Building or thinking about a new laboratory for your school, institute, or personal use? Since labs don’t fall under any regular or standardized category, figuring one out is rather difficult. But don’t worry! Here we are with a minty-fresh lab equipment buying guide from Labkafe. This article will help you ascertain what lab equipment you need, how much of them do you need, and where to buy lab equipment.

There are always two parts of any laboratory ‒ lab furniture and lab equipment. We have covered  how to buy lab furniture for school labs previously, and even published guides on  laboratory wall decor and  lab flooring . Now this guide to buy equipment for laboratories will help you with lab apparatus, lab glassware, lab instruments, and lab machines.

To be sure, deciding on, procuring, and managing laboratory equipment is difficult work. To make it easier, let’s take baby steps ‒ by beginning at the beginning.

To Start A Laboratory

To begin with, what is the type of laboratory that you need? In India, laboratories vary by their levels. At school levels, you have laboratories of the most common kind ‒ composite labs for class IX-X, and physics, chemistry, and biology labs for class XI-XII. There is also a  mathematics lab for schools that need it. Recently we are seeing developments in labs of other subjects like sociology and geography as well. For even younger students, there is the  STEM lab facility.

When you get to the university level, the picture changes dramatically. There are simply too many different kinds of college labs to mention here, and all of them have different lab equipment and lab instrument needs. We can talk about those separately, another day.

Therefore, let’s assume you’re building a lab for your school. But what exactly is your goal? There are two reasons to buy lab equipment for schools ‒  either to make a new lab for affiliation purposes, or to upgrade an existing laboratory. Either way, you have some hardcore spreadsheet work before you.

Count Your Chickens

This is the part where we deal with the “what I need” matter. Each laboratory has two dimensions ‒ the first is the count of different lab equipment, and the second is their quantity, a derivative of the count of users. You have to chalk up both dimensions.

Let us explain with an example. The CBSE composite lab, for affiliation purposes, has to follow the  NCERT science lab syllabus directly. That some schools choose to make slight adjustments to it is another matter, and you shouldn’t practice this anyway. Be that as it may, the syllabus has 36 different experiments (and variations or sub-work). That requires a whopping 272 different kinds of equipment! Further, as per affiliation rules, a CBSE composite lab has to cater to at least 30 students at once. That takes the count of lab equipment that you will need near half a thousand.

To be sure, ledgering out five hundred lab equipment is no small task and at first you may feel like drowning. Sure, you can try talking to other schools or beg your contacts to get a full list of lab equipment, but they are 1) very hard to come by, 2) people who have them guard them jealously, and 3) there is definitely a trust factor involved here. 

We at Labkafe understand this perfectly, and have a particularly useful solution for this:  lab equipment packages . Labkafe has preconfigured affiliation packages for different labs for all boards (CBSE, ICSE, ISC,  IGCSE, State Boards, etc.) which are handmade to fulfill the respective curriculums precisely and perfectly. If you are interested in building a CBSE composite lab, as per the ongoing example, you can just order a  CBSE composite lab package from us and be worry-free.

But that’s not all. We would not want you to blindly order something just because you read it here. Instead, how about doing some homework about the quality? You should always check the markets to see which brands provide the best quality lab equipment, apparatus, lab aprons, and glassware. Then crosscheck with your chosen vendor to see if they can give you those brands as well. For example, Borosil, Tarsons, and Polylab are the most well-known names in the lab ware industry for quality, and therefore  Labkafe has joined up with them as well.

Laboratory Items come with different quality levels. The regular quality items are cheaper but not much dependable. The superior quality items are the very best, but will cost you a pretty penny. Lab instrument accuracy will depend upon their quality and manufacturer, and the effectiveness of chemicals and other consumables will depend greatly on their brand. 

Choose Your Champion

Once you have your list of lab equipment ready for physics lab, biology lab, chemistry lab, or composite lab (or any other labs for that matter), your next job is to find a proper lab equipment supplier. This is the part with the most amount of original research, since it is a very bad idea to depend upon the first vendor you come across with a simple “lab equipment near me” search. Sure, private references are great too ‒ but it still is just word of mouth, so best do your homework first.

A proper, reliable laboratory equipment supplier will not only be reputed on paper, but they will be able to  prove their references . The salespersons of a genuinely good company will always be ready with connections. The more references you can get, the better. Also check if they have worked with government agencies or institutes ‒ this will prove invaluable.

For a better experience, we recommend that you prefer OEMs over resellers. Original Equipment Manufacturers will provide you better quality at more affordable prices, will give you flexible choices, and what’s most important ‒ will provide you with good aftersales service.

Which brings us to our next point. In the laboratory industry, good aftersales service is as crucial as it is rare. Most vendors work in a fire-and-forget manner and don’t look back to a customer. Which puts the customer at a disadvantage. There are only a very few companies that give true unlimited support and an ironclad warranty. With such a vendor, you can rest assured that your interests are taken care of properly. This, then, should form one of the pillars of your procurement management.

Money Matters

Ah, the budget! It is a painful subject in any society and schools are no exception. One always wants the best for one’s students. Certainly you want your kids to get the most out of their practical education, in compliance with the  National Education Policy 2020 and global trends. 

That being said, one always finds oneself short of budget, right? Your lab equipment list and labware vendor both must conform with the budget; else all is lost. Few opportunities are given to us to extend our budgets, and saying “it’s for the good of the students” doesn’t seem to be a viable option these days. (Or ever.) 

So, here we are chiseling off portions from our procurement list to make it slimmer. With lab equipment, you can do it two ways:

1. Trim out the experiments. Most cheap schools go this way, not choosing to complete the practical syllabus. Only backbenchers will applaud this.
2. Manage the consumables. More often than not, the consumables get a bigger chunk out of the budget than the equipment themselves. For example, test tubes are cheap and you can buy tons of them, but the reagents that go inside them are so prohibitively expensive that many local vendors don’t even stock some of the most important ones. You can work with your vendor to carefully trim out these lab supplies and work out alternatives.

While the need to conform to your budget is necessary, a word to the wise. The really good stuff in this world never comes cheap ‒ and we should never compromise on education. Reaching a good platform between quality and price is key to your lab’s success ‒ and the future of anyone who uses it.

Another way to save is to buy things in packs. Instead of buying items separately, you would find it much more profitable to buy lab packages and lab aprons packs. Of course, everyone has local choices and needs, and that may force your hand. It would be best if your lab equipment supplier provides customizable lab packages, offering you room to maneuver as well as cost savings. 

In A Nutshell

Making a new laboratory for a school is never easy, and it is even harder for new schools. Today we tried to make the process easier by offering you this lab equipment buying guide. Long story short: list out exactly what you need, find a reputed seller, and hash out a good price eyeing your budget. 

Checking out the equipment (especially the glassware) when they get delivered is a great idea too. A good lab equipment seller will do this onsite inspection automatically and should provide free replacements if anything came out wrong while unpacking. Additionally, Labkafe also gives free installation services, in tune with our vision to spread accessible lab education to every corner of the country.

The post Labkafe’s Lab Equipment Buying Guide 2022 appeared first on Labkafe Blog.

A school lab consumes various kinds of materials, like lab glassware, equipment, chemicals, support items, and so on. All of these have certain quality standards ‒ you can’t just buy something off the street and expect good results. For example, the reagents you use in your chemistry and biology labs come in various qualities, and almost certainly the cheaper one from the street is little more than colored water. This is why you need a trustworthy laboratory item vendor like Labkafe.

1. Nationally and Internationally Certified

Labkafe, the company and its products and services are recognized by many top-tier national and international quality control organizations like the ISO, BIS, SEFA, NABL, GreenGuard, and lots more. These certificates enable you to recognize our brand and products as the very best quality available in the Indian market. When you buy from Labkafe, you can rest assured that your goods are durable, will give good results and you have gotten your money’s worth.

2. Over 1500 Satisfied Customers

Ever since its inception in 2015, Labkafe has been steadily supplying  lab furniture ,  lab equipment , and  lab consumables . We have come far wading through a mass of customers, over fifteen hundred in number in these short seven years. We have left footprints all over India in every state, even overseas, and we connect to resellers to supply even foreign schools and colleges. And you know what? None of these customers have ever turned their backs on us!

3. Prestigious Customers Everywhere

We do not discriminate among customers ‒ everyone is the same with us. Yet, we are proud to have served a large number of high-profile clientele. We have belted in government schools like APSs, JNVs, KVs, and Sainik Schools. We have worked with prestigious colleges and universities like IITs and NITs. We have supplied scientific celebrity organizations like DRDO and ONGC. And we enjoy the patronage of a lot of well-known private institutes like Techno India and Don Bosco. With a portfolio full of such prestigious accounts, we have little if any competition.

