Kavita Kerawalla is a seasoned educationist with over two decades of leadership experience and a deep commitment to making quality education accessible to all. Her expertise extends beyond academics, focusing on the critical societal challenges facing young people and their families today. Her fresh perspectives on the evolving landscape of education and student development would be genuinely insightful for your audience.
Key Takeaway:
Emotional resilience is no longer optional in education
In a rapidly changing world, children are exposed to constant stimulation, pressure, and uncertainty. Schools must actively nurture emotional resilience through communication, counselling, and emotionally safe environments. Academic learning will happen naturally, but emotional strength needs intentional support from both schools and homes.
Teachers are becoming emotional anchors, not just subject experts
Today’s teachers are expected to do far more than deliver curriculum. They play a critical role in guiding children through stress, confusion, and self-doubt. By creating safe spaces for conversation and trust, teachers help children feel seen, protected, and emotionally secure — which is essential for real learning.
Pressure and comparison weaken confidence, not build it
Unrealistic expectations…excelling in academics, sports, arts, and everything else simultaneously — are harmful. Constant comparison with peers or siblings erodes self-esteem. Confidence grows when educators and parents recognize individual strengths and nurture each child’s unique potential.
Parenting needs boundaries, not guilt-driven decisions
Modern parenting often avoids saying “no,” confusing love with unlimited permission. However, children need clear boundaries to understand responsibility, effort, and failure. Privileges must be earned, limits must be set, and learning to lose is as important as learning to succeed.
Technology must support education, not replace human connection
While technology expands access to knowledge and experiences, overdependence risks weakening imagination, empathy, and social skills. Schools and parents must help children build a balanced relationship with technology, where machines enhance learning but human values remain central.
Holistic education means developing the whole child
True education goes beyond textbooks and exams. It includes emotional intelligence, social awareness, creativity, physical activity, and ethical thinking. Subjects like history should teach values and reflection, not just dates, allowing children to connect learning with real-world meaning.
The future of assessment lies in skills, not memory
Examinations should test application, reasoning, and problem-solving… not rote memorization. With information readily available, the real skill lies in choosing, applying, and interpreting knowledge. A balanced assessment system that blends objective methods with expressive learning is key to future-ready education.
Chethan K (Host): Hi Ma’am. Welcome to Edexlive.
Kavita Kerawalla (Guest): Thank you for having me
Chethan K (Host): You’ve often spoken about preparing children not just for exams but for life. In today’s world, how can schools practically nurture emotional resilience in students?
Kavita Kerawalla (Guest): I see this difficulty all around me every day because the way the whole world is evolving, it's a new world altogether, as kids when we were small, changes used to happen very slowly, very gradually. We had enough time to adjust to all of that. But today's world is changing so fast. Every day there is a new gadget in the market. Every day there's a new way of handling your life that is in the market.
That has left all the educators as well as parents very challenged all the time and the biggest challenge is making your children emotionally resilient because what we have noticed all around us, emotions have taken a backseat. Humanity cannot move ahead like that. What we try to do in education, not just in our VIBGYOR or other educational institutions, we work very closely with some of the state governments.
We try to maintain this balance and how do we do that? By communication, by talking to children more often, by giving them some kind of counseling. We have very strong counseling cells in our schools. They don't only take care of children's educational specific requirements, but they also give them different kinds of counseling, and we have seen the cases rising, so it's not that as adults we feel that it has become an unsafe world, and we need to strengthen our children, make them emotionally very strong, and schools as well as homes need to be emotionally very safe places for the child to be in.
Different kinds of cases come and the numbers are overwhelming. It is nice to see that even children are realising that they require help and that is why we have counselors and a very strong team of counselors in every school. We don't just give counseling sessions to children.
We also provide similar sessions to parents because there is an equal responsibility shared. The child is with us for seven to eight hours every day, but rest of the time he is at home and parents being so busy, families becoming nuclear families more and more. That support system is no longer there, and that is why the child is left in a very vulnerable stage.
