Some schools are full, others are struggling for students: What Girish Kumar Sachdev sees changing in India’s K-12 market

- School Education

- 14 min read

Some schools are full, others are struggling for students: What Girish Kumar Sachdev sees changing in India’s K-12 market

Highlights

- How AI and technology can give teachers more time to focus on students

- Why an AI lab should go beyond robotics kits and gadgets

- Why teacher mindfulness and introspection matter as much as technology skills

- How schools can balance academic performance with a child's overall development

- Why professional management and parent engagement are becoming central to school leadership

- What will define a future-ready school over the next five to ten years

In an interaction with ETEducation, Sachdev discusses the changing dynamics of the school market, the entry of international school brands, growing parental interest in different curricula, the challenge of maintaining individual attention at scale, the changing role of teachers and why meaningful AI education requires more than technology and gadgets.

Q. You are seeing very different trends across the K-12 market. DPS Indirapuram is operating at or above capacity, while some schools are struggling to attract students. What is driving this divergence, and what does it tell us about the Indian school market today?

Girish Kumar Sachdev: I think it depends on which geographical area you are in, what kind of surroundings you have and what you are offering. Sometimes you are not the best fit for a particular market. For example, you may be in a place where the economic or education conditions are not that developed, and you are providing something that is beyond the expectations of that market. At times, that creates a mismatch.

I also feel there are certain areas where there are a lot of schools while the demand is less. When you have 10 schools and the demand is not that great, some will obviously struggle.

There are many schools that opened around 2015 and there is no limit to how many can come up in a market. We are seeing new schools coming up around us as well. Ultimately, I believe it will come down to quality, what you are offering and whether you are able to connect with the requirements of the community you serve.

Q. With several new schools entering established markets, including international and British school brands, what is driving this expansion into India?

Girish Kumar Sachdev: India is a big market. Education is also a very sensitive sector because you are not selling a product. You are dealing with lives.

Our education levels are improving, and the increase in per capita income over the last few years has also created opportunities. A large part of India is middle class, and the middle class is driven significantly by aspirations. They want better opportunities and better education for their children.

That has created an opportunity for international schools and institutions to enter India and try their hands here.

They also understand that they are not bringing their entire setup from their home country. They are bringing the curriculum and the educational model, while land and building costs are much lower here. They may bring some faculty from abroad, but most of the teaching staff would eventually be hired locally.

They are therefore not trying to recreate London or another international location in India. They are trying to offer an international education experience in the Indian context.

I think the effort is positive in terms of creating choices, but ultimately people will judge these institutions by how passionately and effectively they deliver education. When something new comes into the Indian market and the initial effort is good, people are willing to give it a try. After that, it depends on how well the institution delivers and how seriously it serves the cause of education.

Q. You have also seen parents ask for different curriculum options. How do you see the demand for international curricula evolving in India, particularly as more students aspire to study abroad?

Girish Kumar Sachdev: International curricula require a different mindset. The financials, curriculum and expected outcomes are different.

CBSE and ICSE have their own approaches to subjects and learning. When you move towards IB and similar international curricula, the pedagogy is different. The approach is more experiential, involves peer learning and is more project-based. Students learn through experience and doing things themselves. Naturally, the cost structure is also different because there is significant investment in projects and other resources.

I respect IB and other international curricula, but if you look at the outcomes over the last 20 or 30 years, I don't think you can say that only an international curriculum produces students who can succeed globally.

CBSE students have been going to universities abroad for many years. A student from CBSE or ICSE can appear for the SAT and apply to foreign universities. Universities are also increasingly conducting their own entrance assessments.

The difference is that many universities abroad look beyond subject knowledge. They want to understand the student as a person. They look at the student's personality, what he or she can bring to the institution and the community, and what the student has done beyond academics.

They may look at social service, music, sports and other activities. They want to know whether the student has developed an overall personality and the ability to deal with challenges. That is where the difference lies. It is not that only a student from an international curriculum can go abroad. CBSE and ICSE students can also do so.

Q. You are involved with school communities of more than 6000 students across DPS Indirapuram, junior and senior wing. What are the biggest challenges in maintaining quality at this scale without turning education into a one-size-fits-all approach?

Girish Kumar Sachdev: I believe one of the biggest challenges in school education today is time. As schools have grown, expectations from teachers have grown enormously. A few years ago, a teacher's primary responsibility was teaching. Today, teachers teach, assess, prepare reports, communicate with parents, attend meetings, manage administrative responsibilities and deal with several operational requirements.

