Outsourcing in schools

Having met nearly 400 school leaders (Principals/Trustees) and many other school service providers in the last 4 years at EduSports, I have been fascinated with the way schools have been approaching the school service provider ecosystem.


Many school leaders  have posed the question, "So many people like you have started offering solutions to schools. English Labs, Math labs, Science labs - and now even sports is being outsourced"

And the real angst was in this one: "So, what are the school leaders supposed to do? Just provide the building and the Board affiliations?"

The entire ICT revolution was probably not seen as an outsourcing - but more as a fundamental improvement in the way our kids should be taught. While there are strongly held views about the efficacy of this medium, in my understanding, this was not seen as outsourcing.  It was seen as an upgrade up of school infrastructure.

Outsourcing seems to be seen as a sign of weakness. A sign that you have admitted defeat on that particular front - and hence you need a partner.

While "outsourcing" is an easy way of defining what is currently happening between schools & education service providers in India, I think there is one significant from the classical outsourcing that we have seen like outsourcing software to India or manufacturing to China:

In classical outsourcing, customers outsource their non-core functions. Customers retain their core function(s)  .

While schools have been outsourcing buses, meals, uniforms, books etc for years, the in-school education was always their core function.

In what is being called "outsourcing in schools", schools are being offered programs by service providers to help them deliver on  their core function - to educate kids.

For many years, schools have been focused inward in working with their teachers & resources. And the most successful schools were those that did a great job of this.

Given the reality of the school system wrt availability of trained teachers, attrition, inability of a school to invest in high quality content/tools/assessments for a particular subject and competition between schools, it seems that schools have to partner with 3rd party service providers to deliver on the promise of "holistic" education.

Like any outsourced partner, the service providers are able to invest significantly higher (than an individual school) in the issues related to educating children on that particular subject.

And hence the angst: "So, what are school leaders supposed to do?"

In my view, the core function of the school leadership & the teachers will evolve given the reality of the K-12 education sector.

The ability to make a school work in partnership with the in-school staff and the service providers will soon become the key value that a school management will bring to the table.

Integrating the service providers inputs with the rhythm of the school will start becoming a competitive edge.

Can a school reduce costs by leveraging a service providers' content team - or it's ability to source certain items at a larger scale?
Can a school integrate its existing assessment systems with the service providers' systems to provide an integrated view to the parent?
Can a school plan its calendar so that it can leverage the service providers' portfolio?
Can the school teachers deliver a better educational experience to the children?

Defining the vision, the values & the culture and then finding service providers who align with these will become the key success criteria. And the really critical part will be to make sure that the partnerships actually deliver value to the children & parents. Not just remain a marketing gimmick to convince parents that the school has a "tick mark" against that subject.

Going ahead, the schools might have to consider a balance between an inward focus - of defining their values, vision etc along with getting the right in-school team - and an outward focus - of finding the right partners who can help them deliver on their vision.

In the end, the parents want a good quality education for their wards. Who provides them - In-school teachers or service providers - doesn't really matter.

And maybe the word "outsourcing" will get replaced with "partnering" - because over the last 4 years and across nearly 300 schools in 70 cities now, the most successful implementation of our EduSports program has been in "Partner Schools" that really look at us - not as a vendor - but as a partner in delivering a better sports education experience to the child.

The fear of falling.

All this while, in getting kids to play, I have been focussed on ensuring that kids get the right fitness and the right skills at the right age - and hence enjoy the playing experience - and hence play for life. All very logical.

Recently, I realised that we have missed a critical component.

Realised this when my 6 year old son insisted on going to the branch of the SPT academy that was a 20 minute drive away from home. And in the mornings on the weekend.

Not the one that was just a 5 minute walk away from home - that was using a school's ground on the weekend - and more conveniently, in the afternoon.

As a parent, it was very tempting to find a way to convince him to go to the place next door. Drop him off. Go home. Have some tea. Read a book. Pick him up.

So, I tried to convince him. But then he disarmingly told me: "Because the other place has grass"

And there it was. So clear for everybody to see. But I had missed it.

Grass.

The school nearby had a plain ground. Just plain mud. The typical Bangalore Red mud. Slightly sandy. Hard surface.  And the other place had green grass fields.

And then the penny dropped. He refuses to "dribble" in the apartment complex where we live. Fine with kicking the ball around. Prefers cricket to football in the apartment complex.

And I then realised that he was developing a fear of falling on the hard surface.

And I don't blame him.

