EducationWorld July 2021 Archives

Tripartite concordat

Mumbai, June 29. Tata Electronics Pvt. Ltd (TEPL) signed an MoU (memorandum of understanding) with SASTRA Deemed-to-be-University, Thanjavur (Tamil Nadu) to develop deep domain expertise to enhance electronics design and manufacturing skills in collaboration with Asia University and Yuan Ze University, Taiwan. Under this agreement, students admitted to the two-year M.Tech degree programme in Very Large-Scale Integration (VLSI) design at SASTRA University will study for one year on the varsity campus, for the second year in either Asia/Yuan Ze campuses in Taiwan. The second-year curriculum will include practical experience in major lab facilities, a six-month industry internship programme in Taiwan’s advanced semiconductor manufacturing industry, and a basic Chinese language skills programme. TEPL will work with SASTRA University to design the course curriculum and provide financial support if required. “India has a critical role to play in global manufacturing, especially in areas like electronic manufacturing. Our collaboration with SASTRA U is an endeavour to ensure the human capital is industry-ready for this emerging opportunity,” said Ranjan Bandyopadhyay, head of human resources at TEPL, speaking on the occasion. Application forms are available online at www.sastra.edu from June 30, 2021. RNTU-EduSkills MoU New delhi, june 8. Bhopal-based Rabindranath Tagore University (RNTU, estb.2010) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Bhubaneswar-based EduSkills Foundation, a non-profit organisation developing industry 4.0-ready digital professionals. “We are very happy to sign an MoU with EduSkills Foundation to design skilling and upskilling courses for the youth of our country,” said Siddharth Chaturvedi, executive vice president of RNTU. Under this partnership, EduSkills Foundation will provide experts to train and enhance students’ skills to make them job-ready. Moreover, RNTU and EduSkills Foundation will design a ‘Train the Trainers’ programme, and offer internships and job opportunities to students. Ashank Desai Centre at IIM-A Ahmedabad, june 18. The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) inaugurated its Ashank Desai Centre for Leadership and Organisational Development (ADCLOD). The new centre is endowed by IIM-A alumnus Ashank Desai, founder and former chairman of Mastek Ltd, a listed software technologies and services company (estb.1982). “I always wanted to give back to my alma mater, particularly because Mastek Ltd was incubated within IIM-A. I would like the centre to organise roundtables with leaders for a wide variety of themes by way of seminars on leadership issues, conduct cutting-edge research and create leadership paradigms that are global in terms of relevance yet deeply rooted in the Indian context — our history, traditions, and societal values,” said Desai, speaking on the occasion. KSPP-DAKSH agreement Hyderabad, june 7. The Kautilya School of Public Policy (KSPP) of GITAM Deemed-to-be-University, Hyderabad, signed an MoU with the Bengaluru-based DAKSH Society (estb.2008) to research better governance and improve India’s justice system. Both institutions will conduct mutually supportive and interdisciplinary research on various facets of the justice system, and devise inclusive, transparent mechanisms to encourage accountability in all branches of government. Moreover, KSPP students will serve in internships and capstone projects with DAKSH to research government and justice systems to recommend reforms. “India is at…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Schools upgradation drive

Paromita Sengupta with bureau inputs ODISHA Bhubaneswar, june 3. The Kendrapara district administration has set a target to revamp 500 government primary schools in the district by end 2021. “So far, 60 primary and upper primary schools in the district have been given a facelift. The focus is on upgrading their infrastructure with good quality benches, desks, toilets among other facilities. To this end funds have been allocated to panchayats,” said Kendrapara collector Amrit Ruturaj, addressing a press conference. Leveraging the Building As Learning Aid (BALA) concept to enable qualitative improvement in education, the district administration is currently upgrading school premises, classrooms, walls and corridors with paintings related to math, geography and science. It is also planning to introduce computer literacy for class IV-V students and installing digital education equipment, he added. GUJARAT Real-time command centre Ahmedabad, June 10. Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani inaugurated the country’s first real-time command-and-control centre in Gandhinagar to monitor the activities of over 54,000 government schools statewide. Through this control centre, education ministry officials can track implementation of various schemes and initiatives such as home learning and periodic assessment, launched by the state government to improve the quality of education. Inaugurating the centre’s ‘video wall’ feature, the chief minister held a brief discussion with some field staff of the education ministry and received feedback about a project, and also spoke to a primary school teacher in Anand district. Apart from monitoring teachers’ and students’ attendance in all government schools statewide, the command centre also provides miscellaneous district and other data. UTTAR PRADSH RTE Act notices Noida (uttar pradesh), june 4. Thirty-three private schools in Noida and Greater Noida have been issued show-cause notices for alleged irregularities in connection with admission of children from economically-weaker sections under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009. Under s.12 (1) (c) of the Act, private unaided schools are obliged to reserve 25 percent capacity in classes I-VIII for poor children in their neighbourhood and provide them free-of-charge education. “These schools have allocated lesser number of seats to s.12 (1) (c) children than in the previous year,” said Sanjay Kumar Upadhyay, principal, District Institute for Education and Training (DIET). The schools issued notices have been asked to provide proof of total capacity in classes I-VIII, he added. LADAKH Online education initiative Leh, june 4. Ladakh’s Lieutenant Governor Radha Krishna Mathur launched the YounTab digital tablets distribution scheme for government school children to enable them to access online classes, said an official spokesperson addressing the media. Under the scheme, 12,300 tablets with pre-loaded online and offline content, including textbooks, video lectures and online class applications, will be distributed free-of-charge to classes VI-XII government school students in Leh, said Ajeet Kumar Sahu, commissioner secretary of school education. The distribution of tablets will be completed over the next two months, the spokesman said. “An assurance has also come from telecom companies about installing additional towers to enhance Internet connectivity,” he added. PUNJAB New medical colleges Mohali, june…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Whose India binary: The Fate of Butterflies

THE FATE OF BUTTERFLIES Nayantara Sahgal SPEAKING TIGER Rs.455, Pages 144 The Fate of Butterflies by the redoubtable Nayantara Sahgal is another testimonial to her versatile imagination. Interweaving personal and the political like many of Sahgal’s earlier books, this novel narrates a history of the present from a fast receding liberal-secular perspective. Butterflies traces the story of several people but centres mainly around Prabhakar, a professor of political science who has risen from destitution to becoming a respected author, caught in the maelstrom of contemporary history, and Sergei, a Russian arms dealer who has given up the idea of writing a book narrating the story of the trade to concentrate on his father’s business, and has shed his Russian inheritance and identity and assumed one of cosmopolitanism. It also includes, inter alia, Francois and Prahalad, a gay couple who own and run Bonjour, a fine dining restaurant and breakfast venue. Very quickly the novel establishes a cosmopolitan identity as the composite or definitive Indian identity. It is this identity that’s at stake in a majoritarian India, where pluralities are suppressed to present a singular, monolithic identity based solely on religion. At the heart of the narrative is also the story of Katerina, who, along with some rural women, is brutalized, gangraped and left to die. The novel also recounts the impact of polarization on Rafeeq and Rahman — an intrepid chef and owner of Kaif Cafe — who suddenly find that they are strangers in a country they had previously called their own. The trajectory of Prabhakar’s life is rudely interrupted one day when he comes across a corpse on the crossroads, naked but for a skullcap on its head. The pervasive violence of public life intersects in the story with his increasing intimacy with Katerina/ Katya. The novel is a political allegory providing a snapshot of the times we live in. The author maps the swing to the Right not only in the national but in a broadly international context. It narrates the rise of jingoistic nationalism and xenophobia in countries, leaders and people in Europe and an increasingly growing sense of intolerance in people of ‘others’. While the composition of the ‘other’ is shown to vary from one place to another, the core idea is communicated in no uncertain terms. The political discussion is around Prabhakar’s book in which his protagonist Mirajkar expresses interest in a hypothetical overturning of the traditional virtues of altruism and tolerance to replace them with a Nietzschean (and dystopic) view of history. Having endorsed eugenic experiments and the somewhat Darwinian perspective of ancient Spartans more as a hypothesis than anything else, Prabhakar realises that his book runs the risk of being appropriated by a ruthless, authoritarian regime to provide a theoretical bulwark and justification for taking extreme measures. Coming at a time when right-wing populism is ruling the roost, Butterflies is a timely reminder of what is at stake in the relentless pursuit of muscular nationalism that has emerged in countries which have…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Wide but not deep: India’s Power Elite

INDIA’S POWER ELITE — CLASS, CASTE AND A CULTURAL REVOLUTION Sanjaya Baru PENGUIN Rs.699; Pages 228 pp Currently, a Delhi-based policy analyst, writer and columnist, Sanjaya Baru has excellent credentials to write this interestingly titled book. In his eventful, and yet sure to be more productive life he has acquired rich and valuable insights into post-independence India’s power structure and establishment as former editor of the Economic Times, Financial Express, Business Standard, editorial page editor of the mighty Times of India, media adviser to former prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh whom he outed in his best-seller the Accidental Prime Minister: the Making & Unmaking of Manmohan Singh (2014) and 1991: How P.V. Narasimha Rao Made History (2016). To this impressive curriculum vitae add academic experience as faculty in the International Institute of Strategic Studies, London, JNU, Delhi and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore. Unfortunately, while this book is a mile wide — an abridged history of free India — it is only inches deep. At the end, the promise inherent in its title is unfulfilled. Although one learns that the English speaking upper middle class remains a powerful elite in Delhi and metropolitan India, and caste dynamics are dominant in rural India, the author hasn’t dug deep enough. This volume details several ephemeral elites that ruled in Delhi and the state capitals and shaped public policy, but doesn’t provide an explanation why all of them failed to make sufficient impact and whether the incumbent new elite that has emerged during the past decade, will be any different. Way back in the 1930s in his epic eight-volume A Study of History for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize, Prof. Arnold Toynbee traced the rise and fall of great civilisations and societies. In this magnum opus replete with case studies, he convincingly demonstrated that when dominant elites are creative and improve the lot of the masses, civilisations flourish and thrive. However, when elites cease to be creative and become self-serving, they transform into oppressive minorities which catalyses a phenomenon Toynbee describes as a “secession of the proletariat”, setting in motion a process in which civilisations become vulnerable to “barbarians”, and decline and fall. The pathetic condition of India’s post-independence society — it would be foolish to describe it as a civilisation — and especially of the vast majority at the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid, is living proof that every government at the Centre and in the states and their elites, failed the creativity test and severely short-changed the proletariat. According to World Bank data, currently over 880 million citizens of free India have a per capita per day income of $2 or less which means they suffer severe deficits of food, clothing and shelter — the essentials of civilised existence. Baru recounts how several class, caste and combinations thereof rose to power and domination, but has neglected to tell us the reasons for their decline and failure. In the preface, the author admits to fascination with…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

