Head of School James Costain’s educational philosophy and leadership vision are wholly aligned with the vision and passion for education at Legacy School, Bengaluru. He feels a great honour and privilege in leading the continued journey of Legacy School and its learning community. “Our goal is to authentically progress the journey of the school towards excellence as a holistic learning community to empower students and teachers as learners that will enable them to become reflective individuals who can fully discover themselves,” says Costain. Costain’s leadership and education practices are largely inspired by his research and work with learning organisations. Through his work in education research and his collaborations with universities, innovative schools and pioneers in education, Costain has developed a commitment to fostering schools wherein the skills and qualities of effective learning and holistic development are at the core of their daily practices. Costain embraces reflection, evidence-integration and a continuous commitment to his own learning in his work with teachers and students within the community. His approach is humble, grounded and respectful in supporting the learning journey of each individual, whilst being highly ambitious and challenging in encouraging growth in each person and in the school community itself. His work maintains a focus on examining practice in schools, drawing inspiration for improvements and growth through psychology, sociology and organisational learning dynamics. An alum of Northumbria and Exeter universities (UK) who acquired 13 years of rich working experience in boarding schools in the UK, Mr Costain’s first overseas posting was to Nepal, where he undertook his first Senior Leadership role. After five years he returned to the UK to study and pursue his Masters at the University College of London (UCL) which presented him with an opportunity for deep examination of the educational models of learning communities and research on learning organisations. He subsequently moved into senior leadership roles in International Schools in Spain and Ukraine, as well as worked as Head of Organisational Learning across an international school group in Germany. His research and educational partnerships have developed ongoing collaborations with leading schools in Switzerland, the US, France and the UK. He has developed a number of apps to support professional learning in education and has held the position of Chair for the Special Interest Group for Research Engaged Schools with Educational Collaborative for International Schools (ECIS) since 2016. In 2017, Mr Costain conducted a global survey on student wellbeing in international schools, following research from Cambridge University on the well-being of students in the UK, which informs his leadership of Legacy School’s holistic education, integrating social and emotional development of the students. Costain has presented workshops at international conferences, including International Baccalaureate global conferences, on themes of innovation in education, including School as Learning Organisations, and Reciprocal Learning Relationships between teachers and students. In 2019, Costain set up Ethos Education, a pro bono consultancy that offers support to the development of schools as learning organisations. As an educator, Costain is deeply passionate about inspiring and enabling children to evolve…
Work on formulating the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 presented to the nation after an interregnum of 34 years, began in 2016 when the TSR Subramanian Committee working at manic speed, presented the first draft. Evidently, the committee’s report to liberalise and deregulate the education sector on the lines of liberalisation of the Indian economy in 1991, was unpalatable to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which had swept to power in New Delhi in 2014 with a massive majority in Parliament. In 2017, a nine-member committee under the chairmanship of space scientist Dr. K. Kasturirangan was constituted to formulate another draft. In end-2018, the Kasturirangan Committee submitted its 484-page report to the BJP government which was re-elected in 2019 with an even greater majority in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament. Subsequently, NEP, approved by the Union cabinet, was presented to Parliament and the nation on July 29, 2020. NEP 2020 proposes radical reform of post-independence India’s moribund pre-primary to Ph D education system. But to attain this laudable and overdue objective, NEP 2020 proposes greater instead of lesser, government supervision and regulation of the education sector. A large number of supervisory bodies such as HECI, NHERC, NAS, SSA, NAC etc have to be established, essentially to regulate private initiatives in education. The question of whether Indian education needs greater or lesser government regulation aside, the ground reality is that two years on, most of these supervisory committees and bodies have not been constituted. Moreover, there’s considerable suspense about who will be the “academics of unimpeachable integrity” appointed to administer the proposed supervisory and regulatory agencies. Against this backdrop, the stubborn refusal of Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan to defend and clarify NEP 2020 is deplorable. Minister: our cover story is not a trifling academic exercise. It was conceptualised as a public platform for honest and open discussion of this policy initiative which may improve or damage the future of the world’s largest child and youth population — and indeed, determine India’s standing in the global community of nations. Therefore, your obstinate refusal to advise the implementation progress of NEP 2020 is against the public interest. For proof of poor management of post-independence India’s education system, check out our special report feature which explains why youth desperate for medical qualifications are compelled to sign up with institutions in unknown and often hostile countries where they often suffer great anguish and deprivation. Moreover, this monsoon issue of EducationWorld is rich with thought-provoking editorials, opinion columns and book reviews. Let’s engage.
An Afghan lecturer and human rights activist has described being beaten daily by Taliban prison guards, amid mounting warnings about the prospects for academia in the country. Scholars teaching contentious subjects have expressed concern that they will be targeted since US forces’ hurried retreat in August 2021, but although fears of imprisonment and beatings are widespread, first-hand accounts of what happens inside the Taliban’s prisons are rare. One former Herat University lecturer told Times Higher Education that he had been imprisoned for 12 days in Herat Prison after being seized by a group of five men shortly after he emerged from hiding last November. “Every morning, I was beaten with a stick,” he says. “I was told: ‘You are a Jew and an infidel. You are Western.’” The lecturer said his captors asked him about his research activities: “Do you write articles any more? Do you do research any more? Do you still work in the field of human rights?” In those 12 days, after morning prayer he was beaten until the prison officer got tired. He was not allowed to bathe, and his teeth were broken. And he was charged Af150 (Rs.131) per day for his meals. The lecturer’s imprisonment came to an end within weeks when a religious leader’s intervention won his release. Soon after, he fled Afghanistan, entering Iran on a tourist visa. The country shares a border with Afghanistan and has a similar language. But the lecturer did not receive a warm reception there. “Iran is not a good country for me… Iranians do not consider us human. They call us Afghan donkeys,” he says. Because the Taliban have blocked his bank account, he is borrowing money from a friend for his daily needs. He lives in a remote village, in a damaged country house. He cannot teach, but he tries to retain some of his old activities. “One of the ways I still try to defend human rights these days is by attending some international conferences, webinars, and talking about the situation in Afghanistan,” he says. It is impossible to say exactly how many Afghan academics have been displaced since the Taliban takeover, but Afghan students and staff previously told THE about steep declines in university attendance. They say many colleagues — those who could — have left the country. “We have a difficult path ahead. (The Taliban) are completely unpredictable, (but) as a human rights defender, I strive to fulfil my mission. I am even ready to lose my life in this way,” he adds. (Excerpted and adapted from The Economist and Times Higher Education)
Even as caste discrimination continues to plague Indian higher education, debate about the best way to tackle the issue in universities abroad — and even over its very existence — continues to polarise academia. India’s caste system traditionally grouped people by four major castes based on their ancestry, with the lowest class, Dalits — formerly known as “untouchables” — traditionally barred from many types of work. In 1947, negative discrimination based on caste became illegal, but decades later, Dalits still struggle to access education and jobs. At Indian universities, it is not uncommon for them to encounter discrimination. The 2016 suicide of a Dalit student at the University of Hyderabad provoked public outcry, casting a spotlight on the issue. Abroad too, there continue to be reports of prejudice targeted at lower caste Indian students. In January, the California State University system, covering 23 public institutions, specifically included caste in its non-discrimination policies. While caste discrimination is more ubiquitous and explicit in India, it also exists overseas, says Suraj Yengde, a Dalit activist and a research associate in Harvard University’s department of African and African American studies. “People might not call you names, but the things they might do are tantamount to caste discrimination,” he told Times Higher Education. Dr. Yengde recounted his experience of a higher caste Indian colleague who would “casually” make jokes and “infantilise” him, even though he would “pretend it was not intentional”. Still, the colleague would invite him to social events to “show me off as a token to other people,” he recalls. Saikat Majumdar, professor of English and creative writing at Ashoka University, Sonipat, says that abroad and at home, institutions must call out and “shame” such behaviour. “It’s bad enough that caste discrimination is practised in poor and remote villages in India, but it is absolutely appalling that wealthier, supposedly more ‘enlightened’ Indians who go abroad for higher studies also possess these prejudices in the UK,” he says, welcoming steps taken by universities abroad to address such discrimination. “Westerners have no idea of the immense degree to which bastions of knowledge, education, and white-collar labour have been historically monopolised by upper caste Hindus. It is worse than the old boys’ network in academic and professional circles in the UK,” he says. While several scholars told THE that such discrimination is often subtle when encountered abroad, there is still disagreement over how widespread it is — and whether it is an issue at all. “We don’t see ‘caste-based’ discrimination at UK universities,” says Kishore Dattu, a national committee member of the country’s Indian National Students Association. “Since caste discrimination does not exist in UK universities, introducing caste-based legislation based on misinterpreted and misunderstood caste structures in the West will only inflame ruptures and dampen brotherhood among Indian students,” he warns.
