In early January, Plaeto, a multiplay footwear brand of the Bengaluru-based Plaeup Pvt. Ltd, launched the inaugural edition of its Pioneers Physical Education (PE) Teacher programme in the garden city’s world-class PadukoneDravid Centre for Sports Excellence to “train PE teachers to spread the joy of play among schoolchildren in India”. Over 50 PE teachers from schools across the country were trained through a specially curated curriculum to deliver enjoyable sports and fitness activities to children. Promoted in 2020 by Ravi Kallayil, former head of Nike Ideation in Portland (USA), the Plaeto range of school footwear for children is specially designed by the “finest designers and footwear engineers from India, USA and Italy to suit the unique features of Indian feet”. Amid Covid-19 pandemic uncertainty in April 2020, Kallayil decided to give up the “best job in the world” with sportswear behemoth Nike and relocate to India to realise his dream of designing world-class, affordable and healthy shoes for Indians especially children. After thoroughly researching gaps in the Indian footwear industry, Kallayil forayed into the niche children’s footwear segment with the twin objectives of producing customised shoes for Indian children and raising awareness among parents and educators about the critical importance of play and foot health in the life of growing children. “Unfortunately in India’s schools, sports and games have traditionally taken a back seat with the greater focus on academics and exams. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the lack of outdoor play opportunities for children became more pronounced adversely affecting their physical and mental health. Plaeto’s mission is to spread awareness about the importance of foot health; shoes that fit well and are comfortable; and their relevance in encouraging regular play habit,” says Kallayil. An engineering and double business management alumnus of Trivandrum University, Wharton Business School and IIM-Bangalore, Kallayil acquired over two decades of rich working experience in innovation, business development, supply chain, manufacturing and strategy across footwear, apparel, engineering and consumer product industries in the US, India, Africa and Nepal. In October 2020, to spread this message of children wearing scientifically designed footwear as well as the critical importance of play in children’s lives, Plaeto roped in former cricket superstar Rahul Dravid as its brand ambassador and mentor of its innovative footwear and PE teachers program. Former captain of the Indian cricket team and currently its head coach, Dravid is acknowledged as one of the greatest batsmen in cricketing history, having scored over 24,000 runs in international cricket. “When Plaeto approached me with their idea, vision and product — all made to serve Indian children and proudly made in India — I was very impressed with the thorough The centrepiece of the book is a radical re-evaluation of the crucial concept of trusteeship, which according to Rao contests the conventional view that Gandhi was opposed to capitalism research and development effort they invested in designing shoes suited for Indian feet. And when I used it myself I was convinced of its quality,” says Dravid who recalls that “finding comfortable footwear…
Economist Gandhi: The Roots & the relevance of the political economy of the Mahatma Jaithirth Rao PENGUIN PORTFOLIO Rs.599 Pages 256 The centrepiece of the book is a radical re-evaluation of the crucial concept of trusteeship, which according to Rao contests the conventional view that Gandhi was opposed to capitalism MAHATMA Gandhi is possibly the greatest and most remembered Indian to have lived since Buddha. His greatness, however, was not in his invulnerability — but in his struggle to overcome his many frailties. Gandhi’s story is an alluring and rare tale of the triumph of human will over seemingly insurmountable odds. It reminds one of Albert Einstein’s famous tribute to Gandhi: “Generations to come, it may well be, will scarce believe that such a man as this one ever in flesh and blood walked upon this Earth.” One might even suggest that Gandhi’s life was an allegory, his death a metaphor, and his afterlife an unsettled debate. Arguably, no other person in recent memory has been so minutely evaluated as Gandhi. As a result, Gandhi has become, in large measure, a subject of hermeneutical delight; an open book, lending himself to ready investigation and exegesis. Each aspect of his life is closely examined, each word weighed with care, every action measured with precision, every secret is rummaged through with diligence, and even his silences are sought to be interpreted by authors, commentators, critics and admirers alike. This is in part because — unlike many of his contemporaries — Gandhi did not distinguish between the private and public. He led his life under the glare of the world and whatever could have remained hidden, he revealed it himself by way of his letters, speeches, and voluminous writings, including private correspondence, that he left behind for posterity in almost a hundred volumes. The fact that Gandhi continues to evince abiding interest is also in part because he — in his life, thought and action — became a curious synthesis of disparate tendencies that were ascendant in India during the 20th century. Tagore’s humanism, Ambedkar’s egalitarianism, Nehru’s materialism and Savarkar’s Hindutva, are all subsumed in Gandhi’s eclectic world view by a somewhat Hegelian-esque dialectic. This explains why Gandhi has so successfully endeared himself to all political ideologies as there is some thing that all can borrow from his vast oeuvre. In Economist Gandhi, well-known banker, entrepreneur and free markets champion Jaithirth (‘Jerry’) Rao throws fresh light on Gandhi’s economic philosophy. The thrust of the book is the argument that Gandhi can be interpreted as a supporter of big business and capitalism. This is a bold claim, and author Rao is quite conscious of the ambitious task he has undertaken. The centrepiece of the book is a radical re-evaluation of the crucial concept of trusteeship, which according to Rao can be the basis of this departure from the conventional view that Gandhi was opposed to capitalism. It is well-known that in Hind Swaraj, perhaps the most important book that Gandhi wrote, there is a…
SMALLER CITIZENS: WRITINGS ON THE MAKING OF INDIAN CITIZENS Krishna Kumar ORIENT BLACKSWAN Rs.395 Pages 149 The author’s insights help to locate the child within socio-political complexities while understanding education in India and its intersection with citizenship KRISHNA Kumar’s deep and critical engagement with education and its impact on the child is clearly reflected in this slim volume of 18 collected essays, Smaller Citizens: Writings on the Making of Indian Citizens. Collating these essays in a single volume signifies the common theme that binds them together. The author — a highly respected former professor of education at Delhi University — explores with a critical lens, themes of education and citizenship, marginalised childhoods and schooling. He examines policy documents that focus on flexibility and contextualisation of curricula, standards, assessment as well as the manner in which discriminatory practices define Indian education, and how educationists and practitioners merely pay lip service to far-sighted policy documents. With a fine pencil, Kumar highlights systemic bias that makes institutions resistant to change. The insights developed help the reader in locating the child within socio-political complexities while understanding education in India and its intersection with citizenship. The year of publication of the book (2021) is significant from two perspectives. First, this is a period post the two tumultuous waves of the pandemic that has made pursuing life and education difficult for young citizens of India. Existing disparities have deepened as a large section of children have been pushed out of formal education. Many of them have been forced into labour and/or child marriage while others have become rudderless after the loss of family and livelihood. The pandemic has again highlighted the disparities that have always existed in Indian society. The essays throw light on the limitations and biases that are a hallmark of our society. Second, this is also the period when the process of translating the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 into reality has been initiated. This is a policy document that visualises massive reform of Indian education, bringing pre-primary to higher education within its ambit. In this context, the insights built through a perusal of the essays equip the reader with the critical ability to review NEP 2020 from diverse perspectives. The prologue sets the tone of the book as the writer explores major paradoxes that lie at the heart of modern education — on the one hand, encouraging the young to think freely and apply their critical faculties to contemporary problems while on the other, educational practices train them to become loyal citizens, obeying authorities representative of the state. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 and its narrow interpretation, is the focal point of some of the essays included in this compendium. The Act’s potential to reform elementary education making it more equitable through access, has been implemented. Yet another dimension to the legislation is acceptance of the child’s agency and the need for teachers to appreciate and translate it in actuality remains an unfulfilled goal. The…
CHRISTMAS EVE VIDEO INTERVIEW between articulate and incisive interviewer Karan Thapar and celebrated NDTV journalist Ravish Kumar has elicited much appreciation within the chattering classes, particularly leftists and liberal fellow travellers. Kumar’s claim to fame is that as an anchor of NDTV’s Hindi channel, he had established an excellent reputation for fearlessly speaking truth to power, particularly to the BJP government at the Centre. Your editor can’t comment on Kumar’s capabilities because I unapologetically patronise English language TV news channels. Be that as it may, the Thapar-Kumar interview was remarkable on several counts. One for Kumar’s extraordinarily large ego. Without adducing any evidence, he claimed that fast-track business tycoon Gautam Adani purchased the majority stake in NDTV Ltd valued at Rs.493 crore with the primary purpose to silence him. Therefore, he pre-emptively resigned from the bought out company. Moreover, he plainly stated that Adani who is “close” to prime minister Narendra Modi did so at the latter’s instigation because Kumar is the sole, even if unelected, champion of poor and marginalised citizens. The mutual admiration interview is typical of the anti-business and private enterprise prejudice of Cadillac communists of the Prannoy Roy and Thapar genre who dominate the media and academy. They indulge lavishly in the goods and services produced by industry but hold risk-taking entrepreneurs who produce them, in hatred, ridicule and contempt. Quite unlike Mahatma Gandhi, anti-business lefties in the academy and media have little understanding that successful industrial enterprises of the Adanis and Ambanis generate direct and indirect tax revenue aggregating an estimated 5 percent of GDP apart from providing employment to millions while also producing goods and services that consumers want. Therefore, it’s quite normative for free-spending prime ministers and princes to respect wealth creators and big taxpayers. Kumar’s presumption of guilt against a highly successful businessman and duly elected prime minister is illustrative of a runaway ego.
