Born and brought up in UK, Muhammad Hussain Mukaddam(FRSA,B.Ed. (Hons), PhD, LPSH) is an inspirational leader and an academic withover 30 years of educational experience including 21 years as a highlysuccessful principal of government and independent British schools.
Mukaddam has a proven record of providing high qualitytrainings to develop staff to provide the best possible opportunities forpupils and teachers to achieve their full potential. He has recently joinedFoundation World School (FWS) as its Executive Director, looking after all theacademic and administrative affairs of the schools. In an interview withGreater Kashmir special correspondent, Syed Rizwan Geelani, Mukaddam shares hispast experience and future plans for FWS to boost its academics.
After spending over 30 years in UK and other foreign countries, why you preferred to be here at FWS, any special reason?
MHM: Kashmir needs a model like what an international schoolshould be especially for children who are growing up in valley throughchallenging circumstances. It was something that we felt that we must work onand create a model here for children. That is why I joined the school.
Can you explain what sort of challenge you are speaking about?
Children around the world are in a challenging situation asthe science and technology is changing the world rapidly. So that is thechallenge for them, what will they do when they will go to the universities andwhat jobs they would like to go after passing the university. In Kashmir,children have other challenges like hartal and lack of communication as well.Quality of teaching is poor here as data shows that the average Kashmirichildren are below average in India. There are multiple challenges faced bychildren today.
You Joined the FWS when the valley was going through complete communication blockade and suspension of internet. How it affected a normal child?
Once schools were closed, the least we would have done isthat we could have put some online education on website of school or used someother means to provide education to children if internet was kept functional.Children would have not lost completely. Our children lost the opportunity toget benefitted through online education and faced huge academic loss.
You are known for imparting high quality education training to teachers at international level. In reference to that, how do you see the potential in teachers at FWS?
There is tremendous potential among people who are goinginto this field and have all passion and dedication for teaching. But what theylack is world class teaching methodology skills and research based methodology.Cambridge does a lot of work in training the teachers and come up to modernstandards. This is what we try to do, open up opportunities which have beenmissed by the teachers here. So we started training session for all ourteachers and this course is approved by Cambridge as an accredited trainingcentre for teachers.
Now that internet and broadband services are restored, what will be your focus this year?
Our focus is about pedagogy like how to learn modern ways ofteaching. It is student centric in which children are engaged by giving themskills to collaborate, to become inquisitive and become independent and alsohave to employ technology in their education process.
How do you compare the work culture outside, and at FWS?
There are difference not because of people but because ofenvironment and opportunities. For example UK and US has different work culturebecause they are not just academic schools or soft skills, because they developtheir students to contribute towards the economy of the country. The social andpolitical aspects is part and parcel of western education. Here educationsystem misses , and is very much focused on simple teaching like student isgiven a text book and asked to memorize it. At WFS we are trying to implementholistic approach in imparting education.
Apart from academics, if we talk about overall functioningof FWS, we often receive complaints from parents that they are fleeced underthe garb of getting education for kids.
Cambridge being an international commodity doesn’t comecheap. What it does is provide children an opportunity in the world and opensup opportunity to get best universities for them around the world because thatcost is associated with global quality. What we are trying to do is that wemake sure that we give a return for the parents’ investment because it is along term investment of parents on their child.
But for some parents schools like FWS and other top notchschools remain out of bounds in terms of money despite their kids havingpotential to compete with kids of rich families. Does FWS have anything tooffer to such students?
Here at FWS it is seen in two ways, i.e short term and longterm. In short term measure we give scholarships to those who are bright and wewant them to come here and develop their potential. In long term process, wewant to actually train teachers over and above FWS teachers. We are discussinghow we can promote the training even if in government schools and we will beable to train significant number of teachers. With this, parents who are notable to afford FWS will get better quality education in government schools.
Generally private schools prescribe unnecessary books to lower class students only to increase the burden on their shoulders. Has FWS adopted any different practice in this regard?
Yes, digitization of knowledge and education is must for allschools because technology is moving fast. There are many learning platformsfor teaching assistants that lend itself towards this digitized learning andstudents are relieved from carrying heavy burden on shoulders. We want to seehow we can employ this so that children are using tablets. So that is in ourplan, we have to see its practicality but it is our aim that children are givendigitized education.
What is the present system at FWS?
We are using Cambridge curriculum and have provided lockersto students and they keep text books here and carry only workbooks with them totheir home. It is a transaction period till we go to fully digitized phase ofteaching and learning.