Filipino academics have called for the protection of historical rigour as they steel themselves for Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr’s assumption of the country’s presidency later this month. The electoral victory of Ferdinand Marcos’ son represents a dramatic turnaround for the family after its return from exile in the 1990s. The rule of Ferdinand Marcos between 1965 and 1986 was marked by corruption and martial law, with the regime responsible for “tens of thousands of people arbitrarily arrested and detained, and thousands of others tortured, forcibly disappeared, and killed”, according to Amnesty International. Already, Marcos Jr has sought to counter this narrative during his election campaign, portraying the era as a golden age for the Philippines. Scholars fear that once he takes power, his administration will try to erase the truth about his father’s dark legacy by rewriting history and suppressing academic freedom. In days following Marcos Jr’s victory, more than 1,000 scholars signed a statement in defence of historical truth and academic freedom. “The presumptive electoral victory of Ferdinand Marcos Jr and (vice-president-elect) Sara Duterte signals an intensified struggle over historical knowledge and pedagogy,” they wrote. “We pledge to combat all attempts at historical revisionism that distort and falsify history to suit the dynastic interests of the Marcoses and their allies and to fortify their power.” Francis Gealogo, professor of history at Ateneo de Manila University and one of the authors of the statement, told Times Higher Education that the Marcos campaign has already taken advantage of social media to “spread historical distortion and disinformation” and that academics must “face these propagandists head-on”. Work to digitise the country’s history has already begun, with academics working to protect primary sources on the era, he says. In the weeks following Marcos Jr’s election, students have taken to the streets to oppose his presidency. “This is a very dangerous, pivotal moment,” says Jonas Abadilla, a fourth-year chemical engineering student at the University of the Philippines, Diliman and chair of its student council. According to Abadilla during the previous Marcos era the University of the Philippines “became a fortress” protecting victims of persecution. (Excerpted and adapted from The Economist and Times Higher Education)
Education is not always an unalloyed good. Over the past few decades, East Asia has seen a stunning rise in the incidence of myopia, aka short-sightedness. And a growing pile of evidence suggests that the main underlying reason for this is education — specifically, the fact that children spend large parts of the day in comparatively dimly lit classrooms. Before the long economic booms that began in the 1960s, myopia was uncommon in East Asia. These days, among the young, it is ubiquitous. In Hong Kong, Singapore and Taipei more than 80 percent of school-leavers are short-sighted. In Seoul, over nine in ten young men are. China, which began its economic rise later, is catching up. Data from as far afield as Guangzhou in the south and Inner Mongolia in the north show myopia rates among young people of about 80 percent. The West is not immune. Good data is harder to come by. But studies suggest rates of between 20-40 percent in Europe, an order of magnitude higher than the natural state of affairs. One study in California found a rate of 59 percent among 17-19-year-olds. The evidence suggests that regular exposure to bright daylight is vital in properly controlling the growth of children’s eyes. Too little light leads to elongated, short-sighted eyes. Researchers believe this explains why rates are so high in Asia, where a strong cultural emphasis on the value of education leads to long school days and, often, private tutoring in the afternoon and evening. That leaves little time for sunshine. Special eye-drops, as well as clever glasses and contact lenses, may be able to slow the progression of myopia once it has started. But prevention is better than mitigation, and science suggests a cheap, straightforward measure. A series of encouraging trials, many conducted in Taiwan, show that giving schoolchildren — and especially those in primary education — more time outside can cut the number who go on to develop myopia. An island-wide policy of doing just that seems to have begun reversing the decades-long rise in myopia rates. Similar attempts in Singapore relied on parents who have proved more reluctant to change their behaviour, perhaps worried that other parents might not follow suit, leaving their children at a disadvantage in classrooms. Governments are well-placed to solve such collective-action problems, while reassuring anxious parents that a bit less classroom time is unlikely to be catastrophic. After all, countries such as Finland and Sweden do well in global education rankings with a less intense approach to education. Giving more outdoor time to young children would still leave room for them to cram for exams in their teenage years. And longer breaks in the playground may also make a dent in other rich-world problems such as childhood obesity. Far-sighted governments should send kids outdoors. (Excerpted and adapted from The Economist and Times Higher Education)
Nepal’s emergence as Australia’s biggest source of offshore students has fanned fears that the visa programme has been subverted into an “unsponsored work permits” scheme. Immigration expert Abul Rizvi says ballooning numbers of successful student visa applications from the Himalayan nation suggest that lax rules may be luring migrant workers Down Under on study pretexts. This could trigger an explosion in labour hire fraud and the exploitation of foreign workers caught in “immigration limbo” because they lack the credentials to qualify for permanent residency. Meanwhile, Australia could “lose higher-performing students to other nations because of the trashed reputation of our international education industry,” warns Dr. Rizvi in Independent Australia. He blames the former government’s suspension of caps on international students’ working hours. “We are now seen as desperate to attract students more interested in work rights than the quality of education,” warns Rizvi. In March and April, the latest months for which statistics are available, Nepal generated more than 1,000 more applications for visas to study in Australia than China, the traditional top source market, which has almost 50 times Nepal’s population, and some 3,000 more than its other giant neighbour, India, which is normally Australia’s second largest market. Nepal is also experiencing a much higher “grant rate” — the proportion of visa applications decided in applicants’ favour — than it has for the past decade. The rate has soared to 92 percent this financial year after hovering well below 80 percent. By comparison, grant rates for India and Pakistan stand at 78 percent and 63 percent, respectively. Like its subcontinental neighbours, Nepal is normally considered a “high risk” country for non-genuine visa applications. When its grant rate last climbed above 90 percent, in 2013-14, immigration officials subsequently unleashed a mid-2015 crackdown that saw every second application rejected. Sydney-based education agent Ravi Lochan Singh says visa statistics have been skewed by a processing backlog. He welcomes the growing numbers of Nepalese higher education visas but says the “very high” grant rate for private VET applicants is “not sustainable in the long term”. Times Higher Education asked the Department of Home Affairs, which administers student visas, why Nepal’s grant rate had changed so dramatically and whether appropriate scrutiny was being made. A spokesperson said all applications were “considered on an individual basis”. (Excerpted and adapted from The Economist and Times Higher Education)
Several UK universities are raising their headline postgraduate fees by 10 percent or more next year, suggests an analysis of the latest course data for 2022-23. By benchmarking data on individual courses collected from institutional websites, The Knowledge Partnership (TKP) suggests that ten institutions will raise tuition fees by 10, with many more increasing fees by at least 5 percent. Examples include Birmingham City University, where the average international postgraduate taught fee is set to rise by 20 percent to £16,400 (Rs.15.7 lakh) for 80 courses with comparable fees between 2021-22 and 2022-23, and London Metropolitan University, where the average is rising by 16 percent to £15,700 (Rs.15.07 lakh), based on 65 courses. The role of inflation in that is unclear given that many fees would have been set before the current inflation spiral began making headlines. Some variation in TKP data also suggests that price elasticity — the degree to which raising fees affects demand for courses and, therefore, student numbers — could have been more central to decision-making rather than inflationary pressures in 2022-23. Amy Ross, a senior market insight analyst at TKP (a Times Higher Education company), says “many institutions have fee-setting procedures that make decisions well in advance of their public release”. “It seems likely that fee increases next year will continue to be significant as inflationary pressures make themselves felt,” she adds. A Birmingham City spokesman said its international postgraduate fees “reflect the costs of delivering our courses, specific services required to ensure the best support possible for our overseas students, and the continual improvement of our academic offer”. Meanwhile, London Met said it had introduced “generous scholarship packages” for eligible students, which means that in “real terms, the cost of our courses has only increased very slightly for most”. (Excerpted and adapted from The Economist and Times Higher Education)