THE ADVENT OF OTT (OVER-THE-TOP) choice-based cinema and television series from around the world has given a new lease of life to India’s floundering film industry, Bollywood in particular. With well-scripted and intelligent movies produced by cinema and entertainment corporations such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hotstar among others accessible to a new generation of Indian film producers and directors, the stranglehold of old-style Bollywood moguls churning out musicals typecasting outsize heroes and implausibly pasty-white heroines has been broken. Suddenly expensive big-budget movies featuring supermen, helpless heroines, and fantastic special effects — Samrat Prithviraj, Lal Singh Chaddha, Liger and Dhaakad — have started failing at the box office. On the other hand, one can stumble across some well-conceived movies with intelligent plot lines which often capture the gritty reality, crime, corruption and grim lives that the overwhelming majority of citizens are obliged to endure in this sham socialist society. Recently, your editor who neither had the time nor inclination to endure Bollywood melodrama has been pleasantly surprised and engaged by Netflix and Amazon Prime-commissioned movies such as 83, Thar, Khakee, notable for their realism and rootedness in the prevailing socio-economic milieu. Simultaneously despite some notable flops, conventional Indian cinema has also become technically better and continues to draw huge crowds in the rural hinterland and in countries of the Middle East. This combination of new age and traditional cinema opens up the prospect of breaking the soft power monopoly of Hollywood. The entrepreneurial drive and risk-taking capabilities of OTT producers who have grasped that India’s educated middle class is a huge market in terms of numbers, even if not as a percentage of the population, has inadvertently generated prospects of our socio-economically laggard republic emerging as a global soft power nation. That’s one advantage we have over China, if our indigenous morality police doesn’t throw a spanner in the works.
A MULTIPLYING TRIBE OF KILLJOYS IS ruining the social life of India’s teenagers and young adults whose number is estimated at 300 million countrywide. This lament is provoked by a news report in Bengaluru’s Times of India (December 15) that a search of the handbag of a young woman student of a junior college in the coastal town of Mangaluru by exam invigilators looking for cell phones, revealed a love letter written to her by an amorous youth of “another community”. This grave moral lapse provoked a fracas which prompted the administration to disbar 18 students from attending classes, except to write exams. Earlier, in another college in this once jolly town with a buzzing entertainment scene, four college students who performed a dance wearing burqas, worn by conservative Muslim women, were also suspended from college. Serious offence to the religious sensibilities of the minority Muslim community. On the other hand in the good ole days in my top-ranked boarding school in Bengaluru, the school administration routinely organised socials and dances with the neighbouring girls school, and boys inviting girls to the pictures (cinema) and romancing them was not a criminal offence. Later as a young law student in the UK half a century ago, I was pleasantly flabbergasted to learn girlfriends were permitted in our rooms until 11 p.m, a facility that one availed liberally. The purpose of this sermon is not to recount one’s good fortune, but to advise oppressive elders and the country’s morality brigades to refrain from blighting the lives of teens and youth obliged to suffer censorious patriarchy, the insolence of office and the daily spurns that merit takes, by also denying them romance, exuberance and socialisation opportunities.
A spate of new genre private universities enabled by state government legislation and led by brilliant academics with excellent project management and leadership skills are generating overdue stir within the shady bowers of Indian academia, writes Dilip Thakore IN THE LATEST (NOVEMBER) WORLD University Rankings (WUR) 2023 of the London-based Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) and Times Higher Education (THE), the authoritative rating/evaluation agencies of higher education institutions worldwide, India’s most reputed universities which top domestic league tables, including the Union education ministry’s NIRF (National Institutional Ranking Framework), the annual EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings (EWIHER), India Today rankings, among others, are ranked way down near bottom. In the QS WUR, only three Indian universities — the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISc, estb.1909); Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B, estb.1958) and Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi (IIT-D, estb.1961) are ranked among the Top 200 worldwide in that order with IISc ranked #155. In the THE global league table which gives greater weightage to research and citations, IISc is awarded a ranking of 251-300 (institutions ranked below the Top 200 are not awarded a precise rank) followed by the JSS Academy of Higher Education & Research, Mysuru and Shoolini University of Biotechnology & Management, Solan (Himachal Pradesh) awarded 351-400 ranking. On the other hand, China’s Peking University is ranked #12 and Tsinghua University #14 by QS with eight Chinese universities ranked among the QS global Top 200. In the THE WUR league table 11 Chinese universities are ranked in the Top 200. Moreover several South-east Asian universities including Seoul National, Yonsei, Korea Academy of Science & Technology and five others are ranked among the THE Top 200 as are four in Japan. In the QS WUR 2023, eight South Korean universities are ranked among the Top 200 cf. India’s three and ten in Japan. Even Malaysia, a late-comer in higher education, has four universities in the QS Top 200 league table. Against this, it’s pertinent to note that the Indian Institute of Science was established in 1909, and the Bombay, Madras and Calcutta universities admitted their first batches in 1857. Clearly, successive governments in New Delhi and state capitals — all the Indian universities listed above are public, i.e, government administered institutions of higher learning — have blown the early movers advantage that India had in higher education. This dismal conclusion is supported by the depressing fact that India’s academy has not produced a science/technology Nobel Prize winner since Sir C.V. Raman conducting research in Calcutta University was awarded the physics Nobel in 1930 for research studies in the phenomenon of light scattering. The only other Indian to be awarded a Nobel Prize for studies conducted in India is Rabindranath Tagore for literature in 1913. The failure of India’s public universities to cash their early movers advantage is also testified by the grim reality that not a single major world-beating invention — computer, Internet, cell phone, jet aeroplanes, motor car etc — has emerged from the country’s universities whose number has risen to 1,072.…
AM/NS–NSDC pact New delhi, december 14. ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India (AM/NS India) — a joint venture of ArcelorMittal (UK) and Nippon Steel (Japan) — signed an MoU (memorandum of understanding) with the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) to provide digital skills training to youth countrywide. Under terms of the agreement, AM/NS India will fund the training of 1,600 youth of Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, and Maharashtra by NSDC to qualify as IT helpdesk attendants and data entry operators. “We are pleased to extend our partnership with NSDC on this important initiative to equip young people across the country with skills that will help them secure employment and a path to economic prosperity,” said Shingo Nakamura, deputy director (HR & Admin) of AM/NS, speaking on the occasion. “This partnership with AM/NS India will provide inspiration for large-scale participation by corporates in skill development. With promised resources in the second phase, NSDC will conduct digital learning sessions to train 1,600 bright students from various backgrounds to enable them to become valuable members of the country’s workforce,” added Ved Mani Tiwari, chief operating officer of NSDC. Hinduja Foundation initiative Mumbai, december 12. Hinduja Foundation (regstd.1968), the philanthropy subsidiary of the London-Geneva- Mumbai-based Hinduja Group, has partnered with Aspire Institute, USA, to provide leadership skills training to young adults (18-26 years) in India. The Aspire Leaders Program is a fully funded leadership skills development programme delivered online through self-paced courses and virtual classrooms. Aspire Institute (estb.2017) was founded at Harvard University by several faculty of Harvard Business School. “Through its several educational initiatives, the Hinduja Foundation has improved the lives of nearly 500,000 children and youth of India. This partnership with Aspire Institute will enable us to transform the lives of educationally under-served youth through a fully funded leadership development programme that will enable them to make a positive impact in their communities. The education programmes and partnerships of the foundation are aligned with the National Education Policy 2020,’’ said Namrata Hinduja, trustee of Hinduja Foundation, after signing the partnership agreement. Global Citizen Scholarships 2023-24 Noida, december 15. Global Indian International School (GIIS) invites applications for its Global Citizen Scholarships 2023-24 programme — an initiative that enables meritorious secondary school students to complete higher secondary education in Singapore. Students certified as class X graduates by any authorised examination board are eligible to apply. “GCS is an initiative to help meritorious students in India to pursue higher education abroad,” said Pramod Tripathi, Director (Academic) of GIIS Singapore. “Last year, 17 students were awarded GIIS Singapore scholarships and during the past four years, more than 100 Indian students have been awarded Global Citizen Scholarships.” Awardees of the scholarships are entitled to pursue CBSE or IB-Geneva curriculum at GIIS Singapore with full waiver of tuition and residential accommodation fees. Moreover, Global Citizen Scholarship awardees are also entitled to travel expenses and pocket money. The value of the scholarship amounts to approximately S$90,000 (Rs.55 lakh) per student. At the end of two years, the students will also be counselled…
