EducationWorld May 2021

Digital Transformation-Overall Digitization Strategy

KNOWLEDGE BEYOND WALLS

Gen Extra Muros is a pedagogy for digital teaching; this is the center point to make digital transformation success. Having digital equipments or digital content will not make digital teaching a success – the way you teach is very important.

Virtual School: Building the Connected Learning Community

In the connected learning community, formal education simultaneously […]

Innov@Tion At Chitkara University’s College Of Education – Altering The DNA Of Teacher Education

– Dr. Madhu Chitkara, Pro-Chancellor, Chitkara University, Punjab

The Exordium
The compelling desire to “innovate” remains the clear-cut impetus for identifying favourable opportunities and acting upon them. It is the fine blend of intense ambitions and stirring curiosity that enables people and organisations worldwide to stay relevant and grow optimally. For Chitkara’s College of Education […]

Role of ed-tech platforms once schools re-open

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

Social media regulations require wider debate

Though some of the reasons advanced for regulating social media are justified, the new social media guidelines are open to subjective interpretation by petty bureaucrats and policemen – Rahul Singh.

Freedom of expression is recognised AS a fundamental right under Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948. Indeed, it has always […]

The built environment isn’t pandemic-proof – can the right education change that?

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

The deadly new wave of the Covid-19 pandemic that is ravaging India has brought us face-to-face with the dangers of not paying enough attention to building robust healthcare infrastructure. As images of people scrambling to get a hospital bed or an oxygen […]

India’s top 100 private engineering colleges 2021-22

To compile the EW India’s top 100 private engineering colleges 2021-22, market researchers of the Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting & Research Pvt. Ltd interviewed 1,018 engineering college faculty, 1,126 final year students and 379 industry representatives countrywide – Summiya Yasmeen

It’s more than a year since all education institutions countrywide, including preschools, schools, colleges and universities were […]

Madhya Pradesh: Ghost colleges scandal

– Aditi Maheswari (Bhopal)

Even as the coronavirus pandemic ravages the Hindi heartland state of Madhya Pradesh (pop. 86.8 million) – 492,276 active cases, and 5,519 fatalities as on April 30 – a fake colleges and universities scandal has emerged as a distracting sideshow which is creating additional problems for the state’s BJP government.

An enquiry report […]

People

Extra-curricular educator: Ashish Gupta

Bengaluru-based Ashish Gupta is founder-director of Bambinos Learning Solutions Pvt. Ltd (BLS, estb.2020, headcount: 20), a digital learning academy offering 40 specially curated extracurricular programmes ranging from teachings of the Bhagawad Gita, learning musical instruments to robotics and coding. These programmes focus on the “physical, mental, spiritual and intellectual development” of children in the 4-15 […]

Ease of doing business joke

According to a World Bank 2020 Report, India has improved its ranking by 79 positions in its Ease of Doing Business index in five years (2014-19). Currently it is ranked 63rd among 190 nations. However, this report finds few takers in India Inc. In private, industry leaders are unanimous that doing legit business in India […]

People

Edupreneur Bros: Rajat Singhal and Kunal Singhal

Rajat Singhal, CEO and Kunal Singhal, CTO, are co-founders of the Cyboard School, an online K-8 primary launched on February 17. They are also co-founders of the City Public School (estb.2017), a K-8 school in Bhiwadi (Alwar district), Rajasthan and rising stars of the local business community. Determined to utilise new technologies to provide uninterrupted […]

EW India Higher Education Rankings 2021-22

With admission into highly subsidised top tier Centrally funded universities and elite IITs, IIMs, NITs, likely to become more difficult because of loss of learning in the pandemic year, the next option is best private colleges and universities which provide near equivalent higher education – Dilip Thakore writes about EW India Higher Education Rankings 2021-22.

With […]

India’s best government autonomous colleges 2021-22

Within the category of government-promoted higher ed institutions, government autonomous colleges enjoy special standing by virtue of their autonomous status for which a minimum NAAC ‘A’ Grade rating is a condition precedent. Here are India’s best government autonomous colleges 2021-22.

