If these micro-entrepreneurs need help, they can reach out for help, so we can guide them. Their goal is to help their students to become self-directed learners.

These kids will have better social skills too because they will learn from each other. Single-room schools allow older kids to teach younger kids, and peer-to-peer learning is sticky and impactful. They will also have more opportunities to learn from the real world, because they won’t be locked up in school classrooms, listening to boring lectures.

These pods could be run by retired teachers; by stay-at-home professionals; and could also use existing private school facilities to increase their impact.

Attendance is optional, which means the parents who run the pod will have to work hard to keep the kids engaged to ensure great learning outcomes, which they will have to demonstrate to their neighbors who pay fees who send their kids to the pod. These parents will have to be accountable, answerable, responsible, and transparent ( unlike most school teachers today !)

This model will spur creativity, rather than force everyone to follow a one-size-fits-all template, which never works. Parents will adapt the model to suit the needs and wants of their community ( for example, curriculum, content of lessons, class size, and timings ).

The parents who run the pods will get paid for doing this, which means they are motivated and incentivized to provide high-quality services. They charge fees from the other parents who want a better alternative to government schools, and the well-run pods will attract more kids! Charging fees is important because it’s a great way of learning if the pod is adding value or not. If parents refuse to pay, this means the experiment is failing. The fees need to be affordable and should be monthly, so parents can pull out their kids if they aren’t happy. This will keep the micro-entrepreneurs who run these pods on their toes because they will need to focus on delighting their users. Ambitious micro-entrepreneurs can franchise their model if they want to, so this can spread even further at the grassroots level, and they can earn more.

The students will use a computer to access the world’s best educational resources which are available free online. In places where the internet connection is poor, the videos will be pre-loaded onto the computer, and mapped to the class/ grade the student is studying in. In some cases, this may need to be loaded on pen drives.

The number of kids who share a computer will be between 2-4 students, to optimize social learning, based on their age, and the resources available.

Initially, we may need to start these as Tech-Enabled Learning Centers for after-school hours learning. Parents are used to sending kids to tuition – and to paying for this, so this will be the easiest entry point. After kids have studied what they want to ( for example, clarify doubts, or prepare for the next day’s lessons using the flipped classroom model), they will be free to explore whatever else interests them – including playing games!

The easiest way to document improved learning outcomes will be to show the parents that the marks their kids get in their school exams will improve. We think this will happen because they are learning at their own pace, from the world’s best teachers!