A career – through a first-class trained Post-Graduate in Economics with 27 years of rich experience, out of which 19 years have been as a Principal of CBSE schools – 4 years as the Principal of Chinmaya Vidyalaya, NTPC, Unchahar, and the last 15 years as the Founder-Principal of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan's R. K. Sarda Vidya Mandir, Raipur, Chhattisgarh. Mr. Ghosh also had the opportunity to attend short-term courses on “Strategic Leadership for Schools in a changing environment” from IIM, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Bangalore, and Kozhikode. His inclination to learn from diverse systems has taken him places as a delegate in the maiden Learning Mission to Finland under the aegis of CII-School Excellence Programme and subsequently on a Learning Mission to South Korea. Last year, he was invited by the government of Victoria under the Study Melbourne programme for a visit to their Universities.
Mr. Ghosh has been fortunate to work with some of the finest boarding schools in the country viz. The Lawrence School, Sanawar, and Vidya Devi Jindal School, Hisar. He had the opportunity to work in diverse school set-ups – fully boys boarding school, co-educational day school, fully girls boarding school and finally co-educational boarding school. He has handled multiple and diverse assignments that included teaching economics to students of classes 11 & 12, Sr. Housemaster of a boarding house, accompanying children to mountaineering trips, treks and adventure sports, winning a medal for 10 m Air Rifle shooting and the Head of Faculty for Commerce at The Lawrence School, Sanawar.
Late 2005, at the age of 33, Mr. Ghosh dived into experiencing leadership by taking on the mantle of heading a CBSE school in the township of NTPC, Unchahar in UP. Working in tandem with his team, they rebranded the school and in a span of 4 years, the school saw its strength rise from 350 to 950 students – its maximum capacity. They learned multiple lessons in leadership and got to experience the same. Reminiscing of the same, Mr. Ghosh remarks that period was perhaps the greatest learning experience he has ever had hands-on.
The odyssey as the Founder-Principal of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan's R. K. Sarda Vidya Mandir, Raipur started with a piece of land filled with sludge in 2009 October. As on date, the school is a community of 1987 students from classes Junior KG to 12, 92 teachers, 18 administration staff and 48 supporting staff. In the 14 years of its existence, they have had numerous achievements. Their STEM projects were selected to represent the country at the International Science & Engineering Fair (ISEF) in 2017, 2020, 2023 and 2024. Till date 15 children from the school have represented Team India at the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) under the aegis of Society for Sciences in USA every year. Four children have been conferred with The Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar (National Child Award) by The President of India in 2017, 2020 and 2023. In 2018, 2 students, represented Team India in the World Genius Olympiad at State University of New York, Oswego, USA, with their project on Pancreatic Cancer. Children of the school have been conferred with the CSIR Innovation Award for School children in 2018 & 2019. The year 2019 also saw 2 NCC cadets of the school taking part in the Republic Day Parade at Rajpath. Their students have consistently been selected for the ISRO's Young Scientists Programme (YuViKa). In 2024, 9 out of 10 students selected from Chhattisgarh are from their school. Mr. Ghosh's students have gone on to be RISE Scholars and are placed at some of the finest institutions of higher learning like Stanford University, Imperial College of Engineering, University of Manchester, Texas Christian University, Technical University of Munich, and many more.
The learnings that he has acquired through his MDP's and exposure visits have had a lasting impact on the institutions that he has led. Mr. Ghosh has suitably adapted these to the Indian context keeping in mind the Indian ethos and value systems. Exposure to multiple pedagogies has helped him influence practices in his workspace after discussion with his team. Over the years, he has developed a process orientation for every major task undertaken in school like curriculum development, transaction, assessment, budgeting, finances, among others. Mr. Ghosh is of firm belief that a school must be a learning organization and must evolve over time to adapt to the changing paradigms of education.
According to Mr. Ghosh, a school is all about experiences – with learning, sports and games, music, art, and a plethora of other things, and these experiences need to be positive. The leader must ensure that experiences and reinforcements are positive. Teachers must move on from being transmitters of information to facilitators for knowledge creation. The task is easier said than done. Today, it's no longer about information. It's more about tutoring children how to use this information to their benefit. Mr. Ghosh believes that it's all about habits, because as the child metamorphoses into an adult, habits become practices before they get ingrained as value systems.
His knack for that rush of adrenaline comes from his stint at The Lawrence School, Sanawar. He has indulged in river rafting in the Ganges above Rishikesh, trekking above Manali, and above all won a gold medal at the 1st IPSC shooting championship held at RIMC, Dehradun, in the 10 m Air Rifle Master I/C category. When he is not in school, he is on his motorbike. His passion for motorcycling has taken him to the finest of places. He has been a part of many motorcycling expeditions, notable among them being the Tour of Uttarakhand, Tour of Bhutan, North-East on Wheels, and the Himalayan Adventure – Tibet. Experience teaches you what textbooks, teachers and schools cannot, like what Mark McCormack titled his book “What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School.”
