EducationWorld April 2021

Children and the pandemic in conversation with Dr. Maffazal Lakdawala

When is it safe to reopen schools for children below 10 years of age?

This is more a question that the government should be concerned about. As a parent your concern should be that if your children are to go back to school how sure are you that the rest of the children are not […]

Why schools must prepare for a shift to online learning in 2021

The Covid pandemic has impacted life in ways we could not imagine just a year ago. Education was severely disrupted due to the limitations imposed on movement, meetings and gathering. Divya Lal, Managing Director of Fliplearn Education Pvt. Ltd explains her views on why schools should prepare for a shift to Phygital learning in 2021.

School […]

Chitkara’s reverse gamut of education

– Niyati Chitkara

Hello Future! At Chitkara International School

The drive to ensure “learning that makes a difference” has been the genesis of many worthwhile educational reforms over the years. Be it the shift to smart classrooms or the focus on artintegrated learning, educationists worldwide have worked hard to provide “functional education” to children that induces effective […]

CENTA TPO 2020: Growing enthusiasm for teacher development

Against the backdrop of a difficult and challenging pandemic year for India’s teachers, the online CENTA Teaching Professionals Olympiad (TPO) 2020 attracted entries from 25,000 teachers in India and 30 countries abroad – Summiya Yasmeen

One year on since the Central government ordered shutdown of all education institutions including preschools, schools, colleges and universities to check […]

Rediscovery of India

One of the few upsides of the Coronavirus pandemic is that foreign travel curbs and extensive testing of outbound and incoming travellers, has cured not a few nouveau citizens of vacations-abroad mania. Perhaps because of drastic foreign exchange purchase controls imposed on citizens for over four decades in the heyday of neta-babu socialism to conserve […]

Promise & performance

The resignation of insightful and widely admired public intellectual Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, star columnist of the multi-editions Indian Express, from the faculty of the high-profile crowd-funded Ashoka University (AU), Sonipat (Delhi NCR), has severely dented the carefully curated reputation of this new genre private liberal arts university. AU was promoted in 2014 with the […]

Vocation & business

On the issue of regulation of the tuition and other fees of private independent (‘unaided’) schools by state governments which has become a hot button subject lately, the stand of your editors has been clear and unambiguous. The decision to determine chargeable fees is of school promoters/management and is a contractual agreement between parents of […]

Under dragon shadow: Eat the Buddha

Cameron Saunders (The Book Review)

One of the most prominently featured characters in Barbara Demick’s new book is called Gonpo. Born in 1950, a year after Mao Zedong declared a ‘New China’, she is the daughter of a King in Amdo, a region on the eastern end of the Tibetan Plateau in what is modern-day Sichuan. […]

Engaging & timely tome: The Battle of Belonging

Dilip Thakore

If Shashi Tharoor, Member of Parliament and author of 16 masterly English language non-fiction books of deep erudition and three fiction titles, had been born a white Christian American, he would surely have completed at least one term in the White House by now.

A successful politcian, accomplished literateur, exceptional wordsmith skilled in the cut […]

Online safety: Kids safe internet browsers

Protecting children against the Dark Internet

Suchindra Kumar is the country director-India of Wizenoze, and former partner with Ernst & Young (India) leading the firm’s education practice

The overwhelming majority of school children — especially private school children — are digital natives. The internet is their go-to medium for information, socialising, entertainment and just about everything else. In the interest of their […]

France: Sexual assaults indictment

In December 2019, the French investigative journalist Iban Rais was in the student bar of ESSEC Business School, consistently ranked as one of the leading institutions of its kind in the world, when he saw something that shocked him. Looking down over the bar was a stuffed deer’s head, a hunting trophy nicknamed Big […]

China: Laureate labs strategy

China is ramping up its efforts to poach Nobel laureates from universities around the world to establish laboratories in the country. But questions are being raised whether this initiative will have a trickle-down effect to boost basic scientific research.

After several cities across China embraced the idea, it received a major boost when Beijing said it […]

Emerging Economies: Higher ed Top 10

From access to basic equipment, technology and quiet working spaces to childcare burdens and job cuts, the pandemic has exacerbated existing disparities among individuals, communities, institutions and countries.

Increased attention on inequalities has also sparked hope that systems and structures will change and that academia will become more inclusive. Universities in emerging economies could be among […]

United States: End of public exams?

To the delight of campaigners and some parents, Covid-19 has de-popularised school-leaving exams. With support from the Trump administration, all 50 states cancelled accountability testing last March, freeing 51 million public (government) school pupils from the annual rigmarole. The SATS optional essay-writing section and separate subject tests were discontinued this year. The Programme for International […]

United States: Critical alumni role

Why are American universities pre-eminent in global higher education? Previous explanations have included the country’s massive economy, its enormous budget for scientific research and its history of immigration. But a scholar suggests that the answer could be something more prosaic: the fact that they are governed largely by their alumni.