The result is that teachers increasingly spend time on activities around teaching rather than on the child itself. This is one of the reasons teacher burnout has become such an important concern. I strongly believe technology and AI should be used to divide the core and non-core functions of a school. If technology can take away repetitive operational work, it can give teachers something far more valuable than efficiency: time.

We have worked towards creating systems where many of these operational responsibilities are automated or simplified. The objective is not merely to make the school more efficient. It is to give teachers more time to develop themselves, learn new skills and, most importantly, understand the children under their care.

For me, the real test of a teacher is whether the teacher knows the children individually. Who is learning? Who is struggling? Who has lost interest? Who needs encouragement? What may be happening in a child's life that is affecting their learning?

Scale should therefore never become an excuse for standardisation. The systems of a school should be standardised, but the child should never be. A large school can use technology to understand every child better. That is where technology becomes meaningful. It should not replace the teacher. It should give the teacher more time and better information to do what only a teacher can do: understand a child.

Q. You have focused strongly on teacher development. What skills do teachers need to develop for the next generation of learners?

Girish Kumar Sachdev: Teacher training has become a very common phrase in education. Schools conduct workshops, and regulatory and governing bodies also organise training programmes. But I believe we need to look beyond training teachers merely on tools and techniques.

The first thing teachers need today is mindfulness, an awareness of what their responsibility really is. Every child is different. The requirement of one child may be completely different from another. Therefore, a teacher needs to be mindful about what is required, what needs to be changed and, equally importantly, what does not need to be done.

The second quality is the ability to introspect and evolve. If a teacher never evaluates his or her own decisions and practices, there is very little scope for genuine evolution. A good institution should create an environment where teachers feel encouraged to ask themselves: What am I doing well? What am I not doing well? What do I need to learn?

Teaching is not just another profession. Teachers are shaping lives. The children sitting in their classrooms are going to become the future of the country. That responsibility requires a different level of ownership.

Of course, teachers also need strong subject knowledge and must understand technology and AI. But learning technology does not mean making teaching artificial. In fact, I believe the opposite is true.

The more teachers understand technology and AI, the more wisely they can decide where to use it and where not to use it.

Technology can provide information, efficiency and assistance. But compassion, empathy, observation and the human relationship between a teacher and a child cannot be replaced. The teacher of the future therefore has to combine mindfulness, introspection, subject expertise, technology literacy and, above all, human connection.

Q. You have introduced an AI lab and developed a wider technology ecosystem at the school. How should schools move from AI exposure to meaningful AI learning?

Girish Kumar Sachdev: I feel very strongly about this because we spent more than three years researching this area before designing our AI and technology ecosystem.

An AI lab should not simply be a room with a 3D printer, robotic kits, a humanoid or a robotic dog supplied by a vendor. Those things can be useful tools, but having gadgets does not mean that you have an advanced AI lab.

Our first step was actually to educate ourselves. We travelled, studied what was happening internationally, visited institutions known for AI education and also looked at industry. What we realised was that school-level AI and technology education in India was, in many places, still at a very basic or namesake stage. We therefore approached it differently.

We brought experienced trainers and experts on board, developed our own content and created different learning environments, from a design lab to an AI lab and a makerspace where children can practise what they learn.

Our curriculum is age-appropriate and structured around three stages: Discover, Design and Develop. The purpose is not to increase screen time or simply introduce children to more gadgets. The purpose is to make them understand technology and AI deeply enough to use them intelligently.

I believe that within the next five years, AI and technology literacy will become a fundamental requirement across almost every profession. Whether a child eventually becomes a doctor, engineer, teacher, author, entrepreneur or works in any other field, technology and AI will be part of that professional environment.

So our objective is much bigger than exposing children to AI. We want children to leave school with the ability to understand technology, create with it and use it responsibly, so that they are industry-ready when they pass Class XII.

Q. Parents today are increasingly involved in decisions around curriculum, academic performance and their child's overall development. What does a meaningful school-parent partnership look like?

Girish Kumar Sachdev: A PTM, a circular, a notice or an occasional interaction does not by itself constitute a meaningful school-parent relationship. For me, the foundation has to be transparency, trust and a shared responsibility towards the child.