“History of pandemics not taught in our schools”

An alumnus of Mumbai University and London School of Economics, Chinmay Tumbe is currently assistant professor of economics at IIM-Ahmedabad. Excerpts from an interview with Dilip Thakore: Congratulations for your timely new book The Age of Pandemics 1817-1920 — How they Shaped India and the World. The subtitle of your book seems to suggest that the history of the great pandemics that swept the world in those years is inadequate and its impact under-estimated. Am I right? Yes. For instance this age of pandemics between 1817-1920 took over 70 million lives which is about the same loss as in the two World Wars of the 20th century. But although we are well-informed about the World Wars, the public knows very little about the pandemics. Age of Pandemics provides compelling evidence that in those years, the Indian subcontinent was the epicentre of the great pandemics — Cholera (1817), Plague (1894) and Influenza (1918) — which wiped out 72 million lives worldwide, with an astonishing toll of 40 million in India in the 19th and early 20th centuries. So we should have been well-experienced to manage the latest Covid pandemic. But obviously we were not. How do you explain this conundrum? Unfortunately, we have little collective memory of that age of pandemics because it is not taught in our schools, nor surprisingly, in our medical colleges. We remember the Jallianwala Bagh tragedy of April 1919 and the hundreds of lives lost, but not the raging influenza pandemic a few months before that incident, which took a toll of nearly 20 million lives. Epidemics tend to slip through history because they are often not clearly identifiable enemies and leave little property destruction behind. Although the impact of pandemics is measured in terms of lives lost, they also heavily impact the economies of nations. To what extent would you say the 1817- 1920 pandemics were responsible for the precipitous decline of the subcontinent from one of the most prosperous regions of the world for several millennia, to its impoverishment in the 19th and 20th centuries? I don’t see it as impoverishment as much as relative stagnation and pandemics contributed to that by hurting economic activities. For instance, in 1918-19, real GDP fell by over 10 percent and inflation surged to 30 percent. Pandemics, combined with famines of the late 19th century, had a deadly impact on the Indian economy. The popular Western narrative is that the prime cause of the subcontinent’s successive pandemics is poor hygiene and sanitation. Yet you suggest that the major causes were rising international trade, continuous movement of British and Indian soldiers within India and the British empire. What’s your comment? There is little doubt that the British took more precautions against pandemics for their own people in Britain than for Indians in the subcontinent. In the case of cholera, British officials in India resisted scientific evidence that it was water-borne for four decades, and millions of Indians died due to that disease. In the case of plague, not enough…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

EW Grand Jury India Higher Education Rankings 2021-2022

The EducationWorld Grand Jury India Higher Education Rankings were introduced in 2019 to recognise and acknowledge low-profile, media shy higher education institutions (HEIs) implementing best practices. Juries comprising knowledgeable educationists were constituted to evaluate low-profile and newly promoted private HEIs deserving recognition. To select progressive higher education institutions across the country, we invited nominations from educationists, individuals and HEIs themselves supported by evidence of best practices in 12 categories — extraordinary leadership, campus design excellence, quality of campus life, contemporary IT-enabled learning, student diversity, sports and co-curricular education, promising future ready universities, professional education, vocational and skills education and best academia-industry alliance. Nominations were received from more than 500 private and government higher education institutions countrywide. To assess the evidence and rank nominated institutions in each category, this year’s Grand Jury comprising eminent educationists Deepakkumar Mukadam, chancellor’s nominee on the management council of University of Mumbai and founder, Academistan, an online faculty networking platform, Dr. Hiren Ghelani, IT entrepreneur (Softwisdom Infoway) and board of study member, Rajkot University and Dr. A.S. Seetharamu, former professor of education at the Institute of Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore was constituted. The league tables of the EW Grand Jury India Higher Education Rankings 2021-22 are set out below. New-age study programmes leader Top 10 HEIs providing contemporary industry-aligned study programmes. “We are delighted to learn that NKC is ranked #1 in this category by your knowledgeable jury. This award is the outcome of our faculty and students always being open to innovation and experimentation, and we routinely introduce new study programmes. For instance, during the past decade we have introduced BBA degree programmes in international martial arts, marketing management, a B.Sc programme in computer science with specialisation in artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud technology and information security plus a new M.Sc in interior design, tourism & travel management. These new-age industry demand-linked study programmes have been enthusiastically welcomed by students and we have had great success in placing our graduates in top corporates such as Wipro, Infosys, Sutherland, etc” — Dr. Ancy Jose (centre left), principal, Nagindas Khandwala College (Autonomous), Mumbai (estb.1983), which currently has an enrolment of 4,659 students and 150 faculty. Best for academy-industry alliances Institutions pursuing alliances and collaborations to bridge the academia-industry gap and enhance graduate employability. “It’s not so well-known that RNTU, Bhopal is India’s first skill-based university which has deep engagement with the National Skill Development Corporation and various Sector Skills Councils such as BFSI, ASCI, ASDC, and GJSCI to provide short-term certificate courses in auto components, construction materials, healthcare, and several other business verticals. Skilled graduates are in short supply across the country. Therefore, our Industry Academy Collaboration Centre has established linkages with the country’s most respected companies including Bosch, Tata Motors, Schneider, and Daikin etc, who highly value and welcome our graduates. Moreover, RNTU is the only private university in Madhya Pradesh granted permission by Niti Aayog to establish an Atal Incubation Centre. Thus far, we have incubated 45 startups” — Dr. Bramh Prakash Pethiya,…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Madhya Pradesh: Politics of Happiness

Aditi Maheshwari (Bhopal) Evidently inspired by the example of the neighbouring Kingdom of Bhutan which measures national development through a Gross National Happiness Index (GNHI) and latterly by the Delhi state government which introduced happiness classes into the curricula of government schools, the Anand Vibhag (Happiness Department) of the Madhya Pradesh government has succeeded in ameliorating some of the Covid pandemic’s gloom and doom pervading the country’s geographically second-largest (308,245 sq. km) state (pop.73 million) by extending the ambit of the Happiness Department to the education sector. First introduced by incumbent chief minister Shivraj Chauhan in 2016 to spread loosely defined happiness through narration of motivational stories, yoga and mental health advice to rural communities, the department was transformed into the Spiritual Department by the Kamal Nath-led Congress government which was voted into office in 2018. Until March 2020, the focus of the Spiritual Department was to promote intercommunal and religious harmony. However, when the BJP was voted back to power in Bhopal in 2020 after engineering dramatic defections from the Congress, the Happiness Department with a less secular flavour was restored with the mission to uplift the spirits of the people of the state. In 2020 Aloha, an internationally accredited happiness programme, was translated into Hindi and incorporated into the Happiness programmes. Currently, the happiness programme is being disseminated in all 53 districts of the state by 55,000 unpaid volunteers. During the past pandemic year, the department has conducted 100,000 twice-a-week online happiness programmes. The programmes are supervised by the Rajya Anand Sansthan, an autonomous body constituted to promote the department’s objectives. The board members of the Sansthan are eminent citizens working in the areas of culture, society, psychology and academics. “Education was one area that was left untouched by the department, so we decided to sensitise education institutions to the need for happiness, mental peace and well-being, especially in the pandemic era. Therefore for the past one year, introductory programmes have been conducted for school and higher education students in all 53 administrative blocks. Our programmes are not restricted to government institutions and are open to all. They are charged a nominal amount of Rs.200 as registration fees to meet tea-break expenses,” says Akhilesh Argul, chief executive of the Rajya Anand Sansthan. The initial reaction to the happiness programmes being introduced in education institutions — especially in this grim pandemic era — is positive. “The department’s volunteers conducted two programmes for our faculty spread over February and March this year. The programmes included an inaugural prayer followed by yoga classes and interactive sessions with volunteers selected by the education ministry narrating motivational stories and providing pandemic management advice, group singing and poetry recitations. The happiness programmes conducted online, have undoubtedly helped our faculty to destress, refreshed our spirits and diverted attention from the pain points of the pandemic. I’m sure once normalcy is restored and the programmes are conducted on campus, they will be more rewarding,” says Dr. Pratibha Singh, principal of the Sarojini Naidu Govt. Girls Postgrad…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Karnataka: Wrong Priority

Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) Even as the new academic year 2021-22 commenced from July 1 with online education decreed compulsory for all of Karnataka’s 76,800 schools including 48,393 government primary-secondaries, the stalemate over fees payable to private schools for 2020-21 and the new academic year is unresolved. In February, several private schools associations filed writ petitions in the Karnataka high court contesting the constitutional validity of a January 29 state government directive to all private schools —including schools affiliated with pan-India CBSE and CISCE exam boards — statewide to collect only 70 percent of tuition (and no other) fees for the academic year ended April 2021. This directive was issued after parents’ associations contended that private schools’ fees should be reduced because online classes are of shorter duration and schools are not providing co-curricular and sports education. Moreover, parents claim they have suffered loss of income and often employment during the pandemic year. On June 29, the state government made a plea to the Karnataka high court seeking permission to constitute a panel headed by a retired high court judge to determine fees for all categories of private schools in the state for the new academic year 2021-22, and to “grant it liberty” to initiate action against private schools disregarding the January 29 fees restriction order. Responding, private schools associations’ counsel argued before a single judge bench that the state government lacks legal authority to regulate fees of unaided private schools and highlighted that, while on one hand, the government had decreed a reduced fee it had simultaneously directed all private school managements to pay full salaries to teachers and staff. After hearing both parties, Justice Magadum adjourned the hearing to July 22. With a second Covid-19 pandemic wave having pushed the state into a 46-day industry and business lockdown in May-June, parents associations have upped their ante and demanded that the state government applies the 70 percent of tuition-feeonly order to the new academic year as well, and constitute a school fees adjudication committee. “Most extra-curricular and sports activities have been halted since classes went online and schools have saved on these expenses. Private school managements can meet their teachers and staff wage bill by collecting 70 percent of annual fees. We demand that the state government immediately constitute a fees fixation committee headed by a retired high court judge to resolve this issue,” says B.N.Yogananda, general secretary, RTE Students & Parents Association (RTE-STUPA). On the other hand, spokespersons of the state’s 21,000 private unaided schools say that 30-40 percent of parents have not paid their children’s fees for the past year 2020-21, and fees arrears owing to private schools have accumulated to a massive Rs.4,000-5,000 crore. They contend that private schools, especially affordable budget private schools (BPS), are on the brink of financial bankruptcy with most unable to pay teachers and staff. They warn that over 3,000 BPS will have to shut down permanently if the restrictive 70 percent tuition fee order is extended to 2021-22. “Taking advantage of…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

