Mailbox

Not broke, don™t fix Your cover story ˜IIMs: Hostile takeover bid 2.0™ (EW August) exposes the real intentions of the BJP government. Through the proposed IIM Bill 2015, the Union HRD ministry wants to rigidly control the country™s 13 IIMs. This is a regressive step and will result in the institutes being governed by non-academic bureaucrats rather than academic professionals. The BJP was voted to power on the promise of liberalisation and deregulation of all sectors of the economy, including education. The IIM Bill 2015 contradicts this election promise. Also, it™s puzzling why the government wants to repair and fix the IIMs ” islands of excellence in a sea of academic mediocrity ” when they aren™t broke. Instead, greater focus and attention should be paid to upgrading the country™s Central and state government universities which are rapidly going downhill. Manoj Kumar Delhi NPE 2015: ridiculous limit The Recommendations made by the editors of EducationWorld on the 13 themes of school education shortlisted under the proposed New Education Policy 2015 are excellent, and address the pain points of Indian education (˜NEP 2015: EW Recommendations™, EW August). As you have rightly reiterated, the first step towards reform is doubling public expenditure on education from 3 to 6 percent of GDP, and involving private sector educationists and NGOs in upgrading government schools. Though the government™s idea to involve public participation in preparing NEP 2015 is laudable, it hasn™t adequately publicised this initiative. That is why it has received only 12,000 suggestions from the public on its website. The village and block education committee meetings also seemed to have happened only on paper. Moreover, it™s ridiculous to limit constructive recommendations to a mere 500 characters. Deepti Subramaniam Chennai Unwarranted omission Re the EW-Learningpoint India School Academic Rankings 2015 (EW August), there seems to be complete omission of Ryan International Schools which performed well in the CBSE class XII exam. Based on the criteria mentioned in the magazine, some of our schools could have easily featured in the Top 100 list, but have unfortunately been left out. For instance, 315 students of Ryan International School, Sector 25, Rohini, Delhi, wrote the class XII CBSE exam, of whom 95 scored over 90 percent-plus (five-subjects-average). Please make this addition to your listing. Neti Srinivasan COO, Ryan International Group of Institutions, Mumbai The omission is inadvertent. Because of the non-cooperation of CBSE, learningpoint.net was able to access the class XII results of only 5,433 (out of 9,000) CBSE schools ” Editor Expand focus The education initiatives of entrepreneurs in small towns are most welcome (˜Entrepreneurs empowering small town India™, EW July). The Central and state governments have failed in providing quality education options and solving the social problems of citizens in tier II/III cities and villages. However, edupreneurs can™t meet the entire demand for quality K-12 education in small-town India. Therefore state governments must necessarily focus on providing good schools and colleges, and creating employment in small towns to prevent social and political unrest. Mahesh Kapasi Delhi Great…