GSC-NR, Bengaluru students: top-ranked this year. Inset. Dr. Krishnappa

India hosts 39,931 colleges providing mainly […]

India’s top-ranked private autonomous colleges 2021-22

In the India’s top-ranked private autonomous colleges 2021-22 survey sample respondents included – 1,823 academics and 2,133 final year college students in 21 states — have awarded six seats at the Top 10 table of private autonomous colleges to Christian minority promoted institutions.

SXM’s Rajendra Shinde (centre): dedicated faculty & top-ranked students advantage

As noted […]

People

Idealistic LLH duo: Anirban Nandy and Poulomi Nandy

Siliguri-based engineer-turned social researcher Anirban Nandy and wife Poulomi are co-founders of Live Life Happily (LLH, estb.2017), an NGO which runs a mobile library and sanitary pad bank for children of tribal communities in 30 villages and 16 tea gardens in five northern districts of West Bengal. The mobile library houses 7,000 textbooks for class […]

West Bengal exceptionalism

– Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)

West Bengal’s unprecedented eight-phase legislative assembly election ended on May 2 with a thumping third-time victory for the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and incumbent chief minister Mamata Banerjee, not necessarily in that order. Not only did the dream of the BJP led by star campaigners — prime minister Narendra Modi and Union home […]

Vital importance of capacity building

In its recommendations the Kasturirangan Committee identified faculty capacity building as a critical prerequisite of improving HEIs. But NEP 2020 makes only a passing reference to it – Dr. R.S. Grewal

THE NEW NATIONAL EDUCATION POLICY (NEP) 2020 was presented to the country and public on July 29 last year. But as was the case with […]

Second chance for Krea University

The appointment of Dr. Mahesh Rangarajan, a former journalist and respected environmentalist as vice chancellor of Krea University, sited in Sri City (Andhra Pradesh), a two-hour drive from Chennai, offers the institution the chance to make a new beginning after a damp squib start. Krea University was established in 2018 with high hopes as India’s […]

An extraordinary life

It’s a sign of the times. When a politician succumbs to the thousand unnatural shocks that flesh is heir to, the evil they have done is dressed up as good. But the good of the truly good is interred with their bones.

These musings came to mind upon hearing about the untimely demise of litterateur, editor, […]

People

Explanatory learning pioneer: Shrishti Jain

Shrishti Jain is the cerebrally-driven founder CEO of Reading Right (estb.2013), a Kolkata and Delhi-based proprietary firm which she believes is ready, willing and able to give a huge boost to the learning outcomes of a wide spectrum of learners ranging from school children, college, university students to business executives. Following intensive research over seven […]

Imperial perfidy: Bahawalpur: The Kingdom That Vanished

Amar Farooqui (The Book Review, April)

Bahawalpur: The Kingdom That Vanished – Anabel Loyd, Vintage/ Penguin Rs.959 Pages 28

Anabel Loyd’s Bahawalpur is an account of the history of this princely state of the late colonial period, and its territories after accession to Pakistan when it ceased to exist as a distinct political entity. The processes whereby […]

Tomorrow’s leaders: India Tomorrow

Sarthak Bagchi (The Book Review)

India Tomorrow: Conversations with the next generation of political leaders Pradeep Chhibber & Harsh Shah, Oxford University Press Rs.850 Pages 276

This book is a compilation of interviews with some of India’s prominent young politicians who are touted as the next generation of Indian politics. In interviewing these politicians, the authors begin […]

People

Teacher training evangelist: Rishabh Khanna

Rishab Khanna is the founder-CEO of surasaa.com, an edtech platform providing internationally benchmarked teacher development programmes in India and abroad. Designed and developed by Les Transformations Learning Pvt. Ltd, a company registered in Karnal, Haryana, surasaa.com was launched in 2018 and provides online teacher training and professional development programs to aspiring and in-service educators […]

Stanford scholarships

Manipal, May 7. Akshatha Kamath, a computer science and engineering student, and Dhruv Suri, studying aeronautical engineering at the Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT), have been awarded the prestigious Knight-Hennessy scholarship at Stanford University, USA for pursuing Masters’ programmes. This scholarship is awarded to emerging leaders from around the world to enable them to develop […]

Delhi: Landmark fees regulation judgement

A detailed and brilliantly reasoned 128-page judgement of the Supreme Court delivered on May 3, has huge implications for the country’s under-appreciated 450,000 private schools which — most people are unaware — host 48 percent of India’s 260 million in-school children.

Upholding two sets of appeals filed by the Indian School, Jodhpur and Association of Private […]

Schools of Specialised Excellence

New Delhi, April 15. Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia held the first annual general meeting (AGM) of the Delhi Schools of Specialised Excellence Society. The society, which will start functioning from the new academic year 2021-22, has drawn up a plan to establish over 100 schools of specialised excellence (SSE) in the national capital region.

These […]

Maharashtra: Examination imbroglio

Varsha Gaikwad

– Dipta Joshi (Mumbai)

The state government’s cancellation of the school-leaving class X SSC exam of the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MSBSHSE), because of rising Covid-19 cases in the state, has aroused fears of class X students from 21,000 MSBSHSE-affiliated schools being at a disadvantage when competing with […]

Abishek Agarwal

A class XII student of the CBSE affiliated G.D. Goenka Public School, Siliguri, Abishek Agarwal was recently (February) crowned champion of the TCS IT Wiz (TCSITW) 2020, held online for the first time. In the national finals staged on December 30, Abhishek bested three finalists of St. Jude’s Public School, Kotagiri (Tamil Nadu), School for […]

Saanvi Mehra

Early this year Saanvi Mehra (15), a class X student of the CISCE-affiliated Shriram Millennium School, Noida, was adjudged winner of the online Google India Code to Learn Contest 2020.

The prize-winning entry of this young social activist was a machine learning model which identifies newborns with Down Syndrome — a genetic disorder which causes intellectual […]

India’s Top 100 non-autonomous colleges 2021-22

A large number of privately promoted undergraduate colleges with excellent reputation have not been granted autonomy and are tied to the apron strings of their affiliating university. The reluctance of government to cede full governance of excellent colleges to professional academics is typified by the anomalous status of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. Here are India’s […]

They said it in April 2021

“People in Bengal were supporting her only because they thought there is no alternative. Now they regard BJP as an alternative.”

BJP president J.P Nadda in an interview with India Today (April 12)

“The fall-out of the Covid-19 pandemic would have been far less serious had the PM based his policies on the advice of India’s top […]

Disgraceful indifference

Thanks for your hard-hitting cover story ‘3-prong assault on private schools’ (EW April). India’s high-performance private schools are indeed under siege! The indifference of the Central and state governments to the financial crisis confronting private — especially budget private school — promoters and managements is shocking and disgraceful. The Centre should have included private schools […]

Sustained Education Neglect Outcome

Political pundits, academics, sociologists and media pundits have offered numerous explainations for the second tsunami of the Coronavirus pandemic. It is several times worse than the first wave which forced the lockdown of industry and business for over six weeks from March 25, 2020. Education institutions including preschools, schools and colleges have been under strict […]

Heavy Price Of Petty Bargaining

The sharp spurt in numbers of Covid-19 positive cases, fatalities, sudden shortage of vaccines, hospital beds and associated equipment threatens to reverse the limping recovery of the Indian economy from a year ago when a total lockdown was imposed by the Central government.

Although politicians tend to blame the people, the second wave of the pandemic […]

Letter from the Editor

Since EducationWorld was launched as India’s pioneer sui generis education focused news magazine on November 1, 1999 with the mission to “build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda”, it’s a matter of pride and achievement that despite suffering fire, floods, riots, the pangs of disprized love, […]