How Early Steps Academy is revolutionising education with its ground-breaking, Harvard-style curriculum

CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Ms. Sneha Biswas, founder of Early Steps Academy

Q1. How the 21st century world is moving faster than ever and how do we keep the next generation up-to-date with this ever-changing and complex world?

– The 21st century world is moving at an unprecedented pace and young children are limited to the 5 subjects taught in schools, thereby creating a huge learning backlog and lack of confidence to face the real world. As adults are constantly upskilling in this new world, young children must also be systematically exposed to a range of relevant, modern and essential subjects with a focus on building their skills that would enable them to outwit technology. The key skills of the 21st century are thinking ( critical, structured and independent thinking) and effective communication – the two things that machines will not be able to do as well as humans can, atleast in this century.

Q2. How to make school children 10X confident in the real world, even as the world is changing at a lightning speed?

– In this fast-paced, rapidly changing world, children can become 10X confident and maximize their potential only when they are aware of the changes in the world, which means that they must be exposed to modern and essential 21st century subjects from Entrepreneurship, Climate, Space Tech, Applied Math and more. Confidence is not a factor of just knowledge, but also the ability to use that knowledge. This can be done by equipping children with the right set of skills that would enable them to succeed even if the world looks completely different in the next decade.

Q3. Our workplaces and lifestyles have dramatically changed today but children are still taught the same 5-6 subjects as were in the past, leaving them significantly under-confident to face the real world. How Early Steps Academy is changing that through its disruptive Harvard-like curriculum on 1000+ modern essential subjects and 21st century skills?

– Early Steps Academy’s global curriculum exposes school children in ages 8-18 to a range of modern essential subjects and skills through the famous case study method, pioneered at Harvard, and all put in simple childlike language. The case method enables children to see the application of concepts in the real world, thereby making them confident not just in classrooms and tests, but also in the real world. With students from 47 countries, the academy is able to facilitate global interactions for young children, maximizing their exposure and making them 10X confident.

Q4. How is Early Steps Academy Fastforwarding to the future of learning by pushing education forward by a 100 years ?

– Education, as a sector, is the most important sector to drive the economy and to make sure that the world will be in safe hands in the future. However, unfortunately, the sector has not seen any transformational innovation in the last century. While companies like Netflix, Uber and Amazon have completely revolutionized how we operate, in education we see the same subjects, the same kind of classroom designs with benches, aisles and teachers, the same focus on exams and the same routine for children. Even when we talk about the most progressive schools, the modifications are marginal – a little more interactive pedagogy, better student-teacher ratio and a slightly higher focus on application than theory.

Early Steps Academy is the world’s first program to transform education and learning for children by revolutionizing what and how children learn in the 21st century. With a range of modern essential subjects, focus on skills, one global curriculum and tangible learning outcomes, Early Steps’ mission is to make education relevant (useful) and engaging ( fun!) for the 2 Billion school-going children worldwide.

Q5. Founder’s mission to introduce Early Steps Academy to 3.5 billion school-going children by 2030

– By 2030, there will be 3.5 Billion school going children in the world and it is imperative for the survival of the planet to have truly educated and confident children to run it, even as the world is changing at a rapid pace. Therefore, our mission is to reach each and every school-going children and introduce the Early Steps way of learning to them – thereby making sure that every child is able to maximize his/her potential and every child is walking out of school years with 10X confidence to face the real world.

Q6. What is the role of technology in education? How do you see the scenario changing 10 years from now?

– Technology has helped in two things – faster dissemination of information and providing global exposure to learners. Faster dissemination of information is a critical component of learning in the 21st century world where things are moving at an unprecedented pace and knowledge becomes redundant very quickly. Additionally, technology enables a global reach for young school children, like how we do at Early Steps Academy by creating global classrooms for learners where children from different countries can come together and learn together. Increasing the speed of accessibility to high quality learning and expanding the exposure of school-going learners beyond their city is only possible through technology and that is a critical piece of solving a problem of this scale.