Global Schools Foundation has totally adopted Virtual Classrooms across its campuses getting its entire 15,000 cohort onboard this new way of schooling, successfully delivering education online at the time when Covid-19 is causing large-scale disruptions in the education sector as well. 

Students of Singapore, India, Malaysia and Japan campuses will or have been conducting 100% virtual classroom learning with everyone operating from their homes, while GSF schools in UAE will soon jump on-board. Students are having their daily lessons delivered online, in a similar way to being in an actual classroom, and interacting with teachers and peers through their devices. 

“This is a transformative moment for education for our young students, who are experiencing the emergence of a new method of learning and teaching,” Mr Temurnikar observed, in a video message from Singapore sent out to the GIIS family of parents, teachers and students, at a time when corona virus has caused most schools to close.  

With scalable technology available in all GSF Smart Schools,, the face to face teacher student interaction is now fully scaled up and can apply to thousands of students at the same time. 

“While the brick and mortar ecosystem of attending morning school and evening tuitions is under a cloud, parents would now have wider choices of schools and tuitions from different cities, many different countries, to see what is best suited for their students,” Mr Temurnikar said. 

Mobiles were already students’ best friends and now, mobiles would become the new kings, bringing classroom experience to their mobiles. So parents will not have to weigh in on the upside and downside.  

GSF schools have also taken safety to totally next level, beyond just having compliances to fire and safety, to include occupational injury hazards within campuses, to have common and certified systems and processes benchmarked to best standards, and have processes for dealing with Natural calamities like tsunami, pandemics like Covid, SARS, H1N1, etc.  

“We thought of this years back when our GIIS schools were actually caught in the fury of the Mar 2011 Tsunami, exactly 9 years ago, and that led to ideation on how we can make our Schools operate even in a force majeure.  

“Now, the mental health and safety of students is being put to utmost priority, with personal experience being used to ensure preparedness to deal with cases for minimising disruptions in learning,” he added. 

With school education being impacted too, GSF has set up an International Response Centre IRC for all campuses and has been quick to take action to curtail the fallout for the students at GIIS and OWIS. “Our Teams in Japan, Singapore, UAE, India and Malaysia have put measures in place that will allow smooth functioning of the schools with proper precautionary measures in place.” 

Each parent from every campus has received a mail on the helpdesk details and procedures they need to follow to clear their doubts on Virtual Classrooms and technology glitches. 

Understanding the concerns of parents on the growing menace of COVID-19, he said it is the school’s duty and responsibility to put their doubts at ease.

Mr Temurnikar listed the measures taken by GSF for Covid, saying all guidelines by the authorities are mandatorily implemented in our schools. “There is a daily review of procedures in all campuses, like sanitisation of premises, temperature taking activities, provision of masks and implementation of safe distancing measures.”

“Personal hygiene needs to be a top priority for all, as well as following mandatory and suggested guidelines - including staying at home, one-meter distance rule etc. for those who are required to do so,” he pointed out.

Mr Temurnikar said that by continuing to carefully incorporate highly selective digital technology as part of our facilities, and providing digital tools to all students as part of the NextGen Learning process, GSF has  ensured that we embrace newer methods of teaching and learning to provide maximum benefits to students. 

“Our Virtual Classrooms are an example of the far-sightedness of GSF, and their usefulness has been proven at this important juncture.”

GSF has also announced the GIIS Resilience 2020 Scholarship that will support students from families whose cash flow may be affected at this time. “Economic hardships can befall on some during these trying times, which is why GSF has several scholarships,” he said, adding “We will facilitate student loans, in conjunction with financial institutions, for parents who approach the school.”

He also urged parents and teachers to take the time teach the younger generation about resilience in these trying times. “As elders, it is our duty to make our newer generation mentally, physically and psychologically strong. This will go a long way into making them responsible citizens as well.”

“We request our parents to support and cooperate with us, as well as educate their wards at home, to follow the correct procedures which would keep everyone safe, and emerge out of this crisis as winners,” he said.