It was during her time at an architecture school in 2002 that Shivani Gandhi, now a Goa-resident, had an epiphany: the results-driven traditional schooling system had left her ill-prepared for critical thinking.

“The 20 years of learning by rote in a mainstream CBSE school in Delhi did not even prepare me to summarise a text in my own way,” the 43-year-old mother of two explained.

Gandhi decided to break the mould—of adopting nearly a century-old system—for her seven- and 11-year-olds. They are now being microschooled at The Learning Centre (TLC) in the coastal state. So are children—aged 5 to 16—from 70 other families at the school.

Like them, hundreds of parents across India—picking happiness over goals and curiosity over competition—are flocking to “microschooling” for their kids.

These schools are a modern twist on the concept of one-room schoolhouse, featuring smaller class sizes and a focus on student-centred learning and personalised teaching. For instance, if traditional schools teach the photosynthesis phenomenon through textbook readings, a microschool would take a hands-on approach, nudging students to conduct interactive experiments.

There is no fixed curriculum. “Personalisation is the keyword here. Everything is customised as per the student,” said Kavitha Jain, a microschool consultant and CEO of Assist Teacher, a company that helps teachers tailor-make homework per a student’s needs.

So much so that if the child is uncomfortable with a particular teaching process, microschools may even dump it and try something else altogether, said Nandita Deosthale, co-founder, The Learning Centre.

But what led so many parents to embrace this new school of thought, previously dominated by international schools?

During the pandemic, as learning moved online, parents got a front-row seat to their kids’ virtual classrooms, said Sandeep Rai, founder and CEO of The Circle, a social fund helping founders create innovative alternate and after-school programmes. “Until then, it was only restricted to parents asking students, ‘what happened in class?’.”

As parents witnessed first-hand the learning process, several of them - especially the progressive, literate and well-heeled ones, were disappointed to see how there was no innovation in curriculum or pedagogy

Sandeep Rai, founder and CEO of The Circle.