The child actually doesn't know who to go to, and that is where teachers step in, and we are taking that responsibility more and more seriously with each passing day. Teachers as the name suggests they teach, but that's not the only thing they do. They are preparing children for tomorrow and we feel that emotional support is the biggest support the teachers are expected to provide today.
Education is all around. It'll happen. Your history lessons and your geography lessons. They are information and they are everywhere. Children are smart enough and intelligent enough, we need to guide them. We need to facilitate that process of learning. Learning happens on its own, we are not saying that education is less important, but definitely emotional support is becoming more and more important with every day passing.
Chethan K (Host): Many young learners struggle with stress, anxiety, and self-doubt. What role should teachers and school play in helping children build confidence, adaptability, and emotional balance?
Kavita Kerawalla (Guest): The world is full of pressure today. Pressure of excelling in everything. Pressure comes from all different areas. Sometimes I end up talking to parents and telling them, don't pressurize the child so much. The child cannot be getting excellent marks and representing India in different sports arenas, singing, also painting, skating, everything.
It's a child. It's not a robot. First of all, from all of us, we should have our expectations limited. We should be able to identify every child's talent and nurture that. That will make the child feel very confident, feeling heard. That here I am and people are acknowledging me.
They're acknowledging my potential and that is when the child gains confidence and is able to face the world with more confidence because what happens all the time telling a child that, look, you have to do well. How come you got eight out of 10 in this answer and not 10 out of 10.
Why? Just see how your cousin is getting, your younger brother is doing so well. Why are you not doing well? Such comparisons are actually not required and let me also tell you, this is not just today. It used to happen when we were girls but at that time, social bonds were very strong.
There was a lot of support, and if it was coming from parents, there were grandparents to protect us, but in today's world, the child is left all alone feeling very lost and that is when we say that every teacher, in fact, I ask my teachers, it is okay to keep your books aside and just talk to the child, make him feel safe, make him feel protected, make him feel heard.
This is today's generation, this generation refuses to take directions. It has to come indirectly. It has to come like a friendly advice. They do not like to be told what to do, you have to kind of very gently suggest. Tell them that okay, if you made this mistake, it is quite okay.
There's no problem, there's no harm. But how do we build on that for future? What would you do differently? Do you think that this is a mistake or do you think otherwise? It's always good to make the child realise the problems on its own. The tactics have become different today.
This is what we are trying to do in our schools, and this is what I advise everyone.
Chethan K (Host): We don’t often talk about this, but parental well-being deeply affects a child’s development. How can schools support and engage parents so that home becomes a space of emotional stability?
Kavita Kerawalla (Guest): Now parenting has become very different, and I'm not sure why.
Why do parents hesitate to discipline a child? To tell the child that this is not acceptable. Can we do it this way? They are forgetting to tell the child where to draw the line. That's it. Because everything has to be earned. Privileges have to be earned. Rights have to be earned.
But now what we do, we go by a child's thought process, all the demands, all the requests, and we succumb to it and we think that we are great parents because we have been denied by our parents of certain things, so we are providing our child everything. But is that the right parenting? No, the child doesn't know what is right and what is wrong.
We have to tell the child that first. Screen time. The most spoken about, the most debatable screen time, how much a child should be watching the television or the screen, whether the child should be on social media or not on social media. Australia has banned social media for under 16.
We all know that, there are pros and cons of everything. I am in favour of technology a hundred percent, but where do we step in? Where do humans step in, what you can teach machines can't. This is what we share with our parents through parent counselling. Our counselors are all the time available, not just for children, but even for parents.
We've been having group counseling sessions, but this is something I very strongly stand for that we need to say no to a child. Also, the only thing is we should know how to say no. You can't provide a child because the child is at a very young age. Parents at times, because all of us are so busy with our lives, we feel that we are not giving enough time to our child and there is a state of competition, there's a state of panic in parents.
