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 ordered to shut down by the Central government last March to check the spread of the vicious Covid pandemic, which in its second wave is raining death and misery countrywide. With campuses under lockdown, education institutions have switched to online teaching with varying degrees of success to continue the education of their students. During the past 13 months, the world’s largest child and youth population estimated at 500 million has been learning best as it can from ill-equipped homes across the country. For India’s 3,415 engineering colleges, the past year has been a mixed bag. Though the majority, because of their faculty and students’ greater degree of familiarity with digital information technologies, has made a smooth transition to virtual teaching-learning platforms, the admission, academic, exams and placement calendars of engineering colleges have been severely disrupted. The academic year which usually begins in August was postponed to October, campus placements of graduating batches of 2020 were sharply down, and most state governments cancelled exams for all intermediate semester students with examinations held only for final semester students. Yet, despite these delays and disruptions, most engineering college managements responded creatively to the pandemic challenge. Teaching-learning moved online, on Zoom, YouTube, etc. as did laboratory classes. Examinations, internships and placements also went virtual with proctored online tests and video interviews replacing physical interaction. Nevertheless, despite the Covid-19 pandemic hugely disrupting the academic calendar of higher education institutions, we have persisted with our annual exercise of rating and ranking the country’s best private engineering colleges. Since 2016, EducationWorld has been excluding the heavily subsidised and routinely top-ranked Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs), preferring to evaluate and rank the country’s Top 100 private engineering colleges to enable 98 percent of students who don’t make it into the top 2 percent of the 635,000 school-leavers who write the IIT/ NIT Joint Entrance Exam. Our focus is on aiding and enabling this 98 percent to choose the most suitable among private engineering colleges, some of which are rapidly closing the IITs/NITs versus the rest gap. To compile the EW India Private Engineering Institutes Rankings (EWIPEIR) 2021-22, market researchers of the Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting and Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore, estb.2000), our trusted partner ab initio — which also conducts our pioneer annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (estb.2007) and EW India Preschool Rankings (2010) — interviewed 1,018 engineering college faculty, 1,126 final year students and 379 industry representatives countrywide. These sample respondents were persuaded to rate engineering institutes (of whom they had sufficient knowledge) on nine parameters of excellence — faculty competence, placement, research and innovation, curriculum and pedagogy (digital readiness), industry interface, value for…
– 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 written by L.L. Kori, additional director of higher education, Sagar division, and submitted to the state’s home ministry on March 15, confirms that two ‘ghost’ teachers training institutes — NRS College and Sri Ram College in Chhatarpur district affiliated with Maharajah Chhatrawal Bundelkhand University (MCBU, est.2015) — have been issuing fake B.Ed degrees for over three years. “Yes. I have submitted a report to the home ministry. However, I cannot dis[1]cuss the contents or conclusions of the report with you,” Kori informed your correspondent. According to a Times of India correspondent who visited the common premises of these two colleges, one of them is in its initial stages of construction while there is no trace of Sri Ram College — “not even a sign board”. That these two non-existent ghost colleges professedly certified by the Delhi-based National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) and affiliated with MCBU have been certifying teachers for years without detection, has created a stir in academic circles in this educationally laggard state ranked #28 in the Education Development Index (EDI) of the NUEPA (National University of Education Planning and Administration). “This is obviously a well-oiled racket in which fraudsters in connivance with corrupt officials in MCBU are issuing forged and fraudulent B.Ed certificates to desperate youth who pay Rs.20,000-50,000 for them. This is a very dangerous development for primary and secondary education in the state. On the strength of these fraudulent certificates, youth typically bag jobs in remote government schools and draw substantial Seventh Pay Commission salaries. But since they are unqualified, the quality of education they dispense to poor rural children is the worst. This is a perfect example of corruption in the education