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nears its fourth month, much of the focus remains on fighting and survival. When can we talk about the reconstruction of Ukrainian higher education? “Now, I think, because we have to understand that reconstruction will be taking place in stages,” says Inna Sovsun, professor at the Kyiv School of Economics and the National University Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Alongside tens of thousands of deaths and millions forced to flee to the relative safety of western regions, or beyond Ukraine’s borders, in the east at least four universities have been destroyed — in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia — and 25 damaged. If thoughts are soon to turn to academic reconstruction, how best can this be achieved? Ukraine could look abroad. Tempus, a precursor to the European Union’s Erasmus mobility programmes, proved its worth after the Yugoslav wars of the early 1990s, according to Ivanka Popović, rector of the University of Belgrade. Projects sought to strengthen institutions and systems, promote international relations and technology transfer offices, strengthen central administration, improve student mobility and develop new bachelors and Masters programmes. “This was a systematic approach of the European Commission. You had people building bridges again, contacts, and exchanging experiences with colleagues from western Europe,” says Popovic. Ukraine dwarfs the western Balkans in the size and development of its higher education system. It is also fighting a very different war. Perhaps instead, lessons should be learned from Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its ongoing occupation of the Donbas. In government at the time, Prof. Sovsun recalls that efforts to relocate universities had mixed results. Donetsk National University has moved successfully, she says, but others had faced the “heart-breaking” prospect of uprooting again as front lines have shifted. Nevertheless, she believes university reconstruction should begin in cities under Ukrainian control, such as Chernihiv. That will bring tough decisions for many. Buildings are a costly investment for a decimated economy, but people must also return to remake institutions. After stopping completely in the first weeks of the invasion, by mid-March, universities in most regions have resumed remote or mixed in-person teaching, often building on lessons learned from the pandemic. No one yet knows what enrolment will look like in September. Kseniia Smyrnova, vice-rector for education at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, says volumes could be less than a third of previous years. Few expect Ukraine’s international students to return without security guarantees, a blow for revenue. In addition, parents of many fee-paying domestic students may have become unemployed, meaning they will have to pause their studies, adds Denys Smolennikov, head of benchmarking and statistics at Sumy State University. In April, the government estimated the cost of damage to schools, colleges and universities to be more than $5 billion (Rs.40,000 crore) and said the war could eventually cost the country at least $1 trillion, five times the value of all final goods and services it produced in 2021. (Excerpted and adapted from The Economist and Times Higher Education)
According to the latest data of the Union education ministry, 23,000 Indian students are reading medicine in China, 18,000 in Ukraine, 16,000 in Russia, and 15,000 in the Philippines. Every year, thousands of aspiring medicos are driven out of the country because of a huge demand-supply imbalance in medical education, writes Summiya Yasmeen The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24 and continuing warfare between the two neighbour nations now in its fifth month, has not only devastated Ukraine and slowed the global economy, it has also torpedoed the higher education of 18,000 Indian students enrolled in medical schools across Ukraine. As the Russian military rained rockets on Ukrainian cities, television and social media platforms beamed photos and interviews with Indian students appealing for evacuation by the Indian government. By mid-March, these 18,000 students were evacuated under Operation Ganga. Escape from the ravages of war provided the students only temporary relief as they returned to an uncertain future back home. With a ceasefire unlikely in the near future and no guarantee of return to their universities, 100 days on, the evacuated students are making frantic appeals to the Union government’s health and education ministries and National Medical Commission (NMC) to allow them to continue their studies in Indian medical colleges, to little avail. Meanwhile, even as the fate of the evacuated students hangs in the balance, a question being debated by academics, civil society activists and the public is why such a large number of Indian students were obliged to study medicine in Ukraine, which most people can’t locate on the world map. The answer is provided by Shekharappa Gyanagoudar, a retired paper mill employee residing in Karnataka’s Haveri district. On March 1, his son Naveen Shekharappa, a fourth-year medical student at Kharkiv National Medical University, was killed in a Russian rocket attack. According to Gyanagoudar, although his son averaged 97 percent in his class XII boards, his score in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) — the sole pan-India test introduced in 2014 for admission into the country’s medical and dental colleges — was 13 less than the qualifying score for admission into Karnataka’s 17 heavily subsidised government medical colleges. “For a seat in a private medical college, the total expense is Rs.1 crore over five years, including donation. The same education in Ukraine costs Rs.7 lakh per year,” Gyanagoudar told reporters. Naveen Shekharappa was one of tens of thousands of aspiring medicos driven out of the country because of India’s huge demand-supply imbalance in medical education. According to latest data of the Union education ministry, 23,000 Indian students are reading medicine in hostile China, 18,000 in Ukraine, 16,000 in Russia, and 15,000 in the Philippines. These students had no option but to flee abroad because of India’s grossly inadequate medical education capacity. Paradoxically, although India hosts the highest number of medical colleges worldwide — 596 — they offer a mere 88,120 seats annually for undergrad medical education. Conversely, China’s 420 colleges offer 286,000 seats. Unsurprisingly, India has…
National education policy 2020 On the second anniversary of the presentation of NEP 2020 to Parliament and the nation, grave doubts have arisen about bona fide implementation of this policy formulated after an interregnum of 34 years, writes Dilip Thakore Launched with great expectations and considerable fanfare on July 29, 2020 after an interregnum of 34 years, the National Education Policy 2020 — the outcome of mountains of labour of the T.S.R. Subramanian (2016) and Dr. K. Kasturirangan (2018-19) committees — seems to be floundering in shallows. “This National Education Policy 2020 is the first education policy of the 21st century and aims to address the many growing developmental imperatives of our country. This policy proposes the revision and revamping of all aspects of the education structure, including its regulation and governance, to create a new system that is aligned with the aspirational goals of 21st century education, including SDG 4 (United Nations Sustainable Development Goal universal primary-secondary education — Editor) while building upon India’s traditions and value systems. The National Education Policy 2020 policy (sic) lays particular emphasis on the development of the creative potential of each individual. It is based on the principle that education must develop not only cognitive capacities — both the ‘foundational capacities’ of literacy and numeracy and ‘higher-order’ cognitive capacities, such as critical thinking and problem solving — but also social, ethical, and emotional capacities and dispositions,” says the preamble of NEP 2020. On July 29, 2020 when NEP 2020 was presented to Parliament and the country, Dr. Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, a lightweight Hindi language novelist appointed Union education minister for mysterious reasons in 2019, said it would “bring transformational reforms in school and higher education systems in the country”. Likewise in a prepared statement his deputy, Sanjay Dhotre, minister of state for education, described NEP 2020 as the “most comprehensive, radical and futuristic policy document in the educational history of this country”. Curiously but not surprisingly, at that time both ministers declined EducationWorld’s pressing requests for interview for further and better particulars. Neither did they publicly defend NEP 2020 in any major media publication, a tradition of unaccountability sustained by Pokhriyal’s successor Dharmendra Pradhan, a former ABVP (students’ wing of the BJP) leader in Odisha who was moved from the Union petroleum ministry to Shastri Bhavan, Delhi in July last year. During a successful six-year stint in the petroleum ministry Pradhan had established a good reputation for liberalising the country’s hydrocarbons exploration policy dominated by the dog-in-the-manger public sector ONGC and was the prime mover behind the prime minister’s Ujjwala scheme under which below-poverty-line households were provided free-of-charge cooking gas cylinders, a programme that won the BJP millions of votes in General Election 2019. Delighted that he had replaced Hindi language chauvinist Pokhriyal whose 25 months’ term in the ministry was a period of masterly inactivity, your editors enthusiastically welcomed Pradhan’s appointment as Union education minister by featuring a cover story introducing him to the public. But again despite numerous entreaties, all requests…
“The RSS has done this at their shakhas for years now, catching hold of children at a very young age, implanting in them the story of a narrow ‘Akhand Bharat’, killing their scientific temperament and replacing it with extreme edicts — an action plan entirely based on the idea that young brains are more malleable…” Priyank Kharge, Karnataka Congress legislator, on the textbooks revision controversy in the state (The News Minute, June 11) “Today the Republican-controlled Supreme Court has achieved their dark, extreme goal of ripping away a woman’s right to make her own reproductive health decisions.” Nancy Patricia Pelosi, speaker of the US House of Representatives on the Supreme Court overturning women’s abortion rights (Times of India, June 25) “In any place around the world, it is very important that people be allowed to express themselves freely, journalists be allowed to express themselves freely and without the threat of any harassment.” Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, on the arrest of Alt-News co-founder and journalist Mohammed Zubair in India (Scroll.in, June 29) “The savage execution of Kanhaiya Lal in Udaipur will deepen the darkest forebodings about India’s future. It is important to name this gruesome act for what it is, without aestheticizing it. It was an execution and not a murder.” Pratap Bhanu Mehta, public intellectual, on the beheading of Lal by Islamic radicals (Indian Express, June 30) “A major failure of the government’s energy policy is the decline in India’s domestic crude oil production. In 2021-22, the production of crude oil from domestic wells fell to 28.4 million tonnes. Shockingly that’s even lower than the production of crude oil in 1994-95 (32.2 million tonnes).” Minhaz Merchant, journalist, columnist and biographer (BusinessWorld, July 2)
