EducationWorld June 15

There is a God: How the World™s Most Notorious Atheist Changed his Mind by Antony Flew; Harperone; Price: Rs.683; Pages: 222 One can™t entirely be sure if the late Antony Flew (1923-2010) was at any time the œworld™s most notorious atheist, as the title of this book describes him. This description could well be a clever sales gimmick. But there™s no doubt the late professor was one of the most prolific and influential of contemporary atheist philosophers. Flew™s several books on the philosophy of atheism defined non-belief for almost half a century, until when just a few years before his death at 80, he experienced a Pauline conversion and became a believer. No one expected this from one of the most prominent champions of atheism, not least Flew himself. œIt may well be that no one is as surprised as I am that my exploration of the Divine has after all these years turned from denial to discovery, he writes. Befitting the subject and written by a philosophy professional, There is a God is inevitably dense and abstruse. But this account of Flew™s conversion from hardened atheism to belief in God, is truly amazing. It was the outcome of a œpilgrimage of reason, leading him from denial to acceptance of what he terms a œself-existent, immutable, immaterial, omnipotent, and omniscient Being. Flew wasn™t always an atheist. Indeed he began life steeped in religion as the son of an English preacher. He studied in a Christian school where he attended chapel, but prayers, he confesses were a œweary duty. œNever did I feel the slightest desire to commune with God, he recalls, and gradually turned into an atheist, while struggling to make sense of the horrors and evil in the world and the inability of a loving, all-powerful God to exterminate it. By the age of 15, he had rejected the thesis that the universe was created by the all-good, all-powerful God. Flew went on to read philosophy at Oxford, and subsequently taught for many years in universities in the US, Canada, and the UK. In a career spanning many decades as a professional philosopher, he wrote numerous treatises, which earned him the dubious distinction of being one of the leading and most articulate advocates of atheism in modern times. After over six decades of ardently propagating atheism, in surely the most fascinating part of the book, Flew recounts how he experienced a radical conversion. In 2004, he famously declared that he had become a believer (although not of any particular religion). This œneed to believe was not, he stresses, because of any personal religious experience, but the outcome of following where the evidence had led him. He was compelled to acknowledge a Supreme Being because the origin of life pointed to the activity of a Creative Intelligence, or God. Given the enormous complexity of the universe, the existence of a Creator cannot be denied, professes the author. œI now believe that the universe was brought into existence by an Infinite…

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

Health and fitness is not a 21st century fad or phenomenon as is popularly believed. As long ago as 400 BCE, the benefits of exercise ” mens sana in corpore sano ” were well-understood. œLack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being, while movement and methodical physical exercise save it and preserve it, commented the Greek philosopher Plato (428-347 BCE). Few people read Plato anymore. Parents are busy, teachers are overworked, and youth are over-stimulated by internet, television, media and advertising. Our brave new hi-tech world encourages sedentary pursuits rather than movement and action. This is not to say nothing is happening in the world of  sports ” except what™s happening isn™t necessarily good. Despite the reality that only two-five of every 1,000 young sports and games enthusiasts will ever turn pro, many parents continue to believe that sports is about pushing children to win sports scholarships. Such parents ” and the coaches to whom they entrust their children ” encourage the development of hyper-competitive, egocentric mindsets to achieve this goal. Even the most well-intentioned gym classes and youth recreation camps develop programmes œfor youth without including them in their design and operations. They seldom ask children about the type of activities they would like to be involved with, and rarely give them a role in running sports programmes congruent with their needs. As a lifelong athlete, I am sad that today™s young generation may well be the first in US history to live shorter lives than their parents. Even though I am at an age when most of my peers are retired or dead, my response to this frightening possibility is to spend most of my waking hours developing a non-profit exercise, sports, play and leadership programme ” Leading2Play ” designed to engage young people in activities which improve their health, well-being and chances of school, business and professional success. This programme enables students from any school or community organisation, with a little training and support from a team of committed advisors, to take the lead in designing and implementing inclusive and enjoyable sports and fitness activities likely to become habit-forming. The programme has been piloted in nine schools with the goal of building a national programme which will have tens of thousands of kids enjoying sports and physical activity by 2020. My hope is it will have great economic and educational benefits and help children develop physically and emotionally. This is not mere wishful thinking because it™s now well-established by numerous studies that participation in sports and games lengthens life expectancy, decreases absenteeism at work, and improves workplace productivity. Similarly, it™s also well-established that children who are physically active do better in maths and reading, concentrate well, can process information faster and perform better in standardised tests. Likewise, researchers Holland and Andre (1987) among several others, have established a strong correlation between sports participation and higher levels of self-esteem, improved race relations, involvement in political/social activity during young adulthood, educational ambition and attainments, greater self-control,…

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

Ground reports from across the country indicate that implementation of the RTE Act which became law on April 1, 2010 is piecemeal and inchmeal by state governments gripped by financial constraints, bureaucratic corruption and teacher shortages  Summiya Yasmeen On the fifth anniversary of the landmark Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (aka RTE) Act, 2009 which makes it mandatory for the State (i.e Central, state and local governments) to provide free and compulsory elementary education (class I-VIII) to every child between 6-14 years of age and prescribes minimum infrastructure, teacher-pupil ratios and other norms for all schools, there’s little cause for celebration. Ground reports from across the country indicate that implementation of the RTE Act which became law on April 1,2010, is piecemeal and inchmeal by state governments gripped by financial constraints, bureaucratic corruption and teacher shortages that routinely haunt government schools even as the nation’s 319,990 private schools are struggling with the burden imposed upon them by the Act to provide highly subsidised elementary education to poor children in their neighbourhoods. Two deadlines — March 31, 2013 for all elementary schools to meet prescribed infrastructure norms and standards and March 31, 2015 for all primary school teachers to attain minimum qualifications (i.e clear the Teacher Eligibility Test) — set by the RTE Act have elapsed, with little to show for them. According to the RTE Forum, a Delhi-based national coalition of over 10,000 NGOs, educationists and social activists which held its fifth National Stock Taking Convention on the status of implementation of the RTE Act on March 25, 90 percent of the country’s 1.2 million government schools are non-compliant with the infrastructure norms and standards prescribed by the Act. Moreover, the forum estimates a shortage of 500,000 teachers with the country’s 29 state governments having failed to fill teacher vacancies and/or to upgrade the skills and knowledge of 7 million primary school teachers to standards prescribed by the Act. Pass percentages in the Teacher Eligibility Tests (TETs) conducted by state governments are pitiably low, ranging between 0.3 to 6 percent countrywide. “For the past six decades, Central and state governments have conspicuously failed to deliver on their commitment to provide quality universal primary education. Heavy cuts in the school education budget show that even the new BJP government at the Centre is least bothered about the unsatisfactory implementation of the RTE Act. In Union Budget 2015-16, the BJP government has brazenly cut the RTE-Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (elementary education) budget by 23 percent to Rs.22,000 crore. More than six million children are still out of school and 41 percent of students drop out before completing class VIII. There’s a shortage of 500,000 school teachers and an additional 660,000 teachers countrywide need training. State governments continue to violate provisions of the RTE Act by recruiting contractual and untrained teachers and teacher training colleges provide sub-standard education. Even so, there’s no clear road-map to improve the quality of teacher training even though the March 31, 2015 deadline for teacher qualifications 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