The school and the parent have the same objective. The school brings professional expertise and an understanding of the larger educational environment, while parents understand the child in a way that the school may not always be able to. A child spends a significant part of the day at school and a significant part at home, so these two environments cannot work in isolation. Both have to work as a team.

At our school, we have developed a structured and transparent engagement process where parents are kept informed not only about academic progress, but also about the child's overall development, areas where the child may need support and what the school is doing to address those areas.

One initiative we have developed is KYC and KYP, Know Your Child and Know Your Parent. Teachers are assigned a group of approximately 40 children, and those children become their responsibility not merely academically, but emotionally and in terms of their overall development.

At regular intervals, teachers speak individually with parents. They update them about the child and, equally importantly, understand what may be happening at home. Sometimes parents share challenges that help the teacher understand why a child may be behaving or learning differently.

That information can then help both sides support the child better. This has created a much stronger bond between teachers and parents because parents can see that the teacher is genuinely invested in their child. Parent engagement should not be about finding faults with each other. It should be about giving both sides enough transparency and information to work together for the child.

Q. You have also worked on financial and operational efficiency. How important is professional management to the functioning of a large school?

Girish Kumar Sachdev: Professional management is extremely important because the financial and operational health of a school ultimately affects its ability to function effectively.

Schools are largely dependent on the fees collected from parents. When you are dealing with thousands of families, financial processes can become complex very quickly. If these processes are not streamlined, they can create stress for parents, the accounts team and the management, and eventually affect the functioning of the institution.

We therefore worked on making the processes simpler, more professional and technology-driven. An important part of this is also educating parents about their financial responsibility towards the institution. Transparency is critical. Parents should understand why timely and disciplined financial participation matters, while the school should provide a system that makes the entire process simple and transparent.

Technology and AI can support this significantly by reducing manual processes, improving transparency and giving the accounts team, management and parents the right information at the right time. The objective of professional management, however, should never be merely cost reduction.

Operational efficiency is about creating more educational value from the resources available to a school. When administrative and financial processes work smoothly, the management can focus more on educational initiatives, teachers can focus more on children and parents can interact with the school with greater clarity and confidence.

Good management should ultimately make the educational ecosystem less stressful and more effective for everyone.

Q. You are looking to expand beyond Delhi-NCR. What makes a new geography or school opportunity worth entering, particularly when some markets are already seeing oversupply?

Girish Kumar Sachdev: We do have some plans, but they are under wraps at this moment. Unless we get to the final stage of a deal, I would not like to discuss the details. But yes, we are planning to expand outside Delhi-NCR. If we get a good opportunity, we will definitely move forward.

It has been 25 years that we have been serving the cause of education. We have been dealing with children for more than two decades now. We understand that working in education today is becoming increasingly challenging, so any expansion has to be considered carefully.

Q. Looking ahead five to ten years, what will define a truly future-ready school in India?

Girish Kumar Sachdev: A future-ready school is not defined by having a swimming pool, smart boards, air-conditioned classrooms, buses or a collection of clubs. Those are facilities. They do not, by themselves, make a school future-ready.

A future-ready school will first have teachers who can understand individual children and deliver what the institution and the child actually need. It will provide 360-degree support for a child's well-being, skills, personality and learning. It will also be an institution that continuously evolves.

I believe a strong research and development culture will therefore become essential in schools. School leaders cannot simply continue doing what worked five or ten years ago. They have to continuously study, experiment, learn and bring new ideas into the institution.

The other major transformation will be technology and AI. Children need much more than exposure to gadgets. They need well-curated knowledge of AI and technology because, irrespective of the profession they eventually choose, these skills will become fundamental to their lives.

There is a lot of fear around AI, concerns about its misuse, overuse and negative consequences. But I believe that a large part of this fear comes from not understanding it. It is like driving a car. If you know how to drive, you understand where you can drive, how to drive and where you need to be careful. If you do not know how to drive, the same machine can become dangerous. The same principle applies to AI.

Knowledge gives you the power and wisdom to decide where to use technology, how to use it and where not to use it. Therefore, the future-ready school will not simply teach children how to use AI tools. It will teach them to understand AI, think critically about it, create with it and use it responsibly.

Ultimately, I believe the schools that will truly prepare children for the future will be those that bring together strong teachers, individual attention, continuous research, professional systems and deep technology and AI literacy without losing the human side of education.

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