Like other children his age, Vishal Anand (7) loves ice cream and chocolate, and thrills to running, skating and cycling. The difference is, he is autistic. But in medical parlance Vishal is an autistic ‘savant’, an inarticulate individual gifted with innate knowledge. According to American psychiatrist Dr. Darold Treffert, autistic savants have prodigious memory and […]
A slew of big-ticket domestic and overseas projects launched under the banner of its for-profit subsidiary Manipal Global Education Services, are set to dramatically transform the Manipal Education & Medical Group from a competent provider of professional education in peninsular India into Asia’s premier higher ed multinational. Dilip Thakore reports
The Manipal (Karnataka) and Bangalore headquarters of […]
2012 was another much-ado-about-nothing year for Indian education. With the beleaguered Congress-led UPA-II government floundering in a sea of corruption scandals and both houses of Parliament routinely disrupted as a bankrupt BJP-led opposition blocked all legislative business, the policy paralysis in New Delhi which plunged economic growth to a nine-year-low of 5.3 percent in 2012, […]
– Rajiv Desai is president of Comma Consulting, Delhi
On a television talk show recently in which I was a participant, the question posed was “Have opposition politicians misunderstood the nature of lobbying?” The moderator went straight for the jugular, asking the BJP spokesman to defend the assertion of a senior leader of his party, who […]
Manipal University. This is the successor institution of the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (estb. 1942) and the Kasturba Medical College and teaching hospital founded in 1953 by the legendary educationist-entrepreneur Dr. T.M.A Pai (1898-1979), and developed by his successor Dr. Ramdas Pai into India’s first private deemed university, recognised by the Delhi-based University Grants Commission […]
Dilip Thakore interviewed Dr. Ranjan Pai, managing director and chief executive of the Manipal Education and Medical Group Pvt. Ltd (estb. 2000) — the holding company of 43 education institutions with an aggregate enrolment of 300,000 students and 47 healthcare institutions including 16 hospitals in India and abroad, in his office in Bangalore. Excerpts from the 90-minute […]
The Manipal (Karnataka) and Bangalore-based Manipal Education and Medical Group (MEMG) represents an excellent example of the theory of enlightened self-interest (“businesses do well by doing good”). Seventy years ago in 1942, doctor, educationist, banker and philanthropist Dr. T.M.A. Pai (1898-1979) established the Academy of General Education, to train youth in the South Canara district […]
The brutal gang rape of a 23-year-old paramedic student in a moving bus in the heart of Delhi on December 16, has not only triggered unprecedented student and middle class angst against the incident per se, it has also focussed a powerful searchlight on an important civilisational issue ignored for too long in post-independence India: […]
We — Bamboola Play School, Chennai — have been in business for the past ten years now, much before magazines such as EducationWorld started ranking and covering schools in this segment (EW India Preschool Rankings 2012, December). For the past two-three years our school’s ranking has been consistent in your magazine, but this year, I find it […]
With most of India’s cities — especially metros — under-served in terms of privately-promoted primary-secondary schools (middle class households won’t touch government schools with a barge pole), admission of tiny tots into nurseries of Delhi’s most highly-ranked K-12 private schools is a top priority of every aspirational middle class family as it ensures smooth progression […]
Even as the school admission season has already commenced in India’s crowded (20.5 million) commercial capital, unaided minority schools exempted by the Supreme Court in its landmark judgement in Society for Unaided Private Schools vs. Union of India & Anr delivered last April from having to compulsorily reserve a 25 percent quota in class I […]
Eight months after the Karnataka state government notified the state Rules for the implementation of the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (aka RTE Act), it is still floundering in troubled waters. The state’s 13,527 primary/higher primary private schools, which as per s.12 (1) (c) of the Act are obliged to admit 25 […]
After a hat-trick victory at the hustings, and sworn-in as chief minister of the western seaboard state of Gujarat (pop. 60 million) for a record fourth time in a row on December 26, Narendra Modi’s retention of stewardship of the state — widely trumpeted as the fastest (economically) growing in the country — has been cautiously welcomed […]
Agitational including street politics popularised by Trinamool Congress Party leader and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who famously ended 34 years of uninterrupted rule in the state of the CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist)-led Left Front government in the summer of 2011, seems to have struck a resonant chord within the state’s student communities. […]
Despite the southern seaboard state of Tamil Nadu (pop.72.1 million), which is rapidly emerging as a manufacturing hub, experiencing an acute shortage — and rising wages — of skilled technicians in its automobile, construction and service sectors, there are not many takers for vocational education and training (VET) in the state. In spite of the […]
“An education programme, is by definition, a societal programme. Work should be done in schools rather than at home.”
