When a father found his children crying to attend school, he established one. For every child. SK Rathor speaks about the inspiration behind setting up Sanfort Group of Schools
From what I gather, you ran a computer business in the beginning of your career,
what then drew you to education?
I, actually, started my career as a computer engineer with Wipro, InfoTech. After that, I set up my computer business. Speaking of what drew me to education was the fact that both my children disliked going to school. When it was my daughter’s turn to begin schooling, she didn’t want to do. After her, my son also followed in her footsteps. He used to cry when he would have to get to school. Out of frustration, one day I complained to my father saying – “yeh toh bada pareshan karte hain…jaate hi nahi hain school…(They trouble a lot…they do not go to school)” My father said that I was exactly the same child who didn’t want to attend school. That’s when I gathered that it was not my children who were the problem, it was the school.
That discovery prompted me to build a model school where children would love to come. I
established the first pre-school in 2000, with my wife alongside. She has a master’s degree
in education.
Interestingly, my daughter who disliked going to school is now the CEO of the group of schools that she inspired to life. She was the youngest in India to have conducted research on early education.
The initial years must have been challenging, especially because you lacked business or educationist’s experience…Any specific instance that made you want to give up?
Yes, the beginning was full of challenges. Although my wife’s educational background
matched the job, she did not have practical experience in the field of education. We gathered knowledge on our travel sojourns. We learnt different models of learning from different countries. With information from across the world and help from friends with school//teaching background, we set up the first pre-school school. But we failed to convince the parents to send their 2, 2.5, 3 year-old kids to our pre-school. It was a struggle. In the first year, we had 18 enrollments that fetched me Rs 1,100 from each, while my monthly installment was Rs 54,000. But it’s not in my nature to give up. With not much activity happening, I opened up the infrastructure for kids and parents to play together; pro-bono. That idea worked!
Since then we have only grown.
Did the lack of having any experience in the subject add a fresh perspective?
That was the only reason why we excelled. We brought new practices to the country. We were the first pre-school in the country to have introduced touch screen computer set-up.
Nowadays, you have many such pre-schools, but back in 2008-2009, we were the pioneers. My computer background helped.
You think you have made a difference by starting Sanfort?
Yes, we have. Which is why we are in more than 250 locations across the country. Our
teaching model is accepted. The parents are happy. We have more than 90,000 kids who
have passed out.
Any three changes that you would like to see in the current education system?
Firstly, we must make our education global. Even after NEP in place, parents are unable to
break the mental shackle about seeing their children only as doctors or engineers.
Secondly, parents must also shun the desire that their ward must score 99 per cent. Thirdly, personality development is essential. Education must incorporate that.
Are your schools incorporating these ideologies?
Yes. In our schools, we discourage parents to force career options on the child. We
encourage them to find out the child’s interest and then accordingly select a career option.
