Organizational Characteristics of Schools

The move to create an alternative form of education has readily gained momentum in different parts of the world. The number of alternate schools like street academies, international schools, primary schools, open universities etc has successfully established and continues to increase. These alternate schools differ from the traditional schools on the basis of various organizational differences consisting of the way the students are grouped, the arrangement of these groups in schools and the instructional techniques adopted and implemented by the school staff.  The alternative schools vary by the flexibility they have in student grouping or by the absence of the organizational constraints in free schools. While technique adoption and implementation varies in different schools, let’s chart down the different organizational characteristics of such schools and how it impacts the student performance:
Procedure of student enrolment: The public schools have absolutely no terms and conditions for the student enrolment, while the private and independent schools check student’s background, abilities etc before enrolment. Though, such selection criteria are deemed as unfair by many, but on the brighter side, it provides your child with a regulated environment comprising of the students with similar tastes and abilities.

Physical Organization: As traditional schools provide with the series of equal sized classrooms, the learning tends to get monotonous. While the teachers rotate, the students are confined to a single classroom throughout the day. Thus, understanding its negative implications, the alternate schools like Cognita Schools, provide the students with different class room sizes and shape, thus keeping the students interested and entertained.
Grouping techniques: The traditional schools group the students as per the horizontal and vertical criteria. The vertical criteria are the grades that they attain and the horizontal criterion is their age. Thus, this restricts student interactions and wrongfully categorizes them. The alternate schools on the other hand provide the flexibility of choice to the students. For e.g. if a student wants to pursue an advance course, they can do so with an older students. In present times more educational institutes and schools including Cognita are trying to create conducive learning environment for students with better techniques.

How Technology Expands Learning Ability In Classrooms?

We stress the word ‘Electronic’ because it can be seen seeping into every thing in the present era. This digital revolution has changed the perspectives of young generation completely. Be it cell phones, digital cameras, tablets, laptops or computers. The 2G’s are moving to 3G’s and to 4G’s at a very frantic pace making children more technology oriented than their parents were.

If we start from a very simpler level, we find out that students are no more into paper work; they submit assignments and all such documents online. If students are enjoying this technical environment the teachers are enjoying there roles too in creating technology oriented education.  There has been remarkable advancement in this field too. Let’s throw some light on some promising techniques that teachers can use to improve their way of teachings:

·         Presentations: Sometimes it turns boring to just work with manual assignments and listening lectures. So you can allow your students to prepare presentations for their peer groups. Tell them to present on their favourite topic, this way they will be confident in delivering the presentation and the other peer groups will listen if someone of their age will teach them. You can tell your students to use pictures and animations in the presentations so as to make them interesting.

·         E- libraries: Some of the schools also offer interactive environments by providing a special area for video conferencing and I pad reading. This is the easy way by which children can have access to all the things going on world wide. This technology integrated curriculum has raised ability’s of students to use technology effectively. More and more schools including Cognita are making use of innovative technologies to enhance learning ability of children.

· Electronic White board: These interactive white boards are excellent tool in imparting education to plenty of students in one go. It increases the scope of flexibility and imaginative lesson planning in the classroom. According to researches it has been analysed that children grasp visual things quickly than the things they hear. Such boards capture the attention of learners and enables teachers to use internet with the whole class. This makes the teaching process simplified and quick.

· Distance teaching: This technological wave is now driving remarkable changes in the ways of teaching and education. The electronic performance support systems are helping education providers to expand the horizons of teaching. These computer based devices helps students a lot to learn new things from the comforts of their classrooms.

Perhaps some people may think that these new methods of teaching can seldom replace the conventional methods but the fact not be denied that electronic tools make the classes more efficient, interesting, informative, appealing and easy. Most of the good schools like Cognita school and City of London School have already incorporated these activities in their curriculum and are creating brilliant minds each day.

Benefits Of Independent Schools

Independent schools are often characterized as an educative luxury.  Its difference from the public schools can be easily marked with the world class infrastructure and high level of education it provides. Being self funded and governed, these independent schools do not have to rely on the state or federal government to stay funded. They in turn accept donations or charge for the tuitions to meet their ends. Furthermore, there are few advantages of such schools which are not dependant on government for its funds, which are as follows: -

     Independent schools offer a year round world class education. They are carefully budgeted with the money they have or will receive from the benefactors while the public schools are dependent on the government funds. During the slow economies, they get deprived of the basic funds as it’s the tax money that they run on. Thus, there can be unexpected cuts which may restrict the subject variety for the students.

    Their self dependency proves to be advantageous in the extra curricular field as well. Since independent schools have the control on their budget, they can provide students with many extra-curricular options.  Schools like Cognita put an extra effort to create that edge in your child through these extra-curricular activities. This facilitates in all round development of your child and gives additional skills to reflect in their college applications. As, now days colleges look for extra skills in their applicants apart from academic excellence.

    Thirdly, the salaries offered by the Cognita independent schools are attractive with huge benefits involved. In addition, as they have a well structured budget, the chances of unexpected cuts are also low. Thus, more and more experienced teachers opt for independent schools over the public ones. The teachers in independent schools are experienced and well learned than the college graduates who apply in public schools out of their job desperation.

    Independent schools are your best option if your child has special learning needs. The student-teacher ratios in such schools like Cognita Schools are so low that it readily facilitates the students with one on one interaction with the teachers. The public schools on the other hand cannot regulate the student intake and usually end up with the teacher student ratio of 1-70. This way your child ends up being apart of a huge class and misses the direct interactions.