Powerschool: A Global Edtech Leader Empowering India's Schools With Best-In-Class Technology
Apoorav Nischal
Country Head & Managing Director
Educational institutions across sectors are re-evaluating their strategic priorities and technology-led transformation is becoming a key focus area. The evolution of technology in education has brought about a revolution and PowerSchool has been leading the change as a global leader for nearly 25 years.
PowerSchool is the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education. Its mission is to power the education ecosystem with unified technology that helps educators and students realize their full potential, in their way. PowerSchool, widely recognized as the most comprehensive suite of mission-critical K-12 education solutions connects students, teachers, administrators, and parents, with the shared goal of improving student learning outcomes.
With a presence in 90+ countries and 100+ million users, PowerSchool’s products are the top choice of 70 percent of students in North America. PowerSchool has now spread its wings in the Indian market with its product ‘Unified Classroom Schoology Learning’.
We interviewed Apoorav Nischal, Country Head and Managing Director at Power School and here are some highlights.
Take us through your background & what has inspired you to take up a leadership role at PowerSchool?
I have two & a half decades of expertise in IT with a good understanding of the intersection between technology and business. While my experience spans strategic planning, customer engagement, program management, and application operations, my core expertise is in setting up operations, expanding business, and building a centre of excellence.
As Managing Director & Country Head for PowerSchool India, I am working closely with all business owners from our head quarters to build a centre of excellence in India.
PowerSchool’s and Hardeep’s(ourCEO) mission truly inspires me. At PowerSchool, we believe in the simple truth that every child deserves the best quality education to realize their full potential in life. PowerSchool has all the right tools to empower teachers, so they can understand the needs of every child, and make sure the right education is tailored to their learning experience.
This is a mission that I am personally excited about, and now we will be taking the same blueprint to the Indian education system with our products. It was a great opportunity to build India COE from the ground up.
At PowerSchool, along with business growth, we are also focused on people's growth and the impact they are making on the educational system. Our focus is not only on furthering technology and help drive innovation, but also supporting the educators, the teachers, and the community at large to make sure that we're bringing them along in this process.
How is PowerSchool Innovating & Impacting Education Experience?
At PowerSchool, we reach out to
every child, school, and teacher for improving education outcomes and education experience
The biggest pain point for the educators is that they use multiple tech products. At PowerSchool, we build our unified platform on our core system of record our market leading Student Information System and bring together best-in-class strategic acquisitions that help us create the most comprehensive unified platform that meets all mission-critical needs for K-12 schools in one solution.
Today we have products for everything - teaching, learning, career guidance & interests, managing enrollments, HR, payroll, finance, behavioural and more.
Unified Classroom solution: brings everything that's needed for teaching and learning in one place. It provides a single platform for teachers, students and parents for interaction and engagement including digital teaching and learning, assessments, curriculum management, lesson planning, and behaviour support.
Unified Operations: simplifies student information, enrolment, communication, finance and HR with school administration software designed for the unique challenges that schools face today.
Unified Talent:brings together all the core operations for talent management for an HR lead to help with hiring, professional development, and staff analytics.
Unified Insights: brings data into one place for school administrators to really understand what's happening in their school and support a more data-driven approach to supporting a school’s strategic initiatives.
The Education dynamics in India has changed. What are your view on Impact of technology in Education?
In the last two years, we have learnt that technology is a necessity for a resilient education system. With the global pandemic and implementation of the National Education Policy 2020, schools have begun the journey with a steep learning curve.
Educators had to execute blended/hybrid teaching systems while also transitioning to continuous and personalized assessments aimed at improving a student’s learning abilities.
The impact of technology in transforming the classrooms of today has been phenomenal. Leveraging technology and new tools, educators across the world are increasingly blending in-class and online learning strategies. Technology has become a much-needed necessary infrastructure for schools.
Technology today is a great enabler that gives schools the ability to be more agile, helping them maximize the opportunities and enhance collaborative & personalised learning.
What are Power School’s offerings to Schools in India?
Schools today are using multiple tools for delivering lesson plans,
The biggest pain point for the educators is that they use multiple tech products. At PowerSchool, we build our unified platform on our core system of record our market leading Student Information System and bring together best-in-class strategic acquisitions that help us create the most comprehensive unified platform that meets all mission-critical needs for K-12 schools in one solution.
PowerSchool is establishing a technology-led educational blueprint in India. This foundation will build a stronger ecosystem of pedagogy while improving student outcomes, increasing educator effectiveness, enhance operational efficiency and delivering personalised learning. We look forward to helping schools achieve a better educational experience by replicating our global success with our products in India-Apoorav Nischal
Today we have products for everything - teaching, learning, career guidance & interests, managing enrollments, HR, payroll, finance, behavioural and more.
Unified Classroom solution: brings everything that's needed for teaching and learning in one place. It provides a single platform for teachers, students and parents for interaction and engagement including digital teaching and learning, assessments, curriculum management, lesson planning, and behaviour support.
Unified Operations: simplifies student information, enrolment, communication, finance and HR with school administration software designed for the unique challenges that schools face today.
Unified Talent:brings together all the core operations for talent management for an HR lead to help with hiring, professional development, and staff analytics.
Unified Insights: brings data into one place for school administrators to really understand what's happening in their school and support a more data-driven approach to supporting a school’s strategic initiatives.
The Education dynamics in India has changed. What are your view on Impact of technology in Education?
