Africa Business Communities

[Interview] Africa Business Communities speaks with Young Global Leader, Vikas Pota, Founder of Varkey Foundation

Vikas Pota is the Chief Executive of Varkey Foundation,a Young Global Leader who is passionate about Education. The Varkey Foundation believes in the power of education to make positive and developmental change, globally. During his visit to Ghana, Africa Business Communities, caught up with Vickas for a chat.

For those who may not know Vikas Pota, how would he describe himself?

 I am interested in the big picture. To change the world I believe in the power of collaboration and this is what drives me. If you think you can help get in touch.

What drew you to the challenge of tackling issues on education globally?

 Many people would be surprised if you were to tell them there was a crisis in global education.  It’s not an issue that fills the nightly news bulletins or newspapers. The UN Millennium Development Goal to achieve universal primary education by this year was not achieved. In fact 58 million children worldwide still do not attend primary school.   According to UNESCO, there are still 250 million illiterate children. In low income countries, after five or six years of school, one in three children are unable to read. At current rates of progress, UNESCO estimates, it will take until 2072 to eradicate youth illiteracy. I feel very strongly that the challenges in global education need a much greater spotlight.

How do you assess the education system in Africa?

 The reasons for Africa’s poor educational performance could easily fill a thick exercise book – from large classes and low funding to insufficient textbooks and poorly built schools.  But the malaise has one overwhelming cause: the lack of well trained and well qualified teachers.

It is a particular disaster, with 70% of sub-Saharan Africa’s population under the age of thirty. The roar of the African economy will be silenced unless education capacity does not keep pace with the youth bulge.

According to UNESCO, to achieve universal primary education by 2020, countries will need to recruit a total of 10.9 million primary teachers. If they are not, then Sub-Saharan Africa will be the worst affected region.  Even thought the proportion of children finishing primary school in sub-Saharan Africa has rapidly increased, the quality of education they receive is often dire. Adult literacy rates in sub-Saharan Africa are around 59%, compared with a global average of 84%.

Over the last few years, there has been much excitable talk about Africa being on the cusp of an economic renaissance. But this will amount to another lost opportunity if the number of good quality teachers is not increased to cope with the continent's exploding young population. This is why the Varkey Foundation has a focus on training 250,000 teachers in the most deprived parts of the world.

With regards to teaching modules and practices, what are African schools lacking?

 Our own teacher training programme in Uganda move lessons away from a focus on a student’s ability to remember and repeat facts. Instead, we encourage students to apply, analyse and create based on what they remember. The programme trains teachers to create a culture of ‘personalised learning’ in the classroom with greater participation and exploration of ideas.  Rather than simply relying on ‘chalk and talk’ methods of standing at the front of the classroom, teachers are taught to cater for different learning needs – including those pupils who learn best through ‘Visual’, ‘Auditory’ or ‘Kinaesthetic’ methods and take part in cooperative learning activities.

Can you tell us more about the Global Teacher Prize and the response so far?

 The Global Teacher Prize is a one million dollar prize that is awarded to one exceptional teacher who has made an outstanding contribution to the profession. Widely referred to as the Nobel Prize for teaching, it is the largest prize of its kind and is open to teachers in every school in every country of the world.

It was set up to shine a spotlight on the profession in order to recognise and celebrate the important role teachers play in society. By unearthing thousands of stories of heroes that have transformed young people’s lives, the prize brings to life the exceptional work of millions of teachers all over the world.

Since the Global Teacher Prize was launched in March 2014, it has received public backing and has been endorsed by many world figures such as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Bill Gates, UK Prime Minister David Cameron, Queen Rania of Jordan and US Secretary for Education Arne Duncan. The Pope invited three of the 2015 shortlisted candidates to the Vatican to participate in a discussion on how to spread peace & global values through schools.

We’re even more excited about plans for the 2016 Global Teacher Prize; in particular how it can be a beacon for shining a spotlight on the wider global education challenges.