Is it possible to offer a truly international education experience in the Western world? Not according to Alfred Bloom. Dr. Bloom has been vice chancellor of New York University™s outpost in Abu Dhabi since 2009 and, in terms of his pedagogical outlook at least, can be said to have gone native. After 18 years as president of Swarthmore College, a US liberal arts institution, he now argues that efforts to internationalise teaching and research at such institutions are held back by a shuttered worldview. For Dr. Bloom, the world is a œnew place with actors who come from equal levels of intellectual resources and potential contribution. Therefore, the œfirst thing to do, when setting up an international university, is to œmove beyond the hegemony of the US and Western Europe. œUnless you have a context in which no culture is dominant, you don™t have a sense of being in a global world, he says. At NYU Abu Dhabi, Dr. Bloom believes he has created such a context. Of its 739 undergraduates, 11 percent are Emirati and 16 percent are from the US, with 107 countries represented overall. The experience of bringing these students together, Dr. Bloom says is œelectrifying. Not only do these students receive a traditional liberal arts education, they also learn to œfind common ground across differences and build mutual understanding and purpose, he adds. The same is true for research. Academics at an institution like NYU Abu Dhabi, œcan be comfortable stretching paradigms shaped in Western universities in a way which constrained the core of excellence in these paradigms. But this is a rosy picture of academic life in the Middle East.  NYU™s Abu Dhabi venture has faced problems that are familiar to other institutions operating in the gulf. Most recently, The New York Times reported that Andrew Ross, an NYU professor based in the US, has been barred from entering Abu Dhabi after criticising the exploitation of labour who built the university™s campus on Saadiyat Island. An independent report published on April 16 found thousands of (Indian sub-continent) workers had been excluded from NYU™s enhanced labour standards, albeit without the university™s knowledge. Speaking to Times Higher Education before these developments emerged, Dr. Bloom argued that moving to another country inevitably meant that you œaccept a set of expectations from that society and that, if you couldn™t, then œthat™s not the place for you. But he says there™s an œabsolute commitment to academic freedom in Abu Dhabi and argues that every society places restrictions on expression, be it through law or social convention. œIn the US, you can™t start speaking in harassing terms, in racist terms, in revolutionary terms against the government in specific ways, says Dr. Bloom. œI really believe the atmosphere right now (in Abu Dhabi) is one that has somewhat different limitations and different restrictions but will not curb the opportunity for very comprehensive expression and creativity. (Excerpted and adapted from )

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

Tuition fees are likely to rise above the minimum £9,000 (Rs.8.8 lakh) per year to enable spending cuts proposed by the new Conservative government, senior leaders in education have suggested, as universities also prepare a œpowerful public campaign for Britain to stay in the European Union. The Tories™ election triumph will set in motion lobbying efforts by the sector on key issues including Europe and university funding, given that the party is committed to £30 billion (Rs.296,553 crore) in cuts. The department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), which includes research and higher education, is a non-protected department. Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of Universities UK (UUK), says one of the group™s priorities would be government funding because of the possibility that there œmay be an emergency budget preceding a broader spending review later in the year. That would raise œsome pretty urgent questions about the impact on the BIS budget, including research funding as a œtop priority, she told Times Higher Education. Within BIS, there could be pressure to prune the research budget or cut the remaining areas of direct public funding for university teaching (widening participation and high-cost subjects). Do the looming cuts to the BIS budget make it likely that a rise in fees might accompany them? œYes, I think that there may be (a rise), says Dandridge. œI think it™s something that we will be making explicit when we publish the work of our student funding panel¦ we™re still crafting our position on that. William Hague, the former Tory leader, said before the election that a rise in fees in the next Parliament had not been ruled out. And Vince Cable, the former Liberal Democrat business secretary who lost his seat in the general election, had previously suggested there would be œconsequences for universities from the policies of George Osborne, the chancellor. Last October at the Lib-Dem conference, Cable said: œ¦ there would be a significant increase in fees, a reduction in the (student loan repayment) threshold, and the thing which would save money would be really taking a lot of money out of student support ” effectively by stopping grants and turning them to loans, something of that kind. On Europe, the Conservatives are committed to holding an in-out referendum on EU membership by 2017, although there are suggestions that David Cameron could seek to hold the vote next year. UUK has previously said Britain™s universities could benefit from £1.2 billion a year in European research funding. According to Dandridge, UUK would be involved in œa public-facing campaign to talk very clearly and explicitly about the value of European membership and the damage¦that would be done if we were to leave. We hope it will be a powerful voice in that campaign. But I think we™ve got to move on that quite quickly because we don™t know the timescale of any referendum. University mergers wave University mergers are on the rise in Europe, according to a new report of the European University Association (EUA). The research…

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

Harrowing stories of the suffering and dilemmas faced by academics in Islamic State (IS)-controlled areas of Iraq have emerged through testimonies given to the Council for At-Risk Academics (Cara). One witness, on condition of anonymity, describes what happened at the University of Anbar (sited in Ramadi, capital of the country™s largest governorate or province, Al-Anbar). Even before IS took over in June 2014, he recalls, œwe academics were unable to speak freely or give our opinions about IS in public because there were some students involved with IS and some lecturers were beaten up by students. Awarding poor marks to œa student belonging to IS became very risky. Things obviously got worse once IS seized power, since they œthreatened the academics and wanted them to propagandise for them. Lecturers were tortured and even killed for refusing to obey. IS also prohibited academics from leaving the university hostel and used them as human shields¦ Al-Qaim College was occupied by IS and the buildings used as a court and a prison. Yet even those who have found safety in Kurdistan often receive death threats or news that children left behind have been kidnapped. And all this just for the œsin of wanting to œimprove higher education in our country and to teach modern knowledge, which is forbidden and unacceptable to IS. Alongside the terrible impact on individuals, concludes the witness, œIS have destroyed the infrastructure of the university and higher education in Al-Anbar. With books and research papers burned, academics™ houses, laboratories, laptops and cars taken over, œthe academic year 2014 was lost and many students were not able to finish their studies. All research projects were stopped and most lost forever. This took us back perhaps 10 years. Similarly, tragic events are unfolding at the University of Mosul, once the second largest in Iraq. This is œunfortunately now semi-closed, reports another of Cara™s local contacts, since the IS takeover last June led to œthe flight of the army and the government from Mosul, leaving civilians trapped in the city. Now hundreds of faculty members and thousands of students have left the area for nearby Kurdistan as well as other Iraqi cities or outside Iraq. Teaching has stopped in all faculties at Mosul except medicine and education. Yet at the same time, the Iraqi government and higher education ministry don™t recognise universities operating under IS rule, with ten deans sacked by the ministry on April 21. The situation has created appalling dilemmas for academics. Remaining in Mosul leaves them exposed to attacks on the city from the Kurdish Peshmerga and American-led coalition forces as well as IS. Hospitals suffer from an acute shortage of drugs and money to pay staff. IS-controlled areas œare witnessing a return to the Stone Age, says Kate Robertson, Cara™s deputy executive director, with œacademics and medics within teaching hospitals now œcaught between a rock and a hard place, shunned by Baghdad for remaining in (such) areas, or faced with the loss of everything if they try 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

Abandoning schools can be perilous for politicians. When Rahm Emanuel, Chicago™s mayor, decided in 2013 to shut down 47 public schools that were half-empty and had atrocious results, he sparked protests that nearly cost him the next election. In New York, Michael Bloomberg, who once ran the city, infuriated teachers™ unions because he allowed charter schools to replace traditional public schools that didn™t work. In India as well, closure of government schools with too few pupils outrages politicians in particular. Parents worry that closure could disrupt their children™s education. Children don™t want to lose their friends. Teachers worry about their jobs. However, a new report from the Thomas Fordham Institute, a think-tank, suggests closures are good for students. Researchers tracked 23,000 displaced pupils from shut-down district and charter schools in eight Ohio cities between 2006-12. Ohio™s urban public schools have long struggled with competition from charter schools and declining populations (the state™s eight largest cities have lost more than 50,000 students in the past eight years). Those who stayed found themselves in empty or failing schools. The Fordham study says closures ultimately benefit pupils from wretched schools. Once a school is closed, most children end up in better ones, where they eventually get higher grades. Three years after closure, children were found to have gained the equivalent of at least an extra month of learning in their new schools. Those who went from a failing charter school to a high-performing one did even better, gaining 58 more days of learning in reading and 88 days in maths. Most of the closed district schools were in deprived areas. Nearly three-quarters of the children were black and more than 90 percent poor. The report concluded that œthough fraught with controversy and political peril, shuttering bad schools might just be a saving grace for students who need the best education they can get. (Excerpted and adapted from )