ODISHA Achyuta Samanta felicitated Bhubaneswar, december 1. President Draupadi Murmu conferred the Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puruskar 2022 award of the Union ministry of youth affairs and sports on Dr. Achyuta Samanta, founder-promoter of Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT). “This award recognises KIIT’s sustained focus on sports education for the past 18 years. Together with upgrading academic education, we have continuously strengthened our sports and sports-related infrastructure. The encouragement and support of chief minister Naveen Patnaik towards sports has also inspired KIIT to transform Odisha into an athletics and field sports hub of India,” said Dr. Samanta, speaking on the occasion Over the past almost two decades KIIT has sponsored the education and training of several national sports stars. Among them: Olympian Arjuna awardees Dutee Chand (athletics), C.A. Bhavani Devi (rapier fencing), Shivpal Singh (javelin) and Amit Rohidas (hockey). MAHARASHTRA Anti-ragging suspension Nagpur, december 1. Six interns at the Government Medical College & Hospital (GMC&H), Nagpur, were suspended for ragging a junior student. The suspension order was issued after the first-year student sent a video clip of the incident to UGC’s anti-ragging helpline cell, said a college spokesperson. After viewing the video clip, the UGC cell directed the college administration to initiate action against the accused. Dr. Raj Gajbhiye, dean of GMC&H, immediately issued orders suspending internship of the students and also asked them to vacate the college hostel. HARYANA Exam prep bugle Chandigarh, december 25. In an initiative to improve pass percentages of class X-XII students of government schools, the education ministry issued a circular urging temple, mosque and gurdwara authorities to sound wake up calls through amplifiers to ensure students rise early to prepare for their board exams scheduled for March this year. In a letter to government school principals, and district education officers, Anshaj Singh, director of secondary education, also urged parents and teachers to suggest ways and means for students to get extra hours for self-study. “Mornings are most suitable as children’s minds are fresh and there is no noise of traffic. For this, every class teacher should request parents to wake their children at 4:30 in the morning so they can start study by 5:15 a.m. Teachers should advise parents through WhatsApp group messages,” wrote Singh in his letter. ASSAM Dibrugarh ragging arrests Dibrugarh, december 1. On the recommendation of the university’s Anti- Ragging Committee, four students of Dibrugarh University have been expelled for three years for ragging a junior. Addressing a press conference, education minister Ranoj Pegu said a first year commerce Masters student suffered fractures in his spine after he fell from the second floor of the varsity’s hostel in an attempt to escape his tormentors.“Five students involved in the ragging incident have so far been arrested. Another person has been picked up for sheltering the accused,” Bitul Chetia, additional superintendent of police informed media personnel. PUNJAB Mega Parent-Teacher Meeting Patiala, december 24. Under an education ministry initiative, over 1 million parents participated in a Mega Parent-Teacher Meeting (MPTM) simultaneously organised in 19,259…
The major attraction of AUA is that its medical education is recognised in the United States, UK, Canada, India and most European countries, writes Reshma Ravishanker IN THE NEW GLOBALISED WORLD, the once-distant Caribbean islands have emerged as hubs of accessible medical education. Currently, the 13 island nations host 60 medical colleges and thousands of international students from around the world. Their main attraction is that degree issued by most of these medical colleges are recognised in the United States, UK, Canada, and most European countries. Within this salubrious region renowned for its sunshine, white sand beaches and sparkling waters, the American University of Antigua College of Medicine (AUA, estb.2004) has become the most favoured institution of aspiring medicine practitioners from India and the transnational Indian diaspora. Sited in the Antigua and Barbuda Islands, AUA is owned and managed by the Manipal Education and Medical Group (MEMG), India’s premier education multinational which has also established state-of-the-art medical colleges-cum-teaching hospitals in Nepal, Malaysia, and a university in Dubai. In India, the MEMG includes the not-for-profit Manipal Academy for Higher Education (MAHE), routinely top-ranked among India’s private varsities in the EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings, and the distance education Sikkim-Manipal University. Currently, the AUA College of Medicine offers a Doctor of Medicine degree programme to 2,200 students including 660 of Indian origin mentored by 338 faculty. AUA graduates are eligible to practice in all 50 states of the US and in the UK, Canada, India, among other countries worldwide. The major attraction of AUA is that it is accredited by medical education boards worldwide — the Caribbean Accreditation Authority of Education in Medicine and Other Health Sciences; Medical Board of California; New York State Education Department, and Florida Department of Education. Moreover the New York Board of Regents permits AUA students to be placed in long-term clinical clerkships in New York state. “We are approved by all major US state medical bodies and our students can apply for residency in any of the 50 states of America, the UK and Canada. We are also approved by GMC (UK) and are a member institution of the American Medical Students Alliance Association,” says an AUA spokesperson. In 2022, the varsity’s medical graduates recorded excellent placements — 240 graduates were awarded residency positions at hospitals in the US. Moreover, the pass rate of AUA students in the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1 — a prerequisite for clinical internship in the US — is 92 percent (average pass rate since the last 3 years) and USMLE Step 2 CK — mandatory for practising medicine in the US — 97 percent. AUA was founded in 2004 with an initial batch of nine students. Four years later in 2008, it was acquired by the MEMG. Antigua and Barbuda. A sovereign nation of the West Indies, Antigua and Barbuda is primarily known for these eponymous islands, though it includes several smaller ones. Antigua boasts a 95-miles coastline while Barbuda Island is protected by reefs and hosts…
SSPS is the first CBSE-affiliated English-medium school in the under-served Beed district of Maharashtra. In the latest EW India School Rankings 2022-23, it is ranked among the state’s Top 10 day-cum-boarding schools, writes Dipta Joshi SITED ON A GREEN 35-acre campus in the educationally under-served Marathwada region of Maharashtra’s Beed district (pop.2 million), the co-ed Shiv Sharda Public School, Gadhi, Georai (SSPS, estb.2003) has acquired a good reputation for providing integrated academic, sports and co-curricular education to its 879 students — including 184 boarders — mentored by 46 well-qualified teachers. In the latest EW India School Rankings 2022-23, this CBSE-affiliated class I-X school is ranked among Maharashtra’s Top 10 day-cum-boarding schools. Promoted by the Georai-based Jagadamba Shikshan Prasarak Mandal trust (JSPM, regstd.1991) founded by visionary philanthropist and former Maharashtra revenue minister Shivajirao Pandit, SSPS is the first English-medium class I-X school in the taluka. It draws students from neighbouring Aurangabad, Jalna, Latur and Osmanabad districts. Currently the trust, managed by Shivajirao’s sons Amarsinha and Jaisingh, runs 37 educational institutions across Maharashtra with an aggregate enrolment of 16,000 students. “The objective of my father and founder-chairman, Shivajirao Pandit, was to provide children in Georai and neighbouring villages, access to high-quality English medium education blending rigorous academics with a wide range of sports, co-curricular and extra-curricular activities to nurture and develop their potential and holistic personalities. The motto of SSPS ‘Win the World’ encapsulates our founder’s belief in the power of high-quality education to develop children into leaders of change. To enable our students to pursue higher education in institutions of national repute, this year we have affiliated SSPS with the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education,” says Jaisingh Pandit, an alum of the Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University and secretary of JSPM. Deeply influenced by Prof. Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, JSPM trustees and the SSPS management enable students to access diverse activities to discover, enhance, refine and showcase their innate talents. “Among our newly introduced programmes are scouts and guides and the International Award for Young People. Moreover we have designed a special leadership programme for high school students. Prefects in particular, are given responsibility to manage the school’s pupil welfare, cultural affairs and public relations programmes. The school also regularly organises teacher training workshops to ensure their continuous professional development,” says N.P. Datta, principal of SSPS since 2019. A commerce postgraduate of North Bengal University, Siliguri, Datta acquired three decades of valuable teaching and admin experience in the CISCE-affiliated Father Le Blond School, Siliguri and The Assam Valley School, Balipara, prior to signing up with SSPS three years ago. The school’s wi-fi enabled campus which is under 24/7 CCTV surveillance, houses 44 spacious and well-ventilated classrooms including four Smart classrooms which students attend by rotation, composite science, computer and maths laboratories, an audio-visual resources room and a library with 1,421 print volumes and seven journal subscriptions. The residential block hosts separate hostels for 184 junior and senior students, a 1,000-seat dining hall, a 24×7 infirmary staffed by qualified…
Gurugram (Haryana)-based Dhruvi Choudhary (15) is an emerging star in national gymnastics. Last December (2022), she won an individual bronze medal in rhythmic gymnastics in the senior category at the National Games staged in Bengaluru. Earlier in May, this Haryana champion was selected to compete in the School World Games of the International School Sports Federation (ISF) staged in Paris. Although Dhruvi did not make the podium, she believes that the experience of competing with global gymnasts will improve her routines. Recognised by Asian, Commonwealth and Olympics games authorities as a medals sport, rhythmic gymnastics is a discipline combining grace, coordination, agility and artistry. To the sound of inspirational music, rhythmic gymnasts use the hoola hoop, ball, clubs and/or ribbons to perform ballet-like routines. Born into a sports-loving family father Sikander Choudhary is a barefoot marathon runner, mother Savita a former volleyball player and younger sisters Kanika and Hardhaya are both promising gymnasts — Dhruvi, a class X student of Ajanta Public School, Gurugram, believes that competition provides stimulus. “Although my Paris experience was a disappointment, I am confident with adequate training, I can raise the bar of my routines to the level of my global counterparts,” she says. A vegetarian who recently incorporated eggs in her diet, Dhruvi trains for seven hours daily at Gurugram’s Nehru Stadium starting at 5 a.m before school and until 9 p.m after school hours, under the tutelage of coach and former national champion Kavita Saini. Like most athletes in the sporting state of Haryana — one-third of India’s medals in the Beijing Olympics 2022 were won by athletes from the state — Dhruvi has her sights trained on the Paris Olympics 2024. “My ultimate dream is to win an Olympic medal. Right now I am training intensively to qualify for the Hangzhou Asian Games 2023. I am aware that Indian gymnasts have a poor global record but I believe given adequate financial support and professional training, our athletes — especially girls — can become as good as any worldwide,” says this Also Read: Young Achievers: Abhinav Menon
-Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) Kalna (West Bengal)-based Sayani Das recently set a new record by becoming the first Asian woman to swim across the 43-km Molokai Channel which separates the islands of O’ahu and Molokai in Hawaii, USA. Sayani swam the channel which strong currents and gusty winds apart, is also the hunting ground of sharks, box jellyfish and assorted marine species, in a hard grind swimathon time of 18 hours on April 28 (2022). Since 1961, only 37 men and 26 women have swum the Molokai Channel. This is only the latest of this 24-year-old Indian mermaid’s achievements. Others are completing a 81-km swim down the River Ganga (2016); traversing the high waves and winds of the English Channel (24 km) in 14 hours (2017); crossing the 19.7-km Rottnest Channel off the coast of Western Australia (2018), and fording the 33-km Catalina Channel in California (2019). The younger daughter of Radheshyam Das, a retired headmaster of a government school, and homemaker Rupali Das, Sayani attributes her latest feat and mind-boggling swimathons to sustained parental support and a rigorous training regimen. “I am very grateful to my sponsors — the Kolkata-based SKM Group, Molokai Channel guide Terri Dietz and Dan Simonelli, founder of the Open Water Swimming Academy USA,” she says. It’s noteworthy that funding support for Sayani’s swimming expeditions which cost in the range of Rs.13-18 lakh per expedition, is contributed by sponsors, family friends, school teachers, and well-wishers in Kalna. For one of the initial expeditions, her father took a bank loan and even mortgaged their home. In 2018, Sayani was conferred the state government’s Khelashri special award which included a “helpful” cash prize of Rs.3 lakh. Ever on the lookout for new seas to conquer, Sayani has her sights set on four more testing open water stretches. “My dream is to be nominated for the Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame for which conquering the remaining four channels of the Oceans Seven Challenge is a pre-condition. They are: Ireland’s North Channel (34 km), Japan’s Tsugaru Channel (20 km), New Zealand’s Cook Strait (26 km) and Spain’s Strait of Gibraltar (16 km). I intend to fulfill this dream,” says this golden mermaid. Power to your strokes! Also Read: Young Achievers: Abhinav Menon
-Dilip Thakore (Bengaluru) With American disenchantment with communist China growing by the day, America’s top-ranked universities are increasingly looking towards India — which currently hosts the world’s largest child and youth population — for students and academic collaboration partnerships. Suddenly American academics have discovered that the English language skills of Indian students and relative autonomy of India’s higher education institutions offer a far better opportunity for student recruitment and research collaboration than China. This new American discovery of India has been experienced by DR. YANNIS YORTSOS, Dean of the Andrew Viterbi School of Engineering (AVSE), the engineering school of the University of Southern California (USC, estb.1880). With over 50,000 students and 3,000 faculty on its muster rolls, USC is America’s second largest private multidisciplinary university (22 schools) after NYU (New York University). The engineering school of USC, AVSE hosts 10,000 students, 20 percent of whom are from India. Newspeg. A regular visitor to India, during his previous sojourns in this country, Yortsos signed durable academic and research partnerships with the top-ranked Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. In early December, he made his first post-pandemic visit to India to survey the engineering education scene and renew ties with faculty and researchers in BITS-Pilani and IISc. History. A chemical engineering graduate of Athens University, Yortsos signed up with USC for postgraduate study, earning his Masters and Ph D degrees at this top-ranked private, research-focused university. Evidently, he became enamoured with his alma mater and was inducted into the faculty of AVSE. In 2011 shortly after he was appointed Dean of AVSE, Yortsos signed up several academic and research collaborations with IIT-Delhi and other engineering and technology universities in India. Direct talk. Since then, Yortsos’ belief in the latent capabilities of India’s engineering talent — especially students enrolled in the IITs and top-ranked science and technology institutions — has increased. “Indian engineers are among the world’s best, especially graduates of India’s Top 200 engineering colleges and universities. However with the telephone, radio and computer technologies having merged in recent years, India’s institutions of engineering education need to evolve new syllabuses and curriculums. To this end, USC and AVSE are ready and willing to collaborate with a larger number of engineering universities in India and in particular, deepen our research engagement with them,” says Yortsos. Future plans. Yortsos believes that harnessing advanced computer science-driven technologies is the necessary precondition of any country or society attaining the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) — universal health, security and life enrichment. “The institutional autonomy and encouragement that the new National Education Policy (NEP), 2020 confers on India’s higher education institutions, provides new opportunities for USC/AVSE to deepen its engagement with higher education institutions to realise UN’s laudable SDGs in India,” says Yortsos. That’s an offer which shouldn’t be refused.
-Autar Nehru (Delhi) Delhi-based DIYA BADGEL is the new India director of the AFS Intercultural Programs. Promoted in 1915 as the American Field Service (AFS), currently AFS is a US-based non-profit organisation providing multinational exchange programmes for children and young adults to develop the knowledge, skills and understanding required to create a more just and peaceful global order. Newspeg. An alumna of the top-ranked Lady Sri Ram College for Women, Delhi, Amity (Noida) and Lucknow universities, Badgel assumed charge at AFS India in October (2022). History. Badgel, who also has a degree in design from Pearl Academy, started her career in 1999 as a teacher at the National Institute of Fashion Design (NIFD), Lucknow and quickly rose to the position of head of department. In 2001, she moved to the UK and served as an administrator in the Metropolitan Borough Council. Two years later, she relocated to India and started teaching at Sweet Blossoms, Lucknow, a pre-primary started by her family. This was followed by stints as principal of City International School, founder-principal of MySchool and Birla Open Minds International School — all in Lucknow. Over the past two decades, prior to her appointment at AFS India, Badgel also served as director of the Seth Anandram Jaipuria School, Alambagh, Lucknow. AFS Intercultural Programs. AFS was started in 1915 by Prof. A. Piatt Andrew, a professor of economics at Harvard University and erstwhile assistant secretary at the US treasury. Since then over the past century, AFS has established AFS Intercultural Programs, an international youth exchange initiative to promote intercultural intelligence and tolerance. In 2022, 5,678 high school students, young adults and teachers in 55 countries exchanged habitats under AFS programmes. The organisational model is ‘stay and study’, under which groups of students and teachers ‘exchange’ countries to live in the homes of AFS selected host families and/or host education institutions. The duration of exchange programmes range from one week to a year. During their stay with host families/schools, students are ‘guided’ by AFS volunteers to experience host cultures and lifestyle. AFS programmes are unique inasmuch as exchange students actually acquaint themselves with local curriculums in the host school during the period of their stay. In India, AFS has 150 member schools. Though essentially an inter-country exchange programme, post-pandemic, AFS is focusing on promoting intra-country (domestic) student habitat exchange. Recently a ‘stay and study’ inter-school exchange programme was organised between Lawrence School, Ooty and Scindia School, Gwalior. Direct talk. “Our exchange programmes are aligned with our prime mission to promote global peace and harmony by building friendship networks through intercultural learning and bonding. Intercultural exchange programmes between schools and students is a beautiful way to bring them closer. India is a vast country with amazing cultural diversity. Therefore we have also introduced exchanges between school teachers and students of different states of the Indian Union. Now that the world is gradually opening up after two pandemic years, I am also expecting AFS’ inter-country exchanges to gather momentum,” says Badgel. Future plans. AFS…
-Dilip Thakore (Bengaluru) Hitherto principal of the Chaoyang Kaiwen Academy, Beijing (China), ANDREW LEALE is founding-headmaster of the Harrow International School, Bengaluru (HISB) which is under construction on a 30-acre campus in Devanahalli, a suburb of the garden city (pop.10 million). HISB is the outcome of a collaboration agreement between two heavyweights — the Delhi-based Amity Education Group comprising 11 universities, 25 K-12 schools and five preschools in India, and 16 campuses abroad (and whose flagship Amity University, Noida is ranked India #1 in the EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings 2022-23) and Harrow School (estb.1572), one of imperial Great Britain’s most venerated public (i.e, private, exclusive) schools. Alumni include our own Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Winston Churchill and six other British prime ministers as also poet Lord Byron among other notables of imperial Great Britain’s establishment and history. Newspeg. HISB is fast readying to admit its first batch of 150 class VI-XI students in August 2023. Moreover unlike its parent school in the UK, HISB will be a co-ed boarding-cum-day school — “not the other way round” — with the number of boarders budgeted to outnumber day scholars. Annual tuition fee: Rs.16 lakh and additional Rs.4 lakh for boarders. History. An alumnus of the highly respected Charterhouse Public School, UK, and blue-chip Oxford University from where he graduated with a PPE (philosophy, politics and economics) degree, Leale plunged straight into academia and began his career as an economics teacher at the vintage boys day-cum-boarding independent (public) Tonbridge School (estb.1553), where he played a long innings (1993-2019) rising to the position of boarding housemaster and director of admissions. In 2019 after serving at Tonbridge for 26 years, following a global search, Leale was selected and appointed international principal of the privately-promoted Chaoyang Kaiwen Academy, Beijing. “I had a very satisfying and enriching experience as international principal during my three-year stint there. But when I was offered the opportunity to start HISB in India with which I have a stronger history and cultural connection, I was delighted to accept the offer,” says Leale. Direct talk. “We intend to build super curriculums that will go far beyond the prescribed syllabus. Moreover Harrow School, UK has a centuries-long tradition of nurturing outstanding political and business leaders and public intellectuals. Building on this great legacy and tradition, I am confident that HISB will nurture and develop great leaders for Indian society in all walks of life,” says Leale. Future plans. According to Leale, all government and official clearances for establishing HISB “modeled on Harrow School in the UK” have been obtained, and construction of its main block is in “full swing and moving quickly forward”. In keeping with tradition, the school will offer excellent field sports, racquet games and athletics infrastructure and 20 highly experienced teachers, including some drawn from ten Harrow International Schools abroad (Japan, Thailand, China, among other countries). “Harrow School is UK’s most international independent school. Therefore, HISB will offer students and teachers a plethora of study and work abroad opportunities,” says Leale.…
-Summiya Yasmeen (Bengaluru) Best-selling author, motivational speaker, and self-improvement guru, SEAN COVEY is the Utah (USA)-based president of FranklinCovey Education, a division of FranklinCovey Inc (FCI, annual revenue: $263 million (Rs.2,177 crore) in 2021-22), a publicly-listed company providing assessment training and services in leadership and business management to corporates and individuals. The progeny of management guru Stephen R. Covey (1932-2012), author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People which has sold a record 40 million copies and counting worldwide, Sean in his own right has designed FCI’s unique Leader in Me (LiM) programme — “an evidence-based, comprehensive model that builds leadership and life skills in students” — for K-12 schools. Currently, the LiM programme is being taught in 6,500 schools in 50 countries worldwide. In India, the programme is promoted by its exclusive India partner Live Life Education Pvt. Ltd, founded by well-known Chennai-based psychiatrist DR. KANNAN GIREESH. Presently, over 100 schools countrywide are offering the LiM programme. Newspeg. Sean Covey was in India in early December on a whirlwind five-city tour of Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai and Bhubaneswar for the Leader in Me Connect Conclave organised by Live Life Education. The multi-city conclave drew participation of over 1,000 school promoters, principals and teachers. History. An alumnus of Brigham Young University and Harvard Business School, Sean began his career in Walt Disney Inc followed by stints at consulting firms Deloitte and Touche, Boston, and Trammel Crow Ventures, Dallas. In 1994, he signed up with the Covey Leadership Center founded by his sire, which merged with Hyrum W. Smith’s Franklin Quest in 1997 to morph into FCI. That very year, Sean published his first book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, which has sold over 4 million copies worldwide. Since then, he has authored several books including The 6 Most Important Decisions You’ll Ever Make (2006) and The 7 Habits of Happy Kids (2008). According to Covey, the genesis of LiM can be traced to 1999 when A.B. Combs Elementary, North Carolina began implementing the elder Covey’s 7 Habits in its school. Subsequently, principal Muriel Summers recorded its success in transforming the institution. In 2005, Sean Covey visited A.B. Combs and witnessed a miraculous transformation of the school where students and teachers were practicing Covey Sr’s 7 Habits — be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, think win/win, seek to first understand, then to be understood, synergise and sharpen the saw. “That’s when it struck me that the 7 Habits can be adapted to enable whole school improvement. In 2008 after extensive research, I designed the Leader in Me programme,” recalls Sean Covey. Schools which sign up for LiM receive textbooks and access to an online repository of resources with teachers trained extensively to implement the programme. In India, the whole-school programme is priced at Rs.850-950 per student per year. Direct talk. “In less than 15 years since LiM was launched, it has evolved into the most influential whole school improvement programme worldwide with…