Your initiatives earned you an award as a Young Global Leader in 2013, has this had any effect on your work on education?

 It is an absolute privilege to have been selected to join the World Economic Forum of Young Global Leaders (YGL). Upon joining, I quickly realized that the greatest strength of the YGL community comes from the diverse backgrounds and fields of its members.

Solving the global education crisis requires a huge amount of collaboration. My YGL friends (and I now call them friends) have really helped me think in new ways and drive forward new initiatives.

They have, in particular, been really important in building the brand of the Global Teacher Prize. There can be no doubt that the Global Teacher Prize has been embraced by Governments, celebrities, media, the general public and of course teachers, within the space of a year. But the YGL network has really helped push the prize to far flung parts of the world – from Lima to Lagos.

You have affected a lot of change in places that otherwise had no access to quality education, how challenging has the journey been?

The world is full of incredible people that want to do good. The longer I do this job the more obvious this becomes. I love meeting these people, thinking about their ideas and then working out who else they should be working with. There are wonderful new things happening in education every day. They don’t always make the headlines but they’re changing children’s lives for the better.

The hardest minds to change are often those within the establishment. You often need to shake things up a bit here to move the molecules. This is why the Varkey Foundation is proud to have set up the Global Education & Skills Forum, an annual conference which brings together world leaders from the public, private and social sectors. Watch this space!

Anything new Africa should expect from the Varkey Foundation?

Going forward, the Varkey Foundation will be looking at new and exciting ways to deliver on our priority of training teachers. We’ll be looking at how technology and, in particular, interactive distance learning can play its part.

We also have a huge focus on advocacy – moving the policy agenda towards ensuring a quality education for all.  One of our main ways of doing this is through the Global Education & Skills Forum.  We collaborate with partners including UNESCO, the Asian Development Bank, Education International and Harvard Graduate School of Education, to identify ground-breaking research, educational models and world-changing strategies which will give children across the world a quality education and an equal start in life.

In 2016, the Forum will ask how we can make education everybody's business, to reconcile relevance, excellence and inclusiveness of both public and private learning environments through collective responsibility by politicians, business leaders, the teaching profession and the media.

 What ways can policy makers keep teachers motivated to do better in classrooms?

 The new sustainable development goals (SDGs) call for “inclusive and quality education for all” by 2030. But these will remain empty conference room sentiments if the $16bn (£10.5bn) per year required to achieve good quality universal education throughout the world is not met.

Low state teacher salaries, which are often paid sporadically, discourage people from entering (and staying in) the profession. In rural Zambia it can cost teachers up to half their wages to cover the costs of transport and accommodation needed to simply collect their pay from district offices each month. In Malawi, one in 10 teachers reported that they were often not in school because they were travelling to collect their salaries or make loan payments.

To build the schools, train the teachers and then pay them well, we cannot rely on governments alone as they have their hands full building hospitals, roads and other vital infrastructure. Though NGOs do vital work, only the private sector can provide the scale of investment necessary to meet he SDGs.

Policy makers must recognise that to have any chance of meeting the new SDGs on education, business must be seen as part of the solution. Last year, a report by the Varkey Foundation found that the Fortune 500 companies spend just $2.6bn (13%) of their total annual CSR budget of $19.9bn on education-related projects. Fewer than half provide any spending on education-related CSR at all. However, these great efforts pale in comparison to the scale of business philanthropy in global health. The Brookings Institution estimates that corporate giving to global health is 16 times the amount given to global education.

The cultural divide between business and education is particularly unnecessary given that business is deeply concerned about the impact of poor education on organisations and the future prosperity of markets. A PWC global survey of more than 1,200 CEOs found more than half were concerned that skills shortages would stunt growth, particularly in emerging economies.

www.varkeyfoundation.org

LinkedIn Profile: Vikas Pota

 

Africa Business Communities is conducting a series of CEOs and High-end professionals from and/operating in Africa. Are you interested in an Interview?  Please send an email to afia@africabusinesscommunities.com

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