West Bengal: Teachers recruitment priority

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) Evidently chief minister Mamata Banerjee, fresh from her resounding third time sweep of the West Bengal state legislative elections, is convinced that her initiatives to reform the state’s moribund education system and raise teaching-learning standards in 92,000 government primary-secondary schools, played a major role in her famous electoral victory in the assembly elections that concluded on May 2. By any yardstick, her Trinamool Congress Party’s tally of 213 of 294 seats in the legislative assembly is impressive given that she successfully defied two-term anti-incumbency, and was confronted with a formidable challenge mounted by the Bharatiya Janata Party, which rules at the Centre. Therefore, right after convening the first cabinet meeting, she announced the government’s intent to set up English-medium schools in all of the state’s 341 administrative blocks. Moreover on June 21, she announced that her government will be recruiting 32,000 teachers for government primaries by March next year. “The appointment process to fill up at least 14,000 vacancies in the upper primary level (classes V-VIII) and 10,500 in the primary level (classes I-IV) will be completed before Durga Puja in October. Moreover, 7,500 more posts for primary teachers will be filled up by March 2022. All appointments will be made on the basis of merit lists and no lobbying will be required,” Banerjee informed a press conference in Kolkata on June 21. During its first term in office the TMC government was focused on cleaning up the mess left behind by the CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist)-led Left Front government which uninterruptedly ruled West Bengal for a record 34 years (1977-2011), de-industrialised the state and massively infiltrated education institutions. But in her second-term (2016-21), Banerjee paid considerable attention to ensure regular attendance of teachers in the state’s 92,000 government schools, opposed the no-detention provision of the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, and reversed the disastrous Left Front government’s decision on compulsory Bengali medium of instruction in classes I-VII by inaugurating 100 English-medium government primaries in 19 districts of the state. Moreover during her past two terms, the number of universities in the state has increased from 12 in 2011 to 40 at present, with student enrolment in higher education rising from 1.34 million in 2010-11 to 2.03 million in 2020-21. This time around in her third term as chief minister, Banerjee is reported to be determined to resolve the problem of filling teacher vacancies in government schools which defied her efforts in the second term. Soon after the TMC government was returned to power for its second term in 2016, Banerjee promised to recruit 75,000 teachers. But the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET), which is the basis for recruiting teachers for government schools, was conducted only twice — instead of annually — during the past ten years. On both occasions, appointments were stalled because of widespread allegations of test paper leakages, TMC members being favoured, tampered merit lists and appointment irregularities. As a result, more than 20 writ petitions challenging the…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Girl children dropping out danger

It doesn’t make headline news. but evidence is emerging that the shutdown of all pre-primary and K-12 schools countrywide for over 15 months for fear of children being infected by the novel Coronavirus, is likely to blight the future of tens of millions of India’s children, especially the girl child. According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-5 2019-20, enrolment of girl children in rural secondaries has dropped sharply in 18 states across the country. As a result attainment of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of ‘gender equality to empower all women and girls’ by 2030 is in high jeopardy. Ironically, in Gujarat where Narendra Modi was chief minister from 2001-14, prior to being elevated to the office of prime minister, the proportion of girl children in rural higher secondary education (classes XI-XII) has plunged to 29.2 percent from 97 percent enroled in primary school (2019-20). A January 2021 report by the Delhi-based RTE Forum estimates that since March 2020, when all 1.6 million schools countrywide were ordered to shut down, 10 million girl children have dropped out of secondary education. It warns that India’s stringent closure of schools has “disproportionately impacted girls by putting them at risk of early marriage, early pregnancy, poverty, trafficking and violence”. The sharp increase in the number of girl children in rural India, which ungraciously hosts 65.5 percent of the country’s 1.35 billion population, dropping out — or being forced to drop out — of school is likely to adversely impact the country’s female labour force participation (FLFP), a marker of economic development. According to World Bank data in marked contrast to OECD countries where FLFP averages 54 percent, India’s FLFP was 20.3 percent in 2020, lower than of Pakistan and Afghanistan. One of the few positive developments in Indian education in the new millennium is general acceptance that girl children are entitled to primary-secondary education. Even partly educated women marry in adult age, bear fewer and healthier children, and are likely to participate in the formal labour market and boost household incomes. NHFS-5 data indicates that a rising number of rural girl children were dropping out of school even before the Covid-19 pandemic struck India. This situation is likely to go from bad to worse following the extended closure of education institutions countrywide. Indeed there’s a clear and present danger that a substantial proportion of gains of post-independence India’s women’s emancipation movement will be lost. According to an ancient Chinese proverb, women hold up half the sky. The trend lines of NHFS and declining FLFP require the urgent attention of government, policy planners and educators countrywide, if the national aspiration to transform India into a $5 trillion economy by 2024 is not to become a pipedream.

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Muni International School, Delhi

Among India’s unique budget private schools which have emerged as alternatives to dysfunctional government schools, MIS, ranked India’s #1 BPS for three years (2015-17) by EducationWorld, has emerged as a model institution, writes Autar Nehru Established in 2002 to provide affordably-priced English-medium education to children of working-class parents living in the ‘regularised unauthorised’ housing colonies of West Delhi, during the past two decades Muni International School (MIS) has developed into the country’s role model budget private school (BPS). Promoted by former teachers and idealist entrepreneurs as alternatives to dysfunctional government schools defined by crumbling buildings, chronic teacher truancy, English language aversion and rock-bottom learning outcomes, the number of BPS countrywide has ballooned to an estimated 400,000 with a massive enrolment of 60 million children. In this category of primary-secondaries fashioned after private English-medium schools, MIS has emerged as a model institution. In the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) which rank BPS separately inter se, MIS was ranked #1 for three years (2015-2017). In the latest EWISR 2020-21, MIS is ranked #2 in India and #1 in Delhi NCR. Credit for nurturing MIS into the country’s foremost BPS is unanimously given to its visionary and can-do founder-director Ashok Thakur, a former Indian Army infantryman (1984-1992) who after early retirement promoted MIS with his life savings of Rs.1.40 lakh and a first batch of 26 children. “The prime objectives of MIS are to develop the latent potential of each child and provide English-medium primary-secondary education to children of working-class households and enable them to break out of the cycle of poverty and illiteracy. During the past 18 years since MIS was founded, we have demonstrated that good quality education can be provided to the poor at prices they can afford. By reviving India’s ancient tradition of peer-to-peer learning, we have been able to improve children’s learning outcomes dramatically. In MIS, we believe that grand buildings and infrastructure and highly qualified teachers are not necessary to provide quality K-X education,” says Thakur. According to Thakur, the school’s peer learning pedagogy with teachers discharging the role of facilitators, has recorded extraordinary academic results from children, the majority of them first generation learners with negligible academic support at home. In the academic year 2019, all MIS students who wrote the class X exam of the Central Board of Secondary Education cleared the testing exams of the country’s largest pan-India schools board with an average score of 75 percent. Uniquely in 2013, MIS was selected by the Japanese embassy in New Delhi for a student exchange programme with schools in Japan. Moreover in 2015, the US-based Ashoka Foundation (estb.1980) conferred its Changemaker School encomium on MIS. “Our peer-learning system encourages children to learn collaboratively, giving and receiving feedback and continuously measure each other’s progress. This is supplemented by our IPDS (inherent potential discovery system), under which students are periodically tested by their teachers who provide supplementary support and remedial education if required,” explains Thakur. Another distinguishing feature of the MIS curriculum is that every student…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

California State University, Long Beach

One of the largest universities in America’s most populous state, the scenically sited CSULB has an aggregate enrolment of 39,360 students from over 100 countries worldwide, writes Reshma Ravishankar A constituent institution of the 23-campus California state public higher education system, California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) is one of the largest universities in America’s most populous state (40 million) with an aggregate enrollment of 39,360 students from over 100 countries worldwide. The Wall Street Journal and the Times Higher Education rank CSULB #4 for campus student diversity. Sprawled across 322 acres in the coastal city of Long Beach, CSULB is also ranked among America’s Top 10 public universities for value for money by Money magazine. Moreover, the US News & World Report routinely ranks it among the Top 10 most-applied-to universities of USA. Founded in 1949 as the Los Angeles-Orange County State College, it was awarded university status in 1972. Currently, its eight colleges — arts, business, education, engineering, health and human services, liberal arts, natural sciences and mathematics, professional and international education — provide over 147 undergraduate, postgrad and doctoral degree programmes to 39,360 students mentored by 2,372 faculty. Notable CSULB alumni include acclaimed Hollywood filmmaker Steven Spielberg, J.F. Lawton, screenwriter of the Hollywood blockbuster Pretty Woman, and Tara Cross-Battle, a former Olympic women’s volleyball player. Long Beach. Sited on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, Long Beach (pop. 467,000) is a coastal city famous for its scenic waterfronts, RMS Queen Mary (museum ship moored in its Queensway Bay), Aquarium of the Pacific and other sea-side attractions. The sixth largest city of California, Long Beach is the second busiest container terminal in the US and among the world’s largest shipping ports. A short drive (32 km) from downtown Los Angeles, it offers world-class dining, shopping and recreation experiences. The weather is Mediterranean — summers are warm and humid and the winters mild to warm with occasional rainfall. Campus facilities. A mere 5 km from the Pacific shoreline, the CSULB campus in typical American-style sprawls across 322 green acres and hosts state-of-the-art academic, research, sports and recreation facilities. The natural park campus houses 84 buildings of minimalist design that provide excellent teaching-learning facilities. The allure of the campus owes much to the 3,200 Helen Borchers flowering peach trees donated by the citizens of Long Beach, and numerous works of art and sculpture on the varsity grounds. Campus landmarks include the University Art Museum, the Earl Burns Miller Japanese Gardens, the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music, Walter Pyramids and University Student Union Building. Moreover, the six-storey CSULB library hosts 1.1 million printed volumes and offers seating to 4,000 students. Inevitably, sports and recreation facilities are extensive and impressive. They include the cobalt-blue Walter Pyramid (nine volleyball courts or three full basketball courts); Blair Field (one of America’s best amateur baseball arenas); 400 m all-weather Jack Rose Track; 500-seat Ken Lindgren Aquatics Center; Rhodes Tennis Center (12 courts); 2,000-seat George Allen Field (women’s soccer); LBSU Sand Courts (beach volleyball); 500-seat LBSU…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Ill-advised changes in engineering education