-M. Somasekhar (Hyderabad) In sharp contrast with BJP governments at the Centre and in several states which are acquiring a reputation for neglecting and even dumbing down early childhood and primary-secondary education, Telangana’s state government headed by high-profile chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and his son and heir-apparent the US educated K.T. Rama Rao, is winning laurels from the middle class for according priority to high quality K-12 education. In particular, establishment of international schools affiliated with offshore examination boards such as International Baccalaureate (IB), Geneva/The Hague and Cambridge Assessment International Education (CAIE), UK, in Hyderabad (pop.10 million), the admin capital of Telangana (pop.38.5 million). During the past ten years, over 20 greenfield international schools with globally benchmarked infrastructure, expat headmasters and highly-qualified teachers have become operational in this city of nawabs and pearls. Among the new international schools that have set up shop in Hyderabad in recent years are Indus International, Sancta Maria, Jain International, Silver Oaks and Oakridge International, all highly ranked in the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings league tables. Moreover the city, which has transformed into a bustling hub of the 21st century ICT (information communication technologies) industry, has also attracted the attention of global private school chains. In November 2019, the UK-based Cognita Group which owns/manages 90 primary-secondary schools in eight countries around the world, planted its first flag on Indian soil in Hyderabad by acquiring the CAIE and IB-affiliated Chirec International School (estb.1989). Last January, the UK-based International Schools Partnership, which owns/manages over 50 schools in 13 countries with an aggregate 45,000 students, invested in Sancta Maria International School, Hyderabad. Academics in Hyderabad attribute the spurt in number of high-end international schools mushrooming in the city of pearls to a combination of factors. Among them: Hyderabad’s swift rise as a ICT industry and related businesses hub with several transnational and domestic majors including Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and TCS, Infosys and Wipro having established large offices, and the conducive climate created by the TRS government for foreign investors who include Ikea, Accenture and Walmart. In turn, these corporates have recruited thousands of highly-qualified and well-paid IT and business professionals from abroad and across the country who want the best education for their children, and are ready to pay for it. “International schools are increasingly being preferred over family-managed private schools because they offer globally respected syllabuses and curriculums, proven administrative systems, highly-qualified teachers and excellent infrastructure. For instance, the syllabus/curriculum offered by IB schools is holistic, rigorous and practical and makes learning an enjoyable experience for children as it provides opportunity to learn through flexible subject combinations. All this makes students ready for employment anywhere in the world,” says Ratna Reddy, founder of CHIREC International School, the first international school in the city and now a Cognita Group school. Yet perhaps the major motivation factor behind Hyderabad emerging as the most preferred location for high-end international schools is the stable governance provided by the TRS government led by the father-son duo of CM Chandrasekhar…
Karnataka’s school textbooks revision row shows no sign of dying down and could become a major issue in the state legislative assembly elections scheduled for next summer. Despite the state’s BJP government having consented to make addenda to new textbooks already distributed to class VI-X students for the academic year 2022-23 which began on May 16, several Kannada litterateurs, religious seers, social activists and opposition parties have continued to press their demand for the complete withdrawal of the new textbooks. According to critics, the new textbooks have been rewritten from a hindutva, Aryan perspective and contain anti-Dravidian, caste and anti-Muslim prejudices of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mentor organisation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ruling at the Centre and in Karnataka. Protestors have highlighted that chapters on Mysore’s Muslim ruler Tipu Sultan, social reformer Basavanna, Dravidian movement pioneer Periyar and social reformer Narayana Guru who opposed the caste system, featured in previous textbooks, have been omitted in new textbooks. The genesis of the textbooks row can be traced to last September when the BJP state government constituted a 15-member Textbook Revision Committee (TRC) headed by Rohit Chakratirtha, an RSS ideologue and Kannada language writer. In March when the committee completed its assignment, it became evident that class VI-X social science textbooks have been rewritten to propagate BJP propaganda. Since then opposition to the content included in new social science textbooks in particular, has escalated. With the textbooks row snowballing into a major controversy, the state’s BJP government issued a statement on June 27 that it will make “eight corrections” in the revised textbooks “keeping in mind sentiments of the society”. The changes include re-introduction of ‘Samvidhana Shilpi’ (architect of the Constitution), a biography of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar (class IX social studies textbook); inclusion of a lesson on the Bhakti sect and Sufi saints (class VII) and a chapter detailing the contributions of Siddaganga and Adichunchanagiri Mutts (class VI) to socio-economic development. Moreover in the class IX social science text, portions about social reformer Basavanna will be re-written and photographs of poet laureate Kuvempu and Huilgol Narayana Rao will be included in the class VII textbook. Given that the distribution of new textbooks to students in the 74,000 state board schools is underway, the state’s Karnataka Textbook Society (KTS) will print these changes/additions as addenda and distribute them again. However, according to KTS sources, only one addenda booklet will be given per school. Yet, these “cosmetic changes” have failed to placate the protestors and the opposition Congress party which is demanding complete withdrawal of the texts and continuing classes with previous year texts. Comments Harshakumar Kugwe, a researcher at the Bengaluru-based Kuvempu Horata Samithi, one of the organisations in the frontline of protests: “We demand total withdrawal of the new textbooks. They are written from the hindutva perspective and don’t reflect Karnataka’s plurality and diversity. The TRC headed by Rohit Chakratirtha didn’t invite any suggestions or feedback from the public, unlike the previous TRC headed by Baraguru Ramachandrappa…
-Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) A teacher recruitment scandal dating back to 2016 continues to haunt the state’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) government, now in its third term in office. On May 18, a single-judge bench of the Calcutta high court ordered a CBI probe into the process of the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) for recruiting teachers for the state’s 92,000 government schools. Justice Gangopadhyay also ordered a CBI investigation into the TET (Teacher Eligibility Test) 2014 conducted by the West Bengal Board of Primary Education (WBBPE) on October 11, 2015. Aggrieved by these orders, the TMC government appealed to a division bench which peremptorily rejected the government’s appeal on June 16. Significantly, a list of 42,949 selected teachers was a revised merit list published in 2017 for TET 2014. Justice Gangopadhyay observed that even in the revised merit list, 269 of the selected candidates were awarded an additional mark each. WBBPE’s explanation that this additional mark awarded to 269 candidates was because of an error in the question paper, didn’t cut ice with the judge who enquired why the other 2.3 million candidates who wrote the very same exam were not also awarded the additional mark. Therefore, Justice Gangopadhyay rejected the entire revised merit list of 2017 and ordered “immediate cancellation of the appointment of 269 candidates, stop payment of their salaries, and ensure they are barred from entering the respective schools to which they were appointed henceforth”. In his order, the judge also ordered immediate removal of WBBPE president Manik Bhattacharya and assigned his official responsibilities to the board’s secretary Ratna Chakraborty Bagchi. On June 20, Chakraborty cancelled the appointment of all teachers recruited and appointed under TET 2014. Academics and teachers’ unions in West Bengal (pop. 91 million) are aghast that the future of aspiring teachers who wrote TET 2014 is uncertain eight years later because of irregularities in recruitment tests and pending court cases, even as there is an aggregate vacancy of 60,000 teachers in government schools which are also woefully deficient in blackboards, classrooms, libraries, laboratories and lavatories. With teacher recruitment at a standstill, the average teacher-pupil ratio in government schools has risen to 1:59 against the 1:35 prescribed by the RTE Act, 2009. As a result, learning outcomes are plunging. Unsurprisingly, the TMC government’s pathetic inability to sort out the state’s teacher recruitment mess and involvement of party cadres in this scandal have made public protests a daily affair. On June 22, hundreds of TET 2014 candidates who are yet to receive appointment letters, staged a protest by blocking an important crossroad of South Kolkata, demanding immediate recruitment. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s lame reply (June 20): “We have given jobs to nearly 100,000 people in government schools. Mistakes have occurred in 50-100 cases,” has fanned the flames of the 42,949 aspirant teachers who cleared TET 2014 and are awaiting appointment letters. Meanwhile widespread awareness that teachers are urgently required in the state’s 92,000 government schools with an aggregate enrolment of 23 million children to make…
-Dipta Joshi (Mumbai) Dramatic events on the political stage in end-June which culminated in the resignation of chief minister Uddhav Thackeray and end of the tripartite Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Congress party coalition government after 31 months in office, has clouded the future of 2,088 aspirants for the coveted position of assistant professors in private aided degree colleges. Last September (2021), the MVA government’s technical and higher education minister Uday Samant had promised to fill all vacant assistant professor posts in the state’s 1,171 private aided colleges by July. Now aspirants fear that the abrupt fall of the MVA government will stymie the appointment process that began on June 20. In India’s complex higher education system, there are three types of undergrad colleges — government, private aided and private unaided (financially independent). Private aided colleges are privately promoted but levy government prescribed tuition fees. In consideration of this, the salaries of their faculty and staff are paid by the Central or state governments. Currently, an estimated 70,000 well-qualified postgrads and Ph Ds who have cleared the Central national eligibility test (NET) and/or state eligibility test (SET) are employed on clock-hour-basis (CHB) in government and aided colleges. Paid a measly Rs.521 per hour, these aspiring teachers had extracted a promise from Samant that 18,000 vacant assistant professorship posts in Maharashtra’s aided colleges would be filled before the start of the new academic year. Under Seventh Pay Commission scales, an assistant professor is paid between Rs.57,700-182,000 per month. With students’ fees in aided colleges contributing a mere 5-10 percent of their annual revenue, private aided colleges are heavily dependent on salary grants from cash-strapped state governments. A government resolution of November 12, 2021 allowed only 2,088 assistant professors to be recruited for the academic year 2022-23. However, the snail’s pace at which the appointments are being made — the technical and higher education department is still issuing NOCs (no objection certificates) to allow college managements to advertise assistant professors’ posts — means not even one appointment has been made for the academic year 2022-23, which has commenced this month (July). But with the state government’s wages and salaries bill for government and private aided colleges already a sizeable Rs.105.9 crore and the overall budget indicating a fiscal deficit of Rs.24,353 crore in 2022-23, faculty recruitments are on the back-burner. The alternative of raising students’ over-subsidised tuition fees which would enable aided colleges to raise faculty pay, is a political hot potato which none of the state’s political parties is willing to touch. Unsurprisingly, the Aurangabad-based Maharashtra Navpradhyapak Sanghatana (Maharashtra New Professors’ Association), which claims it has 10,000 members, is on the warpath. Since 2017, the association has staged 15 protest rallies including threats of fasts-unto-death. These protests compelled Samant to parley with them last September. At that time, the minister assured the association that all posts would be filled within the next year with a GR issued in November 2021 to appoint 2,088 assistant professors. But with the MVA…
-Autar Nehru (Delhi) Despite widespread criticism of the BJP government at the Centre and the Union education ministry for lethargic implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which was presented to Parliament and the nation on July 29, 2020, early childhood care and education (ECCE) professionals are deriving some comfort from the roll-out of the National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN) Bharat mission. A pilot project of the mission was launched early this month (July) in 72 schools countrywide under the Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) mandate of NEP 2020. After totally ignoring ECCE for over half a century, thanks largely to the efforts of EducationWorld which began stressing its vital importance in 2007, and on the recommendation of the Dr. K. Kasturirangan Committee, NEP 2020 accords highest importance to ECCE and FLN. The NIPUN Bharat Mission was officially launched in August 2021 to attain the target of universal foundational literacy and numeracy in primary schools by 2026-27. “Government as well as non-governmental surveys indicate that we are currently in severe learning crisis; a large proportion of students currently in elementary school estimated to be over 50 million have not attained foundational literacy and numeracy, i.e, the ability to read and comprehend basic texts and the ability to carry out basic addition and subtraction with Indian numerals. If action is not taken soon, over the next few years, then we could lose 100 million or more students from the learning system to illiteracy,” warn the authors of NEP 2020. To track the progress of children in ECCE, the education ministry has designed a Holistic Progress Card (HPC) to indicate 360 degree multidimensional progress of every child’s cognitive, affective, socio-emotional and psychomotor development. Learning outcomes of all children are to be recorded on parameters of prosocial behaviour, health and hygiene, motor skills, first and second language skills, sensory development, environmental awareness, sequence and concept formation, numeracy, financial literacy and technology skills. Children also have to fill up a feedback sheet on activity and their difficulty perception. “This is a radical reform in which children are at the centre of teaching-learning. HPC is a pedagogical tool which will enable teachers to tap the highest potential of children by mapping competencies and learning outcomes to attain the goals of health, well-being and effective communication,” says Dr. Sudha Acharya, principal of ITL Public School, Dwarka (Delhi) and president, National Progressive Schools Conference which has 195 member schools. ITL Public is one of 72 schools in which the pilot programme was launched on July 1. A positive outcome of the high priority accorded to early childhood education and FLN by NEP 2020 is that now, there’s universal acknowledgement of the vital importance of structured, professionally administered ECCE. Hitherto, awareness of the critical importance of children starting to learn enjoyably through play and peer bonding was restricted to the upper middle elite classes. Now all educators are aware of its importance. “I hope FLN is not just limited to elite…
-Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) Established in 2002, Nanritam (‘truth’) is a Purulia (West Bengal)-based NGO promoted by Ranjana Sengupta, founder-secretary, and Prof. P.K. Giri, president of Nanritam Society, together with five like-minded professionals — Dr. Shyamal K. Datta, Dr. Osman Ghani, Milika Datta, Ranjit Mukherji, and Dr. Bharati Bakshi with Prof. Kaushik Basu, former World Bank chief economist, as mentor. Nanritam provides health, education and livelihood training services to the public, and manages four projects in Purulia (267 km from Kolkata) — Filix School of Education, UDBHAAS centre for challenged children, Lokeswarananda Eye Foundation, and Nanritam Krishi Kendra for educating farmers. The NGO’s flagship Filix School of Education (FSE) is a CBSE-affiliated English-medium K-10 school sited in Para village with an enrolment of 450 children mentored by 20 teachers. Newspeg. Nanritam is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. History. Promoted in 2014, FSE has quickly earned an excellent reputation for providing high-quality affordable schooling (tuition fee: Rs.600-1,600 per month) in the backward Purulia district. The school’s first batch of students will write the class X board exam in 2023. “FSE provides high-quality English-medium education to rural children at affordable fees. I am pleased to report that over the past seven years, FSE has developed into a progressive institution offering joyous learning and pedagogies to educationally neglected rural children,” says Prof. P.K. Giri, president of Nanritam and former head of the statistics department, Ramakrishna Mission Residential College, Narendrapur, Kolkata. With the NGO’s K-10 English-medium school having been brought on stream smoothly, last November Nanritam initiated an Education for All (EFA) outreach programme to improve teaching-learning standards in rural West Bengal. The EFA campaign is being led by Sarada Prasad Namhata, former vice president of Huntsman Corporation and global R&D director, Dow Chemical Company. Currently, 500 government and private school teachers in ten districts statewide are receiving in-service teacher training to improve the learning outcomes of 20,000 primary school children. Other initiatives. Established in 2008, the society’s modest eye care clinic in Purulia district’s Barandanga, Para village, has grown into a 100-bed super specialty free-of-charge hospital, supported by the state government, which treats 200,000 patients per year. Likewise, Nanritam Krishi Kendra (estb.2010) provides on-site education to 2,000 farmers in three districts to adopt best farming practices and improve yields. Moreover, Nanritam also runs the UDBHAAS centre for challenged children. Over the past two decades, Nanritam has recruited a team of 100 full-time employees supported by 140 field workers from local communities working in the backward districts of Purulia, Bankura, Bardhaman and Paschim Medinipur in West Bengal. The society’s annual budget is heavily subsidised by corporate and individual donations raised by trustees and well-wishers. Future plans. “Nanritam’s initiatives in one of the country’s most socio-economically backward districts is a promising experiment in rural development. If we are successful in sustaining our model, it offers the possibility of emulation and replication countrywide,” says Ranjana Sengupta, founder-secretary of the Nanritam Society.
Sited on a green 12-acre campus in Nagpur (pop.2.5 million) — Maharashtra’s third largest city — Delhi Public School, Mihan, (DPS Mihan, estb.2018) has quickly established a sterling reputation for progressive K-10 education provision. Within the short span of four years, this CBSE-affiliated co-ed day school has emerged as one of the orange city’s premier schools admired for dispensing rigorous academic and excellent sports and co-curricular education to its 1,300 students mentored by 75 teachers. In the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings 2021-22, DPS Mihan is ranked #4 in Nagpur and among Maharashtra’s Top 40 co-ed day schools. Moreover, in the EducationWorld Grand Jury Awards 2021-22, it was adjudged Maharashtra’s #1 Emerging High-Potential School. The promoter of DPS Mihan is the Chattisgarh-based Shri Chiranjilal Bajoria Education Society (regd.2004). In 2006, the society promoted its first school — DPS, Kamptee Road, ranked Nagpur’s #1 co-ed day school in the EWISR 2021-22. With the group’s flagship school unable to meet the growing demand for admission, DPS Mihan was promoted in 2018. Currently, the two schools have an aggregate enrolment of 4,600 students mentored by 250 teachers. Philanthropist Tulika Kedia, preident of Sri Chiranjilal Bajoria Education Society and pro vice chairperson of DPS Mihan, is delighted with the school’s quick growth and acceptance by the public. “Our objective is provision of a safe, stimulating and joyous learning environment where children acquire the skills and knowledge to become successful, sensitive and responsible global citizens. My several years of experience in primary-secondary education has made me acutely aware that we need a renaissance in K-12 education for sustained social transformation and national development. The new generation isn’t satisfied with mere regurgitation of information. Today’s tech enabled children are anxious to develop higher order thinking skills to solve the nation’s problems, and to aid and enable the less privileged. Therefore at DPS Mihan, the curriculum develops students’ intelligence and emotional quotient while providing world-class academics and pedagogies supplemented with fine arts, performing arts, culture, environment and sports education,” says Kedia, an alumna of La Martiniere for Girls, Kolkata and Delhi University, and a well-known art patron and collector of indigenous tribal art. To enable DPS Mihan to attain its objective of delivering superior holistic education, the society’s management led by Kedia has spared no expense in installing world-class facilities for academic, sports and co-curricular education. The school’s verdant 12-acre campus hosts two academic blocks comprising 48 well-ventilated classrooms equipped with Smart boards and latest digital technologies, four modern science, two computer and math labs and a library housing over 10,000 volumes. The campus has been specially designed to provide joyful learning spaces for pre-primary children including theme-based classrooms, jungle gym, sensory botanical garden and child-friendly indoor and outdoor play areas. The school’s state-of-the-art performing arts facility — ‘Artist Village’ — comprising dance, art and music studios, art gallery, five acoustically enhanced practice rooms and a 400-seat amphitheater, is a unique campus feature. Sports facilities equally mpressive with five acres earmarked for outdoor sports including football, cricket,…
-Autar Nehru (Delhi) With incidents of religious, caste and communal violence rising countrywide, protest voices of the post-millennial generation are becoming louder. A case in point is Gurugram-based Riaan Kumar (18) who is determined “to promote inter-faith communal harmony through enlightenment and public policy.” A class XII arts student of the high-ranked The Shri Ram School, Aravalli, Riaan began his crusade against rising communal discord at age 14. Four years later, he founded Bodhi Trail, a digital social outreach programme with a national footprint. “To spread the message of communal harmony, Bodhi Trail organised a national conference on the International Day of Conscience (April 5). We brought five prominent religious leaders including Ven Geshe Dorji Damdul, Dr. Kalbe Rushaid Rizvi, Rev. Dr. Roby Kannanchira and Vishnu Bhakta Dasa on our platform to discuss ways and means to promote social harmony. By congregating leaders of various creeds together to exchange ideas about social service and activism, Bodhi Trail hopes to highlight the most significant aspect of spirituality — acceptance and community service,” says Riaan. Converted to Buddhist spiritualism and philosophy after the sudden passing of his much loved grandfather (Air Vice Marshal (Retd.) Arun Kumar Tiwary) when he was ten years old, Riaan subsequently signed up for a course on Buddhism at the Harvard School of Divinity, visited Bodh Gaya and completed reading the Tipitaka scriptures, Agatha and Lotus sutras. From his understanding of Buddhist philosophy and pacificism, Buddha Trail was promoted in 2018 and renamed Bodhi Trail in 2020. The elder son of Ratnesh Kumar Jha, CEO-India and South Asia, Burlington English, and mother Anjali Tiwary, an entrepreneur, this social activist intends to sign up for an undergraduate degree programme in public policy and enlightenment. God speed! Also read: Nurturing kind compassionate children
Watershed: how we destroyed india’s water & how we can save it, written by Mridula Ramesh, published by Hachette india is priced at Rs.699. A compelling narrative that traces India’s water history over 4,000 years to highlight a grave crisis confronting latter-day India, writes Mohammad Imtiyaz Mridula Ramesh’s compelling work traces the trajectory of India’s water history over 4,000 years to highlight a grave crisis confronting the country today. Global warming is a tragic reality and it is being predicted that by 2030, India will fail to meet half its water demand. As the book’s blurb points out, water availability per person in India has been decreasing for decades, leaving parts of the country in a cruel ‘Day Zero’ situation, shuttering factories and pushing farmers over the brink. As the climate heats up, it is likely that swathes of land will be submerged, water-related extremes will reshape industry and famine will revisit the country. Ramesh compares India’s past and present as she posits that ancient engineering and traditional technologies were designed bearing India’s volatile water availability in mind. However, their ingenuity often failed to battle monsoon variability and over-exploitation of water resources, which led to the collapse of civilisations like the Indus Valley and flooded Pataliputra, the capital of the powerful Maurya dynasty. The book is divided in two broad sections — ‘Understanding’ and ‘Action’ — narrating how India’s relationship with water has become dysfunctional and the corrective measures required to rectify India’s burgeoning water crisis. It begins by explaining the fault lines and stressors of India’s water resources. Emphasising the science of water and India’s monsoon uniqueness, it’s important to understand how India should manage its water given highly variable rainfall across states and regions of the country. Ramesh argues that insistence on growing commercial crops beyond a region’s water endowment, disrespecting monsoon variability and inter-annual variations of rainfall, have created India’s first water fault line. Further, anthropocentric activities such as the decimation of forests, sand mining in rivers, depleting groundwater and rivers to gratify human needs have altered seasonality and geographical variations and resulted in a warmer world and snowmelt, creating an additional fault line in India’s water availability. Moreover since independence, water management has been ignored at the public policy level. Ramesh cites American climate activist Bill McKibben who famously said “water doesn’t negotiate” to highlight India’s weakening of traditional and natural mechanisms that could mitigate the water crisis. A chapter ‘Chinks in India’s Water Armour’ argues that India’s low and falling water storage capacity is the outcome of policy failures and unplanned engineering. In another chapter ‘The Green Revolution’, Ramesh attributes India’s depleting groundwater reserves to widespread use of HYV (high-yield variety) seeds, which have reduced the soil’s propensity to retain moisture. Although the Green Revolution has enabled India to become self-sufficient in foodgrains, its sustainability is doubtful, warns the author. There is a need for ingenuity to expand India’s food security as the Green Revolution formula needs copious water. Farmers growing unsuitable crops using rapidly…
A Brief History of Equality, written by Thomas Piketty, published by Harvard University Press is priced at Rs.799. Economist Thomas Piketty summarises his previous works to make his research accessible to a wider audience, writes TCA Ranganathan Professor of economics at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences and associate chair at the Paris School of Economics, Thomas Piketty attained global fame with his best-selling Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), which highlighted wealth and income inequality in Europe and the US since the 18th century. The book argued that the rate of capital return in developed countries is persistently greater than the rate of economic growth, and that this would cause wealth inequality to increase in the future. Piketty proposed improving education systems arguing that diffusion of knowledge, skills, and ideas of productivity would act as main mechanisms to lower inequality. In 2019, his next book Capital and Ideology also became a bestseller. It broadened Piketty’s earlier scope by focusing on the sociology of inequality, experienced in various societies in history. The book’s central thesis was that inequality is not an accident but rather a feature of capitalism that can be reversed only through state intervention. It argued that throughout history, elites have tried to justify inequality by claiming it is natural and that the status quo brings stability, but these are biased excuses, shaped by self-interest. The book argued that unless capitalism is reformed, democracies worldwide will flounder. The above two books were voluminous in size and encyclopaedic in scope. In contrast, the book under review is a pithy 244 pages presented in ten chapters in which Piketty summarises his previous works, Capital in the Twenty-First Century and Capital and Ideology to make his research more accessible to a wider audience not necessarily economists. Much of the current discussion on inequality focuses on the period since 1980, when the benefits of growth began to accrue more narrowly to the rich than before. While discussing this phenomenon, Piketty acknowledges that there was an earlier optimistic narrative of the world’s astounding progress toward equality during the 19th century. Life expectancy rose from 26 to 72 years and, with the spread of compulsory state-provided education, literacy rate grew from 10 to 85 percent. Slavery and colonialism, once endemic, were substantially abolished. Perhaps half the population of the developed world is now at least middle class, whereas before the 20th century there was no middle class to speak of. The right to vote, formerly restricted even in democracies to male property owners, was well on its way to becoming universal. What prompted this progress? Piketty has a straightforward answer: the advent of progressive taxes on income and wealth, and rise of the comprehensive welfare state. Taxes reduced inequality and paid for the welfare state, which provided education, healthcare, old-age pensions and protection against severe deprivation. In Capital, Piketty advocated a “global tax on wealth” as a possible remedy for inequality. In A Brief History, he develops the concept of a…
Although the mighty British Empire on which the sun never set has been reduced to the status of a lonely nation exiled to the periphery of Europe following Brexit in 2020, there is something admirable about the tenacity with which Brits are hanging in there by drawing on their indisputably momentous history and soft power. The BBC is still very much in the reckoning and gamely claims to be the world’s most widely watched television news channel; Wimbledon continues to be the most glamorous global tennis tournament and test cricket at Lords is unmatched in grandeur although in tennis and cricket, Britain’s glory days are over. And to this list, one could also add ingenious television serials such as Downton Abbey and Bridgerton which have monetised the windswept island’s enduring upper class pretensions and snobbery into reel dramas which have hooked global audiences. The international success of Bridgerton owes much to the strategy that its multi-racial storyline and casting is in effect a clever apology for pernicious racial prejudice and discrimination that imperial Britain’s upper classes practised in the heyday of Empire. The plain truth is that racial and colour prejudice was deeply embedded in this ugly tribe given to covering their plainness with extravagant uniforms and braid. Even East End cockneys fortified by Lord Macaulay’s infamous dismissal of all literature of the subcontinent produced over five millennia not being equal to the domestic library of an English pastor, were persuaded of their racial and intellectual superiority over highly-educated Indians and subcontinentals. In essence, colour-blind Bridgerton with its multi-racial cast and inter-racial romance is a belated apology for blatant race and colour prejudice that Brits practised for more than two centuries in India and around the world. Hence its global acceptance and success.
The seemingly placid implementation pace of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which has provoked EW’s July cover story, is deceptive, according to a deep-dive investigation conducted by the Delhi-based daily Indian Express (June 21). Twenty-four obscure academics with strong links with the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), the ideological mentor organisation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ruling at the Centre and in several states, are members of 17 of 25 focus groups currently finalising content for inclusion in school textbooks published by the National Council for Educational Research & Training (NCERT), a subsidiary of the Union education ministry. NCERT textbooks are prescribed for 26,284 primary-secondary schools affiliated with the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and serve as models for school texts published and prescribed by SCERTs (State Councils for Educational Research & Training) in the country’s 29 states. The focus group members include Dr. Bhagwati Prakash Sharma, national convenor of RSS think tank Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM); JNU’s Prof. Vandana Mishra, former national secretary of ABVP (RSS-affiliated students union); Dr. Ramakrishna Rao, former national president of Vidya Bharati, the education wing of RSS, plus RSS acolytes in other focus groups — all appointed last December by Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, a former RSS karyakarta. The revision recommendations of the 25 focus groups packed with RSS academics will be forwarded to a 12-member steering committee chaired by Dr. K. Kasturirangan — a former space scientist and chairman of the Kasturirangan Committee whose 484-page policy draft shaped NEP 2020 — for approval. A stickler for old-fashioned propriety, Kasturirangan declined to comment on the Express investigation, and on the progress of NEP 2020 implementation in EW’s cover feature of this issue. Sir, given that a massive RSS-BJP conspiracy to rewrite Indian history and hijack Indian education by twisting your report is underway, this is hardly the time for political correctness and propriety.
Readers acquainted with the voluminous features written by your editor in disparate publications including Business India, Businessworld and EducationWorld (estb.1999) are certain to be well-aware that I’m not an admirer of the country’s 256 Central government public sector enterprises (PSEs). And an equivalent number of PSEs promoted by state governments across the country. Continuous investment of national savings in post-independence India’s black-hole PSEs was the greatest mistake in Indian history which has wiped out the modest material aspirations of three generations of free India’s children, and heinously delayed this nation from reclaiming its premier status as the world’s most prosperous landmass that it was a mere two centuries ago. In particular, the nationalisation of the country’s 27 largest banks in 1969 by prime minister Indira Gandhi has proved to be the most egregious error in India’s economic history. The shift from risk assessment and project evaluation based lending to bureaucratic banking influenced by phone calls from venal politicians in Delhi and state capitals, totally ruined the economy and almost extinguished India’s ancient spirit of private enterprise. In light of this dismal history of India’s nationalised banks, while on a brief vacation in the Maldives, your correspondent learned of a public tribute paid to the State Bank of India by Qasim Ibrahim, founder chairman and managing director of Villa Shipping & Trading Co. Ltd which owns Paradise Island and several other excellent resorts and successful businesses in the island republic. Ibrahim began his career as a clerk in a government hospital in Male and with a loan of $2,000 advanced by the State Bank of India transformed into the wealthiest business tycoon and philanthropist of our neighbour nation. And to this day, SBI remains the Villa Group’s primary bank. It was a pleasant surprise to hear good words about a public sector bank.
In 20 bachelor’s and 150 Masters degree programmes, English is the medium of instruction in this public research institution consistently ranked the Netherlands’ #1 varsity, writes Reshma Ravishanker The Netherlands’ third oldest varsity, the University of Amsterdam (UvA, estb.1632) is internationally reputed for teaching and research excellence. A publicly-funded research institution, UvA is consistently ranked the Netherlands’ #1 university and among the world’s Top 60 in the QS and THE global rankings. The US News & World Report ranks it #38 and the London-based QS ranks it #55. Spread across four campuses in the Dutch capital renowned for its museums and canals, UvA offers a wide range of bachelor’s programmes in its seven faculties including the humanities, social and behavioural sciences, economics and business, science, law, medicine, and dentistry to 34,000 students mentored by 6,000 faculty and administrative staff. In 20 bachelor’s and 150 Masters degree programmes, English is the medium of instruction (see box). While the official language of the Netherlands is Dutch, English language literacy is almost universal. However, UvA spokespersons recommend that foreign students also learn elementary Dutch (Institute for Dutch Language Education, https://intt.uva.nl/) online before emplaning. UvA traces its history to 1632 when the city’s municipal authorities promoted the Athenaeum Illustre (Illustrious School) of medical education. In 1877, the City of Amsterdam elevated it to the status of University of Amsterdam and conferred the right to award doctoral degrees upon it. A century later (1961), it was declared a National University. Given its ancient vintage and academic tradition, it’s unsurprising UvA boasts an impressive alumni roll call including six Nobel laureates, five Dutch prime ministers, former Belgium prime minister Charles Michel, Dutch politician Thierry Henri Philippe Baudet, author Jkvr. Karin Hildur ‘Kajsa’ Ollongren, and Sutan Sjahrir (1909-1966), Indonesia’s first prime minister. Amsterdam. The admin capital of the Netherlands, Amsterdam (pop.1.6 million) is globally renowned for its museums and elaborate canals system. Known as the ‘Venice of the North’, it has over 150 canals which lend the city its unique character and ambience. The Museum Quarter houses Amsterdam’s three most visited sites — Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum and Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art — all of whom display the works of Dutch masters, contemporary artists and impressionists. This bicycle-friendly city also hosts several theatres, concert halls and parks and attracts 7-9 million tourists annually. The weather in Amsterdam is sub-oceanic and rainy which means it has cold (but not freezing) winters and cool summers. The wind blows frequently and furiously especially from November to March. Average summer temperature ranges between 15-18oC, while in winter it could plunge to 0oC. Campus facilities. UvA has four campuses spread across Amsterdam. They are a mix of heritage buildings overlooking canals and modern academic architecture. The historic University Quarter in city centre houses the humanities faculty, University Library, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Allard Pierson Museum. Roeterseiland is an open city campus, sited adjacent to the Plantage district, and houses students enrolled in economics and business, social…
Under the mentorship model unthrea-tened by audit-style evaluation teachers are likely to experiment, innovate and improve classroom management and lessons planning and delivery, Prachi Bhardwaj Upgrading the quality of teaching-learning in India’s 17,000 teacher training colleges is one of the most important prerequisites of introducing academic rigour and improving students’ learning outcomes. This is acknowledged in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. Under the new policy, every school teacher is obliged to undergo professional development training for at least 50 hours per year. This necessity is also recognised by the country’s 9-million-strong educators’ community. According to Union education ministry data, 1.72 million principals and teachers have already signed up for continuous professional development programmes and 2.3 million educators have enrolled in online programmes. Yet there is no clarity about who is accountable for the quality and sustained implementation of these programmes. In the circumstances, there’s a urgent need to examine the quality of teacher development programmes and the methodology of assessing teachers’ learning outcomes. In their book Continuous Professional Development (2003), David Megginson and Vivian Whitaker describe continuous professional development as “a process by which individuals take control of their own learning and development, by engaging in an ongoing process of reflection and action. This process is empowering and exciting and can stimulate people to achieve their aspirations and move towards their dreams”. It’s important to note the key words “ongoing process of reflection”.
