Riverside school in Ahmedabad was awarded World’s Best School for Innovation by T4 Education. A prestigious globally recognized educational award that gives the school a prize of USD 50,000, along with a global platform to share their innovative ideas.
Riverside school was recognized for its design, student-centric, and activity-based curriculum, and for innovative learning approaches like the Feel, Imagine, Do and Share (FIDS) model. Riverside has previously been shortlisted in the top 10 and top 3 schools in the same category. The two finalist in this category are schools from New Zealand and Malaysia.
The other categories for awards are Community Collaboration, Environmental Action, Overcoming Adversity, and Supporting Healthy Lives. The schools from around the world to win Best School prizes are from Jerusalem, Brazil, Colombia, India, and South Africa. Hand in Hand Jerusalem School won Best School in Overcoming Adversity for being a multicultural school integrating both Jewish and Arab students and teaching in both Hebrew and Arabic.
Founder of Riverside School shares her joy at winning
Kiran Bir Sethi, the award winning school, tells TOI that the feeling of having won such a prestigious award at the international level is yet to sink in. She talks about the Riverside Learning Center (RLC) that is a pedagogical research and training center with a global reach in over 9 countries. RLC believes in creating a unique, user-centered approach to building school systems.
“An unforgiving education system often suffocates children and takes faith out of them,” she says, adding, “If what children learn in classrooms relates to their daily life, then the children will know what change they can bring and see the change.”
Sethi’s Design for Change (DFC) initiative is today’s world’s most significant movement for change that includes 22 lakh children and 65,000 teachers in the initiative from over 60 countries. She was awarded the Ashoka Fellowship in 2008 for making cities more child-friendly through her ‘aProCh’ initiative that aims to create safe cities for children where they can explore, and have ample opportunities to create happy memories.
The school intends to use the prize money to further the FIDS programme by expanding its reach through digital learning content and supporting schools and educators around the world. The school is dedicated to instilling in their students the “I CAN mindset” and cultivating empathy, creativity, and social responsibility to create concerned citizens and responsible future leaders.