By falling in line with NEP 2020 and particularly its advocacy of multi-disciplinary education, AICTE has diluted the importance of physics and maths, the building blocks of engineering education, writes R. Natarajan In its approval process handbook 2021-22 released in early March, the Delhi-based All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), established in 1987 by Parliament to licence and supervise all technical education institutions countrywide, has made class XII physics and mathematics optional subjects for admission into undergraduate engineering courses. The rationale of this revolutionary departure from conventional wisdom and universal practice, is that it is in consonance with the objectives of the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. For the past several decades, admission into India’s 3,415 engineering colleges including the globally famous IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) was dependent on class XII students’ aggregate scores in physics, mathematics and either chemistry, biotechnology/biology or an elective technical vocation subject with PCM (physics, chemistry and maths) being the most common combination. Under the changed rules, maths and physics are listed among 12 optional subjects — physics, mathematics, chemistry, computer science, electronics, information technology, biology, informatics practice, technical vocational subject, agriculture, biotechnology, engineering graphics, business studies, entrepreneurship — from which class XII students can choose any three. The rationale for this change advanced by Dr. Anil Sahasrabuddhe, chairman of AICTE, is that NEP 2020 encourages multi-disciplinary undergraduate education. “After 15 years of school education, an undergrad engineering student can go for undergrad studies across disciplines… A new window has been created where students who have not taken physics and maths in school can enter engineering education,” says Sahasrabuddhe. Following criticism of this radical departure from convention and past practice, AICTE spokespersons have suggested bridge courses for students who have not written physics and maths exams in class XII, thereby tacitly acknowledging that deep knowledge of these subjects is critical for the study of engineering in higher education. There were good reasons why physics and maths were made compulsory courses within the undergrad curriculum and others were offered as co-curricular courses and extra-curricular experiences. The plain truth widely acknowledged for decades is that physics and maths are the building blocks of all engineering and technology study programmes. That’s why best universities worldwide mandate the study of physics and mathematics for four or more semesters and also offer them as electives. These subjects cannot be mastered through self-learning or bridge courses. This assertion is endorsed by Dr.V.K.Saraswat, former director-general of the Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) and currently a full-time member of Niti Aayog, the Central government public policy thinktank. According to Saraswat this proposal will prove to be “disastrous” and “further deteriorate” standards of engineering education. Bridge courses are by definition remedial programmes and it’s highly unlikely that in a short duration of three-four weeks, a student will become sufficiently competent in mathematics and physics to avail the full benefit of a four-year engineering undergrad programme. Admittedly in the US and some Western countries, undergrad engineering programmes offer flexibility to students…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

South-east Asia: Higher ed spending spree

In the sort of formal ceremony beloved in this part of the world, VIPs posed on stage, holding shovels decorated with giant gold bows, to mark the launch of a University of Hong Kong (HKU) campus redevelopment project. The event held in January, could be viewed only online. However, the message was clear. Not even a pandemic is going to stop construction on a new home for the business school, sports facilities and residences. Over the next few years, HKU plans several other infrastructure projects and hundreds of new hires at the professorial level. Hong Kong’s flagship institution is not alone in engaging in what seems like a spending spree. Similar developments are happening at universities across the more affluent parts of East and South-east Asia, where new institutes, departments and degree programmes are sprouting. Much of this recent rise in spending comes from state coffers, as well as from government messaging to business that education should be a target for philanthropy. Mainland China’s higher education budget, for example, grew by 12 percent from 2019 to 2020. Meanwhile, companies with close state ties have responded to the siren call that they are expected to pitch in, especially in fields of study deemed politically or socially important. Vanke, a property conglomerate with links to the government, funded an eponymous public health school at Tsinghua University in spring 2020, right at the height of the country’s Covid outbreak. Japan may not have the same annual budget increases as mainland China, but it too is making a concerted effort towards new financing. The government announced this year that it aims to raise capital for an eye-popping ¥10 trillion (Rs.6 lakh crore) university research fund by 2022. If it succeeds, it will have a fund double the size of Harvard University’s endowment. Relatively smaller high-tech states are also trying to muscle in on the competition for top academics and students. Taiwan (pop.23 million) will spend an additional NT$83.6 billion (Rs.22,210 crore) over five years to develop universities, teaching and innovation, according to a 2019-20 report from the education ministry. The ‘Higher Education Sprout Project’ will also include incentives to offer “internationally competitive packages” for foreign academics, while Taiwan’s defence ministry will pitch into higher education institutions for the first time with an additional NT$5 billion programme for research. Growth is happening in developing nations, too. Malaysia, for example, has set aside an impressive 20 percent of its entire 2021 national budget for education. There are also signs of development in other parts of Asia, even if they have been harder hit by Covid. India has ambitions to double the size of its higher education sector under its new National Education Policy 2020. Meanwhile, its latest budget, announced in February, included Rs.50,000 crore for the first five years of a new National Research Foundation (NRF). While state universities are struggling financially, private institutions have grown rapidly despite the Covid crisis. One case in point is O.P. Jindal Global University, which welcomed 209 new faculty in…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

NCPCR asks NCERT to rectify 'anomalies' in teacher training manual

India: Pandemic jugaad charges

Indian universities are facing mounting criticism of their response to the country’s deadly coronavirus surge, with concern focusing on the fate of insecurely employed teaching staff. At the flagship University of Delhi, at least 35 lecturers have died from Covid-19 in the past month, according to the Delhi University Teachers’ Union. Alok Ranjan Pandey, the union’s vice president, says academics employed on an ad hoc basis are most at risk and calls for medical coverage to be extended to them. The union wants a hospital treating Covid patients to be opened on Delhi’s campus, and for the university to provide jobs for family members of the deceased, reports The Print. Apoorvanand, a Hindi professor at Delhi, wrote in Scroll that “Indian universities are pretending everything is normal, as the world around them is collapsing”. “The university authorities did not think about creating a Covid support centre on campus,” he told Times Higher Education. “It does have health centres, but they haven’t been upgraded to deal with the pandemic.” Prof. Apoorvanand is one of the faculty members who initiated a petition asking Delhi to set up a special fund for ad hoc staff. “In many ways, our universities have failed their teachers,” he says, adding that non-permanent staff “bear the major teaching load in the colleges, but they have no security and no benefits that come with the job”. “The situation in the state universities is even more pathetic. Teachers are dying, many of them very young,” he adds. Across India, there have been complaints of staff being dismissed suddenly, not being paid their salaries or being made to work through the summer to make up for lost time. Managers have come under fire for pressing on with online classes and exams with little flexibility on deadlines, despite a deep digital divide and a health emergency. “Many universities forced their faculty to be on the campus (to conduct) online classes without creating infrastructure for this. This meant travelling long distances in crowded buses or auto rickshaws unprotected,” says Prof. Apoorvanand. Also Read: Tamil Nadu: Pandemic advantage

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

United Kingdom: Brexit hits research

UK universities could struggle to fill key professorial and postdoctoral researcher roles amid growing frustration among European academics at Brexit-related bureaucracy and costs, Times Higher Education has been told. Since the end of the Brexit transition period in January, European Union nationals have been subject to the same immigration rules as people from the rest of the world, requiring them to apply for visas to work in the UK. While the cost for a three or five-year visa is just £55 for EU academics or researchers with a job offer under the fast-track Global Talent route, they and every family member are required to pay an annual health surcharge of £625, with family members charged £608 each in visa costs — presenting a total bill of £14,500 (Rs.14.96 lakh) for a family of four applying for a five-year visa. Those costs, as well as the effort required to fill out visa-related paperwork, have led several senior researchers based in EU universities to rebuff all attempts to bring them to the UK, explains Ed Pritchard, managing partner at Anderson Quigley, an executive search firm used by Russell Group universities to fill research professor roles in strategically important fields, such as artificial intelligence. “The reality is that, since Brexit, engagement with EU academics has dwindled,” says Pritchard, who adds that a recent search for a professor in machine learning on behalf of a UK university illustrates the problem facing UK science. “We made 100 approaches to suitable candidates, and 20 came back immediately to say Brexit was a reason that they wouldn’t consider the job,” he says. Several research leaders have told THE that since January, it has become harder to recruit suitable candidates from Europe for postdoc positions. According to Home Office figures, just 46 EU citizens applied under the Global Talent route in the first three months of 2021, excluding dependants, with 12 applications coming from Italy and eight from Germany. Some 55 applications were made from India, 77 from the US and Canada and 35 from Africa in that quarter, figures show. David Bogle, pro vice-provost and chair of UCL’s doctoral school, says that national figures on postdoc applications are difficult to obtain but he is unsurprised by these reports. “Nationally, we have seen a drop in job applications from the EU since the Brexit vote, (and) some academics have also left saying there is a feeling that they are not wanted here. I worry about this situation, as we need this top talent. It’s not so much the visa costs that deters applicants but the NHS (National Health Service) charges, which are not a one-off,” says Bogle. Also read: Much ado about Brexit

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

China: Lab leak theory revival

Just a month ago, the idea that Coronavirus came from an accidental lab leak in Wuhan was derided by much of the press as a fringe conspiracy theory and banned on Facebook as a form of misinformation. Now, a host of distinguished scientists including Anthony Fauci, the US White House’s chief medical adviser, credit the idea as plausible, if far from proven, and are calling for more openness from the lab at the centre of the theory, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Journalists who have rehabilitated the lab leak theory in recent months point the finger at The Lancet for allowing Peter Daszak, president of research funder EcoHealth Alliance, to squash notions of a lab leak early on — without disclosing that he had a significant potential conflict of interest. In February 2020, just as the Western world was waking up to the pandemic’s spread, Dr. Daszak, a British zoologist who has become a controversial central figure in the origins debate, organised and signed a letter — along with the who’s who of pandemic experts — in The Lancet to “strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin”. The letter has been mentioned in news stories more than 350 times so far. But nowhere did The Lancet disclose a critical fact — Daszak had funded and worked with WIV researchers for years to collect bat coronaviruses from the wild — in order to get ahead of them before they spread to humans — and led National Institutes of Health-funded work on, among other things, “virus infection experiments across a range of cell cultures from different species and humanised mice” to assess how they might spread. “If the SARS2 virus had indeed escaped from research he funded, Daszak would be potentially culpable. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to The Lancet’s readers,” says an investigation into the theory published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in early May. A spokeswoman for The Lancet says that Dr. Daszak “is one of the world’s leading experts on zoonotic diseases, including Coronaviruses, with experience of working in China” and that his task force would assess “all leading hypotheses” including “laboratory release”. Daszak did not respond to a request for comment. Rossana Segreto, a former researcher at the University of Innsbruck, says that in January The Lancet rejected a letter by her and colleagues calling for an “open scientific debate” about the origins of the virus. A spokeswoman for the journal says it does not comment on unpublished papers. Dr. Segreto also points a critical finger at Nature Medicine, which in March 2020 added an ‘editors’ note’ to a 2015 paper documenting the creation of a “chimeric virus” from a bat coronavirus in work done in collaboration with WIV. The note emphasises that there is “no evidence” Coronavirus was engineered. But this 2015 paper, critics argue, is exactly the kind of research that could lead to a risky new virus, and the paper itself has…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

German graduates: pandemic era degrees cloud

Germany: Online exams cheating spurt

Students are twice as likely to cheat in online exams following the rapid switch to digital assessment last summer, suggests a survey. A survey of 1,608 students in higher education institutions across Germany found that 61.4 percent said they had used “unallowed assistance and/or engaged in direct exchange with other students” during online exams over summer 2020. For on-site exams taken over the same period, 31.7 percent admitted to this sort of behaviour, according to a preprint published on PsyArXiv. “The overall results speak for the notion that the swift application of ad hoc online testing during 2020 has led to negative consequences for academic integrity,” says the paper. Universities were often forced to switch online in a matter of days and “maintaining academic integrity often became a secondary priority compared to maintaining some sort of instruction and managing limited resources”. The researchers found that 874 of survey respondents took only on-site exams during the 2020 summer semester; 385 took only online exams and 349 participants took them online and in-person. Stefan Janke, an educational psychologist at the University of Mannheim and one of the preprint’s authors, says “the pandemic and the lockdown came very suddenly. Students were confronted with a new kind of learning environment with which they were not familiar and would have felt additional pressures and stresses. Online examinations without additional safety procedures may have provided students with the sense that they can cheat without being detected.” Dr. Janke suggests that universities should consider more collaborative approaches to assessment, or allow open-book exams that permit Internet research. Such reforms will help students to develop skills that are highly valued in the workplace, he suggests. Also Read: 73% of students cheat during online exams: Survey Culturally compatible exams reform proposal

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Beneficial rankings

Welcome innovation I am a regular reader of EducationWorld and have been following the annual EW India Higher Education Rankings for the past three years. Congratulations to C fore and EW for conducting and publishing a comprehensive higher education institutions rankings survey, despite the huge disruption caused by the deadly Covid-19 pandemic. The newly introduced rankings of Top 10 institutes for most popular undergrad courses serve a useful purpose. Ranking colleges and universities according to subjects/degree programmes will help students to choose the best college for academic programmes of their choice. Piyali Baruah Kolkata Most positive development Re your cover story on the EW India Higher Education Rankings 2021-22 (EW June). I whole-heartedly agree with Prof. A.S. Seetharamu’s views that the emergence of globally benchmarked private universities is the most positive development in Indian education of the past decade. Most of them are promoted by philanthropists and corporates committed to putting Indian higher education on the global map. India’s top-ranked private varsities are world-class with superb campuses, highly qualified faculty and research focus. They could do much more if the government loosens the regulatory shackles imposed on them. Seema Bahai Gurugram Necessary tall order I really liked Dr. Krishna Kumar’s timely essay ‘Repair & recovery after Covid’ (EW June). The country’s school education system has hit an all time low after the pandemic. Millions of children have dropped out of school while others are learning sub-optimally online. Government needs to urgently chalk out a plan to intensively train teachers to conduct bridge and remedial classes, to enable children to make up for their learning loss. It’s a tall order that needs to be implemented with imagination and patience. Smita Mathur Delhi ECCE misconceptions The Tamil Nadu Education News report (EW June) highlighting the phenomenon of dwindling nursery and preschool admissions across the state, indicates that parents have fallen prey to false propaganda that youngest children will not suffer learning loss if they miss a year or two of professionally provided early childhood care and education (ECCE). Moreover there is a popular misconception that online schooling serves little purpose for preschool children. As an early childhood educator, I can vouch that formal ECCE is the most important stage of the learning continuum and critical for children to develop strong foundations for future learning. Research has proven beyond doubt that 80 percent of brain development occurs in the first eight years of life. Therefore as Sudha Malini, principal of RMK School says, an hour of curated digital learning per day is a much better option than no education at all. The minds of youngest children need to be active and stimulated in their early years. Lata Chimalapati on EMAIL Insular universities The Teacher-2-Teacher essay ‘Reviving India’s laggard universities’ by Dr. Amarendra Sahoo (EW June) was thought-provoking. He has rightly described India’s higher ed institutions as “insular”. They have made little effort to collaborate and interface with academics and universities in foreign countries. The government has also done little to incentivise colleges and…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

People

Green schools initiative: Sabuj Pathshala

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) Sabuj Pathshala (‘green school’), a Kolkata-based voluntary organisation, has established three lower primary (class I-IV) schools for underprivileged children of Muslim and tribal communities in the Malda, Jalpaiguri and Murshidabad districts of West Bengal. This NGO was promoted in 2006 by Kolkata-based journalists Milan Dutta and Syamantak Ghosh, together with software engineer Arijit Das and Prof. Tapasya Ghosh, in Suhanitola village, Malda district. Since then, a growing number of like-minded friends — Dr. Satyaki Halder; financial adviser Bibhas Dev; IT professionals Sulagna Chakraborty and Dwaipayan Sengupta; school teacher Deboleena Chakraborty; journalists Suchandra Ghatak and Abahan Dutta; life coach Chiradipta Sengupta and Dipanwita Karmakar, an M.Phil student — have joined this philanthropic initiative and are pitching in with supervising the operations of the school. Newspeg. A third Sabuj Pathshala was established in Murshidabad last September despite the raging Coronavirus pandemic, to bridge the learning gaps of 20 underprivileged children enrolled in local government schools. History. In 2005, recurrent floods in Malda district caused massive damage to life and property. While reporting on this disaster for Anandabazar and Star Ananda news publications, Dutta and Ghosh felt it incumbent upon them to provide assistance to little children whose lives were totally disrupted by the floods. “With the help of Kedar Mondal, a local activist, we built the first Sabuj Pathshala in Suhanitola, Malda, 15 years ago. But it was difficult to convince the local people, the majority of them orthodox Muslims, to send their children, especially girls, to school. It took many public awareness campaigns to persuade parents to agree to our even building the school,” recalls Ghosh, a Presidency College alum, who started his career as a journalist with Star Ananda and currently works in the Delhi bureau of Deutsche Welle, a German government-funded media company. Direct talk. “The common curriculum of Sabuj Pathshala schools has been specially designed to encourage creativity, critical thinking and life skills development. It’s a balanced mix of academics and poetry, theatre, and art and crafts. People from diverse walks of life including professors, doctors, and theatre personalities often visit our three schools to widen the horizons of children. After they complete class IV, we facilitate their admission into local government schools while continuing to provide learning support,” says Milan Dutta, a former journalist with Anandabazar Patrika. Future plans. Currently, the annual expenditure of Rs.1.5 lakh is borne by the 13-member team with sporadic contributions from friends. The team is planning to promote the fourth Sabuj Pathshala school in Tipligheri, Sagar Island, 100 km south of Kolkata. “Our objective is to take Sabuj Pathshalas to the most backward villages of West Bengal, and also pioneer a model school with active community participation and ownership,” says Ghosh. Wind beneath your wings! Also Read: NGO’s take online teaching to rural children

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

People

TIME high flyer: Manek Daruvala

Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru) Manek Daruvala is the Hyderabad-based co-founder of test prep company TIME (Triumphant Institution of Management Education) Pvt. Ltd (estb. 1992). With over 40 IIT/IIM graduates in its core team, TIME offers school and college-leavers rigorous coaching to write competitive entrance exams for admission into professional study programmes and employment in banks and corporates. Currently, the company has 200 full-time teachers on its muster rolls providing test prep education in 200 centres in 100 urban habitats. Thus far, TIME has prepped 2 million school and college-leavers. Newspeg. In July last year (2020), TIME tied up with the Telangana Social Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society, aka Gurukulam, an initiative of the Telangana state government which manages 1,000 social welfare residential schools/colleges for students from underprivileged households. Under terms of the agreement, every year TIME will mentor and prepare 30 Gurukulam students for CAT (Common Admission Test), the qualifying exam for admission into the IIMs and other B-schools. History. A science and business management alum of Bombay University and IIM-Ahmedabad, Daruvala acquired five years of valuable experience in Godrej and Boyce Mfg Co, Mumbai and VJ Info Systems Ltd, Hyderabad before going solo in 1992. “While working in Godrej, I mentored MBA aspirants on weekends. That was the time when together with some friends I ideated TIME. I moved to Hyderabad as head of education and training at VJ Info Systems Ltd and quit corporate life 18 months later to promote TIME together with my partners Viswanath Pillutla and Pramod Kumar with a modest initial investment of Rs.24,000,” recalls Daruvala. Direct talk. “I believe the key to our success is our passion for teaching and our well-researched pedagogies and content. Students write our customised mock tests for several weeks in the run-up to final exams. This is not empty boasting. Of the 5,000 graduates admitted into the IIMs last year, 2,600 were from TIME. Our success rate is equally good for GMAT (Graduate Management Aptitude Test) and Bank Probationary Officers exams,” claims Daruvala. Tuition fees (full programme): Rs.5,000-70,000 Future plans. “As we go forward, we will continue to invest in manpower and technology to further improve our services. By 2024, we expect to add 200 more TIME centres in as many tier II and III cities countrywide as possible,” says this irrepressible edupreneur.

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

People

Job interviews mentor: Sandeep Jain

Autar Nehru (Delhi) Sandeep Jain is the Noida-based founder-CEO of geeksforgeeks.org, a website popular with computer science students and IT (information technology) professionals. Launched in 2015, it offers aid and advice to engineering students preparing for job interviews, and useful content and solutions for IT problems and glitches. Newspeg. Recently, the website — awarded a global Internet engagement ranking of 285 by Alexa — expanded its menu to provide online study courses in computer science/IT. History. A computer sciences graduate of the BSA College of Engineering and Technology, Mathura (UP), Jain was “forced to enroll” for a Masters at IIT-Roorkee because he didn’t have a job offer. However it was a totally different experience at IIT-Roorkee. After graduating with a Masters in computer science, Jain had a multiplicity of job offers and chose to sign up with the Hyderabad-based DE Shaw & Co, a portfolio and quantitative investment firm with sophisticated software development and research capabilities. “As I started my first job, I also began blogging about my experience as a student and in particular about my intense preparation and strategies for the campus interview. Gradually several other students and IT professionals began blogging on my website geeksforgeeks.org, sharing their own institutional admission and job interview experiences,” recalls Jain. After two years in DE Shaw, Jain forayed into academia and served as an assistant professor at JIIT (Jaypee Institute of Information Technology), Noida. Meanwhile, geeksforgeeks.org traffic was growing exponentially and generating substantial ad revenue. In 2015, when the revenue from his website exceeded his salary, he quit the academy to promote the Noida-based Sanchhaya Education Pvt. Ltd, the parent company of geeksforgeeks.org. Direct talk. “There is a huge gap between what is taught in engineering colleges and industry requirements, and the prospect of job interview gives nightmares to students. Moreover with a rising number of working professionals anxious to upgrade and grasp new IT and software knowledge, we provide courses to upskill them,” says Jain. Currently Sanchhaya Education has a headcount of 150. Until 2019, the company’s primary revenue source was advertising, but last year after the company introduced its online study programmes, a new revenue stream has started. “Our first online course had a capacity of 50 persons. But we were surprised that within two minutes of opening for admission, 122 working professionals had registered on our payment gateway. Since then, the number of executive education courses has increased to 40 and with the pandemic situation, we expect demand to grow further,” says Jain. Future plans. With geeksforgeeks online courses becoming increasingly popular, the demand for its graduates is also rising. “We are getting a lot of traffic from IT companies interested in hiring our students. This is likely to become another big revenue source. These developments have encouraged us to research the K-12 space and start a YouTube channel providing IT content and coding lessons,” says Jain. Unstoppable! Also Read: “History of pandemics not taught in our schools, nor surprisingly in medical colleges”