They need to just relax. Parents need to relax, so that there is a better environment at home. The child is not under pressure and what is happening today is parents are carrying their own burden and unknowingly they're pushing it on the child and that is because childhood trauma remains the whole life.
It shapes your personality. What you have gone through in your childhood affects you as an adult. These children are not used to taking no, they don't know what failure is all about. Because now what most of us are expected to do.
Race or no race, every child will get a medal, every child will get a certificate. That keeps them away from understanding that you have to put in extra effort to win. And losing is also okay. When a child goes through the difficult times, everything, not just in the child, even for us, our experiences shape us. They make what we are, we are nothing but a product of all our experiences.
Chethan K (Host): With the digital world getting louder every day, how can students, and even parents build a healthier relationship with technology and attention?
Kavita Kerawalla (Guest): By bringing a balance, I feel. I'm not against technology and I'm repeating this because we have a lot of technology in the way we impart education.
Technology has its own limits. Just like human beings, we have our own limits. It can be treated as a tool. It brings the whole of the world inside our classroom today. Earlier I remember as kids, we used to depend a lot on our own imagination. We used to read a lot, and somewhere I read that you are also, in a way, you are doing the same, you are storytelling digitally.
You also depend on your imagination and your thinking of your expressions all the time. All those things are going missing today. That's what I always say, to create machines we need to be two steps ahead of them. How is all that going to happen if we are not going to maintain our balance?
Complete dependency on machines or technology is not going to serve the world anyway. You need human beings who are ahead of that and about the emotions. I still wonder whether machines will be able to give us that someday. Compassion, empathy. We are seeing that it's going down in our society day by day.
You could see more children playing outside in the street. Healthy body, healthy mind. That's what we always said. Today even the cricket is on your screen. Those six inches of screen have cricket. Long is everything. But is that how we have to live? No. But at the same time, technology has great advantage.
I felt that I was in the space when I had that virtual reality camera on me and I could see everything and I was mesmerised. I'm telling you, everywhere there were stars and I was actually feeling like a kid. I was turning all around and trying to see which planet is this and which star is this. I was inside a human body.
Like a red blood cell. I was moving in the entire circulatory system. It is so fascinating. But at the same time, we should know when we need to talk, talk to each other, communicate, we learn so much and socializing social skills, interpersonal skills, these are all one of those 10 life skills laid down by UNESCO also.
They are also important. We should never forget that human relations always lead to improved versions of ourselves.
Chethan K (Host): That’s nicely said Ma’am. Is the current education system doing enough to equip students with skills like focus, mindfulness, and digital discipline? How is VIBGYOR making a change?
Kavita Kerawalla (Guest): We always say that our schools are holistic. We don't just say that because that is a very highly abused word today. We say holistic without even realising what it's all about. Holistic means encompassing everything, making a full, complete child and that means taking care of his social needs, emotional needs, educational needs, of course, and academic needs.
Taking care of his future. Making the child so strong that he's able to face the world tomorrow with a lot of confidence. Now, how do you do this inside a classroom? That means the teaching styles are not only focused on whether the child has learned the objectives of that lesson is achieved.
It's never only that. We have inbuilt values. Now we cannot lecture a child that you are not supposed to tell a lie. You are not supposed to do this. That is not imparting values. The child will be most confused because that is just one line for rote learning for him.
But it has to be practically shown. It has to be done with examples. It has to be done indirectly. In every lesson of ours like for example, history, we all know that Ashoka, when he saw Kalinga war, that was the kind of that one moment changed this emperor Samrat Ashoka, and then he embraced Buddhism and he started preaching ahimsa when he himself was responsible for massacring so many.
This kind of example can lead to a lot of reflections related to values. That is what we like to do inside the classroom. We don't just teach the lesson, but there are different ways of approaching it. Kalinga war could have been just one incident.
You remember the time year when it was fought, and over. But no, there are lessons behind that. Let's not shove those lessons behind the curtain so that the child needs to realise that he needs to actually understand what was going on in Samrat Ashoka's mind at that time when he saw so much of bloodshed all around.
We keep talking about Hitler and Holocaust, same way in history, they're not just dates. They are life lessons, we just need to push children gently towards that and how do we do that? By talking to them inside the classroom, by having an open conversation, welcoming their thoughts.
What do you think about it? Do you think Hitler did the right thing, or can you justify it any way? Let us see what they have to say. This kind of open debate inside the classroom is very healthy. At times it goes slightly haywire because children's imagination then goes wild.
Then that is a teacher's role to bring it all back to the classroom and everyone enjoys the sessions together. Children as well as teachers and children should be frank enough to share their deepest feelings with the teachers. If not inside the classroom, then outside. This is a victory for every teacher.
When children come back to her and they trust her and they share their ethics with them.
Chethan K (Host): Traditional academics dominate most conversations. How can schools integrate arts, sports, values, and life skills without overwhelming students or teachers?
Kavita Kerawalla (Guest): Yes. If you talk about traditional education, I think at that time, definitely sports and art, they were considered as extra curricular activities. But in today's world, that is education. That is a part of education and when I speak of holistic education, it includes that also. What we do is we give exposure, a lot of exposure to children of different things.
Just recently, our schools concluded Lit Fest. In literature we invite these celebrity authors and not those who are just writing children's book or fiction, even from the non-fictional and from different areas and then they share their experience.
They talk about the books. In a way we gently try to push children towards reading, towards the world, which is very fast being forgotten. We have all these events which are not outside the school or outside the classroom. It is all together and we have also not allowed kind of thing, or our school has a different philosophy where we have all the children taking part in all the activities.
It's a huge challenge for the teachers to manage that kind of event, but that's what we are known for. When there is an annual day, we call them concerts and viva, we don't select children. They all have to be there. They all have to take part. So what happens all this is included in the education, and that is what we said.
When we were growing up at that time, a lot of things were not there. Digital world definitely was not there and right now, now we have even AI and robotics coming into the curriculum. They have these kids where which they enjoy making robotics out of it and all of that.
Those are extra things which have been included in the curriculum, but are they really extra and is that not education? Definitely not. It is all together. In fact, if we talk of some other board, there is of course CIE, which you must be knowing. Cambridge board and IB, they give a lot of flexibility.
Even CBSE has started doing that now. They give a lot of flexibility as far as subject combinations are concerned because if you talk of traditional education, we know that it was science and arts and commerce. But now you can choose, you can mix and choose. You can make your own platter of different subjects, the world is opening up and the children are also grasping it with full force. Teachers education needs to be equipped for that.
Chethan K (Host): VIBGYOR has grown into one of India’s most respected school networks with a strong reputation for holistic development. What, according to you, sets VIBGYOR apart?
Kavita Kerawalla (Guest): I don't know how right it'll be for me to compare, but I definitely know that here we celebrate the uniqueness of each child that is core to the schooling. We encourage children to express their uniqueness, to express that they are different.
They can be different in many ways. Of course, if I talk purely in educational terms, there is something called multiple intelligence. There are different kinds of intelligence. Like, for example, a very renowned singer may not or will not be a good sportsperson.
Many of the famous and accomplished sports people have not been very great students inside the classroom but they are still so that is what multiple intelligence is. You have different areas of intelligence and you can excel in any, this is what VIBGYOR celebrates, and this is what VIBGYOR firmly stands for.
I think we give a lot of concessions for children who go outside to play tournaments or to take part in tournaments or who go out for doing those extra coaching classes, singing classes, instrumental. All of that. We try to make a child very confident in whatever he or she is good at.
This is basic and the entire philosophy of VIBGYOR is built on this.
Chethan K (Host): As someonelike you who has shaped a large education ecosystem, what is one change you believe can transform Indian schooling for the next generation?
Kavita Kerawalla (Guest): It may sound a bit controversial, but it'll be technology if we know how to handle it the right way. I think I mentioned that we also work with different state governments and education cannot be just limited to few privileged ones. It is the right of each and every child born on this earth. But there's so much of disparity.
There's so much of difference. It is the technology which is going to actually make our lives easier, which will take education to each and every village, not just in this country, but even abroad. We have worked with countries like Rwanda. We were in Kenya, all these countries.
We have worked with African countries as well. What happens that you can do only with the help of technology. Also, our resources are limited in the sense our B Ed. schools, colleges from where you churn out trained teachers number. We need a huge number to give good teachers to the world.
To keep the teacher's quality high, it's a longer route. We should do that and we must do that. That is what I'm expecting from this new budget also. But at the same time, technology will take education faster to every child in the village. I feel that is the answer for tomorrow.
Chethan K (Host): Do you think that technology will justify the work of what the actual teachers does?
Kavita Kerawalla (Guest): Not at all. This, I'll repeat. Technology can do only what teachers can't and if it becomes an enabler, a teacher can do much more. If it can take all our mundane work out, correcting of papers and setting up of question papers, all of that, taking attendance, filling all those different forms.
If technology can do all of that, we will have more time to take care of our children. That is where I want technology.
Chethan K (Host): Ma'am, my final question is how is exam system changing in India?
Kavita Kerawalla (Guest): Chetan, there has to be a right mix because when you are writing thesis or research paper, you need to express yourselves in many words.
Writing may have been kind of taken over by typing. But it is still there. You need those many words to express yourselves, maybe in lower grades and we have always maintained that we do not assess our children, we assess our teachers. The kind of performance children show that is nothing but a teacher's performance.
It is a reflection of how well he or she has taught inside the classroom. Like in our school, till grade four, do not have tests and assessments. They are very casual. The child doesn't even know that it is a test. It's many a times just an activity inside the classroom through which we understand the child's level of understanding.
Sometimes it is just some fill in the blanks. Sometimes it is match the column. Very basic simple ones, which probably in technological language can be MCQs, multiple choice questions. Now, it may seem to be very easy, but it is very tricky and you really need a very superior quality teacher to design your multiple choice questions because they are meant to confuse the student. They cannot be very easily made. That is definitely a way out. But at the same time, for some subjects like languages, if I don't know how a child is going to write an essay, I will not know whether the child will know the right sentence formation.
There are certain times when your subjective or long answers become very important. Everything cannot be limited to MCQs, but I think that is where the world is, what the world is moving towards. But at the same time, technology is also helping us correct the papers well and fast. Both have to be there maybe in different proportion, like in lower grades, you can have more of objective and more of MCQs, but in higher grades, I think some amount of longer expressions are required. This is my personal opinion.
Chethan K (Host): From my understanding, exams really necessity?
Kavita Kerawalla (Guest): Not at all. In fact, open book examinations have been in practice for such a long time, and when we talk of examinations, what are we actually testing?
If you are testing information based knowledge of a child, that is definitely not required. Because it's all the time in your hands. It is there on the Google. But also Google throws 20, if you type one question 20 such things will, 20 answers will come. You should be able to choose the right one.
That is where your talent lies. That's one. Second, when those things are applicable in real life, that is the situation which actually should be tested not our factual things because they are everywhere. Like today, if I forget which year was the first War of Independence, what, even if I don't remember 1857, I can Google it and get the answer, but where to apply that knowledge, that is where the actual skill lies and that is what the world is moving towards skill-based examination and tests.
Chethan K (Host): Ma’am it was wonderful talking with you. Thank you for being on Edexlive. Hope students and parents have lot of insights from this episode.
Kavita Kerawalla (Guest): Even I enjoyed talking. These are all my favourite things when it comes to education. Thank you so much. I have also enjoyed myself thoroughly