Future-Ready Schools: A Must-Watch for Principals, Teachers & Policymakers | Simerjeet Singh

As most of you might already be aware, a large part of my professional work, my speaking engagements, my keynotes, my workshops, it revolves around corporate leadership and corporate events and corporate transformation. But my heart has always believed in this education leadership is where real change begins. Real social change begins with education. Because if our school leaders, our principles and teachers are inspired and they're improving, every other form of leadership in society will automatically get better. You see, if a company's numbers go down, there's always the next quarter or the next year to recover those numbers. But if a student loses motivation for one term, they lose confidence in themselves. We may lose them for years to come. forever. That's the difference, my friends, between corporate leadership and school leadership. And I've devoted my life to both of these segments with due respect to both these segments. And today, I'm super excited because the five ideas that I'm sharing in this video to improve school leadership come from a deeply personal place. A place of 20 years of observation, conversations, experiences, of running leadership workshops, of delivering keynotes, working with corporate leaders and school leaders, working with CEOs and principles, working with techies and teachers, working with policy makers and government officials across the country from city monastery school in Lucknau to the new town school in Kolkata, from Shimla to Sambalpur, I've devoted the last 20 years traveling the length and breadth of this country uh working both with corporate leadership and school leadership. And I'll be very happy, very grateful even if a few of the ideas that I'm sharing in this video find their way into your schools. If they see the light of the day, I feel truly grateful. And research backs up my love for enhancing effective leadership. School leadership is second only to teaching among all school related factors that impact student learning. In other words, a strong principle can add the equivalent of almost three extra months of learning for every student each year. That's powerful. If you improve your leadership, you impact not just the culture, not just the climate, not just the ethos and values, but also student learning. Before we begin, before we dive into the five tips that I have to share with you, let me also share this video is not about fixing something broken. I've often heard the education system is broken. I disagree. The Indian education system has produced some of the brightest minds on this planet. CEOs, scientists, leaders, researchers, innovators across the world and we rightly very proud of that. This video is about exploring the room for growth. That's what these five tips are about. Exploring how we can improve school leadership. Let's dive in. All right. So tip number one is encouraging alternate careers. You see when I was in school in 10th grade to be precise, I pulled off a surprise. I stood in third in the entire city in the entire district. Now this wasn't expected. I wasn't one of the teachers favorites. In fact, I was the quiet student in the middle and I stood third as turnup events would have had their way. Suddenly I went from being the invisible student to being engineering material. My principal with all the good intentions in the world admitted me into non-medical. She said, "I'll take the fee from your parents, but I'm admitting you into non-medical for my 11th and 12th grade. " For those of who are not familiar in India, engineering isn't called engineering, it's called non-medical. As if the entire identity is not being a doctor, which means if you score really well, if I'd be number one, number two, go for medicine. But if not, go for engineering. But here was the problem. I wasn't cut out for it. At 4 a. m. physics dutions, it became crystal clear this wasn't my path. Eventually, I chose commerce, later found my way into the hotel industry. You've heard about it in other videos and then into what I do today. None of this was on the radar of my principal back then. And I don't blame her for that. That was probably 1993,94. Options were very limited. She was doing what the system had programmed all of us to do. If you score really well, be a doctor, you score a little less, be an engineer, bit less. Don't know what you're going to do. But we're in 2026 right now, my friends, aren't we? We know better. We know that marks alone cannot decide a child's destiny. We know that it is the innate talents. It's their drive. It's their multiple intelligences that will help them flourish in their careers. Today we also know that careers are exploding in

every direction. That you could be a photographer, a digital creator, uh a chef, a physiootherapist, a cricketer, or even a motivational speaker or a life coach like myself. The list is endless. And the future doesn't need just job seekers. It needs dream seekers and risktakers and path makers. The future needs people who can align their inner strengths with career options out there. And as school leaders, if you set the tone from the top that all careers are valid and worth celebrating, not just medicine, not just engineering, not just it, if you say that every career is valid and worth celebrating, you know what will happen? The entire ecosystem will begin to shift. Parents will start to see it differently. Students will start breathing easier. We have put immense pressure on these young souls to follow the conventional norms. But if you convey this message, things will begin to change gradually. Therefore, I urge you to use every opportunity available. Parent teacher meetings, assemblies, annual functions, your videos, your staff ga gatherings, whatever opportunities available to you, speak up about alternate careers, normalize them, celebrate them so that the more we repeat this message that it's okay to look beyond the traditional careers, the more people will begin to accept them. Here are some simple, practical ways to do it. Invite your alumni, especially the ones who have flourished in unconventional paths. If your school alumni are now entrepreneurs or artists or chefs or writers or innovators or inventors, bring them in. Invite them to deliver a talk to your students. Let them tell their stories. Nothing can inspire your students more than hearing it from other fellow students who have pursued conventional paths. Number two, use the tools. We have Gallup Strengthfinder test. I really love it. Dr. Howard Gardner's multiple intelligence theory. We have psychometric testing available. We have so many modern frameworks available to help students discover what are their unique talents and how they can leverage it to convert these talents into professions. The whole philosophy of ikai, the Japanese philosophy of ikai, they don't have to study it once they feel lost when they're in their 30s or 40s. Let's teach this principle right in school. organize career counseling sessions not just for the board classes, 10th graders or folks in 10 plus 1 and 10 plus 2 but across the grades. Let's begin to explore this early um the whole career counseling career guidance thing. Let's start it in seventh grade, 8th grade. So to tell them um to educate parents and teachers, host workshops that broaden their vision also because when parents and teachers also understand that there are other options available, the whole ecosystem will begin to shift. Above all my friends, don't forget that as school leaders, you have the power to shape a culture which encourages all stakeholders. And you're working with multiple stakeholders here, the students, the parents, society, policy makers. You have the power to shape a culture to encourage and nudge all the stakeholders to think beyond medicine, engineering, and traditional careers. While there's nothing wrong with that, we need great doctors. We need great engineers, but we also need great artists and thinkers and innovators and entrepreneurs and creators and photographers and chefs and so much more and choreographers and dress designers and so much out there. A culture where schools are not just producing more test takers but nurturing more dream chasers. That's what we need. A culture that does not discourage risk-taking but encourages risk-taking. And with your participation, with the message coming right from the top, I think we can accomplish this. This was tip number one, encouraging alternate careers. Tip number two for school leaders is actively discourage road memorization and encourage original thinking. If there's one silent and brutal enemy of future skills, it's road memorization. When we push our children to memorize everything word for word, we are not creating leaders and thinkers and innovators, we are creating parrots. And parrots don't build nations. Parrots don't build companies and products. Parrots don't change the world. Thinkers do. Leaders do. Original thinkers do. Sure. Road memorization has its place. Multiplication tables, it's useful. Spellings, absolutely. historical dates, capitals, currencies, formulas. Yes, of course. But when students are memorizing the answer to a question, what do you do in your free time? Or what is Canva for? This is recent, huh? I've personally seen a student memorizing the answer to the question. What is Canva for? If they're just memorizing the answer, we've lost the whole plot. Education is supposed to prepare students to solve real world problems, not just recite

answers. We need problem solvers, my friends, not just people who can parrot the answers they learned from the textbook. Think about it. If a child memorizes what Canva is, but cannot actually log into Canva, create a design, or play with its features, and create something useful, then we're just filling a bucket instead of lighting a fire. Even writing a good prompt for any generative AI platform these days such as chat GBD or Gemini will require original creative thinking on the spot and also clarity about what you want from the AI platform. This stuff cannot be memorized from a textbook. Every prompt will need a different input and these prompts will have to be adapted on the goal. They'll have to change. Poor prompt will lead to poor output and you can't memorize this. This is where memorization will fail, but original creative thinking will flourish. And therefore, no wonder the World Economic Forum reminds us that the top skills for the future are critical thinking and problem solving, creativity and originality, collaboration and teamwork, resilience, flexibility and adaptability, lifelong learning and self leadership. Do you notice something? What's missing on this list? scoring 100% marks by memorizing wrote memorizing my teacher's notes. That's not on the list. And this is where your voice matters. If you give permission from the top, the teachers will feel free to accept diverse original answers. They will actually encourage original thought. If you allow your teachers to break free from copy what I exactly taught in the classroom syndrome, parents too will begin to see the value in real understanding. And that's what we need to encourage. We need to encourage understanding, not just memorization. We don't need perfect reproductions of answers. We need deep understanding and connections, neural connections, so that they can apply these principles in the real world. For alternate careers to flourish, which I talked about in tip number one, you need original thinkers. People who don't just comply with the peer pressure of what everybody else is doing, there is a slight risk. Maybe your school's average scores in the exam might dip a little bit in the short term because your students are not writing exactly what was taught in the textbook. But you know what you'll gain in the long run? It's far greater. You will gain and produce students who can think for themselves, who can adapt, who can innovate and lead. Students who don't panic when they forget a line, but improvise and shine and come up with original thoughts. These are the students who grow into leaders, original thinkers, nation builders, and entrepreneurs. So, here's a quick action checklist for you, list of suggestions from my side. Number one, introduce quick impromptu activities in your school. Like asking a student to explain a concept in their own words on the spot. That's one of my suggestions. Number two, print out and hand over a list of the World Economic Forum's future skills list. Right? Get that list and print it out and hand it over to every single parent and teacher in your school so that they can actually see what are the skills that will matter in the world uh in the coming few years. Okay, we need to circulate this list to every single parent, every single teacher. Encourage parents to praise originality, not just correct answers matching the textbook. Tell teachers, it's okay if your answer sheet does not look like your nodes. It's okay if the student has put the same thing in their own words. Value originality. Alongside exams, I also encourage you to have alternative assessments. Not every student will shine in that 2-hour exam. Use debates, group discussions, projects in which you will be able to get a better idea of a child's true capability. Train your teachers and activities which help them develop understanding rather than just memory. Such as your students can your teachers can start giving out assignments such as creating brief videos on the subject in which a student has to create a video on the subject on what they learned and submit it to the teacher. Right? Organize impromptu speeches. extemporal deo de debates, originality challenges, business idea pitches where students must think on their feet without any pre-written scripts. I give this fun assignment whenever I work with young students. I say, "Okay, um I take a bunch of five students. I give them assignment that you're launching a new restaurant. You're opening a new restaurant and you are going have to design the TV ad, the radio ad, the print ad. You'll design the menus. Tell me what the theme will look like. " Suddenly, they come alive. their imaginative original thinking uh you know it begins to get activated and you see a different version of them and that's what we need their ability to create to have these creative ideas to express these creative ideas and to implement these creative ideas. All right, tip number three for my dear school leaders and school principles.

Aim for growth not perfection. When I attend school performances these days, a lot of it is sadly just lip syncing. The parts that should have been raw and real and spontaneous and full of nerves and courage are now pre-recorded in a studio before the big day and the child just lip syncs on the day of the event because heaven forbid a child might stumble or fumble on stage in front of the whole audience. But my question is, isn't stumbling part of growing? Aren't we stealing away life's greatest teachers, the moments of forgetting and fumbling and recovering and improvising just to keep up a perfect polished image? And why make everything so competitive? Why does a presentation on stage have to be a competition? Why does a fancy dress everything have to be a competition these days in the schools? I've seen these competitions turn into full-blown um parents WhatsApp wars. the fun, the creativity, the joy. It gets lost in the chase for the perfect costume or the first prize. Who won the first prize? It's about the experience. It's not about the prize. I once saw a little boy dressed up as a tape recorder. A very original idea by the parents. Yes. I mean, this was this child was in preschool, but the poor child was crying under layers of cellot tape. I don't know if anybody even asked him what he wanted to be for the fancy dress costume. Maybe he had better ideas. did I don't know if anybody asked him was he comfortable did he enjoy it or was this just another race for parental bragging rights right so again my friends a gentle reminder you are the captain of the ship as principles and school leaders you are the narrative shapers your words your stance your reminders they have a ripple effect throughout the ecosystem you can set the tone you can say at every part possible occasion in our school growth matters more than perfection. Learning matters more than winning. Fumbling is not failure, it's progress. So, let students get on stage and forget a line like good oldfashioned times when we did not have all this pre-recorded or studio stuff. Let parents and teachers cheer the students back on. Let a fancy dress be silly and messy and joyful and full of laughters and giggles and not competitive. Because when children grow up in a culture where mistakes are not fatal but normal, they grow into adults who become lifong learners. And that's what we need in these changing times. That's what future skills are all about. About creating people who will be lifong learners about uh students graduating from your school who will not stop their learning after they graduated but will continue to learn for the rest of their lives. about students who can innovate, take risks, and lead without fear. So, here are some action points to foster a culture of growth. Number one, share stories about famous innovators who failed before they succeeded. There's plenty of stories, TEDex talks, and I'm sure plenty of stories in the books and case studies available about innovators and entrepreneurs who failed before they finally succeeded or even cricketers or sport persons and all that. Teach students Geral Dwick's growth mindset. I think that's should be taught in every school to every child. And I love the part where Carol says, "If you can't do something, say I can't do it yet. " Which means it's not out of reach. I can train my mind to get there. Celebrate effort, courage, originality, not just end outcomes, not just results. Ask parents to praise their children for trying new things, coming up with new ideas, not just for winning. Encourage teachers to reward curiosity, risk-taking, and originality in the class. Normalize that learning moments will include fumbles and stumbles and embarrassing attempts and that's perfectly okay. Build your lesson plans and activities that allow students to experiment to innovate and reflect. Embed the message everywhere in your school ecosystem. Here we grow. We don't just perform. Here we grow together. So that was tip number three, my friends. Aim for growth, not perfection. Because the foundation muscles of lifelong learning, entrepreneurship, leadership, and innovation, all the skills we need for the future, these are not built in perfection. There's no perfect entrepreneur, no perfect leader, no perfect innovator. These are built in the willingness to try, to fail, to be embarrassed, to rise again, and to try again. Okay, let's move on to tip number four now, which is bridging the gap between academia and real life. I still remember two magical experiences from my school days, which was St. Francis in Bala. One, whenever school took us to a sugar mill, watching sugar cane go in one end

and white crystals come out the other. It was unforgettable. Now before this becomes a meme, it was not that simple that sugarcane would go one end of the machine and white crystals would come out the other. It was a huge factory and it went through different stages and it was like a wow experience as a child. And then there was uh free fresh sugarce juice which was an additional incentive as a child. I still remember that very vividly till date and I was probably in grade second or third or something like that. The second was grade six. I remember walking into the computer lab again at St. Francis school in Badala for the very first time. This was when the computers were very basic. Uh and in fact the operating system was called basic. It was MSB basic. You guys probably wouldn't have heard about MS DOSs and I think MSB basic was before MS DOS came in. We had to take our shoes off. There was air conditioning and it was like entering a lab. This mysterious machine staring back at me. I didn't become a software engineer, but that early hands-on exposure to technology and what tech could do planted a lifelong love for technology and curiosity of how I can use technology to my work and my life better. So, why do I share all these stories? Because they highlight a very important point that we often miss. Real life experiences stick longer than any chapter in a notebook. And that's what we need more of in schools, real life experiences, hands-on experiences. A report by the National Training Laboratories Institute found that the average retention rate for experiential learning is 75%. If they are involved, if they are hands-on experiential learning, the retention is 75%. And lectures alone is just 5%. And that's a huge gap between what's taught inside the classroom and what's needed outside them. And as educational leaders, I feel it is our moral duty to build a bridge between what the world needs and what we are teaching. So don't let learning remain trapped in your classrooms only in definitions and dates and diagrams which are important by the way but we need to set learning uh free make it come alive with field visits and boot camps and internships and other hands-on experiences. If students are memorizing what is artificial intelligence many of them are but never experiment with an AI tool we have failed. If they can rattle off what is digital marketing, but they've never visited their local digital marketing agency or that startup, we have failed. If they just theoretically learn about what is green energy, but have never visited a real wind farm or a solar energy farm, we have failed and we won't be able to ignite the same kind of passion or understanding in these young minds which are visual and they are learn more when they touch and feel and see and are out there. This is when schools should open windows, not just computer windows, the real windows to the real world. Open your doors to internships, guest lectures, field visits, trips, workshops, so that students can connect theory to life. That's when education starts to breathe. Edgar Dale's cone of learning, which you might be familiar with already, suggests that learners remember only 10% of what they read, but up to 90% of their what they do through active participation and hands-on practice. So, here's a quick suggestion checklist to implement um this tip. Invite guest speakers, local doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, dentists, artists. Invite them to share what a day in their life look like. Send your students to these fellows whoever are willing to shadow them for a day or two days so that students have an exposure to what does a life of a entrepreneur look like? What does the life of a surgeon look like? Encourage parents to arrange shadowing internship opportunities to let their kids see what real jobs look like. Gallup study uh 2019 found that students who had at least one internship or a real world project during school were twice as likely to be engaged in their future careers. Educate parents on how practical exposure not just more degrees. There's a huge rush. Oh, he's finished bachelor's sign up uh for the master's degree straight away. Right? U and that's risky. We need to educate parents on how practical exposure to the real world can ignite passion and can clarify career choices so that students get to know what will suit them better in the long run rather than just enrolling in another degree. Encourage parents to involve children in activities such as budgeting and negotiation. This can be learning at home. Encourage your teachers to incorporate real world applications of their subjects wherever possible. Organize industry connect days where your teachers, not just students, visit your local businesses so that they can

refresh their own perspective. Often I find that teachers are also disconnected with what's changing in the economic and social scenario. Arrange field trips not just to industries but to local startups, hospitals, labs, podcast studios, creative studios. Host hands-on workshops, coding boot camps, cooking sessions, design labs, photography sessions, even role- playinging a courtroom or something like that. Launch real life Fridays. I love this one. Real life Fridays where one period each week Friday is dedicated to practical life skills, budgeting, finance, pitching business ideas, problem solving, teamwork, designing ads, designing posters on Canva, things like that. You see, education that stays on paper dies on paper. Education that walks into life lives forever like my school sugar mill visit. And as school leaders, you hold the key to making that happen. Let's not just teach our students about the world theoretically. Let us allow them to touch it, to taste it, to try it, to experiment with it. So that my friends was tip number four. Bridging the gap between academia and real life. All right, moving forward my friends. Let's now talk about your first line of defense. Your warriors, your heroes, your teachers. According to UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report 2021, teachers spend up to 40% 30 to 40% that's almost very close to half of their working hours on non-eing tasks like paperwork and administration. Streamlining this could dramatically improve teaching quality. And that, my friends, is tip number five. Free up and fire up your teachers. Liberate your teachers from all the extra work that they should not be doing. And then motivate them to take ownership of their real duty, which is to light a fire inside the minds of the students. I've often walked into schools and seen teachers buried under piles of registers, endless paperwork, reports, administrative checklists, events, so much more going on. And um when I finish a workshop sometimes with the teachers, they all come to me and say, I love all the concepts that you taught, but I don't have the time to do it. And then that's when I think to myself, you know, all this additional stuff, this is not why they became teachers. They became teachers to tell stories, to ignite curiosity, to shape the futures of these young children. But when their energy is drained by bureaucracy and redundant paperwork, how can they give their best in the classroom? A Bill and Meinda Gates Foundation survey 2014 found that 46% that's almost half 46% of teachers feel they don't have enough time to plan and prepare. And lack of time is their number one frustration. And school leaders and principles, this is where we come in. Free them up and fire them up. Free them up by delegating, deleting what truly doesn't need a teacher's expertise. Free them up by using technology to automate repetitive stuff like attendance or reports or something like that. Simplify your procedures. Protect the most precious resource of your teachers, which is their time and their energy. And then fire them up. Give them ownership. Give them creative freedom. Don't micromanage them. Remember Google's famous 20% time where they give 20% time for their engineers to come up with something new and that has created some of their most uh brilliant breakthrough inventions. What if you just gave your teachers even a 10% additional free time to run an activity which is beyond the curriculum, beyond the syllabus, maybe a role play, maybe a debate, maybe a life skills discussion, maybe a storytelling session. That freedom that you give to your teachers is fuel that will turn your teachers into information deliverers to experience creators. And that's what we need more of. We need more teachers who can create experiences in the classroom and not just deliver information because guess what? Chad GBD can do that. You Chad GBD can deliver information. We need experience creators, storytellers, right? People who can influence and ignite and do so much more and inspire. And when teachers feel trusted and supported and inspired, they pass on that energy straight to your students. After all, these teachers are your first line of defense. So, you should look after them. They are the moment of truth for all your vision and marketing and values and everything. That's where the rubber meets the road is how good your teachers are in the classroom. A tired teacher can only finish the syllabus. An inspired teacher can transform a life. So here are some quick suggestions to implement this tip. Publicly acknowledge teachers efforts not just students. Acknowledge the efforts of your teachers also and do it publicly. Appreciation from the top

builds their morale. Share stories of teachers who went the extra mile and the impact it had on their students. Encourage cross-depart collaboration where the best teachers teach each other where they are exchanging notes and ideas and best practices from each other's teaching styles whether it's within the school or with schools in the neighborhood in the city. Offer mentoring and professional development sessions and workshops regularly to keep their passion and their learning alive. Educate parents about respecting the time of their teachers. Reduce unnecessary excessive calls and paperwork and demands. Delegate non-eing work to admin and support staff wherever possible. Okay? If it can be done by a support staff member or an admin staff member, don't let your teacher do it. Let the teacher do what they were hired to do. That is to produce leaders and innovators and thinkers. Simplify administrative tasks using AI tools, digital tools, software, and productivity tools wherever possible. Give teachers a creative period each week where they can design fresh creative out of syllabus activities. Start a teacher innovation fund. Have a small fund where small grants are given for new teaching ideas wherever money is required. My friends, when you free up your teachers from drudgery and fire them up with trust and inspiration, you have kickstarted the transformation of the entire school. Because when teachers thrive, students soar. If you want to build a great school, start by taking care of the teachers. For if teachers are buried under registers, don't expect them to raise thinkers. So, as we close this video, I'd urge you to experiment with at least three ideas. Create an action plan and most importantly, keep the spirit of growth alive in your school. It should not become a monotonous place. You know the word monotonous originated from monotone. When music plays in the same tone, it become it plays in a mono tone and it becomes monotonous. And that's not music. That's not what we're here for. We need to vary the tone and we need to there's all these different notes create different music. That is what we need. And we do it by educating, inspiring, creating a culture of growth. For in a world where AI is doing all the technical work, human excellence, my friends, is no longer optional. It's essential. And as principles, you're not just administrators. You are the thermostats. You see, as you enter a hotel room, sometimes you have a thermostat for the air conditioning. That's you. You set the climate for the entire school. The climate could be warm and encouraging or it could be cold and transactional. It starts with the leaders. I'd also like to say thank you to every principal, every education leader, every teacher who has stayed with me till the end of this conversation. I truly appreciate your time and attention. We put in a lot of uh effort into creating this video. I hope it was useful. It's not exhaustive. Uh we will create a follow-up uh video for this at some stage. And if this resonated with you, I hope you'll share it with others in the profession because when principles and school leaders grow, entire communities flourish, and that's what we need right now the most. And if you'd like me to run a deeper workshop on leadership for the future in your schools, I'd be honored to be a part of that journey. Thank you so much for tuning in once again.