My palms still have marks from the injuries I got while playing football on the hard grounds of IIM Bangalore back in 1993-95. Nearly 20 years ago!

Remember the Indian cricket team not diving while fielding - till recently? No wonder - as the grounds they grew up on were hard, rough and full of gravel. One full-fledged dive would have put them out of contention for a few matches due to the injuries!

And I just can't help wondering how much the fear of falling is impacting the way kids play. Making that extra effort, going for the less-than-half-chance and then making it happen is what you remember from a game. And in the process, you hurt yourself.  I keep telling my son "Well done!" whenever he comes back with a bruise after a game.

For a 6 year-old, falling on a concrete surface or a rough ground can be quite an un-nerving experience.

So, if our kids have a fear of falling, are they really playing to their potential? Are they going after the half-chances? Will they really experience the "magic of sport"? or have such an antiseptic version that it is just not exciting enough?

Just helping them find a small spot of grass to play on can remove the fear of falling.

Now, how difficult can that be? :)

Why do some countries fare better in some sports?

Why do some countries fare better in some sports?

I looked at the London 2012 medal tally - http://www.london2012.com/medals/medal-count/ . Here are some of my  findings - some not surprising:

1. Most Eastern nations have won medals in Individual Sports (weightlifting, badminton, judo, archery, wrestling, shooting) - and not many in Team Sports.

2. Most Western nations have won medals in Team Sports. And also in Individual Sports.

3. Of the Individual Sports that Eastern nations have done well in, the predominant sports are those that have minimal infrastructure requirements (weightlifting, boxing, judo, wrestling..) and the athlete can largely train by themselves - with minimal state/external support.

4. The Individual Sports that Western nations have done well in have infrastructure requirements (Cycling, Rowing, Sailing, Equestrian, Sailing, Fencing....). These sport require state/external support for the athlete to train - relatively speaking.

5. Team Sports is largely dominated by Western nations.

Some thoughts:

1. Is the higher team sport orientation in the Western nation due to the industrial revolution & a religious ethos that emphasised working with the community ("Work is Worship")- as against "looking inward" and a more individualistic approach to salvation? And hence the sports they played ensured that they built the community/team spirit. Most Eastern "sports" actually started out as "arts" - and have a very high level of inward focus. Take any martial art as an example.

2. Most team sports originated in the Western hemisphere. Most Eastern sports are individual in nature.

3. Most "Western" sports require a playing field/court (e.g. Basketball, Football, Tennis) that is much larger than the space that most Eastern sports/activities need (e.g. Judo, Wrestling, Boxing). I find it hard to believe that Western nations had more natural open play areas than Eastern nations. The society must have encouraged team sports and playspaces for the same.

4. For Eastern nations to counter this infra advantage (for whatever reason), they should add sports that do not have high infrastructure requirements. E.g. The move from grass to turf in Hockey (apart from other factors) has destroyed the natural advantage that Indian hockey had.
Am sure if Kabaddi gets added, we will win for a few Olympics and then it will be played on Astroturf!

For India, as we talk about how to win more medals, the choice of sport and the infrastructure related "liability of origin" (a phrase coined by IIMB Professor J Ramchander) has to be accounted for.

Else we will end up fighting a battle on someone else's field - literally!

Remember the bike

First, the facts:

In 1997, Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with late-stage metastatic testicular cancer.

The cancer had spread to his abdomen, lungs and brain.

Post diagnosis, his mother was told to be prepared to lose her son.

He was given a 40% chance of surviving the treatment.

Post-treatment, he did not have enough strength to ride his bike up a small hillock.

From 1999 to 2005, Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France seven straight times.

Read that again: Seven straight wins.

In what is known as the world's toughest race.

And now, the USADA is stripping him of all his titles because of doping charges.
 
I don't know if he cheated. As a sports fan, I don't really care. And here's why:

Let's say he did cheat. How much of a difference would doping have made to his performance? 10%? 20%? 30%?

Does that really matter to a guy who has just recovered from intense chemotherapy? Someone who is competing with other "normal" athletes who have been training hard while this guy had chemicals going through his body.

And is it possible to win seven times consecutively?

Even if he doped, it means he reached a level where he could be at  70-90% (depending on which option you selected earlier) of the fitness required in the world's toughest race. For seven consecutive years.

I don't know if he cheated. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn't. But remembering the doping is missing the bigger point.

Remember Lance Armstrong - who was not supposed to live in 1997 - for what he has been able to prove:

That if you want it bad enough, it can be possible.