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

People

Online ed innovators: Natasha Jain and Sonia Agarwal Bajaj

Dipta Joshi (Mumbai) Delhi-based Natasha Jain and Agra-based Sonia Agarwal Bajaj are co-founders of a new e-learning and skills development platform Whiz League (estb.2021). Each course provides subscribers invaluable insights from industry leaders by way of pre-recorded lectures. Newspeg. Since it was launched in April, this app has been downloaded by 15,000 subscribers. Whiz League currently offers four courses — hospitality, culinary arts, films and music. The programme leaders are: master chef Ranveer Brar, Bollywood casting director Mukesh Chhabra, ace restaurateur Priyank Sukhija and singer Guru Randhawa (Rs.800 per course). History. Equipped with a Master’s degree in industrial engineering from the blue-chip Stanford University, Natasha Jain began her career launching a fin-tech start-up Ruplee in 2014, which was acquired by another online payment platform Paylo in 2016. Following that, she launched Bent Chair (2016) and a restaurant Plum for which she was awarded the Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award (2019) by BBC Good Food. Sonia Agarwal Bajaj, a business sciences graduate of Babson College, USA, began her career as an entrepreneur in 2012 with the launch of Whitenife, one of the largest marketplaces for ethical gifting and fashion. In 2013, she was acknowledged as one of the Top 50 most innovative student entrepreneurs worldwide by Kairos Society, a US-based student-run not-for-profit foundation. In 2016, she promoted the Little Chipper International Preschool (2018) in Agra. This pre-primary was awarded #1 rank under the parameter of Outstanding Leadership in the EducationWorld Grand Jury India Preschool Rankings 2020-21. Direct talk. “The size of the global online education market is expected to grow to US $13 billion (Rs.96,378 crore) in 2026. Several studies indicate that 65 percent of managers and professionals in industry worldwide want to upskill because they are aware that they need to adapt to new technologies and emerging business management complexities,” says Jain. Adds Bajaj: “Professionals in education and allied vocations need to deeply ponder how we are preparing our children for the future. In Whiz League, we are equipping them with first-hand knowledge about careers and professions that are not on the radar of India’s higher education institutions.” Future plans. This year, the platform intends to expand the number of courses to ten. Moreover, it has partnered with Mumbai-based True School of Music (TSM) and is also reaching out to more schools and universities to provide supplementary education. Self-financed thus far, Jain and Bajaj are parleying with investors to infuse additional capital into the enterprise to enable them to go national. Wind in your sails!

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

People

Tinkering labs provider: Sarang Gangan

Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru) Sarang Gangan is founder-CEO of the Gurugram-based Eduphoria Solutions LLP (estb.2017, headcount: 10), an edtech start-up that offers primary-secondary schools a bouquet of solutions to promote hands-on STEM learning and enhance quality and disseminate science and tech education countrywide. Currently, the company provides end-to-end solutions for installing customised innovation and tinkering labs including multi-phased teacher training, industrial visits and technical support and maintenance, in primary-secondary schools. Thus far, Eduphoria has impacted over 150,000 students in 150 private and public schools in ten states countrywide. Newspeg. To support government think-tank NITI Aayog’s Atal Tinkering Labs (ATLs) initiative to develop a national culture of STEM innovation, Eduphoria has established over 25 ATLs in schools in six states during the past six months. “NITI Aayog awards eligible schools a grant of Rs.12 lakh of which Rs.7 lakh is earmarked for lab installation and Rs.5 lakh for school infrastructure. That’s where we come in,” explains Gangan. History. An engineering and business management alumnus of the Bhilai Institute of Technology, Durg, and Institute of Management, Development and Research, Pune, Sarang Gangan acquired 14 years of industry experience after which in 2017, he decided to invest his personal savings (Rs.5 lakh) to promote Eduphoria and showcase his entrepreneurial skills. Direct talk. ”I was raised in the Central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh and schooled in Narsinghpur, a small town with unimaginably poor quality teaching in the government school. Eduphoria was born out of the need to substantially improve the quality of education in tier-II-III cities and towns by leveraging new-age technologies and introducing comprehensive STEM learning programmes. NITI Aayog’s ATL initiative fits in beautifully with our mission to foster curiosity, creativity and imagination in young minds,” says Sarang Gangan. Future plans. Encouraged by steady business revenue growth even in the turbulent pandemic year, Gangan has ambitious future plans. “Bihar and Jharkhand are going to be our next thrust areas. Recently we’ve finalised the design of a DIY science kit. This year, we intend to reach 250 schools and impact at least half a million students,” he enthuses. Fair winds!

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

People

Wizenoze founder: Diane Janknegt

Dipta Joshi (Mumbai) Diane Janknegt is CEO and co-founder of the Amsterdam-based Wizenoze B.V. (estb. 2013), an edtech company which offers learners access to education content and resources on the Internet commensurate with their age and reading levels. During the past eight years since its incorporation, the company’s products — Wizeup and Web for Classrooms — have been integrated with learning management systems (LMS) of major edtech companies in the Middle East (Classera), UK (Pearson Education) and Netherlands (Online Klas). Thus far, Wizenoze has favourably impacted 2 million students around the world. Newspeg. In February, the company made its India debut with inauguration of its first Asia office in New Delhi. On the occasion, Wizenoze announced that its search engine is now mapped with the syllabus of the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). “Wizenoze’s AI (artificial intelligence)-driven algorithms aggregate, verify and categorise content and information available on the Internet. They fish the Internet’s vast ocean of information and identify content suited to every student’s reading level,” explains Janknegt. History. An alumna of the Public University of Utrecht, Netherlands, Janknegt has over 20 years of experience in general management, business development, sales and marketing. She began her career as one of the first Microsoft employees in the Netherlands and after a distinguished career of 15 years stepped down as director OEM in 2012. A chance meeting with Theo Huibers, a computer science professor at the University of Twente, Netherlands, presented her an opportunity to transform into an entrepreneur. Inspired by a European Commission-funded report that highlighted challenges children face in finding relevant learning material on the Internet, Janknegt and Huibers teamed up to promote Wizenoze eight years ago. Direct talk. “For most Indian schools, the move to online education after the pandemic is a first-time experience, and most teachers and students are unable to find online content and resources suited to their syllabuses and curriculums. We are confident that our digital platform will provide students easy access to age-appropriate, student-friendly supplementary content to enhance their learning outcomes,” says Janknegt. Future plans. Currently, the Wizenoze team is working on introducing curated learning programmes to meet the requirements of skills and competency-based education proposed by the new National Education Policy 2020. Swagatam!

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Divine justice

Public Memory is short and television memory even shorter, not more than a 24-hour news cycle. On June 14, few of India’s 403 news television channels remembered that it was the first death anniversary of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput. This promising young movie star’s death, initially reported as suicide, transformed into a CBI murder investigation following relentless media coverage. All of June-July last year, daily prime time news coverage on the idiot box was dominated by his alleged murder, with hysterical news anchors pinning the blame on the late actor’s girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty. A year later, Arnab Goswami, editor-in-chief of the Republic TV news channel who conducted a detailed media trial against Chakraborty and Bollywood, was conspicuously absent from his prosecutorial chair on Rajput’s first death anniversary. Now, all this hullabaloo has come to naught. Chakraborty is out on bail even as the CBI investigation has reached a dead end with the bureau having failed to find any evidence to establish Rajput’s death as a homicide. However, since last year’s media trial Chakraborty’s movie career and reputation are in tatters. Nevertheless, there is some schadenfreude for Chakraborty and Bollywood. Times Now, one of the TV channels at the forefront of the Rajput trial by media, has had to eat humble pie. After film industry associations and 34 producers sued the channel for “irresponsible reporting”, this channel issued a statement on June 22 that it will not air any collectively defamatory material on Bollywood. And Goswami, recently chargesheeted by the Mumbai Police for rigging television viewership surveys in favour of Republic TV, has returned to anchor its prime time 9 o’ clock broadcast after a long absence. But drawn and almost polite, he is evidently a chastened individual. And his claims that Republic TV is the country’s #1 English language news channel have a hollow ring. Perhaps there is divine justice, after all.

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Shattering stereotypes

The phenomenal popularity of the French television series Lupin produced by Netflix, which chalked up a viewership of 76 million in the first quarter of this year, is arguably an inflection point in race relations around the world. In most European countries, including France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain and Denmark, Lupin topped the popularity charts for several weeks and was the #1 show in Canada, Brazil, Argentina and South Africa. In the US too, Lupin became the first French serial to enter the Top 10 list, and rose to #1. Significantly it also topped India Today’s chart of the most popular English language TV series for several weeks. The factor behind the global success of Lupin is certainly not its wafer thin plot, but the casting of Omar Sy as Assane Diop. Diop is an avid admirer of gentleman thief and master of disguise Arsenne Lupin, a fictional character created in 1905 by French writer Maurice Leblanc who wrote 17 novels and 39 novellas detailing the adventures of this insouciant hero who made wicked establishment grandees pay for their sins, and won fair ladies while always remaining two steps ahead of the law. The social significance of the runaway success of Lupin is that unlike black heroes in Hollywood and Western cinema of yesteryear — a dark-skinned Indian, let alone an African hero, is beyond the imagination of the braindead badshahs of Bollywood and its regional clones — who were black-skinned but endowed with aquiline Caucasian features, Omar Sy is uncompromisingly African — large size, pronounced nose and lips, the works. However his social confidence and total lack of racial self-consciousness is extraordinary. And the fact that this television serial has become a global hit, is proof of shattering stereotypes, receding racism and acceptance of the diversity of humankind. But as usual this awareness that handsome is that handsome does, is yet to dawn on subcontinentals still mired in atavistic caste, communal and colour prejudices. Truth is if one can’t appreciate a Picasso, the fault is not of the artist.