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

To become technology-literate is one of the universal mandates of the 21st century. Although the basics of language and arithmetic remain the foundation upon which all professions and occupations are built, the lives of people in the new millennium have been radically disrupted by new information and communication technologies (ICT). The umbrella term ICT covers computers, the internet, telephones, television and radio, which have incrementally fascinated, seduced and hooked people worldwide and rendered those unfamiliar with ICT helpless. To survive in business, commerce, industry and the professions, people need to acquire working familiarity with the moving flux of its languages, tools and protocols. To truly realise the full potential of ICT in education, teachers must transcend the realm of basic literacy, and move towards ICT ˜fluency™. This requires development of responsive agility to be able to utilise new-age technologies efficiently, if not optimally. The first step is to create healthy learning spaces to demystify and ˜normalise™ the existence and awareness of ICT. This opens up two possibilities, viz, to teach ICT as a subject which requires familiarising students with computer systems and software, and to integrate ICT into knowledge transmission. Harnessing both these possibilities will provide young learners with the exposure needed to tap the wonderful new world of knowledge and learning opened up by ICT. As with all new concepts, early exposure will pre-empt the inflexibility of minds jaded with age. Since new technologies are equalising, the term ˜learners™ encompasses all involved in the existing teaching-learning matrix ” students and teachers now transformed into facilitators. That is to say, at the beginning, everybody needs to learn the basics of ICT, including teachers. However, what is particular to the latter group is the dual responsibility of keeping abreast with technology themselves, while also investing in acquiring or developing new pedagogies to engage in the two aforesaid ways of integrating ICT in their classrooms. To ˜teach™ ICT to students in the Indian context, it™s advisable for schools to offer it as a separate subject in the weekly timetable. In these classes, students can be introduced to computer hardware and the basics of using office and applications software. Such introductory classes can also be stretched to enable students to explore the underlying principles of ICT hardware, software and applications ” the basics of an ICT literacy programme. In schools which introduce basic ICT learning classes, there™s also an opportunity for teachers to learn and teach the ˜hows™ and ˜whys™ behind hardware and software, and to develop the cognitive skills required for effective use of applications and programming, data gathering, mind-mapping, logical reasoning and algorithmic thinking. Rather than simply teaching-learning computer facts, figures and functions, a structured curriculum will develop students™ cross-disciplinary life skills facilitating their progress towards ICT fluency. The second necessity is to integrate ICT into the teaching-learning process. For instance to teach class VII history,  rather than using the old chart paper and felt pens, picture ˜homework™ taking the form of a digital presentation incorporating text, audio and videos. Or…

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

I intend to pursue postgraduate studies in clinical research after completing B.Sc in microbiology next year. What are my career prospects? Arvind Swamy, Chennai The clinical research industry recruits trained medical/dental investigators who could be graduates in pharmacy, life sciences and biotechnology for managing clinical sites; clinical trial coordinators for signing up patients; clinical research associates, essentially data and site monitors, and clinical data managers. In sum, clinical research is a highly rewarding career. I™m a B.Com graduate working in a firm for the past four years. To improve my career prospects, I want to sign up for an MBA degree programme. Should I opt for a part-time or full-time course? Deepak Shinde, Pune A full-time MBA course is preferable, especially for individuals with two-three years of work experience. But if you have more than seven-eight years of work experience, a part-time MBA will do. I want to enroll in an MBA degree programme in tourism studies after completing my undergrad studies. Which country offers the best postgrad tourism programmes? Navin Malhotra, New Delhi The US is perhaps the best study destination for a Masters in tourism ” preferably an MBA (tourism and hospitality management). The admission procedure requires aspirants to apply to universities/colleges through their online portals. Applications should be supported with academic transcripts, proof of proficiency in English (TOEFL/IELTS scores), statement of purpose, recommendation letters, etc. Some universities may also insist on a good GMAT/GRE score. I™m interested in a career in dietetics and nutrition. Which subjects should I opt for in undergraduate studies? Christina Vaz, Mumbai You could sign up for a B.Sc in home science, food technology/science or nutrition followed up with a Masters or complete a bachelor™s of life sciences course followed by a postgrad diploma programme in nutrition and dietetics. With growing health and lifestyle awareness within the public, career prospects are promising. I will complete my B.Sc (chemistry) in 2016. What are my options after graduation? Neeta Desai, Ahmedabad You could enroll in a Masters in chemistry. After postgraduation, you become eligible for the position of a researcher/scientist at eminent institutions such as TIFR, BARC, DRDO, etc. Once employed, you could simultaneously continue your studies and enroll in a Ph D programme. After graduating as an IT engineer next year, I want to pursue a Masters in information technology at a foreign university. Please advise. Dilkip Chatterjee, Kolkata Most universities abroad offer the Masters programme in IT. The most popular study destinations are the US, UK and Australia. Every country has differing admission procedures and requirements. How important is the job of a social media manager in commercial organisations? I finish my postgrad degree in mass communications next year and am interested in working as such. Neena Sippy, Mumbai A social media manager increases a company™s brand awareness by writing blog posts, Facebook, Twitter pages and develops and manages social media campaigns, and regularly updates her organisation™s page on social networks with relevant and engaging content using analytic tools to gauge click-throughs 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

With the Indian e-learning industry gradually moving up the value chain, demand for instructional designers ” the cog in the e-learning business wheel ” is set to rise  Indra Gidwani œThe aggregate revenue of the global e-learning industry is expected to cross $107 billion (Rs.680,948 crore) by end 2015. With India a major player in outsourced e-learning work, demand for instructional designers, the cog in the e-learning business wheel, has grown significantly to meet the exploding requirements of the e-learning business, observes Siddharth Naik, a senior instructional designer at the Pune office of Knowledge Horizon Ltd, an international knowledge organisation with its headquarters in Dubai. With the Indian e-learning industry gradually moving up the value chain, demand for instructional designers ” whose number in India is currently estimated at 10,000 ” is certain to rise. Instructional designers (IDs) are creating advanced and sophisticated e-learning programmes for students worldwide. With a growing number of foreign and Indian e-learning companies including Knowledge Horizon Ltd, Wavelength e-learning Consulting and Training Pvt Ltd, Lionbridge India, Learning Mate etc establishing operations in India and developing customised e-learning products for overseas markets, IDs, who hitherto wrote content for pre-designed programmes, are increasingly being called upon to design e-learning programmes. Study Programmes No formal qualifications are required of IDs. Anybody with a college degree and the inclination can opt for this career path. However, it™s important aspirants possess a modicum of writing and graphic visualisation skills. Diploma qualifications in e-learning are also advisable. Some major institutions providing useful learning programmes include SNDT, which offers a Masters in educational technology with computer applications (METCA); Symbiosis Institute, Pune which has a diploma programme in e-learning, and Knowledge Horizon itself which is planning to shortly introduce an online module on instructional design this year. Moreover, the Delhi-based Wavelength e-Learning Consulting and Training also provides online courses in ID. Professionally qualified IDs have a wide range of career options. They can work with corporates to design, develop, implement and evaluate training programmes. In addition, government, universities, non-profits and healthcare charities are recruiting IDs, who can also work in multimedia, educational games development, online learning and other cutting-edge business organisations. Remuneration Prospects Typically, graduates sign up as content writers/junior IDs or instructional analysts and transform into specialist/instructional solutions architects. In terms of career advancement, as IDs prove themselves by undertaking and managing complex assignments, they move up the executive ladder and graduate to developing and designing end-to-end e-learning programmes. With e-learning jobs outsourced to India increasing by the day, and knowledge development and dissemination companies rolling out the red carpet for professionally qualified and/or experienced IDs, pay packages have become attractive. Freshers can expect to start at over Rs.25,000 per month and after acquiring few years of experience, could take home a handsome Rs.1 lakh per month. œObviously the demand for experienced IDs is greater than for freshers, as this is a new-age industry requiring a combination of academic and ICT skills. But freshers can hope to rise fast as they acquire…

