XSEED Education to boost efforts in school education with Teacher Training Academy

Singapore based education company XSEED Education will be launching its first global Teacher Training Academy in Bengaluru, India, as it looks to bolster efforts in innovation driven education in schools across the developing world. The launch is a part of XSEED’s bigger vision of developing thinking skills and problem solving confidence in students to equip them with 21^st century competence.

Mr Ashish Rajpal, founder of XSEED Education, believes that the change he visualizes cannot materialize without the support and motivation of school leaders and teachers. “Most teachers in schools today have themselves been educated in a system that did not lay focus on the importance of 21^st century skills. Unfortunately, the global context has now changed.”, said Mr. Rajpal. “In a time where parents understand that their child’s development does not end at passing tests, it is becoming increasingly important that we re-skill teachers and sensitize school leaders with the needs of the students of tomorrow. This is our effort to build an all-inclusive curriculum that brings school leaders and teachers together, and help them help the child, who is at the center of it all.”

The idea of a Teacher Training Academy was born out of feedback that XSEED Education received from over 3,000 school leaders and 75,000 teachers who connect with XSEED’s ideology and want to be a more active participant in XSEED’s progressive learning method.

The academy will offer short term and long term courses that will award a certification and diploma to the applicants respectively. The courses at the academy will be in sync with XSEED’s skill oriented approach that actively breaks the traditional “tell and learn” teaching method and replaces it with a “show do” curriculum. XSEED aims to equip teachers with skills like classroom management, activity based learning, problem-solving approach, individualized learning and student assessment with this initiative. It will also offer courses on leadership in the 21^st century for Principals and School Management.

Embracing the EdTech revolution in India, XSEED will offer the courses at its Bengaluru campus as well as online.

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XSEED Education is a Singapore based education and technology startup that is working to strengthen learning, teaching and assessment methods for K8 schools in developing countries. The initiative was founded by Ashish Rajpal, who quit a global corporate career in Paris to follow his passion and social responsibility to influence primary school education in India. XSEED’s curriculum is influenced by his time at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in the company of eminent educators like Howard Gardner.

Under his leadership, XSEED has developed a unique 5-step learning method that handholds teachers through activity based lesson plans that encourage students learn by doing. XSEED has also launched a digital learning product, MAX, that offers weekly digital learning classes in the most critical concepts of Math and Science. These classes focus on STEM concepts and complement XSEED’s learning curriculum.

XSEED now reaches 1 million students across 8 countries where they have been observed to ask more questions,  express themselves creatively and independently and persist longer in problem solving.  A 2014 study showed that XSEED children outperformed their peers in non-XSEED schools by up to 20 percent on an average across grades and even more on items requiring mastery of higher-order inference and reasoning skills. Moreover, MAX students show up to an 80% improvement in overall Math and Science scores and a staggering 180% gain in problem solving ability.