French President Francois Hollande on why his government wants to ban homework in schools (Times of India, December 16)
“What I advocate is that during classroom time — when you get human beings together — we should be interactive […]
With laying the foundation stone of the privately promoted Indira Gandhi Technological and Medical Sciences University (IGTMSU) in lower Subansiri district in the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh (pop. 1.38 million) on December 28, the first step has been taken to provide professional higher education in the state. “The commitment of […]
In association with the government of Assam, Pearson Group — the world’s largest and most diversified education and publishing conglomerate — has launched a unique programme to deliver vocational education and training (VET) to schools in the state. Pearson has established vocational skills centres in ten selected government-run schools in Guwahati, initially offering training in two streams […]
Promoted by US-based IT entrepreneur Suresh Reddy to realise a dream, the garden city’s newest international school, Candor International School, Bangalore (estb. 2011) has got off to a great green start
Meticulously landscaped over a 30-acre campus in the sylvan environs of Hullahalli village contiguous to Electronics City (pop. 500,000) — the hub […]
Consistently ranked among Britain’s top 20 universities, University of Loughborough, UK has been voted ‘England’s best student experience’ in the Times Higher Education Awards for five consecutive years
Sited on the largest (437-acres) single-site varsity campus in Great Britain, University of Loughborough (LU, estb. 1966) is consistently ranked among the […]
Shashrek Ambardar (16), a class XI humanities student of Ryan International School, Noida and a Bharatnatyam dancer since age nine, is busy preparing for a solo dance performance at the International Children’s Festival of Performing Arts (an annual global event of the Ryan International Group of Institutions) scheduled for January 2013. Awarded the Balshree for creative […]
Great learning outcomes happen when children have the time and freedom to think. During my attempts to understand the Canadian school education system and role of parents, I became acutely aware that aversion to homework is universal. Therefore most Canadian schools instruct parents not to interfere with the education of their children and let schools […]
As real estate and property prices spiral, construction companies, architecture firms, corporates and education institutions are ready and willing to pay top dollar to landscape professionals
With schools, colleges, universities and corporate offices and campuses countrywide going — or aspiring to go — green, careers and opportunities in landscape design are readily attracting environment-friendly youth, especially […]
I’m a computer science engineering graduate working in a multinational company for the past two years. I want to enroll in an MBA programme abroad. Will my technical background help me in getting admission?
Ravi Krishnan, Chennai
Your engineering degree and work experience will be given weightage in the MBA admission process, especially the latter as work […]
Within academia and among K-12 educators there’s a general consensus that new types of learning are necessary for success in the contemporary world. A world in which information is instantly available, but critical and creative thinking skills are required for students to excel at the highest level. However, at what age should ‘new era’ learning […]
Mark Parkinson, the high-profile director of The Shri Ram School, Delhi (TSRS, estb. 1988), routinely ranked among the country’s top three day schools (No. 1 in 2011, No. 2 in 2010) in the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings, has called it a day at TSRS after a five-year inning. And since September, he has taken fresh […]
Dr Garth Saloner, dean of the globally renowned Stanford Graduate School of Business (Stanford GSB, estb. 1925) is one of the rare academics who has stepped out of his ivory tower to spend time with start-up ventures and enterprises.
