S. Chand Group is a leading education content company in India. The company has been gathering groups of education professionals to participate our Eduvisit programme. Eduvisit is a customized professional educational visit to Finland presenting Finnish practices in education.

“We had heard a lot about Finland and that it has one of the best education systems in the world”, explains Ms Priya Malhotra, Group Head Marketing of S. Chand Group. “We wanted the schools in our country to understand and be exposed to the global phenomena in education. The first country we taught of was Finland”, she continues.

S. Chand Group believes that even though India and Finland are very different countries, there are always things to learn from other systems. The company first planned to send groups to Finland during one year, but when the first group came, they find out that there is a lot to learn. “We taught let’s try and expose more and more people to the Finnish education system so that we can take back something we can implement in our own system”, Ms Malhotra states.

Typical visitors who participate our Eduvisit through S. Chand Group are school owners, administrators, principals, vice principals, and sometimes teachers from different schools. According to Ms Malhotra, after S. Chand Group has sponsored one delegation from a school, the same school often wants to sponsor a second delegation themselves.

That is why the company is promoting schools to send for example 10 to 20 teachers as a school delegation to participate the Eduvisit. “We recommend the visit to most of the schools in our country”, Ms Malhotra stresses.

“It has been a really collaborative and mutually a very fruitful experience”, Ms Malhotra describes the collaboration with University of Helsinki Centre for Continuing Education HY+. She acknowledges that the HY+ staff has been helpful to customize and adjust the programme according to each group’s wishes. “They were keen to help and they’ve really accommodated to our needs. It has been a very nice working experience with them”, she thanks.

We have organized three Eduvisits in total so far with S. Chand Group. The latest one took place in October 2018. “We are planning to come again”, Ms Malhotra adds.

According to Ms Malhotra, the Indian schools that have participated the Eduvisit programme are taking small steps to adapt Finnish ways into their system. Some schools have for example started to involve grandparents in school activities as they do in Finland. What Ms Malhotra thinks is great about the Finnish education system is the fact that the school prepares children for life.

We also interviewed two of the school leaders who participated the Eduvisit programme through S. Chand Group in October 2018. Read the article here.