system of Madhya Pradesh,” says Indore-based social activist Dharmendra Singh Gour who has filed several complaints with the state’s education ministry and Anandiben Mafatbhai Patel, governor of Madhya Pradesh. Gour’s charge that government school children in this Hindi heartland state — India’s largest state in size (308,245 sq. km) — learn very little is confirmed by the Annual Status of Education Report 2018 published by the highly-respected Pratham Education Foundation (estb. 1994) — ASER 2019 and ASER 2020 focused on early years education and pandemic issues. According to ASER 2018, only 56.7 percent of children in class III (aged eight and above) in MP’s government schools can read (Hindi) alphabets and 63.5 percent can identify numerals. On the other hand, in private schools of the state 85.7 percent and 88.2 percent respectively can read alphabets and numbers. Quite obviously the quality of early childhood (anganwadi) and primary school teachers being recruited — some of them not qualified at all — by government is very…
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 years age group through small, live interactive online classes. Newspeg. Encouraged by enthusiastic public response to this edtech company’s eclectic menu, last December, Gupta launched operations in Singapore, Canada, South Korea and Japan. Short of its first anniversary, the company claims to have signed up 70 educators and more than 15,000 student subscribers from ten countries. History. An engineering and business management postgrad of Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh and IIM-Calcutta, Gupta accumulated valuable professional experience over 12 years rising to leadership positions in blue-chip companies including Amazon and Cure.Fit before deciding go solo. “Last January (2020), I invested my personal savings of Rs.40 lakh to promote Bambinos and in June, our online Bambinos.live academy began operations,” he says. Direct talk. “When my daughter turned three, I wanted her to have a broader education beyond acquiring mere academic competencies. I believe that all human beings need to learn vital life skills including inter-personal, communication, problem solving, critical and creative thinking. Children best learn these skills through extra and co-curricular activities. BLS is the outcome of these reflections conceptualised to integrate extra-curricular subjects into mainstream education and prepare children to make aptitudinally suitable career choices. Therefore in BLS, we offer a wide choice of courses for children to explore and experiment with. We believe it takes experimentation with at least four co-curricular/extra-curricular activities before they can focus on any one,” says Gupta. Business model. Subscriptions for an unlimited courses package range from Rs.15,999 per quarter to Rs.59,999 per year. Future plans. Encouraged by enthusiastic public response to Bambinos’ enriching online co-curricular and extra-curricular menu in India and abroad, Gupta has drawn up ambitious expansion plans. “My team has recently finalised a blueprint to take 500 educators on board and offer more than 50 extra-curricular learning programmes,” he says. Wind beneath your wings! Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru)
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 is a high-risk undertaking in which businessmen are routinely subject to a thousand unnatural shocks. Right now the Central government-controlled National Investigation Agency (NIA) is investigating three cabinet ministers of the coalition Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government which governs India’s most industrialised state, on charges of extorting huge sums from businessmen. NIA’s arrest and grilling of assistant police inspector Sachin Vaze, under investigation for the murder of businessman Mansukh Hiren whose deadly gelatin sticks laden car was found parked near the 28-storey home of India’s wealthiest business tycoon Mukesh Ambani on February 25, has unearthed astonishing revelations about how the country’s greedy, amoral politicians routinely pillage industry leaders and businessmen. According to Vaze, transport minister Anil Parab directed him to squeeze Rs.50 crore from the Saifee Burhani charitable trust which is executing a massive redevelopment project to upgrade a rundown Muslim ghetto in Central Mumbai. Moreover, in a written order Parab directed Vaze to extort Rs.2 crore from all civil contractors approved by the Shiv Sena controlled Mumbai Municipal Corporation to overlook their acts of omission and commission in executing corporation projects. That’s not all. Mumbai’s top cop Parambir Singh told the Supreme Court that the state’s home minister instructed him to extort Rs.2 lakh from all 1,650 bars and restaurants operating in the city. All these mind-boggling charges and counter-charges — the MVA alleges it’s a Central (BJP) government conspiracy to topple the state government — are being traded in the country’s commercial capital. Ease of doing business! A cruel joke.
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 education to children whose education has been severely disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, the duo has set a target of 5,000 enrolments by June 2021. Newspeg. Expecting CBSE accreditation in 2022, Cyboard School follows a hybrid model, mixing online classes with safe classrooms to overcome the drawbacks of full-time online education. “Our management team comprises mentors, technopreneurs, curriculum and content development experts and administrators. Together we have designed a curriculum that leverages AI (artificial intelligence). We believe that adaptive blended pedagogies will eliminate the need for supplementary tuitions altogether. Students will be given time slots to raise and clear doubts during and after classes,” says Rajat. History. Professionally qualified, practicing chartered accountants, the Rajasthan-based brothers’ native entrepreneurial spirit has prompted them to promote several business ventures. Among them: EAZY ERP Technologies. Moreover, the brothers are active members of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), and promoter directors of the bricks-n-mortar City Public School. Within three years of establishment, this currently K-8 budget private school (annual tuition fees: Rs.21,60030,000 per annum) has enrolled its full complement. Direct talk. Despite being committed champions of online education, the Bros Singhal believe that developing children’s communication and interpersonal skills are of paramount importance. “We will facilitate city and inter-city interactions of children through camps spread over 30 days per year. Our blended learning model provides for personality development and other co-curricular activities,” says Kunal. Future plans. According to the brothers, the annual revenue of India’s online K-12 education segment is projected to rise from the current $1.16 billion (Rs.8,700 crore) to $4.3 billion by 2025. “If we can attain a 1 percent share of the country’s K-12 market by 2025 — quite possible given our low tuition fees — Cyboard School will become an online education heavyweight within the next few years,” predicts Rajat. Dipta Joshi (Mumbai) Also read: Cyboard School: One-of-a-kind online school launches in India
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 schools, colleges and all education institutions having suffered unprecedented lockdown conditions for over a year since mid-March 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and date of school-leaving class XII exams still uncertain, admission into undergraduate colleges is an issue clouded with uncertainty for the estimated 16 million children in higher secondary education. If at all class XII board exams are held within the next three months, they are likely to lack the rigour of previous years. Ditto for students in undergrad programmes pressing on for higher studies. What all this portends for the future of India’s higher education institutions, the Indian economy and already low-productivity India Inc, is a matter for grim speculation for which the country’s neta-babu brotherhood with a stranglehold on Indian education — especially higher education — has little time. Nevertheless, it’s clear that admission into the country’s few hundred top-ranked colleges and elite institutions such as the IITs, IIMs, NITs is likely to become more difficult than ever because most of them demand sky-high cut-offs in higher secondary school-leaving examinations or high scores in rigorous entrance exams. Therefore with admission into relatively qualitative, subsidised public institutions restricted to a fraction of school and college leavers, the next best option for the vast majority is the country’s top-ranked private colleges and universities which tend to provide near equivalent higher education, albeit at relatively high tuition prices. Indeed informed public and academic opinion is almost unanimous that the country’s 25,375 private colleges and universities that educate 70 percent of youth in higher education, provide better academic programmes, faculty and infrastructure than state government institutions filled with ill-qualified faculty, whose prime qualifications are caste and kinship ties with state politicians and bureaucrats. Therefore, since 2013 EducationWorld has been commissioning nationwide surveys to evaluate and rank the country’s best privately-promoted colleges and universities to enable school leavers and undergrads to choose higher education institutions that don’t receive adequate coverage and examination in mainstream media. “Rankings are a very important service for promoting institutional excellence and improving quality of teaching, learning and research. They also facilitate international collaborations and perhaps most important, enable students to make informed choices for attaining their academic aspirations. They also motivate education institutions to formulate sound policies and develop robust teaching and research ecosystems. Reliable and credible institutional ranking league tables provide students diverse and transparent information to make study choices based on parameters of their interest,” opines Dr. C. Raj Kumar, founding vice chancellor of the new genre privately-promoted O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat (JGU, estb.2009). Evidently Dr. Raj Kumar, an alum of Delhi, Oxford and Harvard universities, is totally convinced about the vital importance of academic rankings. JGU…
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. India hosts 39,931 colleges providing mainly undergraduate education. Of them, a mere 827 colleges have been awarded autonomous status (March 31, 2021) i.e, academic autonomy by the Delhi-based University Grants Commission (UGC). While the overwhelming majority are tied to the apron strings of their affiliating government universities, autonomous colleges are permitted to design their own syllabuses and curriculums; introduce new courses; evolve independent performance evaluation systems, conduct examinations and notify results. And perhaps most important, the name of the college is inscribed on the degree certificate awarded by the affiliating university. This latter privilege enables potential employers to distinguish job applicants graduating from premier colleges from others. UGC has set stringent conditions — uniformly applicable to private and government promoted colleges — for awarding prized autonomous status. Applicant colleges must be of more than ten years vintage and “accredited by either NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council) with minimum ‘A’ Grade, or by NBA (National Board of Accreditation of the All India Council for Technical Education) for at least three programme(s) or be awarded autonomy by a corresponding accreditation grade/score from a UGC empanelled accreditation agency”. Of the 827 colleges conferred autonomous status by UGC, 720 are privately promoted and 107 in the (state) government sector. Last year, we divided the broad category of arts, science and commerce (ASC) colleges into three sub-categories: private autonomous, government autonomous (as classified by UGC) and 100 highly-reputed non-autonomous colleges, and ranked them separately inter se. This year too, in the EducationWorld Top 500 Arts, Science & Commerce Colleges Rankings 2021-22, ASC colleges are ranked in their separate and distinct sub-categories to provide level playing fields. To compile the 2021-22 EW league tables of India’s best private and government autonomous (as well as Top 100 non-autonomous) colleges, representatives of the well-known Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting & Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore) interviewed 3,956 sample respondents comprising 1,823 college/university faculty and 2,133 final year college students, and persuaded them to rate sufficiently well-known colleges on five parameters of tertiary education excellence, viz, competence of faculty, faculty welfare and development, curriculum and pedagogy (digital readiness), industry placement record, infrastructure and quality of leadership/ governance. Low-profile institutions rated by less than 25 respondents are not ranked. It’s pertinent to note that there is a wide perceived quality gap between private and government autonomous colleges promoted and managed by cash-strapped state governments. This gap is evident in the total scores awarded by this year’s sample respondents to top-ranked colleges in the two categories. While St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai is ranked India’s #1 private autonomous college with a total score of 618, the top-ranked government autonomous college — Government Science College, Nrupathunga Road, Bengaluru — has an aggregate score of 539, a difference of almost 80 points. Yet within…
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. As noted in our commentary in the EducationWorld India league table of the country’s most admired privately-promoted autonomous undergrad colleges last year, these league tables were dominated by institutions promoted by India’s small minority (2.3 percent) Christian community. This year as well, the national Top 10 table is dominated by men and women of cassock and habit. The 2021-22 sample respondents — 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. At a time in the nation’s history when Hindu majoritarian fever is spreading across the country, it would be apposite to appreciate the beneficial role that higher education institutions promoted by the Christian minority has played in educating and nurturing India’s 300 million-strong middle class — among the largest worldwide — which has powered the growth, even if unsatisfactory, of industry and the economy during the past 70 years. In the 2021-22 league table of autonomous colleges, St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai (SXM, estb. 1869) has retained its last year’s rank as the country’s premier private autonomous arts, science and commerce undergrad college with top scores under four of the six parameters of higher education excellence, viz, faculty competence, faculty welfare and development, industry placement, and leadership/ governance. Dr. Rajendra Shinde, the cooperative principal of SXM, attributes this 151-year-old college’s continuous top ranking to its administration and faculty’s capability to respond to needs of changing times. “We are fortunate this institution attracts committed and dedicated faculty open to adopting new pedagogies and technologies to ensure that students receive a valuable and enjoyable education experience. We are also fortunate that SXM is the first choice of top-ranked school-leaving students who are receptive to innovative pedagogies and enthusiastic about making the most of their college education. These are the prime factors behind our continuously high ranking in the annual EducationWorld and other media rankings,” says Shinde, himself a graduate of SXM who served on the college faculty for 27 years before he was appointed principal of his alma mater in 2018. Recommended: India’s best government autonomous colleges 2021-22 Shinde admits that the past year during which it was shut down for the entire year was unprecedented for this vintage college whose alumni includes the late outstanding jurist Nani Palkhivala, best-selling author Rohinton Mistry, industrialist Mukesh Ambani and test cricket star Sunil Gavaskar among scores of other luminaries. “Though we were all — faculty and students — forced to shift to online teaching-learning for the first time, after some initial hiccups, with the help of a massive training drive our faculty mastered several new technologies. After that, through digitally-driven programs such as flipped classroom, giving students thought-provoking assignments, and…
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 V-XII students including reference books for competitive exams such as NEET and IIT-JEE. Moreover, during the past four years, LLH has distributed 12,000 free-of-charge sanitary pads to adolescent girl children living in these remote districts of the state. Newspeg. On January 31, LLH introduced beauty and skincare professional training programmes for adolescent girls of two tea estates in Darjeeling district. History. An alumnus of West Bengal University of Technology and BIT-Mesra, and currently a senior research fellow at IIT-Kharagpur, Anirban was raised in Siliguri (pop.1 million), a tier-II town located in the Himalayan foothills and trading centre of the verdant tea gardens of Darjeeling. “Growing up I witnessed the huge education deficit and poor standards of sanitary hygiene in the tea estates. A large number of children especially girl children, drop out of school to work on the estates. In 2017, Poulomi and I decided to start LLH to do the best we could towards improving education and hygiene standards in these neglected districts,” says Nandy, whose Ph D thesis research at IIT-Kharagpur is focused on rural development in the tribals dominated areas of North Bengal. According to Nandy, both these projects — mobile library and the sanitary pads bank — have proved a big hit with children and parents. Under the mobile library initiative apart from lending books to children, the duo also provides ‘10 takar tuition’ in computer science, economics, maths, political science, and English for a token fee of Rs.10 per month. The sanitary pads initiative has also received enthusiastic support from the local community. “This was our first project started in 2017. We set up an online platform inviting the public to gift sanitary pads. This online system which also connects donors with beneficiary girl children is a huge success,” says Poulomi. The NGO’s annual budget of Rs.5 lakh is mainly self-financed with contributions from friends-turned-donors, education activists and local village authorities such as ASHA health workers, SHGs (self-help groups) and district administrative officers. Future plans. Inspired by the success of their initiatives, this idealistic duo plans to introduce additional skills training programmes for children and youth of North Bengal. “Hitherto unknown skills such as financial literacy and basic accounting need to be taught to youth to make them employable. Simultaneously, we intend to expand the reach of the mobile library to cover a larger number of rural girl children and encourage them to undertake vermicompost, mushroom cultivation, and organic farming projects. Our prime objective is to bridge the gaping education and health inequality gap between rural and urban children,” says Anirban. May your tribe increase! Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) Also read: Kolkata traffic cop provides free education to over 100 tribal…
– 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 minister Amit Shah — of winning more than 200 of the 294 seats in the legislative assembly vanish in smoke, Banerjee’s TMC was swept back into office with 214 seats, three more than in 2016. This historic election was controversially held even as the Covid-19 pandemic was running riot statewide. On April 24, West Bengal (pop.91 million) reported 14,281 new Covid-19 cases and 59 deaths of which 20 were reported in Kolkata. Notably two TMC and one Congress candidate succumbed to the deadly virus while campaigning before the Election Commission — which has come in for scathing criticism from the judiciary — banned all mass rallies from April 12 onward. Amidst this chaos, public school education in the state has been hard hit. Though schools were partially reopened from February 12, the second pandemic wave of April has forced their shutdown again. On April 19, education minister Partha Chatterjee directed all government and government aided schools to close from April 20, bringing the summer vacation forward a month ahead of schedule. Thus far, the state government has not cancelled classes X and XII school-leaving exams of government schools. Now that the assembly election is over and Covid positive cases and fatalities are plateauing, they may be held in July, just before the start of the new academic year. Meanwhile, the pan-India CBSE and CISCE exam boards have cancelled their class X and postponed class XII exams. Even if not for law and order — widespread post-poll violence in the state has raised the shadow of President’s rule over West Bengal — Banerjee’s return to power in Writers Building, Kolkata augurs relatively well for the education sector. During her previous terms in office, the TMC government made a discernible effort to bring about the promised poribartan (change) in K-12 and higher education with several initiatives. The most successful among them is the Kanyashree scheme introduced in 2013, which provided adolescent girl children in the 13-19 age group three-tier scholarships of Rs.500 per year for continuing their education, a one[1]time payment of Rs.25,000 at age 18 and full tuition waiver for pursuing postgraduate college education. Initiatives in primary education include measures taken to ensure regular attendance of teachers in the state’s 92,000 government schools; opposing the no-detention (s.16) provision of the RTE Act, 2009 and inaugurating 100 English-medium government primaries in 19 districts of the state. Moreover, in the run-up to the legislative assembly election, Banerjee announced an array of schemes and recruitment drives in the education sector including transfer of Rs.10,000 to the bank accounts of 950,000 class XII students enrolled in 14,000 government and government-aided schools and 636 madrasas for buying smart phones or…
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 NEP 1968 and NEP-1986, progress in implementing it is very slow. NEP 2020 is substantially the outcome of the 484-page report of the K. Kasturirangan Committee presented to the Union HRD (now education) ministry on December 15, 2018. In its recommendations for higher education the KR committee had identified faculty capacity building as a critical prerequisite of strengthening and improving HEIs (higher education institutions). Regrettably, apart from generic platitudes, NEP 2020 makes only a passing reference to faculty capacity building in the country’s also-ran HEIs, none of whom are ranked among the global Top 200 in the authoritative WUR (World University Rankings) of the highly-respected HEIs assessment and ranking agencies QS and Times Higher Education. Although it’s universally accepted that high-quality faculty is critical for excellence in teaching-learning and research, NEP 2020 contains no constructive solutions — let alone a roadmap — for faculty capacity building in India’s 55,000 colleges and almost 1,100 universities. Unfortunately, for the past several decades, the brightest graduates and postgrads seldom opted to enter the teaching profession. That’s because instead of valuing teachers as national assets, schools and HEIs tend to treat them as mere employees. Not only are teachers and professors modestly remunerated, they are accorded low status in Indian society. There was a time in our country when kings rose from their thrones to welcome learned teachers who were venerated as fonts and disseminators of wisdom. But today they are tolerated, rather than respected in Indian society. A major share of the blame for this unsatisfactory situation has to be laid at the collective door of teachers themselves. Their mindsets and pedagogies are of the 1930s. The academic community, and this includes assistant professors, associate professors and professors in HEIs, is nowhere near as competent — especially in the area of original and innovative research — as their counterparts in top-ranked Western universities. Worse, they seem quite satisfied with the status quo and show little interest and inclination for self-improvement. Therefore training and professional development of 1.45 million highered faculty is a major challenge facing contemporary India. Sustained neglect of formal teacher training and professional development now demands special measures for capacity building comprising motivation and coercion. Self evidently, remuneration and service conditions of faculty in HEIs need to be overhauled to attract academic toppers with idealism and positive value-premises to teach in the country’s colleges and universities. The precondition of this is that government and the middle class must shed the notion that high-quality education can be availed at low price. HEIs can increase the remuneration of faculty only if they are allowed to charge realistic fees from students. College and university fees have been frozen…
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 first “interwoven liberal arts, science” (and business management) university. Promoted under the Ashoka University model of collective philanthropy with a huge corpus of Rs.700 crore, Krea University (KU) aroused great enthusiasm as the pioneer liberal arts varsity of peninsular (south) India where science and professional (engineering, medical) higher ed institutions are the rule. To the extent that your editor, despite not quite in the pink of health, journeyed to Sri City to write a comprehensive, highly complimentary cover feature. But curiously, your editor who visited the campus and interviewed key members of its blue-blooded faculty including vice chancellor Dr. Sunder Ramawamy, received not a word of thanks from Ramaswamy or any communication from any of its worthies thereafter. Reportedly, a suggestion of this publication’s marketing team to KU that it purchase 50 copies of the issue for distribution to faculty and board members was interpreted by Ramaswamy — ill-advisedly plucked out of a provincial American university and appointed founder VC of KU — as “taking commercial advantage”. That’s poor math given that a page of advertising in EducationWorld is priced at Rs.1 lakh, and we wrote a seven-page cover story — a gift of Rs.7 lakh to this penny wise pound foolish institution with a proclaimed endowment of Rs.700 crore. For KU’s sake one hopes that the media management skills of Rangarajan, a former journalist, are better.
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, columnist and culture propagator Anil Dharker in Mumbai on March 26. During his eventful life, Dharker greatly influenced the literary and cultural awakening of the country in several spheres before the abhorred shears prematurely cut this thin spun life. Although he qualified as a mechanical engineer and started his career in an architectural firm back in the 1960s after he returned to India from London, he quickly established a reputation as an insightful film reviewer and critic and was appointed the first chairman of the Films Finance Corporation where he managed to squeeze funding from the Union government to finance British director Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi, arguably the greatest biopic of all time. Subsequently, Anil Dharker transformed into full-time journalist and edited Mid-day, Sunday Mid-Day, the path-breaking men’s monthly Debonair (where your editor succeeded him with less success) and the superior upscale daily, The Independent (alas no more). Yet perhaps his greatest achievement was conceptualising and organising the annual Times of India Mumbai International Literary Festival which attracted the choice and master spirits of English literature from around the world to India’s commercial capital. Organising this annual literary extravaganza was an extraordinary feat requiring handling the egos of global literary legends, and raising resources to fund the litfest that catapulted crassly commercial Mumbai to the world’s literary stage. Typical appropriation of this litfest by the Bros Jain of the Times Group prompted Anil Dharker to promote the competitive Tata Literature Live fest which took its toll on this creative man of letters. Indeed the elements were so mixed in him that he will be impossible to replace.
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 years, Jain has built a 15-member core team of software professionals which is led by CTO (chief technical officer) Som Sankar Naskar. Together, they have developed a revolutionary SaaS (software as a service) tool — including a ready-to-use dashboard — which enables every teacher to insert supplementary online explanation to any difficult-to-grasp textbook content, across all subjects. Newspeg. This software package perfected and launched in the “stealth mode” in over 700 institutes thus far, is set to go big time with two un-named state governments and a national exams board having signed up schools/colleges falling within their ambit. History. A business management graduate of St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata and the top-ranked Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, which awarded her a merit scholarship, Jain began her professional career in 2016 as a lead consultant to the ministry of planning, heading infrastructure, energy and urban development for the government of Andhra Pradesh. Meanwhile, she had already conceptualised and registered Reading Right as a path-breaking proprietary firm based on deep lateral and critical thinking modules. “Although my father, a Kolkata-based businessman is an avid reader of business newspapers, I hated having to read them because of their complex language. News reports and editorials covering a wide canvas of politics, economics, law, sociology among other subjects in a technical bouquet of words often need deeper explanation. Thus the idea of developing a software program to insert explanations on any given paragraph, line or word in the daily newspaper was born,” recalls Jain. Reading Right began its operations seven years ago with physical format programs centred around a curriculum crafted out of newspaper reports and edits which has transfigured into ‘smarticles’ on the firm’s dashboard and app. Direct talk. “The basic model for smarticles is to provide people with the option to purchase single stories/news articles across media publications, instead of an entire subscription along with explanations — in the form of images, videos or audio notes — provided for every concept/line by expert practitioners. Eventually, we intend to persuade the Central and state governments and premium schools and coaching institutes across disciplines to include this tool in their teaching-learning systems. Through this initiative, we hope to achieve economies of scale which seems plausible because the explanatory notes provided by a good teacher can be shared not only by students of a single school but across schools countrywide. Moreover, this tool offers the guarantee of dramatically improving students’ learning outcomes as explanatory education is way more powerful than conventional chalk-n-talk teaching,” says Jain. Future plans. With the MPV (minimum product viability) of the SaaS tool having been tried, tested and proven, Jain is all set to scale the firm’s customer…
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 Bahawalpur was absorbed and new, frequently altering, administrative arrangements were introduced for the governance of its territories are discussed together with the fate of the erstwhile ruling family. Loyd brings the story down to the ongoing disputes over the extensive properties of the family. Nevertheless, there is little reason to lament the end of princely rule in the state in the post-1947 period. Princely states in the subcontinent existed because British colonialism found them useful for stabilising and governing the empire. They acquired their legitimacy from the paramount power and in turn legitimised imperial authority. The end of British rule put an end to their relevance. Loyd’s narrative is marked by a sense of loss, and perhaps even betrayal of the state and its ruling family. This is reflected in the nostalgic reference to Bahawalpur as the ‘kingdom that vanished’ in the subtitle of the book. The travails of the state after 1947 were a product of the political trajectory of Pakistan and not directly the outcome of its constitutional status as a former princely state. By the time the British began penetrating this region in the early 19th century, the kingdom of Bahawalpur extended from the borders of Jaisalmer and Bikaner in the west, to the Sutlej and Indus in the north. It was sandwiched between Ranjit Singh’s kingdom in the north and Sind in the west. In view of its strategic location, in the early 1830s the British sought to enlist collaboration of the Bahawalpur court. The diplomatic expertise at the disposal of the East India Company was too much for the state’s ruling elites and soon they signed agreements which in the long run undermined the authority of the court. The company would go on to use Bahawalpur as a base for its campaigns in the region when during the late 1830s and early 1840s Sind, Baluchistan, Punjab and Afghanistan became targets of its expansionist thrust. This strengthened the ties between Bahawalpur and the British, and gave the state considerable political importance. A substantial part of the book deals with the several decades-long rule of Sadiq Muhammad Khan V, from 1907 to 1947; the period of transition from the integration of the state to its extinction in 1955, and his death in 1966. Sadiq Muhammad was an infant when he succeeded his father in 1907 and was invested with full powers of a princely ruler only in 1924. It may be mentioned that the extent of a ruler’s ‘full authority’ was determined by the Crown. Between 1907 and 1924 the state was administered by a council of regency under British supervision. Shortly before the administration was handed over to Sadiq…
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 with a simple stated goal — “to understand their personalities and ideologies and offer readers unique insights” — and have been quite successful in achieving this. Unfortunately they don’t reveal more about their personalities than what is already known in the public domain. Rahul Gandhi’s passion against inequality, Aditya Thackeray’s concern for environment, Devendra Fadnavis’s penchant for numbers and data, Sachin Pilot’s modest demeanour, KTR’s fascination with technocracy are already well captured in their political profiles. Poonam Mahajan, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore and Smriti Irani come across as mature politicians with well-rehearsed answers revealing little insight into their personalities. The authors have chosen to keep their interviewees below 50 years of age, which is what essentially makes them tomorrow’s leaders of India. However, going through the list of names, it becomes clear that may be age (or lack of it in this case) is not the only asset which qualifies them as India’s political future — it is also their family legacy and political lineage. Only three out of the 20 featured in this book are first generation politicians: Jignesh Mevani, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore and Smriti Irani. The selection of elite politicians with strong political dynastic linkages (four politicians coming from families directly linked to a prime minister and five with a chief minister in their family) has been justified by the authors as acknowledging that contesting elections in contemporary India requires money and resources, which become more accessible for politicians with dynastic linkages in politics. It is not entirely true though, that there’s a lack of non-elite politicians who can influence India’s political future. The age limit of below 50 might have kept Arvind Kejriwal of Aam Aadmi Party (Delhi) and Thol Tirumavalavam of Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi Party (Chennai) outside the authors’ radar. However, the authors seem to have ignored many young politicians with the common touch like Atishi Marlena, Kanhaiya Kumar, Hardik Patel, Saurabh Kumar, Manoj Manzil, Hemanta Biswa Sharma, Tejasvi Surya, Mohua Mitra who have made a name for themselves, earning popularity and mass following in both the real world and in the world of social media, which has emerged as a new theatre of political performance in recent times. Besides these young politicians who are mostly first generation and self-made individuals coming from student politics or other professional backgrounds, there are also some remarkable names with dynastic connections, which to my mind merit inclusion in any list which is seen as representative of India’s political future. Tejashwi Yadav and Chirag Paswan in Bihar, Hemant Soren in Jharkhand, Dushyant Chautala in Haryana, and Gaurav Gogoi in Assam are some of the leaders from regional political families with potential to influence the…
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 in India, Dubai and the UK. Newspeg. After a hiatus of three years during which the company proved the efficacy of its suraasa.com platform in Dubai and the UK, Les Transformations established its first India teacher development centre in Bengaluru in early 2021. Simultaneously, the company has launched two new India specific programs — Certificate in Teaching (Assessment and Evaluation) and Award in Teaching (Online Teaching & Learning) — customised to meet the objectives of the recently released National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. History. A mechanical engineering graduate of the privately-promoted Manav Rachna University, Faridabad, Khanna began his professional career in 2008 as a software development professional with the bluechip ICT multinational, HCL Ltd. However, his entrepreneurial instinct led him to search a “more fulfilling option”. He went solo and promoted Les Transformations in 2010. In 2013-14, the company was selected by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) — India’s largest national school-leaving exams board — for a capacity building programme of teachers. Under this project, Les Transformations trained around 20,000 teachers. This assignment, along with experience of training over 50,000 teachers across India, provided his team with valuable insights into the skill deficits of teachers and prompted him to rope in his brother Ankit, an engineering alumnus of NIT, Jalandhar, to jointly design and develop a sophisticated online teacher training and development platform christened surasaa. com, in early 2018. