GURUSPEAK >>> Aakash Chaudhry Director & CEO, Aakash Educational Services Ltd
#UNIQUE CONTENT & FACILITIES
We don’t teach students only from books. Our content and curriculum are prepared after vigorous research and development for each subject. Students are required to take frequent mock tests and rapid revision exercises to check their preparedness for competition and are assessed online for that. They have the option to access video lectures at the branch itself or from their home. Because of the lockdown, we have also launched Crystal, a live doubt-clearing app, where a student can chat with the teacher. All our classrooms have fully equipped libraries and iTutor labs for recorded lectures. We have also recently launched ‘NEET challenger’ through which students struggling in a particular subject can be assessed.
All centres have a common pool of facilities, but the bigger centres have a digitised board teaching facility as well. We have the option of a weekday and a weekend programme, and the curriculum is divided into physics, chemistry, botany and zoology. The time-table is generated keeping in mind the number of study hours and number of teachers. For the flagship NEET guide programme meant for class 11 and 12 students, a twoyear course with 600 hours of content, multiple tests are conducted and students are ranked city-wise. One of the key features of our programme is that we teach students after school and work in the evenings with them. The classes are wellplanned and organised and a national-level assessment happens across the 204 centres all over India.
#FINANCIAL AID FOR STUDENTS FROM ECONOMICALLY WEAKER SECTIONS
We have been running a scholarship programmes for the past 10 years where we identify and help students from economically-weaker backgrounds. Class 9 and 10 students get a monthly scholarship and under our annual scholarship programme, ANTHE, they can earn a full scholarship if they perform well consistently. We also have a special category for children of defence personnel and teachers.
#PLANS ON HOW TO HANDLE COVID
On March 25, the first day of the lockdown, we were supposed to start off a fresh batch of 100,000 students. Since for the past six to seven years we have been making use of technology for classes, we managed to shift classes online within just a few hours. The classes are being conducted via Microsoft Teams and our in-house platform, Crystal. We have about two classes a day of one-and-a-half hours each.