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

Edited and abridged e-mail responses of eminent agri-scientist Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, founder-chairman of M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai. To what extent in your opinion is the poor productivity of Indian agriculture the consequence of declining learning outcomes in rural primaries, as testified by the annual ASER reports of Pratham? Poor productivity of Indian agriculture is due to several causes. Learning outcomes is not the main cause. Inputs are needed for output. Nearly 60 percent of India™s cultivated area doesn™t have assured irrigation. Fertiliser use efficiency is also low and the soil™s organic content is deteriorating. Above all, the monsoon and market are the major determinants of farmers™ well-being, and both are unfavourable. Mass rural distress is compounded by the neglect of skills education and the failure of agricultural universities. Do you agree? Neglect of skills education is costing us dearly. This is why several decades ago, I established Krishi Vigyan Kendras, based on the principle of learning-by-doing. More recently, I have been promoting farm schools in the fields of outstanding farmers to promote land-land or farmer to farmer learning, Agricultural universities need to go back to their original goal of serving the entire farming system, i.e, a crop-livestock-fish integrated production system. Unfortunately agricultural universities are getting fragmented into animal science, horticulture and other narrowly focused universities. Any other comment? The agrarian crisis is becoming more intensive and farmers™ suicides caused by a combination of adverse monsoon and market behaviour are getting prominent attention in the mass media. The small compensation being offered to widows and families of farmers who commit suicide has aroused more anger than appreciation. It™s time we look at the fundamental problems faced by farmers. A century and half ago, the US started land grant colleges based on the Morrill Acts, 1862 and 1890. After India™s independence, we adopted this model of looking at farming in a holistic way, i.e, crop, livestock, fish, agro-forestry and agro-processing as the mandate for our agricultural universities which number 62. Unfortunately, both in the organisation of agricultural varsities and departments, responsibilities are getting fragmented. The agriculture universities which were to serve farmers on a farming system basis, have now been split into veterinary, animal sciences, fisheries and horticulture institutions. Thus farmers aren™t getting integrated advice covering conservation of natural resources, cultivation on the evergreen revolution pattern, consumption and commerce from research, extension or development activities. Among the problems faced by farming families, the absence of a system of integrated advice and help is a serious one. It™s time now to restore the original concept of farm universities viz, to conduct research, education and extension on a farming system basis. This will help in generating farm and non-farm incomes, thereby saving farmers from total income collapse.

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

The overwhelming majority of the country™s academics, media pundits and intellectuals in their ivory towers seem unable to connect dismal quality primary education being dispensed in rural India with rising farm suicides Dilip Thakore ON APRIL 28, HARESHBHAI JASMATBHAI RABADIA, a 34-year-old agriculturist who farmed seven acres of land in Bhader village in the Rajkot district of Gujarat ” India™s showpiece state which had recorded the country™s highest annual rates of agriculture growth under the stewardship of its long-serving chief minister (2001-14) Narendra Modi, since elevated to prime minister following the sweeping victory of the BJP in General Election 2014 ” hung himself  to death from a tree in his farm. Shortly thereafter, his wife Bhavisha unable to bear the loss, immolated herself. The couple leave behind a six-month-old girl child to confront a dangerous and uncertain future in a society in which child abuse and trafficking is rampant. Earlier on World Earth Day (April 22) Gajendra Singh, a 41-year-old farmer from Rajasthan hanged himself from a tree during a public rally called by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi to protest the Central government™s Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2011 which is pending parliamentary approval. Even after Singh™s suicide which was broadcast live on national television, Delhi chief minister and AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal continued to address the estimated 12,000 crowd for 15 minutes. A relatively prosperous agriculturist whose family farmed ten acres in Dausa village in Rajasthan, Singh leaves three orphaned children behind. These are just two farmer suicides which have captured media attention in recent times. Every day, 32 farmers in rural India kill themselves, driven to despair by agrarian poverty, unrepayable debts, non-legislation of personal bankruptcy laws and almost total absence of a law, order  and justice enforcement and dispensation machinery in the rural hinterlands of 21st century India whose vainglorious politicians and self-centred 250 million-strong middle class, nurture UN Security Council membership and superpower ambitions. According to the latest available statistics of the National Crimes Bureau, 11,772 rural citizens took their own lives in 2013. A study conducted by the Madras Institute of Development Studies in 2008 says that over 200,000 farmers across the country killed themselves in the period 1995-2007. And although popular economist Swaminathan Aiyar, a product of the callous Nehruvian era when in Soviet/Maoist-style millions of peasants were starved to fund disastrous heavy industry public sector ventures, argues (Times of India, May 3) that proportionately to their population (60 percent), farmer suicides are normative, he is contradicted by award-winning journalist P. Sainath whose series of essays written from ground zero for The Hindu, has established that suicide rates among farmers are 47 percent higher than in other vocations. According to Sainath, 270,940 farmers countrywide committed suicide in the period 1995-2013 (The Hindu, May 18, 2013). Even though conscientious intellectuals within academia and the media have highlighted the paradox of post-independence India™s centrally planned socio-economic development model in which the contribution of 60-70 percent of the population engaged in agriculture…

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

The current education landscape in India is characterised by nearly universal enrolment in elementary education (96 percent) on the positive side. But on the negative side, Indian primaries are notorious for the pitiably poor learning outcomes of millions of children, as testified by their performance in a PISA test of OECD; in tests administered by Pratham for its Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) and the National Achievement Survey of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). I believe the prime explanation for poor primary education outcomes is continuous neglect of evidence-based policy formulation. In good education systems defined by real learning outcomes, education policy is not made on hunches, ideology or political expediency but on the basis of evidence of what works. Decision-makers evaluate evidence relating to the impact of differing policy interventions or commission evidence collection and assessment on the impact of particular interventions through pilot studies before deciding whether to scale up. While poor quality schooling isn™t life threatening, it seriously affects the quality of life and even the longevity of children. Yet in most developing countries, ministers and bureaucrats cavalierly formulate education policies without evaluating evidence. This amateurish attitude towards policy formulation needs to urgently change. Evidence can be used in several ways to improve the quality of primary-secondary education. First, by making school-leaving board exam results publicly available. This inevitably improves secondary education quality because parents can avoid badly performing schools. In turn, there™s pressure on laggard schools to improve their teaching-learning systems and outcomes to attract students/fun-ding. Publication of schools™ board exam results in the US and UK confirms the correlation between availability of school performance results and the quality of education they dispense. While after many mature debates OECD countries have chosen to publish school rankings for parental information, none of India™s school exam boards ” CBSE, CISCE or the state boards ” publish whole school performance results. The quality of education delivered by schools can also be assessed by evaluating teacher competence. Unfortunately ” perhaps deliberately ” there™s rarely any meaningful testing of teachers in India. However, the SchoolTELLS survey (2008) which tested 600 teachers in 160 rural primaries in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar indicates an alarming deficiency of subject-matter knowledge, literacy and numeracy among class III-V teachers. A Unicef-funded study, Inside Classrooms (2011) corroborates the low teacher competence evidence of the SchoolTELLS survey in an additional five Indian states. It™s likely the evidence offered by these two studies prompted the Central government™s policy decision to introduce the mandatory Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) in 2012. Since then TET results have confirmed abysmal teacher competence unearthed by the SchoolTELLS and Unicef studies. Barely 4 percent of teachers pass TET in most states across India. Nevertheless the performance of teachers in each TET paper is valuable but largely unused evidence. TET results could be but have not been utilised for diagnosing shortfalls in teachers™ knowledge and devising training programmes. While the CBSE board is to be congratulated for moving in this direction…

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

The Hyderabad-based Sri Chaitanya Schools (SCS) is one of the country™s first K-12 education networks to adopt Microsoft™s edu-cloud, an IT-based solution for teachers and students, in the group™s 80 schools. Under an agreement signed in Hyderabad on May 5 between Microsoft India, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the US-based Microsoft Inc (annual revenue: $86.83 billion or Rs.547,906 crore) and SCS, 14,000 Windows-powered tablets will be used by teachers and students of SCS to access enriched content from the Microsoft cloud to make teaching and learning more engaging and productive. Explaining the rationale of choosing Microsoft India as the group™s partner, Dr. B.S. Rao, founder-chairman of Sri Chaitanya Educational Institutions said: œWe believe that digital experiences will equip our students with 21st century skills. The world over, teaching and learning has been transformed by the use of new digital technology. Microsoft™s education cloud infrastructure is the best-in-class. We are proud to have enabled our teachers and students to use it to enhance their learning and teaching. Under the agreement, students of Sri Chaitanya Schools will be able to freely access MS Office365 from their tablets and use Powerpoint, Word, Excel, OneDrive, OneNote, SharePoint and new software such as Office Mix and Sway. In addition, teachers can use the Mobiliya learning management solution, and 1,000 teachers will receive training under Microsoft™s Partners in Learning programme. STIR shortlisted for WISE Awards STIR Education (Schools and Teachers Innovating for Results), a social enterprise building teacher networks in India and Uganda, has been shortlisted for the WISE Awards 2015. Instituted by the Qatar Foundation in 2009 under the leadership of chairperson, Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the WISE Awards identify and promote the most innovative and effective solutions to education challenges around the world. œWe appreciate the jury™s recognition of the contribution of our 10,000 teacher changemakers working in India and Uganda, who have the courage to lead this movement of change in their classrooms and communities, says Sharath Jeevan, the London-based founder-chief executive of STIR Education. By 2017, STIR expects to have 30,000 teacher changemakers impacting 1 million children. Fifteen WISE Awards finalist projects will be evaluated by a jury of internationally recognised education experts, of whom six will bag awards and a prize money purse of $20,000 at the seventh World Innovation Summit for Education, in early November in Doha, Qatar. The best project will win a prize money award of $1 million. MISB Bocconi-Future Group programmes MISB Bocconi, the B-school of Universita Bocconi, Italy, has launched its IEMB (International Executive Masters in Business) with specialisation in design management programme in India in partnership with the Mumbai-based Future Group, which pioneered modern retail in India 20 years ago. This unique programme combines the Future Group™s Indian business expertise with MISB, Bocconi™s global academic rigour. Addressing the media in Mumbai on May 26, Veronica Vecchi, executive education director, MISB Bocconi and professor of business-government relations at SDA Bocconi, said: œThe MISB Bocconi executive Masters programme brings the Bocconi international faculty to India. It…

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

Himachal Pradesh Teacher accountability drive The Himachal Pradesh state education ministry is set to issue show-cause notices to government schools which clocked poor results in the class XII state board examination. œThe government is likely to instruct the directorate of higher education to issue show-cause notices to these schools, asking them to explain why their teachers should not be transferred. The ministry will also issue notices to schools in which more than half of class XII students failed the exam, an education ministry spokesperson informed the media in Shimla on May 1. According to the spokesperson, all students failed to clear the class XII board exam in 20 government schools despite their having full teacher strength. The motive behind issuing show-cause notices is œnot to threaten or demean anyone but to fix accountability of teaching staff, he said. Himachal Pradesh Board of School Education data shows that of the aggregate 1,717 senior secondary schools in the state, only 225 had 100 percent pass results with 345 recording below 50 percent and 120 below 30 percent. Of the 20 schools in which not a single student passed, seven are in Kangra and five in Shimla districts. œSchools that performed poorly can explain the problems confronting them, said the official. Jammu & Kashmir In-court exam drama In a rare case, the Jammu and Kashmir high court directed a school teacher to write a brief exam in open court to judge his capability, but the examinee failed to clear the simple exam. This prompted the court to issue a slew of directions to the state government for keeping a check on œtuck shops in the education sector. The court presided by Justice Muzaffar Hussain Attar was hearing a petition challenging the appointment of Mohammad Imran Khan as Rehbar-e-Taleem (education guide) in a south Kashmir school. The petitioner had alleged that Khan™s certificates ” issued by the Board of Higher Secondary Education, Delhi and Global Open University, Nagaland ” were fraudulent. The marks awarded in the certificates purportedly issued to the respondent by the Board of Higher Secondary Education, Delhi indicated 74 percent, 73 percent and 66 percent in Urdu, English and maths respectively. œIn this situation, what would be the fate of the state™s education has to be only visualised. School going children…. would pass out as blockheads, observed Justice Attar, who issued orders directing the state government to constitute a panel to review degrees issued by unfamiliar study centres. TELANGANA CCE master trainers programme The Telangana government is set to conduct  special training workshops for government school teachers on the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) system introduced last year, deputy chief minister Kadiyam Srihari informed the media in Hyderabad on May 26. This initiative is the government™s response to an 8 percent decline in the success rate of students in the recently completed class X state board examination. In accordance with a proposal made by the state™s school education department, specially trained subject experts will conduct CCE training sessions for public school…

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

œTo choose IIM directors on the basis of ˜group discussions™ is to lower the best academic institutes to the standards of the worst TV shows. Ramchandra Guha, historian-author, on the Union HRD ministry™s plans to make group discussion mandatory for hiring IIM directors (Bangalore Mirror, May 16) œSo far as the government is concerned, there is only one holy book, which is the Constitution of India. Prime minister Narendra Modi in an interview with Time (May 18) œFor India to become an attractive option for China™s neighbours we need Mr. Modi to set aside his fiddle, get away from insecure NRIs, do ghar vapsi and stay at home for a while and attend to its myriad challenges. Pankaj Mishra, well-known author, on prime minister Narendra Modi™s recent visit to China and East Asia (The Hindu, May 24) œMake in India is directly related to how we educate and skill the people of India. Accomplishing the transformation agenda requires the availability of the right people, with the right skills and knowledge. Vinita Bali, former managing director of Britannia Industries, on an action agenda for the one-year-old Narendra Modi government (Forbes, May 29) œAs a result of what I helped construct, women in Delhi are able to have a mode of public transport that™s safe for the first time. That™s an incredible outcome. I™d like to see that across India. Reiko Abe, an engineer who couldn™t find a job in Japan, but has overseen construction safety on Indian metro projects for seven years (Mint, May 30) œThe HRD minister attracts sound bytes, eyeballs and controversy, but no one has focused on a forgotten fact: when 15-year-old students from states that do relatively well in education took part for the first time in 2011 in the PISA, they performed worse than students from all countries other than Krygyzstan. Editor T.N. Ninan in Business Standard (May 30)

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

AN UNPRECEDENTED CHANGE IN THE process of selecting the next director of the prestigious Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (IIM-L, estb.1984), reportedly ordered by Union HRD minister Smriti Irani, has generated considerable heartburn within the faculties of the country™s 13 Central government-promoted Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), especially the first six IIMs (Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Lucknow, Kozhikode, and Indore) which have acquired a global reputation for graduating highly employable business management graduates. Following completion of the five-year term of Dr. Devi Singh as director on September 9, 2014, Irani reportedly decreed a change in the process of selecting his successor. Hitherto, the board of governors of each IIM constituted a search committee which invited applications for this apex-level position, short-listed eligible candidates, interviewed them and recommended a panel of two-three names to the ministry which forwarded them to the President, the ex-officio visitor of all IIMs. However in group discussions ordered by Irani, all applicants discuss a chosen subject or issue ” a mandatory requirement of student applicants short-listed for IIM pre-admission interviews. During the group discussion, members of the search committee are silent observers. Seventeen eminent educationists short-listed for the position of director of IIM-L reported for group discussion before the panel. This change in the selection process has aroused great indignation ” as also apprehension ” within the IIM-L faculty, with even the usually media friendly public relations cell refusing to comment and a professor of communication declaring he is œtoo small a fry to opine on the issue. However, Dr. Pritam Singh, former director of IIM-L (1998-2003) who played a major role in developing the institute sited in under-governed Lucknow into a globally respected B-school, has no such inhibitions. œThe director™s position at IIMs is equivalent to the post of senior-most officials of the Central government. Subjecting candidates applying for it to group discussions is a public insult to them, he says. Adds K.R.S. Murthy, former director (1991-97) of the top-ranked IIM-Bangalore: œThis is a sharp departure from past practice and has reduced the process of selecting IIM directors with long academic track records to the level of assessing student applicants. A higher secondary dropout and former television soaps star albeit an articulate (English and Hindi) spokesperson of the BJP, since her surprise appointment as HRD minister Irani has ruffled feathers not only in the IIMs but also in the country™s globally admired 16 Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). In March, eminent nuclear scientist Dr. Anil Kakodkar resigned as chairman of the board of governors of IIT-Bombay following differences with Irani over the appointment of directors of three new IITs. Earlier in December 2014, IIT-Delhi director Dr. R.K. Shevgaokar put in his papers reportedly in protest against the HRD ministry™s pressure on the institute to pay back the wages of BJP™s maverick ideologue Dr. Subramaniam Swamy, who claims he was unfairly dismissed for political reasons from the faculty of the institute way back in the 1970s, and also reportedly, for refusal to establish a Sachin Tendulkar cricket…