Shailendra Raj Mehta, president and director […]

Developing entrepreneurial mindsets

Sarojini Rao is the principal of Indus International School & advisor, Indus Startup School, Bengaluru

21st century India is re-discovering its entrepreneurial roots. It is now among the world’s top 5 countries for the number of start-up enterprises. However, according to a 2017 IBM Institute for Business Value and Oxford Economics Study, 90 percent of Indian […]

3-prong assault on private schools

With the Central government denying them MSME status, state governments slashing tuition and other fees and parent communities unwilling to pay contracted fees, India’s 450,000 high-performance private schools are under siege – Dilip Thakore

The incubation of the Coronavirus aka Covid-19 virus in the exotic wet meat markets of neighbouring China in November 2019, and its […]

Private varsity governance pitfalls

– Shiv Visvanathan is a professor at O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat (Haryana) and a member of Compost Heap, an academic think tank

One of the drawbacks of academic controversies is that they surface without articulation of genealogy, or context. They erupt as scandal, evoke a few personalities, allow a trail of gossip, and fade quickly. […]

Hemesh Chadalvada

Krishna Prasad (Visakhapatnam)

Hemesh Chadalvada is the latest teen wonder to join the brigade of celebrated social innovators. On the eve of Republic Day (January 26) this year, the 14-year-old was among 32 children conferred the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar (PMRBP) award by prime minister Narendra Modi in a virtual felicitation ceremony for his newest […]

Radhika Ghetiya

Runa Mukherjee Parikh (Ahmedabad)

Anand (Rajkot)-based mint fresh agriculture science graduate Radhika Ghetiya (22), has made media headlines in Gujarat for bagging a record 12 gold medals including the vice chancellor’s best student medal — the highest honour — for her performance in the four-year B.Sc (Agriculture Hons) final exam. The medals were awarded to her […]

National University of Singapore

Its rigorous academic programmes and high-quality research have earned this prosperous island nation’s oldest university the reputation of Asia’s premier higher education institution – Dipta Joshi

The National University of Singapore (NUS, estb.1905) is the island nation’s oldest and most internationally reputed higher education institution. Its rigorous academic programmes and high-quality research have earned it […]

Universal Business School, Karjat

Established in 2009, Universal Business School, Karjat is a wholly residential B-school, two hours drive from Mumbai, dispensing contemporary international business management education in association with several globally top-ranked offshore universities – Dipta Joshi

Spread across 40 acres in a pristine valley near Karjat, a two-hour drive from India’s commercial capital Mumbai, the Universal Business […]

New blockchain study program

Bengaluru, March 4. Simplilearn — a San Francisco-based global digital skills training provider, announced a partnership with IIT-Kanpur to offer an exclusive Professional Certificate Program in Blockchain Technology. Delivered via Simplilearn’s learning model, this intensive program is designed to provide learners with a clear competitive advantage through an ideal blend of conceptual training and applied […]

Delhi: DBSE registered

New Delhi, March 30. The first annual general body meeting of the Delhi Board of School Education (DBSE) — the latest of India’s 31 state examination boards — was held to discuss registration and constitution of the board.
Establishment of DBSE was given Delhi government approval on March 6 following which the board was formally […]

They said it in February

“There needs to be recognition that socialism is not the only ideology that has copyright on welfare. When the economy does not do well and wealth isn’t generated, then social good suffers and so does the welfare state. So, we have now called the bluff that wealth creation is in conflict with welfare.”— Nirmala Sitharaman, […]

Karnataka: Reopening dithering

Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru)

Even as several parts of the country are bracing for a second wave following a massive surge in Covid-19 cases, parents of primary school children in Karnataka (pop.63 million) are divided on the issue of sending their children back to school.

An online survey conducted last month (March) by the Vidyarthigala Nade Shaleya Kade […]

Madhya Pradesh: Unprecedented verdict

Aditi Maheswari (Bhopal)

Despite ‘ragging’ — an archaic initiation ritual during which new entrants into schools and colleges are teased and bullied by seniors having been banned by the Central and state governments and inviting the wrath of the Supreme Court — acts of ragging are punishable by fines of up to Rs. 50,000, jail terms […]

West Bengal: Unwanted new broom

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)

It seems to be the season for top-level resignations from blue-chip higher ed institutions. Soon after the highly respected public intellectual Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Dr. Arvind Subramaniam, former chief economic advisor of the BJP/NDA government, put in their papers at the ambitious, privately-promoted Ashoka University in Delhi NCR on March 15, […]

Maharashtra: Witty-Cerestra fallout

Dipta Joshi (Mumbai)

The year-long shutdown of all education institutions countrywide to protect children and youth from the Covid-19 pandemic has thrown the finances of the overwhelming majority of the country’s 450,000 private schools into disarray. Even in upscale private schools, cash flows have been adversely affected because a minority of parents who suffered salary cuts […]

Delhi: Roles definition lesson

Avtar Nehru (Delhi)

The resignation of prof. Pratap Bhanu Mehta from the political science faculty of Ashoka University (AU) on March 15, has stirred the academy in India and abroad and shaken the carefully curated reputation of this seven-year-old university positioned as the country’s first wholly — American Ivy league-style — liberal arts university.

When Mehta was […]

Scandalous neglect

Congratulations for presenting a well-researched analysis of the Union Budget 2020-21 (‘Bare cupboard for world’s most high potential children’, EW March). Slashing the Centre’s allocation for public education by 6 percent in the pandemic year, during which all education institutions were shut down for almost ten months, is a telling indicator of the low priority […]

Don’t backslide on PSB privatisation

The silver lining of the devastating Covid-19 pandemic, which despite take-off of the national vaccination campaign, is surging in some parts of the country, is that it has made the neta-babu brotherhood aware that adoption of the socialist development model under which the State dominates the “commanding heights of the economy” was the biggest mistake […]

Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s right choice

The controversial resignation on March 16 of Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta from the faculty of the high-ranked Ashoka University (AU, estb.2014) has provoked universal condemnation of the promoter trustees of this new genre, crowd-funded private liberal arts university established to maintain the highest standards of academic independence and institutional autonomy for which the Oxbridge universities […]

Letter from the Editor

The public, especially the great Indian middle class, has a curious love-hate relationship with private schools. On the one hand, almost every household in the country aspires to educate its children in private schools which are not only a status symbol, but provide passports for upward mobility and financial security.

However once they have ensured the […]