In the last two years, we have learnt that technology is a necessity for a resilient education system. With the global pandemic and implementation of the National Education Policy 2020, schools have begun the journey with a steep learning curve.
Educators had to execute blended/hybrid teaching systems while also transitioning to continuous and personalized assessments aimed at improving a student’s learning abilities.
The impact of technology in transforming the classrooms of today has been phenomenal. Leveraging technology and new tools, educators across the world are increasingly blending in-class and online learning strategies. Technology has become a much-needed necessary infrastructure for schools.
Technology today is a great enabler that gives schools the ability to be more agile, helping them maximize the opportunities and enhance collaborative & personalised learning.
What are Power School’s offerings to Schools in India?
Schools today are using multiple tools for delivering lesson plans,
assessments, grading, uploading assignments, storing data, group interactions and more. At Power School, we have reimagined K-12 education, we're addressing different challenges faced by schools by providing a one-stop solution for all their teaching and learning needs.
PowerSchool’s ‘Unified Classroom Schoology Learning’ equips K-12 schools with a complete set of tools to improve student performance and empower educators. It provides a one-stop solution with integrated assessment management and video conferencing to improve student performance, foster collaboration, and personalize learning.This powerful learning management system (LMS) has enabled 60,000 schools and supported more than 20 million students globally.
With Schoology Learning, we are solving challenges faced by the stakeholders at the schools.
Teachers: It helps teachers to reduce their administrative work and spend more time teaching, communicating, and collaborating. It lets teachers organize their courses, post content for their students, select right resources, manage attendance and assess student performance without consuming too much time. It allows teachers to personalise learning. Schoology learning also provides teachers with a forum for the sharing of resources and ideas.
Students: It increases student engagement by hosting interactive discussions. Students can take online tests and quizzes directly within the platform, allowing for immediate scoring and analysis. Students can submit their assignments online, where teachers can provide one on one feed back and track revisions.
Parents: Due to their busy schedules, parents lack knowledge of courses being taught. Schoology Learning gives parents a window into their child’s learning and provides real time information about daily activities
Principal:It helps the administrator track school’s progress and teacher’s effectiveness. It helps in identifying weak concepts by providing data on class performance
Some of the renowned schools that have had success stories with Schoology learning are Keystone, Wynberg Allen, Ekya, Insight
Academy.
What are PowerSchool’s Future plans?
Our number one priority is always the student. We want to make sure that we can provide equitable personalized support for every child but it's also important that we
look at technology as a supporting factor. We want to focus on building confidence in our operational readiness so that schools can be ready for what's coming next year, and for many years from now Also, our focus is going to be on Educators, the heroes! How do we make sure that we are giving them the right tools and right support? Data is key. How do we ensure smarter data is available at the right time in realtime, so we can help support better outcomes. Also we will continue to ensure data protection of student education records and privacy. These are going to be our focus points for moving education forward.
In India, we are building a team that is focused on understanding the India Education system and identifying problems and gaps. We intend to partner with organizations that share our commitment to innovation in education solutions. Our partnership framework is structured to build strategic and meaningful relationships that are mutually beneficial and result in a productive and profitable synergy. In the near future, we also plan to introduce more products to the Indian market which make teaching and learning in schools more personalised and more effective.
PowerSchool’s ‘Unified Classroom Schoology Learning’ equips K-12 schools with a complete set of tools to improve student performance and empower educators. It provides a one-stop solution with integrated assessment management and video conferencing to improve student performance, foster collaboration, and personalize learning.This powerful learning management system (LMS) has enabled 60,000 schools and supported more than 20 million students globally.
With Schoology Learning, we are solving challenges faced by the stakeholders at the schools.
Teachers: It helps teachers to reduce their administrative work and spend more time teaching, communicating, and collaborating. It lets teachers organize their courses, post content for their students, select right resources, manage attendance and assess student performance without consuming too much time. It allows teachers to personalise learning. Schoology learning also provides teachers with a forum for the sharing of resources and ideas.
Students: It increases student engagement by hosting interactive discussions. Students can take online tests and quizzes directly within the platform, allowing for immediate scoring and analysis. Students can submit their assignments online, where teachers can provide one on one feed back and track revisions.
Parents: Due to their busy schedules, parents lack knowledge of courses being taught. Schoology Learning gives parents a window into their child’s learning and provides real time information about daily activities
Principal:It helps the administrator track school’s progress and teacher’s effectiveness. It helps in identifying weak concepts by providing data on class performance
Some of the renowned schools that have had success stories with Schoology learning are Keystone, Wynberg Allen, Ekya, Insight
Academy.
What are PowerSchool’s Future plans?
Our number one priority is always the student. We want to make sure that we can provide equitable personalized support for every child but it's also important that we
look at technology as a supporting factor. We want to focus on building confidence in our operational readiness so that schools can be ready for what's coming next year, and for many years from now Also, our focus is going to be on Educators, the heroes! How do we make sure that we are giving them the right tools and right support? Data is key. How do we ensure smarter data is available at the right time in realtime, so we can help support better outcomes. Also we will continue to ensure data protection of student education records and privacy. These are going to be our focus points for moving education forward.
In India, we are building a team that is focused on understanding the India Education system and identifying problems and gaps. We intend to partner with organizations that share our commitment to innovation in education solutions. Our partnership framework is structured to build strategic and meaningful relationships that are mutually beneficial and result in a productive and profitable synergy. In the near future, we also plan to introduce more products to the Indian market which make teaching and learning in schools more personalised and more effective.