Korea tourism invitation Bengaluru, June 23. Korea Tourism Organisation (KTO), India, an agency of the Republic of Korea (RoK, South Korea) under its ministry of culture, sports and tourism, organised a webinar in collaboration with EducationWorld to invite schools across India to visit Korea for education tours. “South Korea is an educationally advanced country which spends over 5 percent of annual GDP on education,” said Summiya Yasmeen, managing editor of EducationWorld. “It is also an emerging education hub of Asia with a highly developed kindergarten to university education system,” she added. Speaking on the occasion, Young Geul Choi, director, KTO, said the agency facilitates elementary, middle, high school and university students visiting Korea. “K-pop, food, cuisine and fashion have been attracting young tourists in recent years. RoK offers a safe and clean environment, four dedicated seasons, long history, rich cultural heritage and global peace tradition, and excellent tourism infrastructure,” said Choi. IIT-M’s unique course Chennai, June 6. The high-ranked Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M, estb.1959) has launched an ‘Out of the Box Thinking’ programme in mathematics. “Out of the box thinking is solving math problems through indirect and creative approaches, using reasoning not immediately obvious and involving ideas quite different from traditional step-by-step logic. In this unique course, such thinking is provoked by rediscovering known and unknown facts of mathematics logically, with an interesting broader perception of the manner of doing it,” says Prof. V. Kamakoti, director of IIT-M. The institute is targeting to enrol 1 million school and college students, and working professionals and researchers. Learning modules will be offered in online mode free-of-charge through IIT-M’s Pravartak Technologies Foundation, a s.8 company which will issue grade certification for students who take examinations at a nominal fee. The final proctored examination will be conducted at centres in select cities countrywide. The first batch of the course commenced on July 1. Unique MentorKart programme New Delhi, June 2. MentorKart, a technology-based platform of the Noida-based Tracxn Technologies Pvt. Ltd announced the launch of its Industry Mentorship Model Campus (IMMC). According to a company media release, IMMC is designed to train university/college students for myriad industry job roles based on their qualifications. MentorKart has already signed up with 50 universities countrywide for students to participate in the IMMC programme. It intends to achieve its goal of reaching over 200 universities in the next few quarters. With more than 1,000 highly experienced mentors, coaches, content creators, IMMC offers an e-learning and career acceleration ecosystem. “This initiative does not only provide or enhance college/university students’ technical and soft skills but also provides them guidance from our highly experienced mentors. It is a win-win programme for higher education institutions, students as well as industry,” says Vijay Sethi, chairman of the advisory board and chief mentor, MentorKart. Deakin-JGU tie-up New Delhi, June 8. Deakin University, Australia and O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU), Sonipat (Haryana) invite applications for their joint Global B.Com (Hons.) + B. Business + MBA (International) integrated degree programme — the first in…
Delhi: Major digital skilling drive New Delhi, June 6. Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan launched a class VII-graduation digital skilling initiative for 10 million students. The programme will provide skilling, reskilling and upskilling education to students via internships, apprenticeships and employment in emerging technologies. “This is the first-ever collaboration on a national scale between the ministries of education, skill and affiliated NSDCs, Skill India programmes and AICTE. Over 100 corporate, technology and manufacturing firms have already come on board this platform to provide free-of-charge emerging technologies certification,” said the minister, addressing a press conference. Rajasthan: Best education districts New Delhi, June 27. Rajasthan’s Sikar district is the best performing school education district countrywide, followed by Jhunjhunu and Jaipur, according to the Union ministry of education’s Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D) pertaining to 2018-19 and 2019-20. The three districts are classified under the ‘Utkarsh’ category (awarded 81-90 percent on a scale of 100) with Jhunjhunu awarded the maximum (236 out of 290) in learning outcomes. PGI-D classifies districts into ten categories starting with ‘Daksh’ for districts awarded over 90 percent of the total points in that category; ‘Utkarsh’ for districts with scores awarded 81-90 percent followed by ‘Ati-Uttam’ (71-80 percent), ‘Uttam’ (61-70 percent), ‘Prachesta-I’ (51-60 percent). The lowest classification in PGI-D is ‘Akanshi-3’ for districts which are awarded 10 percent or less. Madhya Pradesh: K-question suspensions Indore/Bhopal, June 21. The Madhya Pradesh Public Service Commission (MPPSC) suspended a paper setter and moderator after a controversial question on Kashmir was posed in the General Aptitude Test of the state public service commission’s preliminary examination. According to home minister Narottam Mishra, the question was: “If India should decide to hand over Kashmir to Pakistan, which of the following arguments are stronger? Options included ‘Yes, it will save a lot of money for India’ and ‘No, such a decision will lead to more similar demands’, ‘Both are stronger or vice versa’.” Addressing the media, Mishra said: “The question was objectionable and a letter is being written to the state public service commission and the higher education department for stringent action against them.” J&K: Stress management programme Jammu, June 5. The Singapore-based Red Pencil Humanitarian Foundation (estb.2011) and the Mumbai-based Piramal Foundation have developed an art-based capacity building and training (ACBT) programme for teachers to address the emotional and mental stress of government school children in the Union territories of Jammu and Kashmir. Addressing the media, Ravi Shankar Sharma, director of school education, J&K, said that 150 teachers, 75 each from Jammu and Kashmir divisions will be trained in the first phase. “The objective is to improve the socio-emotional well-being of students, especially those who cannot express their problems and grievances verbally. The ACBT project will be especially helpful for teachers in remote areas like Poonch and Kishtwar,” he added. Odisha: New education milestones Bhubaneswar, June 17. Chief minister Naveen Patnaik inaugurated the Bhawanipatna School in the backward Kalahandi district. Promoted by the nationally renowned Kalinga Institute of Social Science (KISS), the school will…
Distinguished philosopher My compliments to you for the highly insightful and comprehensive cover story ‘Why every educator should revisit J. Krishnamurti?’ (EW June). Krishnamurti was the sole Indian existential philosopher who advocated individualism in education development. The spirit of his education philosophy needs to be replicated in India’s faltering K-12 education system. You have elevated EW to a great height by featuring JK in this unprecedented lead feature. You should continue with this trend of writing about distinguished educationists and thinkers in your future issues. Dr. A.S. Seetharamu, Bengaluru Inspirational cover story Congratulations on an inspirational cover story ‘Why every educator should revisit J. Krishnamurti’ (EW June) highlighting the education philosophy of this extraordinary philosopher-sage. I am happy to learn that his precepts are being faithfully implemented in six KFI (Krishnamurti Foundation India) schools countrywide. As a parent of two teenage children, I believe it’s paramount for them to develop into good human beings. After the anxiety of the pandemic years, there is urgent need for children to be provided education in nature-friendly and joyous learning environments. Shivani Nakhare, Mumbai Well done job kudos to EducationWorld for successfully staging the EW India Higher Education Rankings 2022-23 Awards ceremony featuring the leading lights of academia. Your pictorial essay (EW June) reflects a well-done job of celebrating and felicitating top-ranked colleges and universities based on the outcome of the comprehensive EW India Higher Education Rankings 2022-23 conducted by Delhi-based market research company C fore. Aditya Sen, Kolkata Support aspiring champs It was refreshing to read about teenage golfer Avani Prakash’s latest achievements in your Young Achiever’s column (EW June). Her success story offers valuable lessons to parents and school managements who hesitate to support aspiring sports champions fearing their board exam results may suffer. No wonder a country with one billion-plus people struggles to produce medal-winning Olympians. Wake up India! Mrinal Singh via e-mail Useful institution profiles I am a class XII student and a regular reader of EducationWorld. I congratulate you for your unique foreign Institution Profiles in particular, because they are well-researched and provide details of global rankings, campus facilities, accommodation options, tuition fee and boarding charges, and degree programmes offered. These detailed profiles are very useful for school-leavers like me to choose suitable higher education institutions abroad. Keep up the good work! Satisha Raghava, Bengaluru Appalling callousness I am writing to express my dissatisfaction with your persistent misprinting the name of our college in the annual EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings for the past two years. We are DAV College, Abohar and not DAV College of Education, Abohar. We brought the error to your notice for the first time in May 2021 which was duly acknowledged and our name promptly corrected online. However, our institutional name was misprinted again in your April 2022 issue. I am appalled by your sheer callousness in rectifying mistakes in your print editions despite bringing the errors to your notice. Dr. Rajesh Kumar Mahajan Principal, DAV College, Abohar Sorry again. Error is regretted and…
-Dipta Joshi (Mumbai) Mumbai-based sex education evangelist Anju Kish is the founder-director of UnTaboo Education Pvt. Ltd (estb.2015). The company conducts age-appropriate and gender inclusive safety and sex education workshops for children in the 8-18 years age group. Over 30 progressive primary-secondary schools including Dhirubhai Ambani International School, Oberoi International, Mumbai, Mayo College, Ajmer and The Doon School, Dehradun are on UnTaboo’s clients list. Thus far, Kish has addressed over 100,000 children, parents and educators. Newspeg. On July 1, Kish is all set to launch India’s first gamified E-learning platform for safety and sex education (UnTaboo.online) with two programmes — ‘Puberty adventure for boys’ and ‘Puberty adventure for girls’. The impactful content comprises animated and gamified programmes that will enable independent learning empowering children with accurate information to develop body positivity and responsible behaviour. History. A law and mass communication graduate of Nagpur University (1991), Kish began her career as a journalist in Hitavada, Nagpur’s premier English language daily, in 1993. In 1996, she moved to Mumbai to work as copywriter in the Mullen Lowe Lintas Group. A decade after she married Sanjiv Kishinchandani and became mother of two curious boys, she began a futile search for child-friendly books on sex and sexuality. This experience inspired her to sign up with The Institute of Human Technology, Mumbai and qualify as a sex educator in 2011. After four years of independent practice as a sexuality educator in schools, in 2015 Kish invested her savings and promoted UnTaboo Education which offers children, parents and schools gamified workshops and awareness lectures. Appalled by the neglect of sex and sexuality education in school curriculums in 2019, Kish wrote her first book How I Got My Belly Button: An Enchanting Story on Puberty, Sex and Growing Up which bagged the FICCI Best Children’s Book that year. Direct talk. “Children today have easy access to pornography at the click of a button and there are hardly any conversations to counter the impact of what they are seeing and hearing. Therefore, they fall prey to misinformation, myths and develop unsafe attitudes. UnTaboo Education helps them grow up with healthy attitudes and better decision making skills. Safety and sex education needs to be recognised as an important life skill for children’s holistic development. I have been working in this space for over a decade, not just educating children but also empowering parents and teachers to enable open conversations,” says Kish. Future plans. Encouraged by the overwhelming response of parents and schools to her workshops and book How I Got my Belly Button, Kish has ambitious plans for the future. Besides publishing a second edition of her book soon, her online portal untaboo.online will offer additional programmes — on body safety, cyber safety and drugs and alcohol resistance. “The main objective is to help children and teens to make informed choices and navigate adolescence responsibly,” she says.