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Daly’s rude rajah

Despite Official claims to the contrary, for ease of doing business or conducting an honest enterprise, post-independence India is one of the world’s most difficult countries. Even running an education institution which by definition is in the public interest, is a very difficult vocation. Under Indian beggar-thy-neighbour socialism, private school and college promoters and managements are subject to dozens of rigorous laws, rules and regulations legislated to prevent them — horror of horrors — making a profit, anathema in the socialist lexicon. One would have thought that with the country’s 1.2 million government schools ruined by interfering politicians and bureaucrats, the great Indian middle class would be grateful for the initiatives of philanthropists, religious missionaries and edupreneurs who have established 450,000 pre-primary to class XII schools and higher education institutions, some of them globally respected. On the contrary, India’s middle class parents community has also emerged as a hostile community given to routinely harassing private education providers for suspicion of “profiteering”. Despite schools being locked down for over 15 months and having suffered huge financial loss for providing, or attempting to provide, online education while also paying teachers and staff, most parents are far from grateful. This hard reality was brought to light recently by an audio recording of a parent of the highly ranked Daly College, Indore, roundly abusing a housemaster for his temerity to call him and remind him that his son’s term fees were overdue, which went viral on social media. That the parent, one Hemendra Singh Dhar, a self-proclaimed royal who threatened the housemaster in the coarsest language for “interrupting his breakfast”, is an old boy of the school is a bad advertisement for Daly College (estb. 1882), in which the board of governors is reportedly divided on every issue. Especially on ways and means to spend the school’s Rs.70 crore endowment. Indeed radix malorum cupiditas est.

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Dr. Krati Jain

Aditi Maheshwari (Bhopal) Dr. Krati Jain (25) has the unique distinction of becoming the first woman medical graduate of the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial (MGM) Medical College, Indore (estb.1878) to win 13 gold medals for outstanding performance in the MBBS final exam. The medals and awards were conferred on her in mid-February this year at an in-person special convocation of the Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya, Indore, the parent affiliating university of MGM. The elder of two children of Anil Jain, a businessman, and homemaker Seema, Krati is elated with the encomiums. “Even though the pandemic forced me to wait longer for the convocation ceremony, it was worth the wait. I attribute this achievement to sustained study discipline encouraged by parental and college support,” she says. Inspired by the late Dr. Babita Singh, her class IX biology teacher at St. Mary’s Convent School, Ujjain, Krati realised early that medicine was her preferred career path. “I started preparing for NEET-UG in class XI. Among 7 lakh students who wrote the exam, I was ranked #162 nationally and #7 in Madhya Pradesh,” recalls this academic achiever, currently enrolled in a radiology postgraduate study programme at the city’s Sri Aurobindo Institute of Medical Sciences (SAIMS). Following a state government diktat directing deployment of final year medical undergrads, nurses and postgrads on Covid duty, Krati is currently serving at SAIMS’ red zone Covid centre. “As qualified doctors, we have a responsibility towards all our patients. But since the outbreak of the pandemic and subsequent shutdown of educational institutions countrywide, medical students have missed over a year of internship. Instead we have been allowed to treat critical Covid patients under supervision of experienced medical officers,” says this committed medico. Krati has set her mind on mastering the skills of radiodiagnosis and studying its impact on medical practice. “I believe many more lives can be saved every year through accurate diagnosis and treatment. That is my life’s ambition,” says this dedicated young medico with her heart in the right place.

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Anjali Surana

Paromita Sengupta, Bengaluru A class XII student of Kolkata’s top-ranked Cambridge International (UK) and International Baccalaureate (Geneva)-affiliated Calcutta International School, Anjali Surana (18) is national winner of the 11th Pramerica Spirit of Community Awards (PSCA) 2021. This teen social activist was presented a gold medallion, certificate of excellence and a cash prize of Rs.350,000 for promoting Fullstopp, a non-profit NGO whose prime objective is to educate society about the universality of women’s menstruation cycles and to “banish persistent myths and superstitions associated with this perfectly natural phenomenon experienced by half of humankind”. Last year, a UK charity acknowledged Fullstopp’s initiatives and awarded Anjali the prestigious Diana Award 2020. The elder of two children of businessman Sidharth Surana, and homemaker Namrata, Anjali is delighted that Fullstopp campaigns to eliminate the shame and stigma associated with menstruation have been acknowledged by PSCA. “Fullstopp is a non-profit led by 100 youth volunteers working to improve awareness, access, and advocacy efforts in the menstrual health and hygiene space. We are busting myths, allowing underprivileged women to make the switch from rags to eco-friendly sanitary products through distribution drives, and online and offline campaigns to foster healthy attitudes towards menstrual periods. Thus far, we have impacted 6,000-plus women, and distributed over 1 million women friendly products to achieve a period positive world,” she says. Tirelessly helping and enabling “people in need anywhere and everywhere”, this young activist was heavily engaged with a relief campaign to provide rations to 1,000 households affected by Cyclone Amphan, which swept eastern India in May 2020, and the ‘Unite for Erudite’ campaign to provide 640 hours of online learning for children during the pandemic. Currently focused on her class XII online A level exams, Anjali is clear about her future career path. “My goal is to develop business management skills and use them in causes of social justice,” says this indefatigable activist who is headed to Stanford University, USA to pursue an undergrad degree in economics and communication studies this fall.

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Why India’s Schools Should Reopen Right Now

The balance between children’s safety against the Covid-19 pandemic and their right to protect their future livelihoods needs to be restored. The national interest demands no more time is lost in restarting India’s long shuttered schools with adequate safety protocols, writes Dilip Thakore Loss of lives and livelihoods has been the focus of official and media attention for the past 15 months since the deadly novel Coronavirus began to spread countrywide in March 2020. However beyond official declarations and media headlines, 21st century India’s already ramshackle education system that has long under-served the world’s largest child and youth community estimated at a massive 500 million, has suffered further damage. Now, even as the national drive to vaccinate 1.3 billion citizens against the malignant virus is gathering momentum and daily infections and fatalities have declined from a peak of 412,000 and 3,980 on May 6 to 48,786 and 1,005 currently, this is an appropriate time to measure the extent of damage to the education system from preschool to Ph D, and strategise ways and means to repair it. Thus far, the Union and state governments have availed the soft option of a comprehensive lockdown of all campuses and classrooms of over 2 million preschools (including 1.6 million government anganwadi centres); 1.5 million primary-secondaries (including 450,000 private schools) with an aggregate enrollment of 260 million children; and 39,931 undergrad colleges and 979 universities with a total enrolment of 39.4 million youth, for over 15 months. The damage suffered by the world’s largest child and youth population by way of loss of learning during the past 56 weeks — the longest shutdown of education institutions worldwide — has not been adequately assessed. According to a detailed Unesco study titled Education from Disruption to Discovery (2021), the prolonged closure of primary-secondary schools in India of 56 weeks and counting, is in sharp contrast to Russia’s 13 weeks, China’s 27, UK 27, France 12, South Africa 37 and Tanzania 15. Only the US (56 weeks) and Brazil (53) have shut their schools for as long. However, it is pertinent to note that the US and European countries are far ahead of India in terms of children’s access to Internet connectivity and digital learning devices. According to a recent study conducted by the India office of Unicef (School Closures in the Context of Covid, 2021), 42 percent children in the 5-13 age group in six states surveyed for the study, haven’t accessed any remote learning content in the year after schools closed in March 2020. Worse, 36 percent of girls and 33 percent boys in the age group 14-18 didn’t access remote learning content either. Indeed, because of continuous under-investment in public education for over six decades after independence, the digital divide between rich and poor, urban and rural is very wide and becoming wider. According to a report in the Economic Times (June 24), official data of the Union education ministry indicates that 70 percent of children in six major states of the Indian Union…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

TN focuses on employability, skilling youth, says CM

Tamil Nadu: Pandemic advantage

Shivani Chaturvedi, Chennai Since it was re-elected to office after a hiatus of ten years, the new Dravida Munnetra Kazhagan (DMK) government led by M.K. Stalin, son of M. Karunanidhi, one of the founders of the party (estb.1949) which initiated uninterrupted rule of Dravidian political parties with close links to popular Tamil cinema way back in 1967, has made an impressive start to his first innings as chief minister. One of Stalin’s first big decisions was to appoint a high-powered Economic Advisory Council (EAC) comprising globally respected Indian diaspora economists including Nobel laureate Esther Duflo; Dr. Raghuram Rajan (Booth School of Business, University of Chicago and former RBI governor); Arvind Subramaniam (former chief economic adviser to the Central government) and Jean Dreze (Delhi School of Economics) to aid and advise the new DMK government to place the state’s economy back on track. In the education space heavily disrupted by the Covid pandemic, an initiative to make transfer certificates (TCs) optional for children switching schools has given a huge boost to languishing government schools. Rules framed by the state government over a decade ago under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, required students to produce a TC issued by the transferor school prior to the transferee school admitting them. This was acceptance of a convention that all fees and dues of the transferor school had been cleared. But under the new directive issued on June 22 to all schools, the state’s education ministry stated that by using the Aadhar card number of a student, his/her details could be accessed from the Educational Management Information System (EMIS), a common online platform connecting schools, teachers and students, by the transferee school. However, this directive is limited to students transferring from private to government and government-aided schools. Students switching from one private school to another still need to produce TCs. As a result, the state has witnessed an unusual reverse migration of students from fee levying private to free-of- charge government schools because the Covid pandemic has resulted in widespread job and income losses for parents statewide. Currently, 5 million students are enrolled in Tamil Nadu’s 12,419 private schools of which 10,000 are affordably priced budget private school (BPS). The new directive making TCs optional has tilted the playing field in favour of Tamil Nadu’s 37,217 government and 8,403 government-aided schools which were hitherto experiencing a continuous exodus to private, especially budget private schools. During the past year, nearly 300 of my 1,200 students have switched to government-run schools, because their parents have experienced Covid-related financial difficulties. Moreover, fees for the academic years 2019-20 and 2020-21 are overdue as most parents haven’t paid their children’s fees. And this year, they are shifting their wards to government schools,” says Dennison, founder of Infant Jesus Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Kalpakkam. K. Radha, founder-principal of the Little Oxford Matric Higher Secondary School, Chennai, affiliated with the Tamil Nadu Board of Secondary Education, says that with the state government’s recent announcement that…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Maharashtra: Fees regulation imbroglio