-Jessica Cavallaro The agile classroom is built on the foundation of people, process, collaboration and problem-solving through practice of 21st century skills OUR CURRENT EDUCATION SYSTEM WAS designed during the first industrial revolution (1760-1820). In that era, the general public was largely uneducated, unable to read and knowledge was in short supply. If you wanted to learn about the world, history, math and science, someone needed to collate that information and present it to you. With knowledge stuffed into books, which were not readily available to most, lessons needed to be memorised to hold forever. Accessing information wasn’t easy and most people didn’t have the time. Knowledge needed to be memorised to be applied later. Time in school was short and therefore, pacing of the curriculum needed to be controlled. The teacher’s job was to control the flow of information with students learning passively, expected to absorb as much as possible because tomorrow they might have to start working. The needs of contemporary students are radically different from those of past generations. Through leaps in technology, we have access to all human history at our fingertips. We can look up random facts, dates, and unrelated trivia. High-performing artificial intelligence (AI) can do the rote jobs that bore us, and is quickly taking over more complex tasks. What was considered ‘educated’ in the past — memorisation and rote execution of tasks — is not what students need to navigate an increasingly ambiguous and complex future. Evolution that has transformed every segment of society has largely by-passed education. Generally speaking, schools still function as they did in the past. In any country, you can walk into classrooms where students are at desks, passively taking notes. Students are still taking recall-based standardised tests as a measurement of ‘education’. Not much has changed in this sphere even though so much has changed in the world. Several paradigm shifts have occurred in the past few decades. We are experiencing a technological revolution moving at hyperspeed in the past few years. The majority of the world is online, with people working in diverse teams in different time zones. The change is not just in the way we work. Work that needs to be completed has changed as well. With AI growing more intelligent, jobs that can be completed by following directions or through rote memorisation are being automated. The Dell Corporation estimates that 85 percent of the jobs that our students will do have not even been created yet. To truly prepare students for the uncertain future, we need to focus on keeping up with the evolving landscape. This means equipping children with skills that are transferable, flexible, and adaptive. For children spending 12 years in school, it is our responsibility to provide them with the tools necessary to succeed in the world that awaits them. As teachers, we must be ready to answer their questions to keep our students engaged. Therefore, we must shift our focus. Content is important, but it is not the most…
Kingshuk Nag (Hyderabad) With the telangana legislative assembly election scheduled to be held by end December and General Election 2024 obliged to be called the following summer, all political parties led by the erstwhile Telangana Rashtra Samiti, renamed Bharatiya Rashtra Samiti (BRS) on December 14 by chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR), have gone into election frenzy. As a result, the state’s socio-economic development plans are on the backburner. This is a change in priorities because since 1995, the state’s politics has centred on the development of Hyderabad which has rapidly transformed from a mofussil town into a globally respected software, telecom and other hi-tech industries hub. According to most political pundits in Hyderabad — carved out of a united Andhra Pradesh and now the admin capital of Telangana (pop.35 million) — KCR’s national political ambitions will slow down Telangana’s impressive economic growth rate and development of social infrastructure. Over the past two decades, from a dusty laid back town, Hyderabad has metamorphosed into a shiny steel-and-glass ICT (information communication technologies) hub hosting a global Microsoft development centre. It also hosts the world-class Indian School of Business (ISB) and an international airport with excellent infrastructure. Among multinational corporations that have established large offices and research centres in the city are Apple, Cognizant, Amazon, and Capgemini. This has also spurred the growth of numerous education institutions. Among the new international schools that have set up shop in Hyderabad in recent years are Indus International, Sancta Maria, CHIREC International, Silver Oaks and Oakridge International — all highly ranked in the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings league tables. Moreover the city has also attracted the attention of global private school chains. In November 2019, the UK-based Cognita Group which owns/manages 90 primary-secondary schools in eight countries around the world, planted its first flag on Indian soil in Hyderabad by acquiring the CAIE (UK) and IB-affiliated CHIREC International School (estb.1989). Last January, the UK-based International Schools Partnership, which owns/manages over 50 schools in 13 countries with an aggregate 45,000 students, invested in Sancta Maria International School. But even as high-end private schools are mushrooming in Telangana and Hyderabad in particular, the state’s 30,023 government schools are suffering neglect and disarray. The BRS government is doing precious little to upgrade and improve government schools because a large percentage of the state’s budget expenditure is being spent on freebies and handouts to pander to the electorate. Despite the prolonged closure of schools countrywide for 82 weeks in 2020-21 because of the Covid-19 pandemic during which children — especially in government schools — suffered huge learning loss, the TRS/ BRS government’s allocation for education in 2022-23 at Rs.16,042 crore is a mere 6.24 percent of the total budget (Rs.2.57 lakh crore). Against this, most state governments allocate 10-15 percent of their budgets for education with the Delhi state government allocating 23 percent. In neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, the YS Reddy government has allocated Rs.27,706 crore (11.74 percent) of the budget (Rs.2.56 lakh crore) for education. “After formation of…
-Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai) Tamil pride suffered a huge blow in the closing months of last year when the Union ministry of education’s Performance Grading Index (PGI) 2020-21, released on November 3, 2022, demoted the state’s primary-secondary school system to Level III. According to the ministry’s department of school education and literacy website, PGI, introduced in 2017-18, “measures the performance of states/ UTs on a uniform scale to catalyse the (sic) transformational change in the field of school education”. However to “eliminate the phenomenon of one (state) improving only at the cost of others, thereby casting a stigma of under-performance on the latter,” the index clusters states/UTs (Union territories) into grades/levels I-X with states with best performing school systems grouped in Grade I and worst in Grade X. In PGI 2020-21, no state or UT school system has been awarded Level I status. Seven states/UTs — Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Chandigarh — have been awarded Level II Status (scores 901-950). Tamil Nadu, which was routinely featured in Level II for the past three years, is relegated to Level III (score: 851-900). The index assesses the schooling systems of states across 70 indicators (parameters) under two main heads: outcome, and governance and management. Under these main categories states’ school systems are evaluated for learning outcomes, access, infrastructure & facilities and governance processes. In Tamil Nadu (pop. 76.4 million), a state which prides itself on its intellectual tradition and prowess, the demotion of its school system from Level II to Level III where it is grouped together with the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh and Jammu & Kashmir, has come as a shock. Chennai-based educationist Dr. S. Somasundaram ascribes this demotion to children’s learning loss due to the closure of state schools for 82 weeks during the Covid-19 pandemic. “There was no classroom teaching for them for one-and-a-half years starting from March 2020. The great majority of children — especially in government schools — have been learning only from lessons telecast on Kalvi TV, the state-run education channel. Learning outcomes from such one-way lectures are bound to plunge to the lowest level,” says Somasundaram. Failure of the state government to promote listening, speaking, reading and writing (LSRW) pedagogy in primary education is also a contributory factor. “Government schools are still focused on rote learning rather than developing creative thinking capabilities. Pratham’s Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2021 survey indicates that a large percentage of class VIII students can’t do basic maths taught in class III. If students have a good foundational education, they will do well in high school and higher education,” adds Somasundaram. However, government spokespersons highlight that the state’s annual outlay for education has risen from Rs.29,000 crore in 2019-20 to Rs.37,000 crore in 2020-21 and blame government school leaders and teachers for Tamil Nadu’s demotion in PGI 2020-21. K.P.O. Suresh, former president of the Tamil Nadu Postgraduate Teachers Association (TNPGTA), admits that the outlay for education has been increased, but according to…
-Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) Even as west Bengal’s monumental teachers’ recruitment scandal in which cash mountains of Rs.100 crore were discovered in the palatial home of actress Arpita Mukherjee, mistress of education minister Partha Chatterjee, is being investigated by the CBI and Enforcement Directorate (ED), the West Bengal Board of Primary Education (WBBPE) held a fresh Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) on December 11. In the new TET held after an interregnum of five years, 690,931 college and university graduates wrote the test to qualify for 11,000 primary teachers’ positions in West Bengal’s 92,000 government-owned and aided schools. TET 2022 of 150 minutes duration was held in 1,460 exam centres statewide amid heavy security and police presence. Although there are reports of exam paper leakages, cheating, impersonation etc — which have been a feature of previous TETs — at the time of writing, candidates are apprehensive about behind-the-scenes marking and paper substitution scams which have stymied teacher recruitment since 2014. That’s because the Calcutta high court has taken a dim view of teacher recruitment scandals in the state and has frequently cancelled flawed TETs and stayed recruitment. On December 6, Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay said he would, “cancel the appointment of 42,000 candidates who had passed TET 2014 if they are found to have been recruited illegally”. This comment was made after WBBPE published the detailed scores of TET 2014 qualified candidates following orders of the Calcutta high court. It was found that some candidates had scored 10.96 points out of the maximum 10 in a TET higher secondary paper. WBBPE explained this away as a technical error. Government school teachers’ jobs are highly prized in this state which suffered sustained capital flight and de-industrialisation during 34 years (1977-2011) of uninterrupted rule by the CPM (Communist Party of Marxist) where unemployment (7.6 million registered unemployed youth) is pervasive and small and medium scale industry salaries are rock-bottom. A government school teacher’s job with starting pay of Rs.33,000 per month after implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations in 2020, is so highly prized that families desperate for sons and daughters to be employed as teachers in government schools often sell property and/or take loans to pay upto Rs.20 lakh as bribes to government officials to land these jobs. Therefore since 2015, disgruntled TET failures and civil activists have filed a string of petitions, obtained ten recruitment and appointment stay orders, CBI investigation and more than 1,000 appointment orders have been revoked even as education minister Chatterjee and former WBBPE chairman Manik Bhattacharya have been arrested. With recruitment for government schools stymied since 2012 because of a series of scams in recruitment tests and pending court cases, thousands of youth who aspire to teach in government schools are suffering extreme frustration. And with no fresh SLST (state level standard testing) or TET exam held in the past five years, 1.2 million aspirant teachers statewide who acquired B.Ed degrees have now become age-ineligible (age upper limit: 40 years) to write TET/ SLST. With teacher recruitment…
-Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) With state legislative assembly elections less than six months away, the auguries are not good for the state’s BJP government. The party’s strategy to arouse sub-nationalist Kannada pride by reviving a border dispute with Maharashtra has backfired with the BJP government at the Centre refusing to intervene in the dispute between two BJP-ruled states. Moreover, the powerful Lingayat community has launched an agitation demanding reservation in government jobs and education institutions, even as the opposition Congress party’s campaign against pervasive corruption in the administration is gathering momentum. The BJP government’s record in education — which unlike most north Indian states is an important electoral issue in Karnataka — is also attracting widespread adverse comment. For instance, in the year past the government has been focused on politicising education rather than upgrading academic standards. It has stoked the hijab (headscarf), saffronisation of textbooks controversies and is beset with corruption accusations against the education ministry. In November, a Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) 2022-23 report revealed alarming neglect of primary-secondary education in the state highlighting lack of functional toilets for girl children and huge deficit of computers and Internet connectivity in government schools. During the 82-weeks closure of education institutions because of the Covid pandemic, children’s stress and mental well-being emerged as a major issue. Despite this on December 14, the education ministry issued a circular mandating annual exams for class V and VIII students in all 69,310 government and private schools affiliated with the state examination board. According to the circular, these exams will be held in March with question papers set by the Karnataka School Examination and Assessment Board (KSEAB) and evaluation of answer papers conducted at the ‘taluk level’. However, the circular states that children who fail won’t be detained in their current classes. The purpose of the ‘assessment’ is to measure general learning outcomes of children in primary education, says the circular. “For this reason, they should be called assessments and not board exams,” says R. Vishal, commissioner, department of public instruction, who adds that the purpose of the exams is to identify children who need remedial education. Education officials insist that assessing children’s learning outcomes is in line with recommendations made in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. Moreover, the circular highlights that s.16 of the landmark Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE), Act, 2009, which initially prohibited examinations and mandated compulsory yearly promotion of classes I-VIII children, was amended by the BJP government at the Centre in 2019 to allow detention of students who fail twice. Private schools in Karnataka are divided over the introduction of exams in primary/elementary education. Comments D. Shashi Kumar, general secretary, Associated Managements of Private Schools in Karnataka, which has 3,900 member schools: “We are in favour of annual exams for class V and VIII children because learning outcomes dropped drastically during the Covid pandemic when children were out of school. There’s a need to rigorously assess children’s learning outcomes to provide appropriate…
The glacial pace at which the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, formulated after an interregnum of 34 years — during which the world entered the digital age — is being implemented has belatedly galvanised the BJP/NDA government at the Centre into action, especially in higher education. And the man chosen by the BJP top brass to lead the roll out of NEP 2020 higher education reforms seems to be Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar, chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC) — the apex level regulatory body for all higher education institutions. An alum of IIT-Madras and former low-profile professor of electrical engineering at IIT-Delhi, Jagadesh Kumar shot into the national limelight when he was appointed vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in 2016 to quell left-liberal ‘anti-nationalism’ and ‘urban naxalism’ in JNU, a well-known fortress of Left ideology and politics. To all intents and purposes, Kumar has discharged that mandate successfully. JNU students — and faculty — who went into hyperactivity mode protesting BJP’s appointments in higher education institutions (including JNU), have been tamed. All is quiet these days in JNU. Perhaps as a reward, in February Jagadesh Kumar was promoted to chairmanship of UGC. Since then, Kumar has gone into over-drive introducing a spate of higher education reforms mandated by NEP 2020. Last March, to eliminate the stress that students experience in writing multiple entrance exams of colleges and universities, he introduced CUET (Common University Entrance Test) for 45 Central universities and affiliated colleges. Moreover, he has readied India’s first digital university announced in the Union budget 2022-23 to take off this year with Delhi U as the nodal varsity and establishment of a virtual Academic Bank of Credits (ABC) to enable multiple entry/exit options for students with flexibility in choice of courses and institutions. Other initiatives actioned by UGC are introduction of the position of ‘professor of practice’ – under which industry experts are invited into colleges/universities to provide practical industry-related education to students; abolition of the hitherto mandatory requirement of Ph D scholars to publish research articles in peer-reviewed publications or attend a prescribed number of academic conferences before writing their theses, and direct entry into doctorate programmes for bright students who complete a four-year undergraduate research programme. Moreover, Kumar has also liberalised rules relating to foreign universities setting up campuses in India and Indian universities establishing campuses abroad. UGC’s latest initiative is introduction of a new Curriculum and Credit Framework for Undergraduate Programmes (CCFUP), announced on December 12. Under the CCFUP — the expression of the Academic Bank of Credits — undergrad students are allowed the option of multiple entry and exit options at the end of two and three years as outlined in NEP 2020 and draft National Higher Education Qualifications Framework (NHEQF). As the announcement of CCFUP was expected by all stakeholders, it has come as no surprise. Now universities will have to adopt it in their respective statutory bodies for implementation from the 2023 academic year. “CCFUP is welcome especially for undergrad students of…
Commendable focus I AM A regular reader of EducationWorld and want to thank you for publishing the comprehensive EW India Preschool Rankings 2022-23 (EW December), especially after the understandably truncated surveys over the pandemic years. I also welcome inclusion of the best government-run anganwadis in your survey. This will serve the purpose of focusing government attention on upgrading anganwadis which provide pre-primary education to youngest children from bottom-of-pyramid households. Sushmita Das KOLKATA God-sent surveys CONGRATULATIONS for the well-researched preschools rankings survey across 17 cities (EW December)! In most metros and tier II cities of the survey, many newly ranked preschools have replaced those that downed shutters during the pandemic. In this scenario, your survey is a Godsend for parents looking to make informed admission decisions. You are also doing a commendable job by felicitating budget private schools. Keep up the good work! Sushila Kale MUMBAI Comprehensive parameters THE LATEST December issue featuring the EW India Preschool Rankings 2022-23 is very valuable for parents of toddlers. It offers a reliable benchmark as many parents are concerned about issues such as child safety, teaching-learning, parental involvement etc. Your parameters of preschool education excellence are very comprehensive. May I also suggest that you take this one step further and segregate preschools into budget, mid-range, and high-end? This will also help parents choose their child’s preschool according to the fees structure. Rakesh Prakash DELHI ‘Value for money’ is one of the ten parameters of preschool education excellence under which all preschools are assessed in EWIPR 2022-23. High scores under this parameter is a good indicator of a preschool’s affordability — Editor Please note name change IN THE latest EW India Preschool Rankings (EW December) you have ranked Little Millennium, Girish Park, Kolkata’s #2 franchised preschool. I sincerely request you to verify your data before publishing. For your information, we are no longer associated with the Little Millennium brand. We are now a playschool named Smilee Hearts. Please update your records accordingly. Bindu Daw Smilee Hearts, Girish Park KOLKATA Demoralised & demotivated THE ENTIRE team at Sunderji Nursery School, Pune, is demoralised and demotivated by our demotion from the Top 5 in 2021-22 to #9 in the latest EW India Preschool Rankings 2022-23. Please advise how we can improve our scores on some critical parameters of preschool education excellence. Anahita Khambatta Sunderji Nursery School Off Shankar Sheth Road, PUNE Proclaim your school’s achievements and encomiums regularly — Editor Toilets for girls THE EDUCATION news (EW December) on Karnataka based on the Union education ministry’s recently published UDISE report holds a mirror to the dismal primary education system not only of Karnataka, but the entire nation. While proudly flaunting the beti bachao beti padhao (‘save girls by educating them’) campaign nationwide, the least government can do is ensure availability of basic amenities to girl children. It’s such a shame that in this day and age our girl children are deprived of basic toilet facilities. The plight of millions of adolescent girl children who undergo daily physical…
The resurgence of the covid pandemic in the neighbour People’s Republic of China (PRC) has quite rightly triggered alarm bells in New Delhi and several state admin capitals. Although the PRC government of a communist dictatorship has stopped publishing data on the number of Covid infections and fatalities, by all indications the deadly virus and its several variants, hitherto supressed by a globally unprecedented rigorous lockdown of industry, business, education institutions and entire cities with huge populations, is back with a vengeance. Through over-reliance on lockdowns, testing and isolation and relative neglect of vaccination as also insistence on using the under-tested indigenous Sinovac vaccine, the Xi Jinping government has landed the country in its current mess which is certain to cause huge economic, if not political damage. Back home in India, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear the initial reaction of the BJP/NDA government to broadcast a peremptory order to shutdown the economy and especially all public transport nationwide at four hours’ notice, was too panicky. It visited unprecedented misery on millions of migrant workers. But subsequent pandemic management strategy of mass vaccination and expeditious opening up of economic activity even at the risk of a spurt in fatalities, was the more intelligent option. Admittedly India’s official count of Covid fatalities during the two pandemic years at 530,707 is incredible and the estimate of 5 million is more reliable. But it was a small price to pay to get the engines of the economy humming again. Evidently the strategy of combining work from home, mass vaccination and masking has paid off. Last year the economy grew at 6.9 percent — the highest rate of growth worldwide — stock market indices scaled new heights, cricket and football stadiums filled up and the hotels and tourism industries revived. This time round in the event of the virus or new variants thereof entering and spreading within India, the central and state governments should persist with wfh where possible, vaccination, masking and reasonable precautions, and not repeat mistakes of the pandemic years. First, industry and business lockdowns must be localised. Second, all senior citizens should be pressured to take the precautionary booster dose. And the worst mistake of the 2020-2022 pandemic — locking down schools and education institutions — must not be repeated. The prolonged education moratorium — the longest of any major country — has inflicted huge learning loss on the world’s largest child and youth population whose impact will be felt in years to come. New variants of the virus are likely to be less virulent; the general population has improved its immunity and it’s now proven that children are less susceptible. Lessons of the past must be learned and improved upon while previous mistakes eliminated. In the final analysis it’s preferable for a few to be struck down by the virus than for millions to suffer prolonged illness, hunger and deprivation. That’s the advantage of a large population. Also read:
In an official statement made in Parliament on December 13, Union defence minister Rajnath Singh made light of a December 9 scuffle between Chinese and Indian soldiers on the McMahon line which marks the border in the north-east between the world’s two most populous countries. However, the clash which prompted banner headlines in the media, is a grim reminder of conspicuous failure of successive governments in New Delhi to negotiate and demarcate a settled China-India border — which stretches over 3,488 km from the Aksai Chin plateau in the north-west to Arunachal Pradesh and the seven sister states of north-east India — for over seven decades. Because of high defence expenditure aggregating 3.5-5 percent of GDP every year, post-independence India has never been able to increase annual expenditure (Centre plus states) for public education to 6 percent of GDP — declared as absolutely necessary by the high-powered Kothari Commission way back in 1967. As a result, 75 years after independence, the country grudgingly hosts 287 million adult illiterates. In India’s 1 million under-provided government schools defined by crumbling infrastructure, chronic teacher truancy and multigrade teaching, over 50 percent of children in class V can’t read class II textbooks or solve simple arithmetic sums. The outcome of weak foundational education carried forward into higher education and workplaces for decades, is arguably the lowest per capita agriculture, industry and government productivity worldwide. Guns versus butter. This iron law of economics is relentless. The reluctance of the incumbent BJP government at the Centre to negotiate and finalise a settled border with China is particularly surprising. The saffron party is under no obligation to persist with Nehru’s ‘talk but don’t negotiate’ vacillation. In retrospect, it’s impossible that the Nehru government was unaware that the Tibet-India boundary lines drawn by the British Boundary Commission of 1846-47 and in the north-east by Henry McMahon in 1914, were unilateral and forced upon a weak and ill-administered China of the 19th century. Therefore after communist China’s suzerainty over Tibet was conceded by New Delhi in 1950, Nehru’s obstinate refusal — graphically documented by Times (London) journalist Neville Maxwell in his deeply researched India’s China War (1970) — to renegotiate and demarcate the entire China-India border was unreasonable and irrational. The Galwan skirmish of May 2020 and the latest scuffle between Indian and Chinese troops is a reminder that this is a good time to set self-destructive national pride aside and negotiate firm boundary lines to resuscitate Sino-Indian harmony and mutual respect which endured for 2,500 years before the war of 1962. The Modi government unencumbered by Nehruvian baggage should avail this opportunity to negotiate a permanent settlement of the boundary issue for peace between our two great civilisations. Also read: The world university rankings: China science superpower
With former space scientist Dr. K. Kasturirangan, chairman of the nine-member committee which authored the 484-page Draft National Education Policy, 2019 which translated into the 66-page National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, having unobtrusively accepted the position of chairman of a steering committee to implement NEP 2020, the speed of overdue reform of India’s moribund education system is accelerating. Last October, the Union education ministry formally launched the National Curriculum Framework for Foundational Stage 2022 detailing ways and means to incorporate vitally important professionally administered early childhood care and education — which your editors have been stridently advocating since 2010 — into the new 5+3+3+4 school education system. Moreover, it’s a welcome development that implementation of the Kasturirangan Committee’s root and branch reforms in higher education — the other end of the learning spectrum — has also gathered momentum. As reported by our Delhi-based correspondent Autar Nehru (see p.18), Prof. Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar, chairman of UGC (University Grants Commission) — the apex regulatory body of higher education — is rolling out liberalisation reforms proposed by NEP 2020 at fast clip, and has emerged as the can-do point man for higher education reforms of the BJP government. Yet the plain unheralded truth is that the reform rush that’s shaking up the shady bowers of Indian academia has been catalysed by the country’s new age private universities legislated by state governments. They have infused new life and stimulus into the country’s also-ran higher education institutions — 42,000 colleges and 1,072 universities, some of them of 150 years vintage — a few of whom are ranked in the bottom deciles of the World University Rankings league tables of Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) and Times Higher Education, the highly-reputed London-based rating agencies which assess and rank HEIs around the world. Only after emergence on the national landscape of a rash of new genre, globally bench-marked privately promoted universities — anathema to left and left-liberal academics, politicians and media pundits who have presided over the slide of public universities into mediocrity — has a new spirit of competition and search for academic and research excellence invaded India’s lackadaisical higher education system. For further and better particulars, read our unprecedented cover story of this issue. For the engaged and intelligent, there is rich fare in this first issue of 2023. Check out respected public intellectual Sudheendra Kulkarni’s case for settling the long-pending border issue with China; US-based educationist Jessica Cavallaro who advocates new age agile classrooms and the People page which introduces academic VIPs. Let’s co-operate to make 2023 a landmark year for Indian education!
Settle Sino-India border through compromise
Can one-sided claims or a ‘no-compromise’ stance by either India or China guarantee peace along the LAC, much less cooperation between our two civilizational nations that can shape a new world order?, writes Sudheendra Kulkarni JUNE 2020: GALWAN VALLEY, LADAKH. DECEMBER 2022: Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh. In the absence of a mutually agreed permanent boundary, every time there is a military clash at any point along the 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control (LAC), between India and China, the trust deficit between our two countries grows wider. The media and social media in both countries exacerbate hostility between the world’s most populous countries. Opposition parties in India train their guns on government. This does not happen in China because it doesn’t have opposition parties. Yet each time there’s a confrontation on the LAC and soldiers are killed or injured, the same two questions repeat themselves in the minds of those who want peace and cooperation between Asia’s biggest countries which co-existed in peace and harmony for 2000 years before the 1962 border war in the north-east. How long will this confrontation go on? And can the boundary dispute be settled once and for all? The second question can be answered easily. And if the second question is answered to the satisfaction of both countries, the first becomes redundant. The best opportunity to settle the dispute — in the western sector (Ladakh) and in the east (Arunachal Pradesh, formerly known as North-East Frontier Agency or NEFA) — came in 1960. China offered a workable solution, but India rejected the offer and lost a historic opportunity. Then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s weakness, vacillation and lack of foresight were to blame, but also the sustained pressure of opposition parties on the prime minister to make “no compromises” relating to territory claimed by India. This resulted in the Indo-China border war of 1962. India’s defeat in that war has left such a deep psychological scar that neither politicians nor people of India are prepared to view the boundary dispute objectively. But it’s important to state facts clearly and dispassionately. In 1960, at Nehru’s invitation, China’s premier Zhou Enlai visited India. “I have come here to seek a solution and not to repeat arguments,” he said. At that time Zhou offered a ‘package deal’ for final settlement of the boundary issue. China would accept India’s sovereignty over NEFA, which meant de jure recognition of the McMahon Line, if India accepted China’s lines drawn in Aksai Chin, Ladakh. China has always challenged the McMahon Line as illegal, because it was arbitrarily drawn by British imperialists when neither China nor India was free. Nevertheless, Zhou, obviously with the approval of Chairman Mao Zedong, agreed to accept the McMahon Line and thereby India’s claim on NEFA. “Our friendship is the most important thing,” he told R.K. Nehru, former India ambassador to China. “Non-settlement of this problem will harm us both.” Zhou spent 20 hours in talks with Nehru. But the latter rejected the package deal because opposition leaders (including Atal…