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

THE SENSATIONAL POLITICAL COMEBACK OF five-time chief minister J. Jayalalithaa who was in hibernation for eight months after she was convicted by a trial court in Bangalore on September 27, 2014 in a 19-year-old disproportionate assets case and finally acquitted by the Karnataka high court on May 11, has over-shadowed all activity in Tamil Nadu (pop. 72.1 million). However, the jubilation if any, of educationists in the state is muted because during her four previous stints as chief minister, Jayalalithaa didn™t distinguish herself for raising teaching-learning standards in Tamil Nadu, which until recently was a front-line state in the national war against illiteracy and poverty. Over the past three decades in particular, education standards and learning outcomes in the state™s 52,303 government primary-secondaries, 10,934 private unaided schools affiliated with the Tamil Nadu State Board of School Examinations (TNSBSE) and 538 engineering colleges affiliated with the premier Anna University, have plunged. This has had a disastrous consequence on the competitiveness of Tamil Nadu™s engineering graduates in advanced national entrance exams. In the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) 2015 ” conducted every year jointly by the blue-chip Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and seven pioneer Indian Institutes of Technology on behalf of the Union HRD ministry for admission into their postgraduate engineering and technology programmes ” although Tamil Nadu is among the top five states in the number of examinees, it is near bottom of the list in terms of success rates of students. Only 4,869 or 6 percent of the 80,903 engineering graduates who wrote the test in Tamil Nadu qualified for admission into postgraduate programmes of these top-ranked institutions ” an abysmal percentage which compares unfavourably with even economically backward states such as Bihar, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand whose GATE success rates exceeded 20 percent. In GATE 2015, Delhi recorded the highest success rate (31.47 percent) countrywide against the national average of 16.84 percent. Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, which have the largest number of engineering colleges in the country, recorded an average success rate of only 11 percent. Informed educationists attribute the poor performance of Tamil Nadu™s engineering graduates in national competitive exams to poor teaching/learning pedagogies at school and college levels, which encourage rote learning rather than cognitive development. According to them the samacheer kalvi or common school curriculum legislated by the DMK government in January 2010, and implemented by the Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK in 2013 in all 52,303 government schools and 10,934 private unaided schools affiliated with TNSBSE, is of substandard quality and is largely responsible for lowering education standards and learning outcomes in the state. œDuring four years of undergraduate engineering education, the preparation for GATE exam which requires well-developed critical thinking and analysis skills, is highly inadequate in TN™s engineering colleges. Moreover, cultural differences between states prompt engineering graduates in Tamil Nadu to start working immediately after graduation unlike students in Andhra, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh where there is strong motivation to pursue higher education, says Dr. S. Ganesh, professor 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

BY PRESCRIBING THE COLOUR combinations of uniforms of two municipal schools, the Ahmedabad Municipal School Board has provoked a raging controversy in the western seaboard state of Gujarat (pop. 65 million), ruled by the BJP since 1998 and hitherto the stomping ground of three-time chief minister Narendra Modi until his elevation to the prime minister™s office last May. A complaint has been filed before the National Commission of Minorities protesting the colour of uniforms issued to class I children in two municipal schools sited in the Shahpur and Dani Limda areas of Ahmedabad. Until the end of the last academic year, students of all Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) schools wore white shirts and blue shorts or trousers, distributed free-of-charge by AMC. But in the forthcoming academic year beginning April, students of the predominantly Hindu Ahmedabad Public School, Shahpur, have been distributed orange uniforms, while the Dani Limda English Medium School with an estimated 98 percent Muslim student population have been given green uniforms. Unsurprisingly, this œexperiment currently restricted to class I students of the two schools, has provoked a mighty row in communally-sensitive Gujarat in which cases relating to the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom are still sub-judice in the snail-paced judicial system. According to Badruddin Sheikh of the opposition Congress party, the school board™s choice of uniforms is a blatant initiative to practice the BJP™s identity politics. However Ahmedabad™s municipal commissioner D. Thara has an explanation. According to Thara, the colour of the uniforms in each case was chosen by the school management committees (SMCs) comprising principals, parents and donors of each school, constituted under s.21 of the landmark Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009. Under the Act, SMCs are empowered to œmonitor the working of the school, prepare and recommend school development plans, monitor the utilisation of grants received from the appropriate government or any other source, and perform such other functions as may be prescribed. œThe AMC School Board has neither decided any colour code for students™ uniforms nor given any dress to them. It is decided by the respective committees of the schools, says Thara. However, Sheikh blames the AMC School Board for permitting SMCs dominated by parents (75 percent of members) to choose students™ uniforms. œUniforms are meant to blur divisions between the rich and poor, caste and other societal differences, he argues. But, Jagdish Bhavsar, chairman of the AMC School Board, plays down the controversy. œThere™s no issue at all. The decision was made by SMCs of the schools which are dominated by parents. Although this year, these SMCs chose the uniforms which will be worn, this issue can be reviewed next year, says Bhavsar. Yet, this is not the first instance of communalism ” the agenda of the RSS and sangh parivar, parent organisations of the ruling BJP ” creeping into school education.  In January this year, an AMC School Board circular directed the principals of municipal schools including minority Urdu and English-medium primary-secondaries to ensure students recite the Hindu…

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

THE MAMATA BANERJEE-LED Trinamool Congress (TMC) government, which swept to power in West Bengal (pop. 91 million) in May 2011 ending 34 years of Left rule in the state, was expected to be the harbinger of much needed paribartan (change) in all sectors of the economy, especially education. However with members of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) having infiltrated and thoroughly entrenched themselves in powerful students and teachers unions, the TMC government has had little success in reforming West Bengal™s 374 government colleges and 19 universities defined by continuous campus violence, mass copying during examinations and huge faculty vacancies. Nevertheless the TMC, now in its final year in office, has made a positive contribution to higher education in West Bengal by facilitating the promotion of a clutch of internationally benchmarked private universities, strictly verboten during the 34 years of rule of the CPM-led Left Front government (1977-2004). Early this year (February), The Neotia University (TNU), established by a special Act of the West Bengal assembly, became the fifth private university to begin operations in the state after Techno India University, Salt Lake; Seacom Skills University, Santiniketan; Adamas University, Barasat, and JIS University, Agarpara, North 24-Parganas. Promoted by Harshavardhan Neotia, a well-known real estate tycoon in Kolkata, and sited on a 50-acre campus in the outlying South-24 Parganas district, 40 km from Kolkata, TNU will admit its first batch of 300-400 students in July. TNU will offer courses in performing arts and visual arts, liberal arts, languages (Spanish, Mandarin and English), manufacturing technology ” robots and automotive manufacturing, infotainment ” animation and video game design, energy studies, marine engineering and nautical sciences, and biotechnology. Well-known personalities such as West Bengal governor M.K. Narayanan, former UGC chairman Dr. Hari Gautam and eminent vocalist Pt. Vijay Kichlu are on its board of governors. To realise his dream of establishing TNU as West Bengal™s top-ranked private university in short time, Neotia has assembled an impressive faculty headed by distinguished bioinformatics academic Dr. Ashok Kolaskar, former vice chancellor of the University of Pune and KIIT University, Bhubaneswar. œThe university™s teaching pedagogy is based on experiential learning derived from industrial training, equipped laboratories and research-based projects, and our choice-based credit system allows students to learn subjects of their liking. The result is that our campus will provide space for cross-fertilisation of ideas, innovation and creativity in a disciplined manner, promises Kolaskar. The Neotia Group which already runs a technical institute on the campus, is set to develop TNU into a world class varsity. œWe have already invested a sum of Rs.80 crore in the institute and plan to invest another Rs.200 crore in the next two-three years to build state-of-the-art infrastructure for TNU. Faculty from renowned foreign universities are expected to join TNU in the near future, says Neotia, chairman of Ambuja Neotia Group. Tuition fees in TNU are modest by global standards and range from Rs.30,000-.1 lakh per year, steep compared with rock-bottom fees demanded by West Bengal™s crumbling public universities. For Neotia, 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