Remember the bike.

Life lessons from kids at play!

Have always been  pleasantly surprised at how kids play, how they make a game out of nothing at all, how they make up the rules - and then modify them - as the game develops.

All this without any training. No adult supervision.

As adults - and especially as parents, we think that we know it all (as compared to the kids) - and that we have to "educate" our kids on our "way of life".

As a parent, every incident is an opportunity to reinforce a particular life-lesson:

"See? I *told* you to be careful"

I was wondering if any of the kids could articulate their "way of life" for adults, what would they say?

Here goes my shot at their way of life:

1. No rules:  We don't need well-defined rules to play a game. We will make them up as we go. Then negotiate and re-negotiate the rules. And that works just fine for us - even if we do sulk occasionally when the rules don't go our way.

2. No limits: Why does cricket have to be played with a bat and a ball? A rolled-up piece of paper and my hand will do just fine, Thank you.  We love a lush green playground - but the space in the living room works well too. We will define and re-define our own games.

3. No enemies: We will have fights. We will hit each other. We will call each other rude names. Very rude ones. But we will still call each other to play the next morning. And we forget our fights within minutes. Sometimes within seconds.

4. No end: So what if we just travelled the whole day and were about to doze off a few minutes ago? There is no end  to play. We want to play more - and then some more. And we always have the energy to play.

5. No ROI:  So what if the amusement park we like is 2 hours away - and if we leave now, we will only get 30 minutes to play. We don't calculate fun as a Return on Investment.  If we can have fun, then it is worth any investment.

6. No goals!: We play because we want to have fun. Not to get fit, not to play for the country or represent the school, not to lose weight! While having fun, if any of that happens....cool.

7. All Fun: Fun doesn't mean that we have to be laughing, giggling and shouting. When we are fully engaged with our friends, stretched to our limits and know how to play our game - we have fun.

Wonder how life would change if we had these rules for the adult "way of life"! :)

How do we win more Olympic Medals?

Now that we have had our "best ever" Olympics performance, we are celebrating our champions - and rightly so. Given the margins between a podium finish and oblivion, we should probably spare a thought for the multiple contestants who missed a medal by a whisker. And celebrate them as well.

And as with every large sporting event, the public post-mortem into our Olympics performance has also begun. "Make sports a part of school curriculum" - says Gagan Narang.
"Corporate participation" , "Set up Sports Schools" - many others.

So, I tried to analyse the various solutions with a single goal: How do we win more Olympic Medals?
1. Sports Schools:

Great idea. But will you send your child to a sports school? A school that first trains your child in sport - and then covers academics. Most parents: Not really.

For the infrastructure and quality of training that is required, the cost of training (& educating) a child in a sports school will be at par with fees that some of the International schools charge in India. 

So, you need rich kids. Or you need a government or a corporate sponsor.

Most senior sportspersons will tell you this: The critical ingredient for success in world sports: hunger.

Unfortunately, hunger to succeed in sports is typically inversely proportional to a family's current income level.  Most athletes doing well in sports in India do not come from a financially comfortable family. There are a few exceptions - but not enough to draw a trend. And most of those exceptions are in sports that are expensive to play in the first place! So, we have a "sampling bias" - as they call it in statistics.

The Sports School idea will work onlyfor those kids - and parents - who do not have any other option. Education is either not an option - or they feel it is not really going to get them out of their current context.

Success in Sports has to be the only way out.

2. Corporate Sponsorships:

Great idea. But after the euphoria around Olympics and the angst about the level of Indian Sports has passed, the reality of business kicks in.

Corporates need an ROI. In an Olympic Medal context, there is no financial ROI. You can only have a goodwill and brand exposure if the athletes you support do well. And to get a decent ROI on the level of investment per athlete, you would need significant media coverage.  This requirement automatically restricts the kind of sports corporates would invest in.

The athlete representation market in some sports - like football - present a better ROI opportunity for Corporate Houses but I am staying with winning Olympic Medals for now.
Some initial estimates suggest that it costs between 25 to 75 Lakhs to support a budding sportsperson over a few years - depending on which sport you choose. In some sports, these numbers are annual numbers. Of course, there are more expensive sports as well!

We should choose sports that probably require lesser investments.

Success in Olympics (as in other spheres) depends on so many things coming together at the right time. For every 10 kids selected and trained for the Olympics, we should only assume 2 will get a medal.

With these realities, The Chairman of the corporate sponsor has to be committed - and remain committed for 10-15 years before any results come in.

