk-throughs. A simple click to https://www.21kschool.com/how-to-enrol/ takes you to the portal and all you need to do is fill up the enrolment form and submit it. Rolling admissions also helps students to join at any point of the year and not wait until the following term’s admission window.21K is looking to reach every corner of the world and offer its world-class education to every student wanting to spread his or her wings. We at 21K believe that every child has the potential to reach their zenith. All they require is a platform to enable them through a well-researched pedagogy powered by technology. 21K school aims to fill this gap and in a short time is already educating 3,500 students in around 35 countries around the world.

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