FOR MYSTERIOUS REASONS neither the Central nor state governments have paid more than lip sympathy to myriad difficulties confronting the country™s estimated 33 million school-going children with physical and learning disabilities. In the Union budget 2015-16 presented to Parliament on February 28, the allocation of their parent Union ministry of women and child development was cut by Rs.8,206 crore (44 percent). Consequently, there™s considerable satisfaction within the community of NGOs engaged with children with disabilities that the Bombay high court has come down heavily on the new BJP-led Maharashtra state government for denying students with learning disabilities (LD) adequate authorised diagnostic testing centres. Moreover, the court also slammed the Delhi-based National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) for refusing them amanuensis (writers) facilities during the recently held class X and XII board exams. In a letter dated March 25, U. Raja Reddy, NIOS™ Pune-based regional director, denied 400 students amanuensis questioning the credibility of learning disability certificates issued by diagnostic centres and/or hospitals. Following parent protests and a letter written to the high court by well-known city psychiatrists Dr. Harish Shetty and Dr. Sanghnaik Meshram, Chief Justice Mohit Shah and Justice Girish Kulkarni took suo motu cognisance of the issue and directed NIOS to sanction writers to students suffering from LD for the school-leaving board exams starting April 9. œThe high court order has saved the future of hundreds of students with learning disabilities who were left in the lurch by the NIOS director after he arbitrarily withdrew the facility of writers a few days before the class XII exams. These children were provided with writers in class X by the same board after being tested at authorised learning disability centres. NIOS has violated the Disability Act, 1995 and its own bye-law 12.2 which clearly states that in NIOS examinations, learners with disabilities will be provided the facility of amanuensis, technological devices, calculators etc, according to their disabilities, says Dr. Shetty. Raja Reddy™s abrupt refusal to allow writers for LD children ten days before the board exams were scheduled to begin countrywide took the LD activists™ community by surprise since NIOS was established in 1989 as an alternative to the mainstream CISCE, CBSE and state boards for œproviding education to those who are unable to attend school for a variety of socio-economic reasons and meeting the educational needs of differently abled children for creating an inclusive education system. The world™s largest open school board, NIOS offers secondary school and vocational education programmes through the flexible open distance learning mode to an estimated 2 million students countrywide, and has 4,201 K-12 schools across the country including 26 in UAE, Nepal, Kuwait, Qatar, Muscat and Bahrain affiliated with it. Currently, NIOS serves 10 million physically and mentally challenged children, of whom 80 percent suffer from LD. While the intervention of the high court resolved the crisis and enabled 400 students to avail the service of writers during the recently concluded board exams, the larger issue of lack of adequate LD testing centres 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

THE BJP-LED NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC Alliance (NDA) completed its first year in office on May 26. However, unlike the 200-days-in-office celebrations of December 22 last year when the Union ministry of human resources development (HRD) showcased its initiatives with pomp and ceremony, its anniversary celebrations were relatively muted. That™s because under the stewardship of former television soap star Smriti Irani, the HRD ministry has little to crow about. According to Yamini Aiyar, director of Delhi-based Accountability Initiative, Irani ” the youngest minister in the Narendra Modi-led BJP-NDA coalition which was swept to power at the Centre with a massive majority last summer ” has undermined her credibility by provoking œneedless controversies. œA plethora of schemes have been rolled out every second month during the past year without cohesive thinking and planning. It™s not clear how the HRD ministry intends to fund its many programmes including SSA (elementary education for all) when it allowed its allocation in the Union Budget 2015-16 to be slashed by 24 percent, says Aiyar. Simultaneously, a growing number of politicians and academics are critical of Irani for undermining the autonomy of higher education institutions and ˜saffronising™ education. œInstead of strengthening education institutions, HRD minister Smriti Irani seems bent on destroying them by insulting respected educationists and appointing RSS functionaries with dubious qualifications and reputations to high positions in academia, Congress spokesperson Dr. Girja Vyas told reporters in Ahmedabad on the eve of the NDA government™s completion of one year in office. In support of her charge, Vyas referred to the resignations of Dr. Anil Kakodkar (former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission from the chairmanship of the board of governors of IIT-Bombay), IIT-Delhi director Raghunath K. Shevgaonkar, and NCERT director Parvin Sinclair among others, in controversial circumstances after differences with the minister. Moreover, the selection process for choosing the new director of IIM-Lucknow has been unwarrantedly changed with eminent educationists forced to undergo a humiliating ˜group discussion™ (see p.31) even as Y. Sudershan Rao ” a historian who has spent the greater part of his career trying to prove the veracity of the mythological epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, was appointed chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research last July. Coterminously, notwithstanding that its budget has been slashed without even adjustment for inflation and the ground reality that there™s a massive faculty crunch in academia, the HRD ministry has announced the promotion of five new IITs and IIMs. It has also launched the Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya National Mission on Teachers and Teaching, Padhe Bharat, Badhe Bharat to focus on the quality of foundational learning, Swachh Vidyalaya Abhiyan, Know your College portal, a choice-based credit transfer scheme in universities, a massive open online courses (Swayam) programme and the establishment of a Lok Nayak Jayaprakash National Centre for excellence in humanities in Madhya Pradesh, among other initiatives and projects. Despite having initiated these ambitious projects, while the BJP-NDA government™s first full-fledged Union Budget 2015-16 was being formulated, as indicated by the cut in the ministry™s allocation from Rs.82,771…

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

CONGRATULATIONS FOR PUBLISHING the EducationWorld India University Rankings 2015 (EW May). I am grateful the EW editorial team has taken the initiative to publish an India specific national universities league table, and highlighted the achievements of the country™s top varsities. Over the past few years, the media has been providing disproportionate coverage to the under-performance of Indian universities in the QS and THE World University Rankings. Never mind that these same under-performing Indian universities are supplying the West with a regular flow of highly-qualified engineers and doctors. I believe our universities deserve encouragement because they operate within a tightly regulated environment, and battle political interference on a daily basis. Anant Kumar Chennai Wrongful double weightage I ENJOYED READING THE EW India University Rankings 2015 (EW May). However I believe you have been ill-advised in giving the parameter of research and innovation double weightage (300). That™s the reason why two purely research institutions ” Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai ” have been ranked first and second all-India. Though technically they are classified as universities, they are essentially postgrad research institutions and admit only a small number of undergraduate students. Their brief is to engage in research and development, not teaching. Instead, the C fore team should have given double weightage to faculty competence because in the Indian context, teaching and pedagogic processes truly determine the quality of education delivered. In an ideal situation, research and innovation is paramount in universities. But unfortunately your tables rank Indian institutions, and the survey agency should have taken into account that they are mainly undergraduate teaching varsities. Sumant Jha Delhi Accurate prediction THANK YOU FOR PUBLISHING A separate EW India Private University Rankings league table (EW May). Your prediction that privately promoted universities will dominate the higher education segment in the country is accurate. With public universities facing a perpetual funds crunch, severe faculty shortages and unable to upgrade infrastructure and facilities, private varsities are set to emerge as preferred choices of students. Already new private universities such as Ashoka and O.P. Jindal have broken into the Top 50 national league table. State governments are doing right by liberally legislating new private universities as it™s necessary to accommodate the increasing flow of students entering higher education. But they need to go a step further and liberalise the regulatory environment and guarantee the academic and administrative autonomy of private varsities, so they can excel internationally. Amrita Deshpande Mumbai Silent majority danger After reading your special report ˜World™s Largest Child Population Cheated Again™ (EW April), I could not resist congratulating you for candidly highlighting the multiple dimensions of the morass that has beset Indian education at all levels. The budgetary allocation, ASER reports, dropout rates and university rankings that your report covers are all symptoms of the malaise you have described with a passion. It speaks of the depth of your care and concern for children and youth, who outnumber all other demographic segments in India, and yet are rarely…

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

ALTHOUGH MOST LEARNED commentators give the BJP-led NDA government of Narendra Modi pass marks for a good first year, it™s patently discernible that optimism is fading among leaders and pace setters in several sectors of industry, over the failure of the Modi government to boldly initiate the promises he made in his campaign narrative to rejuvenate the Indian economy. In office, the Modi government has proved surprisingly cautious, adopting a policy of incremental rather than the promised radical reforms. Therefore, industrial and agricultural growth is sluggish and the number of rural suicides unabated. Moreover, despite international crude oil and petroleum prices having fallen substantially, inflation has not reduced commensurately. And perhaps most disappointingly, the promise of generating 10 million new jobs annually is nowhere near fulfilment. The major infirmity of the BJP-led coalititon and the PM is loss of ideological compass. It was an open secret prior to General Election 2014 that the prime factor of Modi™s success as Gujarat™s three-term chief minister (2001-14) during which period the state recorded the highest annual rates of economic growth among all 29 states countrywide, was his belief in the power of private enterprise and commitment to free markets. However, after his election as prime minister, instead of swiftly removing the bottlenecks and bureaucratic red tape which have plunged India to the near bottom of the World Bank™s transnational Ease of Doing Business Index, spooked by Congress and opposition parties™ old hat pro-rich rhetoric, the PM has distanced himself from Indian industry and business, vitiating the investment climate and consequently jobs generation. Clearly, the BJP and Modi have failed to correctly interpret the resounding verdict of the electorate that people are fed up to the back teeth with the inorganic neta-babu socialism and public sector driven economic development model, which over the past 68 years has transformed high-potential India into a nation hosting the largest number of the wretched of the earth. Right until the start of the 19th century, the Indian subcontinent generated 20 percent of the world™s GNP because of its 5,000-year-old private enterprise driven manufacturing, commerce and trade traditions. During those millennia, there was no licence-quota regime or state-owned public sector enterprises. Correctly translated, the mandate of the electorate to the BJP/Modi government  in General Election 2014 was to revive the entrepreneurial confidence of the Indian people, dismantle the bleeding public sector and develop the abundant  human resources of the nation through investment in education, health and law, order and justice. Unfortunately bogged down in Hindu revivalism fantasies, the BJP leadership lacks the analytical power to read the message of the people. India must protest rohingya persecution IT™S ALL VERY WELL FOR HIGH-FLYING prime minister Narendra Modi, who completed a year in office on May 26 as head of the BJP-led NDA government which swept the general election of last summer, to keep jetting off to new destinations abroad. During the past 12 months, the prime minister visited 19 countries reportedly to announce that India is open for business 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

The farm suicides epidemic sweeping the country is being ignored and/or mismanaged by the establishment and middle class India at its peril. Almost 250,000 farmers in the neglected rural hinterland have killed themselves since 1995, driven to extreme desperation not only by acts of commission and omission of the Central and state governments, but also by the indifference of the academy, intelligentsia and the urban middle class who have cornered all the gains of socio-economic progress in post-independence India. I believe the most heinous of the numerous acts of commission and omission of government and society, which have belittled the nation™s rural citizens who constitute the overwhelming majority (60 percent) of the population, is education deprivation. Sixty-eight years after independence, 300 million citizens ” most of them in rural India ” are totally illiterate. It can be safely presumed that an equal number are at best quasi-literate. The latest (2014) Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) published by the Mumbai-based voluntary organisation Pratham, indicates that 51.9 percent of class V children in rural primaries cannot read and comprehend class II textbooks and 73.9 percent cannot do simple division sums. Worse, the trends trajectory is downward. Within Indian academia, the establishment and intelligentsia, there™s  curious reluctance to correlate the rising incidence of farm suicides to mass illiteracy and the pathetically inadequate and indifferent public education post-independence India™s children have received, and continue to receive. In consonance with Marx-influenced socialist ideology imposed upon the subcontinent once globally reputed for its private enterprise tradition, farmers™ surpluses were sucked out of the rural economy and invested in showpiece public sector enterprises which have proved a miserable failure and failed to generate profits for reinvestment in the social sector. The consequence is continuous and sustained under-funding of public education and health which has plunged farm productivity to the depths and disabled rural citizens from negotiating equitable rural-urban terms of trade. While learned economists and agriculture/social scientists ascribe rising  farm suicides to several proximate and removed causes, in this month™s eve-of-monsoon cover story, we argue that the mother of all the trials and tribulations plaguing rural India is a pervasive primary education deficit. I welcome vigorous debate of this proposition. And in our special report feature of this issue ” enriched by insightful opinion essays by Dr. Geeta Kingdon of  the Institute of Education, University of London and Raymond Ravaglia of Stanford University ” managing editor Summiya Yasmeen presents a review of the landmark Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 which became law on April 1, 2010, from the perspective of school promoters, trustees and principals wrestling with the problems of  implementing  it.

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

œWelfare helps alleviate poverty. But growth can end it. Michael Schuman, American author and journalist, on bridging the wealth gap (Time, May 19) œOn 16th May 2014 the people of India gave their verdict. They delivered a mandate for development, good governance and stability. Together we will script a glorious future for India. Let us together dream of a strong, developed and inclusive India that actively engages with the global community to strengthen the cause of world peace and development. Prime minister Narendra Modi, in his first message to the people of India posted on his official website (May 26) œBeing MoS (minister of state) is like standing in a cemetery ” there™s a lot of people under you but no one is listening. Shashi Tharoor, former MoS, on advice for new ministers (Times of India, May 28) œIn the style of Bob Dylan, let™s ask the question for which the answers are œblowin™ in the wind… How many crores must Air India lose before a minister takes his head out of the sand? T.N. Ninan, well-known journalist, in ˜A song for our times™ (Business Standard, May 31) œDirecting a rocket science programme doesn™t necessarily involve expertise in rocket science. Indeed past experience suggests that the most academically qualified HRD ministers also turned out to be the least beneficial for Indian education. Swapan Dasgupta, columnist, on criticism that the newly appointed Union HRD minister Smriti Irani doesn™t have a university degree (Deccan Chronicle, May 30) œA belief in democracy requires two things: an acceptance of the upshot of an election, and a refusal to blame the electorate if the upshot fills one with dread. Akeel Bilgrami, professor at Columbia University, on the recent India General Election 2014 (The Hindu, May 31)

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

Decades of confusion, obfuscation, harassment and corruption aided and abetted by successive governments in the southern state of Karnataka (pop. 57 million) on the issue of Kannada or mother tongue being employed as the mandatory language of instruction in all 60,000 primary schools (classes I-V) ” including private schools in the state  “  has been finally ended by the Supreme Court. In a landmark judgement pronounced on May 6 in State of Karnataka & Anr. vs. Associated Managements of (Government Recognised Unaided English Medium) Primary & Secondary Schools & Ors. (Civil Appeal Nos. 5166-5190 of 2013), the apex court upheld a 2008 Karnataka high court verdict which quashed a state government order issued way back in 1994 mandating Kannada or mother tongue as the compulsory medium of instruction in all primary schools (classes I-V) statewide. œWe are of the considered opinion that though the experts may be uniform in their opinion that children studying in classes I to V in primary school can learn better if they are taught in their mother tongue, the State cannot stipulate it as a condition for recognition (of schools)… The right to freedom of expression under Article 19 (1) (a) of the Constitution includes the freedom of a child to be educated at the primary stage of school in a language of the choice of the child and the State cannot impose control on such choice just because it thinks that it will be more beneficial for the child if he is taught in the primary stage in his mother tongue, ruled the five-judge bench in a unanimous judgement. Unsurprisingly, the promoter-owners of Karnataka™s 11,745 state board-affiliated unaided primary schools (the language policy directive exempted schools affiliated with the pan-India CBSE and CISCE boards) with an aggregate student enrollment of 3.2 million, who have been contesting the state government™s 1994 medium of instruction directive for over two decades, all the while suffering extortion from Karnataka™s notoriously venal education ministry officials to overlook their cardinal sin of teaching children in English, are jubilant. œIn 2008, the Karnataka high court had upheld parents™ fundamental right to choose the medium of instruction for their children and ruled in our favour. But the state government appealed the judgement in the Supreme Court. Now with a five-judge Supreme Court bench upholding the high court judgement, the state government has no option but to legally recognise English-medium schools which were forced to give undertakings that they would teach only in Kannada. We are pleased that the Supreme Court has protected the rights of parents. The state government must respect this verdict and immediately grant recognition to all English-medium schools in the state, says V.R.N. Reddy, president of the Karnataka Unaided Schools Management Association (KUSMA), which has a membership of 1,800 schools and prime petitioner in the case. However despite the unanimous and unambiguous Supreme Court judgement, the Congress government of the state refuses to throw in the towel. On May 20, chief minister Siddaramaiah announced that the government will file…

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