Dipta Joshi, Maharashtra Despite a May 3 judgement of the Supreme Court in Indian School Jodhpur & Ors vs. State Government of Rajasthan in which the apex court ruled that the right to determine private school fees is of “management alone,” on June 7, the Maharashtra coalition government announced the formation of five Divisional Fee Regulatory Committees (DFRCs) for Mumbai, Pune, Nashik, Nagpur and Aurangabad districts. Another three divisional committees and an appellate committee to hear school fees-related disputes are on the cards. DFRCs have been established under provisions of the Maharashtra Educational Institutions (Regulation of Fee) Act, 2011. Justifying this initiative, Maharashtra’s education minister Varsha Gaikwad tweeted that “discouraging commercialisation and profiteering in the education sector” is the prime objective of establishing DFRCs state- wide, and advised “parents aggrieved by unjust school fee hikes to look no further.” Although parents contract to pay fees stipulated by private school managements at the time of admission of their children, in a society which has little respect for contracts, many of them subsequently challenge school fees and annual fee increases necessary to adjust for inflation. Several Supreme Court judgements of the 1970s, the heyday of Indian socialism when the apex court was packed with left and communist judges, prohibited “commercialisation of education”. Since then, these judgements have provoked a flood of litigation in the country’s choked courts. The hostility of parents’ communities towards the managements of private schools has increased over the past 15 months during which they have been ordered to shut down because of the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. A majority of parents across the state have refused to pay full fees for their children attending online classes provided by private schools. In June 2020, the Bombay high court stayed a state government order of May 8, 2020 directing private schools to refrain from increasing fees for 2020-21 and continue charging fee as per the previous academic year. The court was responding to a petition filed by several representative associations of private school owners who argued the government has no right to directly regulate fees of private schools under the MEI (Fees Regulation) Act 2011. The Act mandates that in private schools, tuition and other fees should be approved by Parent-Teacher Association executive committees (PTA-ECs) constituted under the Act. If fees proposed by the management are not approved by the PTA EC, school managements are permitted to appeal to DFRCs. In July 2017, the Bombay high court affirmed that “parents disgruntled about school fees cannot approach DFRC”. However on the court’s order, the government constituted an 11-member committee under the chairmanship of educationist V.G. Palshikar, which recommended changes to allow parents to appeal to DFRC in some circumstances. The panel also recommended that school managements be allowed a 15 percent fee hike every two years and the right to appeal to DFRC, if the hike is not approved by the school’s PTA EC. In 2018, however, the state’s then ruling BJP-Shiv Sena government (voted to power in October 2014)…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Delhi govt to work on class-wise reduction of syllabus under Mission Buniyad

Performance grading index politics

Autar Nehru, Delhi The second edition of the Performance Grading Index (PGI) 2019-20 whose release was “approved” by Union education minister Dr. Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank on June 6, has generated a political controversy. Designed by the department of school education and literacy of the Union education ministry and first published last year, the purpose of the annual PGI is to “catalyse transformational change in the field of school education,” i.e, to improve the quality of K-12 education. Launched in 2018, PGI ranks states for quality of school education provided based on data collected from the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE), NCERT’s National Achievement Survey (NAS), Mid-Day Meal website, Public Financial Management System (PFMS) and the information uploaded by the states and Union territories on shagunPortalEL. However, PGI doesn’t rank states, but grades them by levels I-VII. Best performing states with scores between 951 and 1,000 points are graded Level I, Level II is for scores from 901-950 and the lowest grades for states awarded 0-550 points. In the latest PGI 2019-20, Punjab is awarded a total score of 929 (out of 1,000) with 126/180 in learning outcomes & quality; 79/80 for access, 150/150 for infrastructure & facilities, 228/230 under equity, and 346/360 for governance processes. It is followed by Chandigarh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andaman and Nicobar. Delhi is in level III with a total score of 898. Delhi’s demotion to level III and #6 national rank has made the state’s deputy chief and education minister, Manish Sisodia, see red. At a press conference convened on June 12, he described Punjab’s top score as prime minister Narendra Modi’s “gift” to Punjab chief minister Capt. Amarinder Singh. According to Sisodia, there’s a secret pact between Modi and Capt. Singh to help the latter win the Punjab legislative assembly elections scheduled for early 2022. “Modiji has stamped the work of Captain (Amarinder Singh) of the past five years as #1 in the country while ignoring the fact that thousands of government schools (in the state) have shut or have been handed over to the private sector and people are troubled by the working of government schools in the state,” said Sisodia. The back story behind Sisodia’s ire is that since the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) first won the Delhi state assembly election in 2015 and swept the 2020 assembly election again despite the BJP wave in General Election 2019, reform of the national capital’s 1,051 public schools has been a major plank of AAP’s election campaigns. In the party’s 2020 campaign and subsequently, AAP leaders have been show-casing Delhi’s government schools as being as good in terms of infrastructure, co-curricular and sports education, and student learning outcomes as top-ranked private schools. Moreover, for several years Delhi state’s AAP government has been allocating 25 percent of its annual budget to education which it claims is the highest of any state countrywide. In the circumstances, its #6 ranking in PGI 2019-20 and its score of 898 cf. Punjab’s 929 smells of manipulation. The…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

How to prepare for post-pandemic education?

– Professor Arjya B. Majumdar, Dean, Admissions & Outreach, O.P. Jindal Global University

More than a year after the outbreak of the pandemic, nearly half of the students worldwide remain affected by intermittent school closures, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The pandemic has severely disrupted lives of university teachers and […]

Culturally compatible exams reform proposal

Explosive grades inflation has jeopardised the credibility of school board exams. Therefore the criterion referenced assessment (CRA) system is receiving new traction, says Venunadhan Pillai In many countries around the world including India, examination boards have cancelled or postponed exams because of the Covid-19 pandemic. This decision has not been taken lightly. Public board exam scores are the most important determinant for undergrad college and university admission. Therefore with exams cancelled for the pandemic years, examination boards have been compelled to devise alternative methodologies to measure students’ learning outcomes. In the pandemic year 2019-20, national boards unable to conduct their full set of exams, permitted managements of affiliated schools to use their judgement to award grades/marks to school-leaving class X and XII students. Some schools acted ethically and awarded grades/marks based on the historical progress of students. However, not a few availed the opportunity to award highly inflated marks to their students. The resultant grades inflation has further jeopardised the suspect credibility of school exam boards. Therefore, the criterion-referenced assessment (CRA) system proposed by American educators Robert Glaser (1963) and Popham and Husek (1969) who devised this alternative assessment system to measure academic learning outcomes, is receiving new traction. According to University of California academics, “criterion-referenced assessment is the process of evaluating learning outcomes of students against a set of pre-specified qualities or criteria, without reference to the achievement of others”. Under this methodology, students are expected to cross specified learning milestones without comparison with others in their cohort. On the other hand, the norm-referenced assessment system measures the performance of every student relative to others writing the same test. Before 1835 when British educationist Lord Macaulay wrote his famous ‘minute on Indian education’ and uprooted “the beautiful tree” of India’s ancient gurukul school education system, although it was not described as such, the CRA system was normative in primary-secondary education in the subcontinent. The gurukuls prescribed a set of criteria, and attainment of these criteria resulted in the end of gurukul life. Significantly, the performance of students was unrelated to other students. The system didn’t rank students because the gurukul was not competitive but designed to prepare children to live their lives according to the four ashramas of the dharma concept, i.e, develop the physical, spiritual, aesthetic and intellectual capabilities of children combined with high sense of civic duty which students would devotedly carry back to their families and communities. This tried, tested and proven school education system flourished until 1813 when the East India Company was forced by London to accept the responsibility for education in its territories as a precondition of renewal of its charter. Following Macaulay’s minute, governance of the subcontinent was subsequently taken over by the Crown in 1857, and the norm-referenced assessment system of standardised tests which compared students’ performance interse was introduced. This learning outcomes-based assessment system prevailed, as the primary purpose of education became filtration due to limited seats in higher education and employment after graduation. It’s instructive to note that as…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Chitkara Design School

Gopal Meena, Vice President – Strategic Initiatives, Dean – Department of UX. Chitkara Design School

Chitkara Design School believes in a unique vision that combines the creative legacy of the past with innovation that looks towards the future.

Being one of the new and promising design schools in India, Chitkara Design School offers students a wide range […]

JAGSoM launches BBA program

Learn instruments, be a vocalist, paint on a canvas, trek on the mountains and still be Industry 4.0 professional

AACSB-accredited and globally ranked Jagdish Sheth School of Management (JAGSoM) has launched a unique BBA program at Vijaybhoomi University near Mumbai. Globally acclaimed academics Padma Bhushan Prof. Jagdish Sheth (Chairman, JAGSoM) and Prof. A Parasuraman (Pro-chancellor, Vijaybhoomi […]

Fliplearn homework transformation system for schools and teachers

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

The […]

Education India to invest 20 crores in school acquisition module in next two years

Dr Manjeet Jain is founder of Education India, born and brought up in Mount Abu. Doctorate In English Literature from USA, served in army as captain after volunteer retirement opted education career as passion. Has been awarded with various recognition and held key designation in various government, semi government and private bodies. He is well known for expressing his views fearlessly towards education system his more than 100 articles published featured in various print media like Times of India, Express, The Hindu and is a frequent blogger for the platforms like Speaking Tree etc. He also holds the privilege of being a principal of President Awardee School in 2016. At present taking care of all together 200 plus schools and has been featured in Forbes India Magazine in November 2020 Edition. His key mantra in life is “ Live the Life to the Lees”. Education India – India’s academic partner, one of the fastest growing startups in the field of education, is set to invest rupees 20 crores in School Acquisition Module. The company is planning to have more than 300 schools on lease module till 2023. Education India having corporate office at Belagavi, Karnataka has already acquired nearby 100 schools in the recent past. The startup began its functioning in 2015 and has reached to the milestone without raising any fund. The vision of the company is quite simple to feast quality education to remote locations of India with the combination of technology and trained human resources. Education India is involved in thoughtful research in school education and as a result the company has developed more than 156 modules for every aspect of schooling like nomadic SOPs for vertical admission and revenue growth or quadrilateral module for academic excellence. Education India has a team of 100 plus senior academicians who are dedicated to bring the revolution in school education sector with various innovative ideas and creative teaching methodologies with edge of technology. Even the company has developed its own digital platform “Edubuddy” which has a complete solution for students, parents, teachers and school management. In the recent developments EI has signed an MOU with Network 18 [A RIL Company] for technical collaboration as well as has exchanged an LOU with Education Department of Queensland – Australia for various academic programme. Education India has already made its presence in 25 states per cent UTS of India and planning to cover entire stretch by 2023. Even during the Covid situation Education India has acquired 23 schools in UK, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Andhra and Karnataka with the investment of more than 7 crores. As on today Education India is rendering its various services to DPS, MT Litera, GD Goenka, DPIS, Scottish, Manchester, DAV, Good Shepherd and Shanti International schools. The planned investment of rupees 20 crore will help the company to increase the reach as well as to equip the school sector with latest technologies. Executive Director Lakshmi Khilari and her team have visited nearly 22 states and 250 schools to…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda