Curated by the Knowledge Team of ICS Career GPS
Education
The pandemic’s blow to school children
Excerpts from article by Suresh Bhagavatula and Shubh Samtani, published in Business Line
Though Covid has severely impacted education, a recent study shows that many creative solutions have also emerged
A Xth Grade student from The International School of Bangalore (TISB), Shubh Samtani, guided by Dr. Suresh Bhagavatula from IIM Bangalore conducted this research over the course of the last six months. Shubh, a 15-year old, is co-founder of 0Gravity, a free coding club movement for underprivileged that has imparted applied computer science training to over 1,000 children globally. As 0Gravity coding clubs shut down due to Covid, and with his own school going online, he realised the deep impact of this pandemic to the continuity of education for children. So the study reached out to different stakeholders in education and children to hear the challenges and framing recommendations to address the gaps.
The research integrated data and statistical models for census and demographics of children in India by a range of factors, including age and family income level with qualitative assessment of policies, Right to Education (RTE) Act, programmes and themes captured through the interviews.
In 2009, India passed the Right to Education (RTE) Act, making education a fundamental right, although for every 100 children only 32 children finish their education age-appropriately.
Virtual schism widens
The report highlights that the Covid disruption has widened the schism for access of education significantly in the virtual world.
A country with a population of 1.35 billion, only 20 per cent of families with children have access to the Internet, and only 11 per cent of households possess any type of computer. The shutdown of schools across the country due to the pandemic has been nothing less than disastrous in providing continuous education to children. The problem is even more exacerbated in rural India, where less than 15 per cent of families have access to the Internet.
For many underprivileged children, going to school is a way out of child labour. “Out-of-school children have already started filling jobs left vacant by the migrant laborer exodus,” said Ramji Raghavan of Agastya Organisation.
The report also highlights how children rely on schools to provide them with regular meals, which has now been disrupted due to shut down of schools impacting their growth and development. This also means that the poorer households are spending a more significant proportion of their income on food, which is further decreasing their ability to pay for other necessities like rent or water.
Creative solutions
On the positive side, the research report has captured the creative solutions that millions of teaching and student communities have adopted across the country to overcome the challenges of lack of computer and internet infrastructure for online learning.
The report welcomes many of the recommendations of the recently released National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, though it does not address children’s immediate education needs and significant risks exist in the execution.
The study addresses structural issues of India’s educational system, such as the need for greater contribution of India’s GDP towards education, faster implementation of the programmes from the recently approved NEP 2020, up-skilling of teachers to be trained to deliver online classes, and providing children free online connectivity and portable devices to maintain the right to education of our children as the country grapples with the pandemic and its aftermath.
Career
Career in Animation: Skills needed, job roles, salary and companies hiring
Excerpts from article by Anish Mehta, published in India Today
A career in animation is a highly lucrative one in this digital world, especially for those who have good creative and drawing skills. The Indian animation scene has been successfully able to mark its presence in the international market, be it for culturally supreme and diverse content or projects adapted to global sensibilities.
The animation industry has seen steady growth in the past years, but the IP part of the business has been growing faster, by 18.4% from 2018 to 2019, versus 8.9% for services, according to a 2019 KPMG report.
Listed here are the skills and degrees you need for an animation job, along with growth prospects and salary, and the top companies hiring in this field.
Career in animation: Skills needed
Animators create images either by hand or software, for various businesses including gaming companies, advertising agencies and motion graphics studios and also educational, medicine and manufacturing fields. You need to be highly creative.
It is a modern art form that offers numerous job opportunities for skilled and successful animators.
Here are the top skills animators need:
- Creativity and imagination
2. Patience and attention to detail
3. Drawing skills
4. Computer literacy and familiarity with graphics software
Job roles in animation industry
Various job roles fall under the animation world naming voice-over artist, concept artist, designer or illustrator, storyboard artist, layout artist and 3D Modelers. The major responsibility of an animator lies in being creatively available in generating ideas and building models.
Growth prospect in the animation industry
Over the years, we can see that the global animation market, VFX, gaming and comics (AVGC) sector of India is only set to grow further. Giving it further impetus, more IP holders are seeing animation as a profitable space to adapt successful and blockbuster live action feature films and series as well as iconic characters.
Though this has been seen earlier it was only restricted to large-scale Marvel and DC movies; however, we can safely say the market is opening up for various scales of good productions as consumers evolve and increase demands for quality content.
Animation industry companies that are hiring
- Advertising
- Online and Print News Media
- Film & Television
- Cartoon production
- Theater
- Video Gaming
- E-learning and Ed Tech
What kind of degrees are preferred while hiring in the animation industry?
An animator’s education involves bachelor’s degrees in computer animation, fine arts and graphic arts. One needs to be creative and artistic, with communication and time management skills.
Excellent computer expertise and the ability to use animation and video editing software are what a company looks for before hiring an employee. Besides these, courses in voice modulation and or voice-over artistry are preferred while looking at fresh potential candidates.
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the article mentioned above are those of the author(s). They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of ICS Career GPS or its staff.)
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