No Marketing Head can take such a decision.

3. Sports as a Career:

Sports as a career will make sense when it starts to pay well. Like it made sense for some of us to become engineers, MBAs, doctors, architects, entrepreneurs etc.

Note that we are discussing playing the sport as a career  - and not careers associated with sports like sports marketing, sports events, sports coaching etc.

The sources of money into sports:  a) Sponsorships. b) Government grants.

For Sponsorships: Refer point 2 above.
For Government grants: To be fair, jobs have been given to former players in PSUs, Banks etc. This is still a large incentive for the kids for whom sports is the only way out.

But maybe the folks most vocal about India's performance at the Olympics do not see this as incentive enough.

Most sportsperson peak between 20 and 26. In some cases (like cricket), they continue till much later!

At a time when most other professional careers are actually starting to mature (30-35 yrs), these folks have "retired"!

What job options does a player have after the sports career is done?

The "Sports as a Career" path is just too risky for anybody who has even half a better option!

4. Make Sports an integral part of the School Curriculum:

Guess what? It already is. Physical Education & Sports are already a part of the School Curriculum. Have been for ages. Remember the "compulsory PT" we used to have as kids?

The problem is the spirit and the quality of its implementation in schools wrt
- adequate trained PE/sports teachers
- adequate play spaces
- adequate importance given to the sports curriculum
- adequate focus on assessing every child
- adequate importance given by parents to their child's progress on the PE/sports front.

This will only change if parents demand better quality sports programs from the schools.

The school context - with its constraints on time and space - just does not lend itself to producing Olympians. The level of training, infrastructure, trainers, intensity, individual attention and focus required for sporting excellence always conflict with the inherent goals of a school system.

If we get kids in schools to play regularly, get fitter, pick up the right skills at the right age, we will have a larger pool of talent to choose from. And then we increase our chances of success. But that is a way to build a healthier, fitter nation. And the right way to build a system that will keep generating potential Medal winners.

But it is also a  much longer route to winning more Olympic Medals!

5. Existing Talent:

During the London Olympics, if our athletes had performed to their personal best, they would have qualified for the semis. And on that day, "hey, you never know!". So, it is not that we do not have the talent, body structure, diet etc etc.

The talent exists. In plenty. It needs early identification and support to make that jump from an "almost there" to a Gold Medal.

So, to summarise my formula for winning more Olympic Medals in Olympics 2020:

1. Sports Schools for those kids who have the hunger to succeed in sports. For whom sports is the only way out. Fully sponsor their education, boarding & training from 12 yrs onwards. Supported by corporate houses who have a 15-20 year vision.

2. Assured jobs for these kids after they finish their sporting career.

Interestingly, this is what the government tried to do. But failed at execution.

Question is: Can the Corporate Houses take up the challenge? And then execute better?

Till then, we should be happy with the successes that are coming inspite of the "system". And celebrate all the Olympians for the struggle they have gone through to reach this level.

Excellence in schools?

The other day, a good friend started a discussion about how this particular school is "mediocre".

And that got me thinking about excellence in schools - whether in the academic context or in sports.

There is a lot of debate about how the current schooling system started - and whether it's goals are relevant in today's context.

Have read articles about how the Industrial Revolution created the need for schools - to take care of the kids while the adults worked in the factory.

Also to ensure that kids stay out of trouble and dont create trouble for others. And yes, also to teach the kids about the alphabet, how the world works etc.

With increasing competition and dependence on academic credentials for jobs and opportunities to move beyond your current socio-economic context, the after-school "tuition" model came in.

The school environment - with 35-45 kids in a class - is designed to ensure that all kids get a good foundation on a wide range of subjects. In today's context, excellence - in say, Maths - currently defined  by getting selected for the Maths Olympiad or getting into IIT requires significant after-school efforts by the student. (Not my definition of excellence. Just what I have understood of how parents and schools  define excellence) Very rarely have we seen academic excellence come about only due to in-school efforts.

Similarly, in sports. All school teams and performance sports endeavors are done after-school and on weekends. It is just not possible to provide the kind of time and individual attention required for sporting excellence during a class with 35-45 kids in 35-40 minutes, 3 times a week!

If you want "excellence", schools can only provide you the foundation, the flexibility in time table, examinations etc.  You have to do the rest yourself.

And therefore, I wonder if we should be using "foundation" instead of "mediocre". Because that's what schools are designed to do. Ensure kids have a good academic and sporting foundation.