4. Strong Presence on GeM

As you may know, government organizations are compelled to procure lab supplies only from the  Government e-Marketplace . And Labkafe is like a beacon there, a  registered OEM on GeM . Present as Orientallabs Retail Services Pvt Ltd in the GeM portal, we provide the best prices and pass every specification check, winning bid after bid. And you know, you can trust who GeM trusts.

5. Fully Customized Lab Design ‒ For Free

Labkafe is famous for our custom lab solutions! Unlike other suppliers, we do not force you to match with our products ‒ instead, we adapt to your requirements. Our engineers will visit your facility and take note of your existing infrastructure. Then we will bring up a plan in 2D and 3D as fits, to show you how your lab could be. You can then customize it at your heart’s content. And guess what? All of this is free of cost!

6. Free Installation and Demonstration

Don’t you just hate it when they deliver the packages and it just sits there waiting for you to dirty your hands? Unlike other vendors or manufacturers, we do not forget the client after the sale is done. Our engineers and technicians will visit your site, open the packs, reconcile the delivered items to the order copy, and then install the equipment and consumables where needed. You won’t have to lift a single finger!

7. Great Warranty Values

We make it, we sell it, we fix it. Our all-encompassing warranty gives you full protection from any accidental damages and other unforeseen quality issues that may arise. We will respect your every concern and we will try to fix any problems with our products. All our products come with ironclad warranty clauses in agreement with all business laws.

8. Awesome Aftersales Support

We pride ourselves on serving our customers faithfully! Our aftersales support team will listen to your every concern patiently and offer solutions that are dependable and minimum hassle. We remember and serve our customers even years after the warranty period, since we know the value of goodwill. 

9. Full Technical Assistance

Procuring school lab supplies can be a complicated thing, especially if you have to do it through GeM. Don’t worry! Our experts will be with you from start to finish, hand-holding you through every step of the procurement procedure. We will prepare all documentation for you, provide remote assistance through Anydesk, and make the whole process smooth and silky for you ‒ on or off GeM.

10. Doorstep Delivery at Any Pincode

That’s right, we deliver anywhere! No longer will you have to suffer handling half of the logistics yourself ‒ we will do it no matter wherever you are in India. We have served schools and institutes in the remotest locations, working through the worst kind of situations. We have delivered perfectly intact lab solutions to customers through landslides, political turmoil, storms, and droughts, day or night, at borders and on icy roads. You cannot depend upon the weather forecast ‒ but you can depend on our delivery truck.

To Pack It Up

All those proud services and excellence, and yet we managed to keep our prices down. This is possible because our vision, which is to see every child have access to affordable laboratory education, is priceless! Our NIT-alumni-founded company is doing more than just business ‒ it is changing the very backbone of educational infrastructure in India. 

We wish to become the face of practical education in the country, to become a story, a name to swear by. Come, join the movement! Add your school or institution to the list of future-proof labs. Be a part of tomorrow!

The post 10 Reasons to choose Labkafe for School Lab Supply appeared first on Labkafe Blog.

Are you applying for CBSE, ICSE, or IGCSE affiliation? Or perhaps planning to construct an affiliated school? In either case, designing a compliant and functional science lab is essential.

Here, we share five key tips on how to design a science lab for schools that meets all educational board requirements and optimizes student learning.

Indian education boards—including CBSE, ICSE, IGCSE, IB, and various State boards—have specific guidelines for setting up school labs. This guide will help you navigate the rules and create an effective science lab environment.

Tip 1: Begin Science Lab Design with Early Planning

A laboratory is a critical asset in schools, as it provides hands-on learning, a fast-growing educational approach worldwide. To start, consider these foundational aspects:

• Location: Labs on the top floor offer good ventilation but may require extra safety considerations. Ground-floor labs are often preferred for easier access to utility lines and greater safety.
• Room Size: Most board affiliations specify a minimum lab size (often around 600 square feet), which should accommodate lab furniture, storage, and space for around 30 students, along with the teacher and lab assistant’s workspaces.

Before choosing a location or size, decide how many and what types of labs are needed. Labs can vary from composite science labs for secondary students to specialized labs for physics, chemistry, and biology. Schools might also benefit from adding geography, math, or social sciences labs.

There are four kinds of labs in school ‒

1. Composite (science) lab for secondary level
2. Physics labs
3. Chemistry labs
4. Biology labs

There can also be laboratories for geography, math, and social sciences if you choose to add them to your school (they really do matter!).

Tip 2: Hire a Professional Science Lab Designer

It is lucrative to think that one can do all the designs on their own, or maybe the builder or architect of the school has all the answers. Don’t make that mistake ‒ it never pays well. Instead, call up a professional lab design company like Labkafe to help design your lab. 

They will send experts to measure out the space, note down room features like doors and windows, and come up with a floor plan perfectly suitable for your lab room. Once you get these plans, you will far better understand what should go where and complicated matters such as foot traffic control and ventilation and utility linings. Our experts will explain everything.

Tip 3: Don’t put down utility lines yet.

Your first impulse may be to get the utility lines in the room first (like water, electricity, LPG, drainage) and then build the lab accordingly. This makes things unnecessarily complicated and difficult. Instead, a better idea would be to call up the lab design company first, let them design the space, and then lay the pipes as they instruct. Then do the finishing of the room as fits.

For example, your builder or architect will most probably insert the gas line through a corner in the floor, and put only one switch box with internal wiring beside the door. This is horribly wrong and creates a lot of extra work. 

In reality, a wet lab would require gas lines coming down from framework overhead, and internal wiring in the wall right beside each lab workbench unit. If your lab needs island tables isolated in the middle, then wiring and plumbing has to be done through the floor. Obviously, you can’t do these unless you get the design made first.

Tip 4: Make it safe.

We can’t stress this point enough ‒ lab safety takes paramount importance in lab design. By law you are required to provide adequate safety equipment, ventilation, and evacuation route/training in every laboratory you will build. 

To that end, your lab designer must advise you about crucial points such as safety equipment placement and training, foot traffic control, and ventilation. You’ll need fire extinguishers, eye wash, first aid kit, etc.

We can’t put our kids’ lives to chance ‒ we have to make sure the labs are safe even with human error.

Tip 5: Get certified lab equipment.

Perhaps this goes beyond saying, but it is kind of obvious that you won’t get results if you buy lab equipment from the cheap local market. First of all, there are so many of them! Just building the list of lab equipment, apparatus, glassware, support items, and consumables you will need to cover the syllabus for a single lab is a gigantic and thankless task.

But there is an easy yet reliable solution for that. Look for  lab equipment packages on sale. We have preconfigured affiliation packages that conform to each board syllabuses. These packages bundle everything you need for the affiliation together and so this way you can leave off the extra headache. What’s more, you can also customize these packages if you wish to add or remove something.

Even more important, get your equipment only from a certified manufacturer. A manufacturer always provides better service than a third-party supplier, and better warranties and aftersales support as well. Also check for their certification. A proper lab equipment company will be ISO certified at least. Look for other certificates like BIS, SEFA, NABL etc. as well ‒ the more quality certificates a company has, the more trustworthy their products are.

Finishing Touches

Obviously, the above is not all ‒ far from it. There is the whole purchase/procurement procedure, paperwork, receiving the shipment and overseeing the installation, and checking out if everything is okay or not. A good lab infrastructure supplier should help you in each and every step of the whole cycle, making your experience as fluid as possible. 

At the end of the day, our target remains to make affordable quality practical education accessible to all children. Our skilled organization is geared towards this vision, serving one prestigious institute after another, glowing strong while providing a robust backbone to the educational infrastructure of the country.

The post How to Design A Science Lab for Schools? appeared first on Labkafe Blog.

Both CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) and ICSE (Indian Certificate of Secondary Education) are both prestigious boards which have been shouldering a lot of the educational sector responsibilities in India.  They both have quite strict regulations on how to build a school lab ‒ and you need to conform to these CBSE ICSE regulations if you want to get affiliation with them.

According to the  new way education is changing in India , all new schools opening in the country should have a robust laboratory infrastructure. The CBSE and ICSE boards are pioneers in this pathway. And they do have some very specific rules that dictate exactly what you need to make a CBSE or ICSE affiliated school lab for the secondary/higher secondary level. So, what are the rules to make a CBSE ICSE affiliated school lab? Let’s discuss.

CBSE & ICSE Bye-laws for Laboratory

According to the bye-laws one can find in the respective websites of CBSE and ICSE boards, the regulations you will need to follow are these:

Suitability of Rooms

• Lab requirement: One composite or science lab for secondary level; three separate laboratories each for physics, chemistry, and biology subjects for senior/higher secondary level.
• Room size: 9 meters by 6 meters (30’ x 20’ approx),
  • Totalling at least 600 square feet or 54 square meters
• Accommodation: at least 30 students (excluding the lab assistant and teacher/instructor)

Do note here that the minimum dimensions given here (600 sq.ft.) is not much big for the minimum crowd (30 students plus teacher). A laboratory is not a place for crowding and congestion; so, it makes sense to build the room rather oversized than tight-spaced.

Also, if your school is quite big and you need to teach a lot of students at once, then you are well advised to split your labs into multiple rooms. For example, handling 60 kids with access to dangerous chemicals at once is not a good idea ‒ better split them up into two labs of 30 each. Generally, Labkafe recommends that you keep your lab accommodation down to no more than 40 per room.

Suitability of Furniture

Any respectable school laboratory should have the following types of furniture installed:

1. Student workbenches
2. Demo workbench or teacher’s workbench
3. Lab assistant’s table
4. Storage cabinets
5. Accessories (chairs or lab stools, peg boards, eye wash etc.)

For each laboratory room you will have to decide what kind of lab workbench should go into that room ‒ wet lab tables or dry lab tables. Physics lab requires dry lab tables while chemistry and biology labs require wet lab tables. Composite or science labs would require both types in equal numbers. And if you are building a math lab or geography lab, then there are special tables for them as well. Our  lab furniture buying guide will tell you more about what kind of furniture you need for CBSE or ICSE labs.

You should note one thing. The regulations clearly state that your lab should have some storage area inaccessible to students, to store dangerous chemicals. Which means, your chemistry and composite labs should have at least one locked storage solution.

Suitability of Safety/Infrastructure

According to the bye-laws, a CBSE or ICSE affiliated laboratory should have the following:

• Safety precautions like fire extinguishers and eye wash stations
• Utility lines like water and gas
• Easy access to running water
• Ventilation capacity like exhaust fans (multiple)
• Proper access to exit 
• Enough space between workbenches to move around easily

Suitability of Lab Equipment

It should go without saying that without proper lab equipment and apparatus a laboratory is meaningless. Therefore, each laboratory should be equipped to the hilt with all the lab equipment, apparatus, glassware, machines, support items, and consumables that the students would need to conduct all the necessary practical experiments, demonstrations, and activities in the CBSE or ICSE curriculum. 

You can, of course, manually make a list of all the equipment you need for each lad. But it will be a grueling, time-consuming exercise because there are so many different types of work one needs to do in a CBSE/ICSE affiliated lab! We understand this, and so we provide an easy and quick solution to this problem.

Labkafe offers preconfigured  lab equipment packages for each and every CBSE and ICSE laboratory, which we can install in your lab setup and voila ‒ your laboratory is good to go! You will need the following packages for your school if you are looking to get a CBSE/ICSE affiliation:

Each of these lab packages are built carefully by our lab experts to meet the affiliation criteria of the respective board. By default, the packages are configured for 30 students, but you can change that easily. What’s more, the packages are very much flexible and you can configure the list of composite, physics, chemistry, or biology lab equipment and apparatus in any way you wish.  Contact us today and we will be happy to assist you throughout the procurement process.

Checklist to Build CBSE/ICSE Affiliated Laboratory

1. Is the room of the right size/dimensions? (minimum is 9m by 6m)
2. Does the laboratory room have easy entry/exits?
3. Does the room have the necessary utility lines? (electricity, water, gas)
4. Does the room have an adequate number of lab workbenches, designed in a proper way?
5. Does the lab have workbenches for the lab attendant/assistant and the teacher?
6. Are the workbenches adequate for the requirements of the students?
7. Are the lab furniture fire retardant and spill resistant?
8. Is there enough space for easy foot traffic?
9. Is there good enough ventilation?
10. Is there emergency support available? (Fire extinguisher, eye wash, first aid kit)
11. Is there enough lab safety equipment available? (safety glasses, gloves, mask, lab coat)
12. Are there enough lab storages available to hold all the equipment and apparatus?
13. Does the lab have the proper equipment and apparatus to cover the whole syllabus?
14. Does the lab have enough consumables and supplies to last the whole school year?
15. Are the chemicals within their expiry date?
16. Are dangerous laboratory goods kept out of reach of children?
17. Does the lab have a display area for displaying teaching boards/charts?
18. Does the room have some space for the students to deposit their bags?
19. Is there an emergency plan in place?
20. Is the room aesthetically pleasing? (Decorated with good lab wallpaper, side stickers, charts and pictures, etc.)

.The above checklist can help you build a school lab from scratch, or to renovate your old lab. Our experts can help you get through the list and check off each item. Do make sure that the labs you are building for CBSE/ICSE affiliation have all the necessary lab equipment they need ‒ as stated above, our lab packages can be very helpful to you to fill up your lab with exciting equipment and apparatus quickly!

The post Checklist to build a CBSE ICSE affiliated laboratory | Labkafe appeared first on Labkafe Blog.

Cambridge Primary Level

There are 10 subjects in this level intended for school beginners, kids from 5 to 11 years. Each subject breaks down into 6 stages that you can teach over around a year (or more or less as you determine the pace of your institution). Each subject is again divided into ‘strands’ of key learning objectives (for example, English can be structured by four strands of listening, speaking, reading, and writing).

English (First Language)

Cambridge Primary English (as the first language) is intended for kids who already can speak English to a communicable degree. Therefore, you can expect them to read and write and speak in English, to some degree, from the very first class. You will have to structure this syllabus with such content that will help the students acquire a good foundation level onto which the learning of all other subjects can stand. This takes precedence over most subjects since the Cambridge curriculum heavily relies on the English language being a global learning and communication support platform.

English (Second Language)

When you don’t need to communicate in English all the time, but need it for practical purposes like learning and business, then this would be a more suitable choice for non-English speaking kids. This supports a multilingual learning paradigm and should be configured as to provide the best supportive learning environment that can be utilized to learn other subjects in English.

Mathematics

This is the stage where kids need a basic understanding of how math works and have a holistic understanding of the subject. This subject develops in three strands ‒ numbers, geometry and measurements, and statistics and probability. 

Computing

The computing syllabus develops in five strands ‒ computational thinking, programming, managing data, networks & digital communication, and computer systems. Your syllabus should help students to understand what a computer is and how it works in the basic level; and learn basic block-based programming to know how each piece of computer hardware works together.

Science

Perhaps the most important in this era of advancement and enlightenment, teaching science properly at the grassroots level is extremely important for Cambridge. It should develop in five strands ‒ Biology, chemistry, physics, earth and space, and science in context. The learning experience should depend heavily upon hands-on learning and using basic scientific equipment. Your curriculum must encourage thinking scientifically and logically and working through cause-and-effect scenarios. The science in context strand, meanwhile, should focus on the role of science in our society, culture, and history.

Global Perspectives

Focusing on the skills of research, analysis, evaluation, reflection, collaboration, and communication, the Global Perspectives subject ‒ while not mandatory ‒ should still be a subject highly encouraged to the students. This is the subject that truly teaches the “international” part of an international curriculum and so it has immense value. You should prepare the syllabus of this subject to accommodate different perspectives ‒ local and global. The subject should be highly flexible, be integrated as a part of other subjects, and have at least one dedicated class every week. 

Art, Music, Physical Education, Digital Literacy

These are rather unique subjects in the sense that you never teach them in conventional ways. The Art curriculum needs explanation of concepts and approaches for different types of artistry. Learning music should be a fun experience that encourages the students to spread their performative wings, and also teach them to respond to and recognize masterworks. The Digital Learning syllabus should not only teach how to apply a computer for daily usage, but also prepare the child against online malice. And last but not least, physical education should form a very essential part of the curriculum, since regular exercise and an active lifestyle help students to not only stay healthy but also have a great psychological balance. 

Assessments

You need to implement two kinds of assessments at this level ‒ progression tests and a checkpoint. You can take progression tests as soon as you see your students ready; meaning, you can divide them into a flexible routine and spread the classroom assessments and tests evenly or oddly. You have to interpret the results with tools provided by Cambridge and analyze areas of improvement and readjust your teaching methodology accordingly.

The Cambridge Primary Checkpoint is the main course-end key your students have to turn. It will tell you if a student is ready to move on to the next level and their depth of understanding of the subjects. Cambridge provides these tests themselves and marks them (for English, Math,s and Science). You will have to test the Global Perspectives program through a team project, overviewed by Cambridge.  This page will give you more information about the Cambridge Primary Level assessments.

Cambridge Lower Secondary

Best for kids of 11 to 14 years old, this level is somewhat comparable to the previous level, only with more content to learn. Like the previous level, no single subject is compulsory and you can flexibly create your own curriculum. The subjects should have three stages of learning spread over three to four years, each stage taking as much time as necessary for proper understanding and skill development. Cambridge will review the framework to make sure it fits its philosophy and standards.

English (As the first language)

Best suited for Cambridge learners who wish to go truly international and who already have good proficiency in written and spoken English, this subject sits between the basic level of the previous years and the advanced literature levels available later. You should enable it to provide the students with excellent understanding and creative skills useful to study other subjects. Students of this subject should learn about using various language features in professional life, as well as develop a keen, critical reading skill. 

English (As second language)

Less voluminous than the above, this subject is targeted to give the students all the lingual skill support they need to continue studying other Cambridge subjects in English effortlessly in the coming years. Though not intended to be as strong a First language, students should still be able to develop enough skills to use English professionally with the help of this subject. Note that while this subject is not mandatory per se, you should make it so (for students with other First languages), because otherwise, it doesn’t make sense to study in the Cambridge curriculum.

Mathematics

Continuing to uphold the philosophy of thinking and working mathematically, the Cambridge Lower Secondary Mathematics prepares the students for the next level. At this level, you will introduce algebra, continuing to delve deeper into geometry, numerics, and statistics. Your course should also include chapters to familiarize the students with the application of mathematics in other subjects like science and social science, and enable them to study those subjects with enough numeracy and stats skills.

Sciences

This is perhaps the most important stage in a student’s learning journey where childhood’s broad ideas give way to sharper specializations. Teaching not only the whats but also the whys of how the universe functions, this subject builds further understanding of biology, chemistry, physics, earth, and space sciences. The philosophy here should remain strong on thinking and working scientifically and with logical, critical, and analytical skills taking the front seats. 

Provide scientific equipment to your learners to inspect and use wherever possible, and familiarize them with everyday objects using the scientific theories they have understood so far. Still providing a holistic view of the world of science, this should prepare the students for the imminent forking of ways that is to come and advise them about how to choose properly.

Digital Literacy

Putting more emphasis on staying safe online, this subject should teach the students all they need to know to run and protect their devices securely and efficiently. An equal amount of importance should go into respect and concern for other users.

Computing

Introduce text-based software at this level; explore algorithms and flowcharts; get into spreadsheets and databases. Introduce networking and new-age concepts such as machine learning and AI. 

Art

Continuing the same learning objectives as before, the Art curriculum should try and bring out the hidden artist that lives within all children.

Music

This curriculum should let the students explore as many varieties of musical performance and then help them choose which seems best suitable to their persona and abilities. 

Physical Education

Health is wealth and this should be the message that gets drilled into a student at this stage. Maintaining an active and healthy lifestyle with plenty of exercise and team sports to build spirit should be the target of your curriculum. Try out gymnastics carefully too. 

Global Perspectives

At this stage, learners should get to understand why personal, local, and global perspectives differ about the effects and execution of various subjects on life. Same as the previous level, the method of integrating the classes with other subjects should go on here, as should the philosophy of research, analysis, evaluation, reflection, collaboration, and communication. You should also try to arrange full-day activities in this curriculum that help students familiarize themselves with the real-world applications of everything they are learning.

Assessments

You can schedule classroom assessments as you see fit, but Cambridge will provide the Progression tests and the Checkpoint test. Progressions tests are available online and on paper (auto-marking is available for some online tests), which will have to be analyzed using the tools from Cambridge. Compare the results with those around the world and you will get to know how your school is doing internationally. The Lower secondary checkpoint works the same way as before, with English, Math, and Science taken in written papers and Global Perspectives taken as an individual research report. Go to  this page for more information. 

Cambridge Upper Secondary

This is the prime education level that marks the beginning of a student’s career. To enable that, there are plenty of varied subjects available to study at this level (suitable for 14-16 year olds). Depending upon your educational aim, you can go for designing a broad, balanced curriculum offering lots of different areas of learning; or you can sharpen your curriculum into one or two narrow specialties. Or anything in-between, really, Cambridge is truly flexible. The levels are called IGCSE or O-level; here we shall assume you would want to adopt the more popular IGCSE.

What is Cambridge IGCSE

The International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) is Cambridge’s crown jewel. There are 70 subjects discretely available and each is separately certified. It is a formal recognition of a student’s learning level (at that age, tentatively) on a particular subject accepted worldwide. 

The content for the IGCSE curriculum should be created in such a way that it avoids all cultural biases, and that suits a wide variety of schools. Learners from all kinds of backgrounds with enough knowledge in the base subjects should feel comfortable with the curriculum. The goal of the curriculum should be to provide a baseline education strong in creative thinking, enquiry, and problem-solving skills. 

All learners have to pass course-end assessments, also called components, which consist of written papers, orals, coursework, and practicals. They award grades from A* to G, from high to low. When a student’s first language is not English, there may be some options available through which students can achieve the qualification. This gives students a broader band of opportunities to demonstrate their learning.

Science Subjects

From this level, students get to shape their scientific education. Depending upon your educational aims, you can keep teaching all sciences together as a single subject ‒ or choose the far more normal way of separating each science subject on its own. Of course, the latter way is the best way to provide the most content to your students. To retain flexibility, you should allow students to take any and all science subjects in combination with other subjects. That is, they can choose to take all the science subjects, or they may choose to major in one subject, or may even take one or two of them as electives. 

To even further flexibility, Cambridge Upper Secondary offers two other types of science subject options, separate from standard discrete subject syllabuses. In the Co-ordinated Science option, each science subject has double the course content than normal, and consequently, a qualification in one of these subjects counts as a double IGCSE for that subject. Naturally, this is most useful for students who plan to aim their career down that particular lane, preparing early. Conversely, students who do not need to study science any further than this level can take Combined Science, having one-third content of each subject. 

Core Subjects and Supplements

All the main IGCSE subjects ‒ that is, English, math, and science subjects come in two flavors ‒ ‘Core’ and ‘supplement’ (or ‘extended’). Anyone taking one of these subjects must complete the core tier to qualify for passing IGCSE. But, their grading will be capped within C to G only (as opposed to A*-G grading for other subjects). On the other hand, those who wish to specialize in a particular direction can take the ‘supplement’ tier add-on have to study a lot more, but now they will be graded on the full A* to G scale as normal. 

You should take care while designing your IGCSE curriculum around this methodology. The core subjects are intended to provide a well-rounded education to go forward in career and life. Whereas, the extended syllabus is much more cognitively demanding and only applicable to future experts ‒ normal students without a special affinity to the subject won’t be able to cope with them. 

Clearly, your choice of streaming your students into either tier will hugely impact the future education and career of your pupils. Schools know their students best, and if you think all your students can handle the extra load then by all means go ahead and choose all science subjects at the supplementary tier. But if your school caters to a rather backward sect of the demographic then we advise you to keep all subjects at the core tier only. Schools serving all kinds of students will, of course, want to keep both options open. 

Remember when we talked about continuity in the  last article ? This is a fine example where that applies strongly. If you or your students want to study a supplement tier subject, they would need a strong, continuous line of progression previously. If your institute is providing multiple certifications with the option to change lines, then you will have to make sure your IGCSE core and supplementary subjects are compatible with the other course you’d teach before this level. If educational gaps are unavoidable ‒ as they sometimes are, when going inter-discipline ‒ you would also have to provide proper support courses for short term.

Flexibility is a good deal more prominent at the IGCSE level. The Cambridge Upper Secondary level is recommended to be studied for two years, but schools may choose to complete it in one or three years as well. Some schools may require students to study 8-9 subjects for a longer period, and some others can utilize a more specialized curriculum with only 5-6 subjects. Please take into account the flexibility of offering combined or coordinated subjects, core or supplementary.

Last but not the least, remember that from this level onwards practical education gets really serious. You should have the proper  laboratory infrastructure for this, and Labkafe can help you set up an IGCSE-level laboratory.

Cambridge Advanced

At 16 to 19 years of age, students are raring to get specialized, to get into careers. Naturally, they would want to study specializations only. However, you can still use this time to teach a broad, balanced syllabus ‒ or you can specialize. This is called the Cambridge AS & A Level.

What are Cambridge AS & A Levels

‘AS’ stands for ‘Advanced Subsidiary’ and ‘A’ stands for ‘Advanced’. The AS level subjects have half the content than A level subjects, and students are generally capable of finishing them in one year only. AS levels need two years. Degrees are offered at the end of both years, and there are options to sit for board exams at the end of either year as the student chooses. Meaning, that an A-level student can go through the tests in two iterations or a single one at the end of the course.

In most parts of the world, a Cambridge AS level degree is sufficient to enter there. Students can carry forward their AS level credit and get a full A-level later. As these are almost all specialty subjects, they demand more classroom and individual study time.

The Cambridge advanced level brings great flexibility to this slab. You can either provide non-staged, solid blocks of A-level or AS-level degrees (after 2 or 1 year of study respectively). Or you can let the student go through a staged approach, where each stage of one year includes some AS and A level subjects. In the first year, all subjects will be AS level; next year, the student may choose to keep some of them to upgrade them to A level and replace the others with other AS level subjects. An example follows:

• Year 1:
  • Mathematics AS level
  • Physics AS level
  • Chemistry AS level
  • Biology AS level
• Year 2:
  • Physics A level
  • Computation AS level
  • Global Perspectives AS level

In this example, the student has chosen to specialize in advanced physics, and so dropped one subject to free up study time for the advanced content. Meanwhile, she is covering a total of 6 subjects, in all of which she will be internationally acceptable if passed.

Cambridge Pre-U Program

The Pre-U program is available as a diploma or separate recognition. If the student chooses to get a Pre-U diploma (recognized throughout the world for university grade qualification), then she has to choose three subjects. Or she can take certifications in each of those subjects discretely. However, to get the diploma the Global Perspectives & Research qualification. All of this can be done in parallel to or in replacement of the A-level program. The qualifications are graded finely into nine levels of recognition (3 each for Distinction, Merit, and Pass). Note that you have to get special approval to get this implemented in your school.

A Last Word for Implementing the Cambridge Curriculum

Flexibility. Integration. Global recognition. Global understanding. All of these are salient points of the Cambridge curriculum and so should they be yours as well when you need to build it into your school. School subjects should target conceptual development, and substantive content should form the widest part of the curriculum. Overlapping of concepts inside the curriculum throughout subjects should be expected and welcome. For example, a student may encounter the concept of renewable energy in physics, geography, economics, and politics. The global perspectives pathway can help them reconcile these overlapping concepts easily and effectively. In the end, a robust yet adaptable framework will be your key to success while implementing the Cambridge curriculum in your school.

Image courtesy:  pixabay

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There is a new wave coming from across the world, and we expect it to sweep off the existing education system and build a new order. This is the Cambridge curriculum and today we will discuss how to implement it for Indian schools. This new education system is recognized and preferred by most of the reputed universities and institutes around the world. And it’s coming to your doorstep now!

So, what is the Cambridge curriculum anyway? It is a very well-recognized system of education that any school can implement without disturbing the influence of the local culture and yet deliver students capable of entering any university across the globe. The “Cambridge Pathway” aims to internationalize the education system at the undergraduate level. It is well-known and accepted in most universities, institutes, and leading businesses. 

The Cambridge curriculum has grown out of a British system of education, which divides the system into four parts ‒ Cambridge Primary, Cambridge lower secondary, Cambridge upper secondary, and Cambridge advanced. Together, they are called the Cambridge Pathway ‒ for a child to grow into a responsible, skillful, world-worthy worker and citizen.

A highly flexible and adaptive system, the Cambridge curriculum lets you pursue your local boards of education but also implement the Cambridge pathway. Both inspiring and challenging, it rewards students with an inquisitive mind and helps the more challenged ones to grow personally and think on their own.

20 Questions to Ask Before Building the Cambridge Curriculum

To accomplish anything, you have to ask the right questions to yourself (or the working body). To build a Cambridge curriculum is no different either. Here are some pertinent questions for your meeting table when you decide to go the Cambridge way. These questions assume that the school is offering an existing qualification (like CBSE, ICSE, or similar) already and wants to upgrade to an international level.

1. What is your goal? What social, personal, and academic outcomes do you expect out of your syllabus?
2. What skills will this curriculum grant to the students?
3. Is this curriculum capable of motivating, engaging, and challenging the students? How?
4. Which Cambridge subjects and programs will you include in your curriculum?
5. If selected, how will the above work with the existing curriculum in your institute?
6. How will you implement local and national culture into the curriculum?
7. The Cambridge curriculum is a highly English-dependent system. Which subjects will you teach in English? If your students don’t have fluency in understanding, speaking, and writing English, how do you plan to support them?
8. Does the curriculum make progression from one level to another a fluid process, or are there gaps that need to be filled?
9. What is your detailed plan of assessment procedure for this curriculum?
10. Will the teachers need any special training to teach this syllabus? How do you plan to give them that support? And how will you determine that they stay on track afterwards?
11. Do you have an effective governance and teaching structure in place to handle the new load? Or if not, then what should that structure be?
12. How will you measure the impact of your curriculum, and how will you know that your students are actually learning things, irrespective of exam results?
13. Do you have any inter-school network through which the administration and the teachers can take help with this curriculum?
14. How much of this curriculum will be learned in theoretical classes and how much will be learned from hands-on practical classes?
15. How many hours will be spent studying which particular subjects at different levels? And how much of that time shall be divided between theory and practical sessions?
16. Does the school have a proper laboratory setup like  lab furniture and  lab equipment to cover the hands-on learning part of this curriculum?
17. Does the curriculum offer elective subjects? Can the school balance the resource requirements for a prediction of electives that may be taken by the students?
18. How does the community interact with this curriculum? Would the students have opportunities to involve with the community/society through this?
19. Can external groups make any contributions to the curriculum? Conversely, can your students perform in any outreach program serving the community?
20. What facilities do you require to fulfill the learning environment needs for the specialist subjects in this curriculum?

Answering all of the above questions satisfactorily is the key to building a Cambridge curriculum for your school. Your school should meet all the requirements as mentioned above and then have some breathing space for the future.

Basic Principles for a Successful Cambridge Curriculum Design

Consistency

The thing you need to remember here is that the Cambridge curriculum does not work in a one-size-fits-all kind of way. The various schools taking up this curriculum operate in a wide variety and scope, such is its flexibility. School leaders must remember that a fluid continuity is the key to this learning system. 

Therefore, they should not only consider exactly which subjects a student should study every year, but also that there should be a clear path of consistent progression during the student’s career ‒ be it in any specialization. Each level change should feel natural and unjarring to the students, and they should not have to go out of their way to learn new subjects.

Vision and Mission

The values and aims of your school should match perfectly with your curriculum design. If, for example, your objective is to build a more skilled workforce for the country, then your Cambridge curriculum should mix a lot of hands-on learning with a good dose of local and national culture. However, if you foresee your students spreading all over the world, then your curriculum should include more topics covering international cooperation and how the world is bound together in life, in business, and in politics. Anyway, your choice of subjects and activities should be holistic to your objectives.

Quality over Quantity

A natural question comes when deciding on any course curriculum ‒ why not just all subjects and all content, surely that would teach everything to a student? But we have to ask ourselves ‒ does the real world work that way? Can a student learn everything in one walkthrough of school life? The answer is a hard no, and that won’t change until we’ve genetically engineered superbrains and learned to slow down time.

Instead, your goal while implementing a Cambridge curriculum should be to maximize learning in a few subjects pertaining to a student’s Cambridge pathway, supported by some other subjects that let them be aware of how the world works. Too much content in one subject also does not result in better learning (almost always). Instead, let the learner maximize understanding of the basic, key points and encourage them to explore further on their own.

Balance of Knowledge

While the school’s vision does guide the breadth and depth of the subjects you will integrate into the curriculum, a balance must be struck somewhere pertaining to developing a sense of context of the specialty subject. Normally, a balanced diet for the studying mind includes mathematics, languages, sciences, technology, humanities, creative arts, and physical education. Covering these from the lower level broadly will expose the students to the actual world which consists of a bit of everything to make a project succeed.

Secondly, some subjects are special in the way that they are more integrated with many other subjects. Instead of teaching them as discrete subjects, your strategy should better include their implementation in other subjects while teaching them. Mathematics and Information Technology are two good examples of such subjects that are present in almost everything, even art. Further examples should be literacy and numeracy ‒ teachers of all subjects should be well-read and have a clear calculative mindset that makes sure that the students will be capable of working in their discrete subjects with good support.

Reaching Up

Your school’s duty is to prepare students for the world, on a national or international level. As such, your Cambridge curriculum should gear up your students to be compatible with the entrance criteria of most renowned universities or businesses. This becomes more and more important as the student goes through the Pathway and becomes more and more specialized.

Implementing a robust syllabus is a good way to achieve the above, but there are other ways too. As school leaders you can incorporate various support programs and activities into the curriculum, especially at the later stages, to give the students the industry and higher education exposure they need. 

Inter-curriculum Compatibility

We have previously assumed that your school already offers some other sort of qualification under other common boards like CBSE or ICSE. It is very important that your new Cambridge curriculum be compatible with your existing curriculum. The reason behind this lies in the fact that many students choose to move in and out of specific teaching systems as their needs fit them. If, for example, one of your students wants to migrate from class VI to Cambridge Lower Secondary, the process should be smooth and not jarring. 

Coherency

Perhaps this goes without saying, but an educational system should be more than just the sum of its parts. The content of a curriculum, its textbooks, its resources, and its assessing systems should all work together and be interconnected to reinforce each other. You can only call your international curriculum successful when the content of the curriculum, the pedagogical approach, and the assessment system all work together to maximize students’ learning development, achievement, and above all, the ability to see and work with the big picture.

Designing the School Curriculum with Cambridge

As mentioned above, the Cambridge Pathway is divided into four levels ‒ Primary, Lower Secondary, Upper Secondary, and Advanced. Here are some useful details about these levels to utilize while designing your Cambridge curriculum.

Cambridge Primary

• Age group: 5 to 11 years
• Builds a basic understanding of how the world works.
• Subjects available (none are compulsory):
  • Art & Design
  • Digital literacy
  • English
  • English as a second language
  • Cambridge Global Perspectives
  • Computing
  • Mathematics
  • Music
  • Physical education
  • Science
• Each subject can be divided into “strands” to navigate it easier and in more practical ways. For example, English can have four strands ‒ reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
• Assessments should be targeted toward identifying the strength and weaknesses of the students.
• Cambridge Primary Checkpoint: an end-of-the-line assessment test for the Cambridge Primary level, that grades students with only English (both first and second), mathematics, and science. The Global Perspectives subject is graded through a team project. Any student from another discipline completing the Checkpoint is awarded a special achievement status.

Cambridge Lower Secondary

• Age group: 11 to 14 year
• Bridges gap between primary education and board exam levels.
• Subjects:
  • Art & Design
  • Digital literacy
  • English
  • English as a second language
  • Cambridge Global Perspectives
  • Computing
  • Mathematics
  • Music
  • Physical education
  • Science
• Subjects can be similarly divided into strands to ease the learning process.
• Assessments should be good enough to provide an international benchmark of the student’s capabilities.
• Cambridge Lower Secondary Progression: for each stage, students can be directed to sit for this exam whenever the teacher feels they are ready.
• Cambridge Lower Secondary Checkpoint: The final test of the level, it evaluates the subjects English (both first and second), Math, and Science. Cambridge Global Perspectives is graded through a research paper.

Cambridge Upper Secondary

• Also known as IGCSE (International General Certificate of Secondary Education).
• Age group: 14 to 16 years
• Provides an excellent educational platform to build upon in the Advanced or Diploma levels, or can also provide qualification for some professions.
• Designed as a two year program, but students can choose to take it over a 1-year or 3-year course.
• Subjects: over 70 subjects with almost any possible combination (except a few ‘barred’ combinations). Here is the  full list of IGCSE subjects .
• Some subjects offer an “Extended” or “Supplementary” or “Advanced” tier. The ‘normal’ versions of those subjects are marked as “Core”. This extra education is elective. For example, a student can take Core Physics, OR Extended Physics that includes the core content plus something extra.
• Local assessments should give the students a grade for each subject course they complete.
• Cambridge IGCSE Assessment: taken at the end of the upper secondary source, it includes written, practical, oral, and coursework assessments.
• Grading is given in a scale of A* to G (from C to G for core subjects) in graduation from best to worst performance.

Cambridge Advanced

• Topmost level of the Cambridge Pathway, intended to prepare students for entry into the leading universities and businesses across the world.
• Also called the AS & A levels.
• Age group: 16 to 19 years
• Builds deep understanding, critical analysis, and independent thinking.
• Subjects: over 50 with any combination.  Full list here .
• Assessments would include formal written exams, orals, practicals, and coursework; gradation is from A* to E. 
• Pre-U (university entrance) exams are held at the end of a two year course, grading from D1 to P3. Pre-U courses are available by special request.

To Be Continued…

This article discussed what the aim and scope of your school leadership thought process should be to implement the Cambridge international curriculum at your school. We have discussed at length questions that need to be answered before starting the curriculum design, and basic principles to adhere to while building it. We have also given you a razor-edge overview of the Cambridge Pathway ‒ should you want to implement it in full or part. 

In the  next article about building a Cambridge curriculum for your school, we will discuss in detail about the subject distribution in each course, pedagogy, and the signature subject of the system ‒ the Global Perspectives progression. Till then, have a nice time!

The post Implementing Cambridge Curriculum in Schools Part 1 ‒ Labkafe appeared first on Labkafe Blog.

Education is one of the most important matters that build up a nation’s backbone, and as such, it is a primary subject of discussion of any government. From time to time, the strategies of how education should go in the country need to be revised; and that is how the National Education Policy came to be.

What is the National Education Policy

The Government of India has formulated the NEP or National Education Policy as a means and strategy to regulate, promote, and support education throughout the nation of India. The scope of the policy covers everything from elementary grades to higher education levels, and is applicable to both urban and rural areas.

So far, there have been three iterations of the NEP education policy. For the first time, PM India Gandhi implemented the National Education Policy 1968; then PM Rajiv Gandhi brought about the National Education Policy 1986; finally, PM Narendra Modi created the National Education Policy 2020.

Brief History of the National Education Policy

National Education Policy 1968

Based on the Kothari Commission report, prime minister Indira Gandhi brought in the first radical change in education in India in the form of NEP 1968. It had the following ambitions:

• National integration to bring about better cultural and economic development.
• Compulsory education for all children in India up to age 14.
• Special training and qualifications for teachers.
• “Three Language Formula” is based on a focus on regional language. Encouragement on learning Hindi as much as possible. Sanskrit is included in syllabuses.
• The education budget was revised to up to six percent of national income. 

National Education Policy 1986

The Rajiv Gandhi government introduced a new and improved education policy as NEP 1986, with emphasis on equalizing education among all, especially with women and SC/ST people. It covered the following points:

• Explore possibilities of adult education
• Introduce more scholarships
• Recruiting more teachers from the backward classes
• Induce incentives for the poor to send their kids to school
• Providing educational support services like housing and infrastructure
• Start “Operation Blackboard” to improve primary schools across the country
• Attach open educational system to the general public education system with the help of IGNOU
• Promote economic and social development at grassroot level by implementing “rural universities”

Note that the PV Narasimha Rao government brought some changes to this policy in 1992 and the UPA government changed it further in 2005.

National Education Policy 2020

In 2019 the Ministry of Human Resource Development under the Modi Sarkar has drafted a New Education Policy 2019, after a lot of public sector consultations. This new policy aims to improve critical thinking and discussion and analysis-based learning in children of India. It also proposes a redistribution of the old 10+2 system into a 5+3+3+4 system to enhance the cognitive learning ability of the students. The policy was approved in 2020 and hence NEP 2020 was born, which after various revisions may be enforced by 2026.

NEP 2020 Key Points

The vision of the New Education Policy 2020 is to implement an India-centric education system that enables our great nation into being a powerhouse of knowledge and innovation sustainably by providing high-quality education to all levels of society, bar none. The policy wants to reflect lots of sizable changes in our present educational system and expects to raise state expenditure on education up to 6%.

Learning Languages

1. NEP 2019 recommends using a three-language formula of which two would have to be from India.
2. It emphasizes the use of the local language or mother tongue as a part of the basic education (at least up to class 5; recommended up to class 8).
3. The policy prescribes learning of Sanskrit and foreign languages as well.
4. The new education policy 2020 directly points out that no particular language can be imposed upon any student; however, it also points out that the policy is nothing but a guideline to education and hence it is truly up to the state and institute level education authorities to decide what will they teach. 
5. It should be noted that the Right to Education Act of 2009 also promotes usage of a student’s mother tongue as the primary learning medium at least in the early stages; therefore NEP 2020 is following this law perfectly.

School-Level Learning

1. The existing 10+2 system will be redistributed as a 5+3+3+4 system, as follows:
   1. Foundation Stage ‒ 3 years of preschool learning followed by classes 1 & 2, for children from 3 to 8 years.
   2. Preparatory Stage ‒ for children of 8-11 years, classes 3 to 5 will help children prepare for the world by gradually introducing general subjects covering most of the basic learning spectrum.
   3. Middle Stage ‒ Classes 6 to 8 will teach children aged 11-14 more abstract forms of everything, which may eventually lead to higher specializations.
   4. Secondary Stage ‒ Covering the age group of 14-19, the classes 9 to 12 shall provide multi-optional subjects to study in two sub-stages (9/10 and 11/12) that provide lots of depth and help critical thinking.
2. The above system will hold exams only three times ‒ in classes 2, 5, and 8. Board exams of classes 10 and 12 will take place as usual, but their formats will change too. These exams will take place twice a year and students may get a second chance for each exam. Each exam will have two parts ‒ objective and descriptive.
3. The Foundation and Preparatory Stages will focus more on basic literacy skills (reading and writing) and basic arithmetic skills. To get this done by 2025, the NIPUN Bharat Mission was launched in 2021 which will implement goals in state-level primary schools and track and analyze progress.
4. The policy aims to be as much interdisciplinary and holistic as possible. To that end, the restrictions of choosing subjects at the Secondary Stage shall be minimized and the choices of subjects will be increased. For example, a student can take physics and cooking in his combination (if the school offers both), no issues.
5. All students are now required to learn some basic forms of computer programming. From class 6, coding classes will take place.
6. To encourage children from poor family backgrounds to come to school, the Midday Meal Scheme will enlarge to include breakfasts as well. 
7. Social workers and counselors will visit schools or take up posts so as to take better care of the children’s mental health.

Higher Level Education

1. The NEP policy 2021 proposes a new graduation level learning system after that of the most famous international curriculums like IB or Cambridge Path. In this system, students will have a total of 4 years of study in front of them but will have exit points each year with varying scales of degree certification.
   1. That is, exiting the course after the first year only will earn you a certificate degree, after the second year you’ll get a diploma, a graduation certificate after completing 3 years, and a multidisciplinary bachelor’s degree for completing the full course. 
   2. The course will have a greater selection of professional and vocational subjects too. 
2. Various new commissions will be set up to regulate and gauge undergraduate learning.
3. In addition to JEE and NEET, the National Testing Agency will also conduct the other university entrance examinations now.
4. IITs are requested to revise the number of subject courses they offer and to expand the selection.
5. In a radical move to internationalize the education system in India, the NEP 2020 also proposes to let education cross borders. Meaning, foreign universities can now set up campuses in Indian soil and Indian universities are allowed to go abroad as well.

Teaching the Teachers

1. NEP 2020 aims to enforce that the teachers be more “passionate, motivated, highly qualified, professionally trained, and well equipped” from now on.
2. To ensure that, the  NCTE is pushed to implement a National Curriculum for Teacher Education and a National Professional Standards for Teachers by 2022.
3. To become a teacher, a 4-year bachelor of education degree will be mandatory now. 
4. The teacher recruitment process will be decanted to become more transparent and straightforward.

Technology In Education

1. The NEP policy 2020 takes edtech very seriously. This new policy encourages and guides edtech companies and startups. 
2. The policy talks of implementing and integrating into the learning system various innovative modern-day subsystems like education management systems, ERP software, test/assessment platforms, online learning platforms, virtual laboratories, etc. In fact, in the pandemic situation, the need for solid online learning platforms has become stronger than ever.
3. An autonomous body called National Educational Technology Forum is also called into action to work in the above sense.

Who Follows the National Education Policy 2020

• Karnataka was the first to jump onto the NEP 2020 bandwagon. The state government issued orders in August 2021 to implement parts of this.
• Only a few days afterwards, Madhya Pradesh followed suit.
• The UP and Assam governments have promised to implement the new education policy by 2022.
• Telangana and Rajasthan have announced positive decisions to implement the policy.
• Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh chiefs have directed bodies in their respective states to spread the influence of the policy.

What NEP 2020 Means for Laboratory Education in India

 India is fast becoming a global leader in information technology and communications. As such, the National Education Policy 2020 campaign is highly geared towards embedding modern technologies into standard education. It is now understood that the relationship between education and technology flows both ways, and so the need to integrate modern innovations into the learning process is more important than ever.

The NEP 2020 visualizes a near future where tech-savvy teachers will bring up a generation of modern, enlightened, and world-compatible students. The general life tomorrow will be highly influenced by multiple technologies in a myriad of ways, such as artificial intelligence, robotics, drones, IoT, smart boards, handheld computers, blockchains, and a lot more. As such, it is the duty of this generation to make sure the next generations are not left in the dark about these matters. 

When the National Education Policy was created for the first time in 1968, or even when it was revised for the first time in 1986 ‒ we had no idea about the huge effect the internet will bring to pretty much everything, not only the education sector. Now that we’ve seen that, what about smartphones? What about something that may come right the next day, without us having the slightest idea today? For this reason, special bodies will be set up just to monitor the technological edge and recommend modifications to the system accordingly. 

So, what does all that mean for hands-on education in India? Indubitably, tomorrow’s school syllabuses will expand to include much more than just basic sciences and arts. Computer classes are already the norm in many schools ‒ it’s valid to suppose they will soon open doors to other technologies like AI, drones, robotics, space science, etc. All these subjects have very little theory at the lower level and lots of practical learning scope. For example, it’s almost impossible to teach robotics without having some sort of moving part in your hands.

Even conventional text-based subjects are fast becoming more and more dependent on practical work. Take a subject like geography ‒ in our childhood, a student could have done a master’s in it without ever touching a rock or seeing a river. But nowadays, the new education policy highly dislikes that sort of theory-only learning. Even in arts subjects, there can be a lot of practical works.

At the same time, at the grassroots levels with young kids, the nature of learning shall change as well. Instead of relying on conventional teaching, alternative and holistic approaches are being considered more. Activity-based learning is going to take a front seat, making learning fun again for little kids. To that end,  science parks ,  math parks , and  social science parks come to mind.

Soon, more and more schoolhouses will be so much more than just a bunch of classrooms. There will be grand laboratories and activity areas taking up most of the space. The school grounds will be adorned with interactive learning parks and models. Children will spend more time working with their hands than just reading from books. Night classes will be a thing now, with astronomy and space sciences the degrees of the near future.

All of this, of course, will need a lot of infrastructures. And innovative, fast-adapting laboratory equipment and lab furniture manufacturing companies like Labkafe are uniquely positioned to quench the thirst of the future schools under the National Education Policy. With technologies changing as fast as they are, we can expect more revisions coming soon. And we shall be ready to meet the new requirements, as the world witnesses.

(Image Courtesy: Pixabay, Pexels)05

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What is social science anyway?

The answer to this question can be surprisingly complicated. You see, the standard sciences like biology, maths, chemistry, physics etc. deal with how the universe works and how we can use those rules to our advantage, building technology. Social science tells us the impact of science and technology on our lives. Indeed, it teaches us about modern life as it is.

The social sciences encompass a wide range of disciplines from geography to demography to technology to environmental sciences. Through the combination of these we can try to make students understand how the world works and how we affect it. And what better way to do it than interactive and visual education?

The traditional mode of education can only take us so far. Indeed, in our country education has reduced in many places to just mugging over notes before exam day. The goal that we are setting before our kids is not learning things, but passing exams and getting a well-paid job. We are not encouraging them to understand the world, nor are we teaching them to give back to the planet, to help it survive. To help us survive. (Heck, we’re doing precious little in those avenues ourselves as it is.)

Learning social sciences interactively from very young ages is one of the best ways to get out of this rut and take the first step towards becoming a truly global citizen (not just running away to another country for money). And thankfully many of our educational agencies are understanding this gradually. 

What is a Social Science Park?

A social science park in a school is basically an outdoor activity and learning area for children to frolic in. This area includes various static or interactive models that showcase and/or demonstrate various principles of social science. The idea behind it is that children should have fun while gathering a lot of important knowledge.

Thus we are able to see many new programs and schemes taking place in various sectors of school education in our nation. For example, the Kerala government has started a new rejuvenation policy which will make their school system more dependent on interactive education than textbooks. There are new directives for government schools such as KVs and JNVs and Army Schools. 

I know what you are thinking. It’s all good to give orders, but who will bell the cat? Who will build these social science parks in schools? Who knows what kinds of models and interactive elements should go into these parks? Who is, in short, an expert on hands-on education for kids?

How can Labkafe Help Build Social Science Parks?

The expert on hands-on youth education you’re looking for is Labkafe. We are dedicated to bringing affordable hands-on education to every child in this nation ‒ that’s our very dream. To that end, we have been researching these matters for quite some time now ‒ and have become experts on providing interactive education solutions to schools. We manufacture and install science park, maths park, and social science park equipment and models in schools and communities.

Labkafe provides various sorts of interactive and static models for social science parks. These may include 3D relief maps showing various kinds of regions or ethnicity, apparatus that gives kids ideas about how time is set around the world, basic meteorological models like sundials and wind models, environmental models that teach about safe garbage disposal or that display various ecological niches, etc.

How to Build a Science Park

So, what do you need to build a social science park in your school? Since a social science park is, to begin with, a park area, you would need an open outdoor space inside your education facility. The size of the area would, of course, depend upon how many models you want to keep in there and how much activity you plan to do ‒ but as a ballpark figure we can advise you to start from a 20-by-20 feet space. 

This area should be well designed to support lots of foot traffic (meaning with a good pathing solution) but should not be too far removed from nature (meaning you shouldn’t just do it on a big concrete or asphalt square). Apart from the social science equipment, you should also decorate the area appropriately to let the kids know that this is a designated fun zone. For example, if your space is large enough, a few trees would be nice too.

And that is the key point to focus on this whole matter ‒ that learning should be fun. It should not be poring over dusty old books and memorizing them forcefully. Learning should be an interactive, hands-on activity that gives flesh to abstract course material. While school laboratories can do that in part, it is not even close enough to how much we need. As a direct demonstration, try to remember the facts of life that you have learned quite early but still can remember vividly. Haven’t all of them risen out of some practical activity?

The Bottom Line

That whole matter described above is realized by modern education counsellors, the reason why this new education drive is blossoming across India. The next generation will have their curiosity glands stimulated in a very modern, different way. And Labkafe is proud to be a part of this. 

Our social science park equipment and models for schools are designed to provoke curiosity and innovative learning. We consider it our responsibility to build a better generation of people tomorrow who are very much aware of their planet, their environment, and their society. To that end, our manufacturing and installation services are available for all private and government schools, colleges, and institutes.

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The traditional method of studying maths ‒ indeed, any science ‒ includes mugging over boring old textbooks and remembering a huge bunch of stuff, almost all of which are pretty abstract to a young, inexperienced mind. In the majority of cases, this creates a negative eddy to the learning process and a distinct negativity about the subject itself. Also, you get to know pretty much nothing about working with the real things.

No wonder we have a shortage of scientifically-minded people and technically skilled workforce in this country. 

The obvious solution to this disinterest in scientific curiosity is to include a practical education to the field. Of course, our schools are doing this already and Labkafe is committed to bringing affordable practical education to all children in the nation. But practical classes, as of the educational system now, come far later in the years while an opinion about the subjects has already formed in the students’ minds.

But there is another way. You can build interest in science subjects at a younger level. And for that, you need something far more substantial, interactive, and fun than boring old textbooks.

This is where the concept of interactive learning parks for children comes in. The idea is that instead of providing the knowledge raw, you make a fun game out of it. Take plotting graphs, for example. You can force your kids with flat boring graph papers and make them squint as they struggle to find the points. Or, you can build a big, colorful board with X and Y axis and make an enjoyable game of placing blocks on given coordinates. Which one do you think the children will love more? It’s glaringly obvious.

A mathematics park does just this. All you have to have is some open grounds inside your school premises, where you can plop down some big interactive models and decorate the place somewhat so that kids may like it. Labkafe manufactures and sets up various kinds of such interactive models, ruggedly fabricated and brightly painted. Our maths park equipment includes demonstration of Pythagorus’s theorem, behavior of a double-sided cone, etc.

Learning maths and sciences has always been a rather grim experience to most of our memories. Therefore, we have acquired a natural distaste for all the traits that come automatically with a science-loving mind: critical thinking, inquisitive nature, caring about nature and environment, curiosity towards how the universe works, an energetic and disciplined mind, etc. 

In turn, that has caused us to become what can only be described as a featureless collection of dronelike workers. All this, while the actual brilliant minds permeate out of the country to make other nations great. We have to change this ‒ by attracting them young.

The concept of inclusion of maths parks, science parks, and social science parks in the school premises has been in the air in India for a while now. The Kerala government has introduced a scheme to rejuvenate the state’s education system, in which this is a part. Selected central government schools like Army schools etc. have been instructed in the matter as well. And many private schools, being such highly modernized they are, are considering and building maths parks and science parks in their premises too. 

All in all, a new wave is coming that is targeted to completely change the next generation’s attitude towards maths and science. This will create a lot more interest toward sciences on a grassroot level, changing that generation’s whole attitude towards technical education and work. It should also change the situation with the shortage of technically skilled workers, and the general attitude towards technical education and technician work in the populace. 

A great example of a children’s maths park is the Ramanujan Maths Park in Andhra Pradesh. It is an interactive museum located inside the Agyasta Campus Creativity Lab. Dedicated to teaching mathematics in interesting and hands-on ways, the Park has various indoor and outdoor exhibits and activity models. It is highly attractive to young students and works to create interest in the field of geometry, trigonometry, arithmetic, and other more advanced mathematical theories in a practical and hands-on manner. 

This great park, and similar technological playgrounds have been set up around the nation in various places under various programs. The respective authorities have expressed great interest in replicating these maths and science parks in other places and inside schools as well. 

Teaching maths in creative and innovative ways is the future, rather than the traditional method. To that end, various governmental organizations and private institutions are progressing steadily, making this the norm of the future. And Labkafe is in support, supplying the hardware and installing. Not to beat on one’s own drums, but we’re sort of experts on the matter.

Other than lab equipment packages and customized lab furniture, we also serve schools and other institutions for their interactive children’s parks needs. In Labkafe’s inventory, you will find maths park equipment and models, science park equipment, social science park equipment etc. We provide products that are sturdy and services that are dependable.  Contact today for more information ‒ we’re always ready to serve!

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The biggest part of the upbringing of our children is in education – and it encompasses two things – what to study, and how to study. The second part has been long ignored largely, but that is changing fast. In the education industry of India, there is a new theme going around ‒ science parks, maths parks, social science parks etc. So, what exactly is a science park anyway? And how can you set up one of those? Labkafe has the answer.

Let’s take a step back and think. What do we mean by education? What do we see in our minds as we utter the word? Don’t we see a desk, heavy books, a teacher rambling on in a classful of glassy, sleepy eyes? You see that too. Most of us have the exact same idea of “education”. 

This is a dangerous rut we are stuck in. Education should not be a boring thing. It should not be theoretical mugging on and on. It should not, above all, become a burden. Especially in the case of scientific knowledge. But how do we change that?

Science parks are a great answer to this question. Get ‘em young, we say. People don’t want to learn ‒ really learn, not just memorize processes ‒ about something they aren’t interested in. And the best way to interest people in science is to attract them via fun and playful activities that also teaches things. At quite young ages.

What is a Science Park

A science park in a school does exactly that. Basically, a science, maths, or  social science park in a school is an open playground for kids of all ages, with very specific equipment to play with. The school carefully chooses these equipment in such a way that they demonstrate specific scientific principles, while being fun to use as well.

A science park is the best way to teach science informally to kids. It encourages children to play with hardware that actually demonstrates something, rather than burying their noses in textbooks. Obviously, textbooks can only take you so far. But hands-on practical learning will stay etched in your memory forever.

The basic idea behind a science park is to enable children of all ages to learn science interactively outside the confines of a laboratory. Normally, there are quite a few scientific theories that you can see in action in a lab. But that’s not feasible for young children; so instead, you make rugged big working models of those principles and place them on a playground. Children would interact with them and have fun doing it (who doesn’t like talking through a long tube?), while a teacher or older students can explain why it works that way.

Indeed, the idea is so lucrative that it has become the norm for many modern schools, and in India, government schools are also expected to have science and maths parks. Some state governments are already launching educational schemes that have this form of modernized learning as a part ‒ for example, Kerala’s Public Education Rejuvenation Mission . The Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas have taken up the challenge as well.

What’s in a Labkafe Science Park

Labkafe, with a vision to provide affordable practical education to all children in India, has taken up the responsibility of manufacturing and supplying science park, maths park , and social science park equipment and models. We understand that by doing this we are changing the future.

Labkafe offers a full package of models and equipment you can use in your school’s science park. For example, with our equipment your kids can learn about the following:

• How sound travels through a tube
• Persistence of vision
• How a periscope works
• Structures of various molecules and crystals
• How a car engine works
• …and so much more!

Each of those models and equipment demonstrate a given fact of science about how something functions, and the kids can find plaques attached to them explaining the theory. We boil down complex science principles in simple, playful, easy-to-understand matter and present them in a colorful and interesting way, understandable to most kids in the junior sections of a school.

In the traditional education system, few kids ever like science. The heavy textbooks with complicated writing are bad enough to scare any kid away. No matter how colorful you make a book, it cannot take the place of the fun a kid has seeing things in action. Why else do you think the kids science shows are so popular in the west? 

This is why the idea of science parks is so good for a country which seems to be bogged down in theoretical education and support work only. Innovative thinking and curiosity-driven learning is suffocating under truckloads of bland notes to be memorized on the day before exams. Which is, demonstrably, one of the worst ways to learn science. In this ‘normalized unreality’, innovative learning methods like science parks can not only bring a fresh air to the system, but can actually make a paradigm-shifting change, producing more and more science-loving youngsters ready to take their first steps into professional skill-oriented education. 

How Labkafe Can Help in Building Science Parks

And that is one of our prime driving motivations. Labkafe wishes to see an India in near future, transformed by interest and skill sets, packed with technically proficient workers chomping at the bit to change the very image of our nation. To see this done, Labkafe is quickly transforming into and expert on the science, maths, and social science parks. 

Moreover, Labkafe is standing in an unique position to help out in this matter. Not only our extensive experience with government schools and others help us smooth out the red tape, but also we have a robust presence on GeM as a registered OEM. (You can find us there as “Orientallabs Retail Services Pvt. Ltd.”) 

It is a great help for all government schools like JNVs, KVs, APSs and Sainik Schools since they have to purchase from the Government e-Marketplace only. We oil the machine even better by offering free technical assistance at every stage of the procurement process. For private schools too this works as a guarantee of product quality and cost-effectiveness. 

Every step of these particular efforts are geared towards making science more enjoyable for the younger generation, who are going to grow up and become our nation tomorrow. And we owe it to them to give them the facts about life, universe, and everything in the best manner we can. 

Disclaimer: the images used above are collected from their respective websites.

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