Newspeg. Saloner was in India in early November to launch the online Stanford Innovation and Entrepreneurship Certificate Programme. During […]
Saurabh N. Saklani is a co-founder and director of Delhi-based Inme Learning Pvt. Ltd (estb. 2009), a company focused on providing adventure-based experiential learning programmes to children in classes IV-XI. Inme’s experiential leadership and life skills development programmes are conducted in owned/leased outdoor campuses sited in Uroli, Tons, and Rishikesh (Uttarakhand), Coorg (Karnataka), and Yercaud (Tamil […]
Sunil Vishnu, Karthik Kumar and TM Karthik (TMK) are co-founders of Chennai-based Sideways Training (ST, estb. 2011), a division of Evam Corporate Training Pvt. Ltd, a soft skills training company that uses creative performing arts pedagogies based on theatre, dance, music and games. ST is a new venture of Evam Corporate which also owns Evam […]
A law and social work alumnus of Calcutta University, with advanced diplomas in child rights and public service management from Sweden, Prof. Joydev Mazumdar is executive director of the Vidyasagar School of Social Work (a unit of the Jayaprakash Institute of Social Change founded by the late Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan in 1973), affiliated with Vidyasagar University, West Bengal. […]
The number of overseas students attending university in the US reached a record 764,495 during the academic year 2011-12, according to figures from the Institute of International Education.
The data, published annually in partnership with the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, shows a 6 percent increase on the previous year and […]
When former University of South Australia vice chancellor Denise Bradley in her landmark 2008 report recommended that Australian higher education move to a demand-driven system, she was equally clear that an independent national regulator was required to ensure that teaching quality did not suffer. Previously, higher education had been officially regulated by the country’s states […]
Of the many reforms that China’s new leaders will be expected to tackle after they took over in mid-November, one of the most urgent yet potentially divisive is giving migrants and their families the same opportunities in the cities as other citizens. Recently in Beijing, mere talk of allowing children of migrants from the countryside […]
After serving 14 years as president of the Republic of Ireland, one could be excused for wishing to take a step back from public life. However, just a year after stepping down as head of state, Mary McAleese has returned to public service as the chair of a new European Commission inquiry into higher education. […]
The trial of a university dean has raised concerns about the future of higher education in Tunisia and the longer-term plans of the dominant Ennahda (Renaissance) Party.
It was in Tunisia that street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set fire to himself on December 17, 2010 in protest against ill treatment by local police, thereby sparking the regionwide […]
Until recently Grace Wambui, a 14-year-old pupil in Nairobi, had never touched a tablet computer. But it took her about “one minute”, she says, to work out how to use one when such devices arrived at her school, a tin shack in Kawangware, a slum in the Kenyan capital.
“Isn’t this terrific?” I said to my daughter-in-law recently while watching my granddaughter’s soccer game. It’s amazing how much more fun and relaxing it is to watch one’s grandkids play sports, versus the gut-wrenching anxiety that often came when my own children were in the thick of action. And because there’s less anxiety, I believe […]
The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling; Little Brown Book Group; Price: Rs.850; 503 pp
J. K. Rowling, the 47-year-old British novelist best known as the author of the Harry Potter fantasy series, is a unique phenomenon. She failed to get admission to Oxford and had to settle for Exeter University. She was on social security in her thirties […]
Where would you place education on your national list of priorities?
There’s a dire need to have education and the social welfare of children at the top of the national agenda.
How best to upgrade 1.6 million government anganwadis into preschools?
Allow NGOs and corporate organisations to […]
In the tower of Babel which is the public discourse the world’s most populous democracy dominated by politicians whose prime motivation — it’s easy to discern — is not the public good but primitive capital accumulation, Justice (Retd) Markandey Katju, chairman of the influential but toothless Press Council of India (estb. 1966), stands out as a […]
Marking a tangible change in the school education system, Odisha has ranked fifth in the country as per the Performance Grading Index (PGI-2.) between 2019-20 .....Read More
Assam has the potential to evolve into a hub of higher education with the right initiatives, Governor Lakshman Prasad Acharya said on Thursday. Following a .....Read More
A new age of unreason
– Rajiv Desai is president of Comma Consulting, Delhi
On a television talk show recently in which I was a participant, the question posed was “Have opposition politicians misunderstood the nature of lobbying?” The moderator went straight for the jugular, asking the BJP spokesman to defend the assertion of a senior leader of his party, who […]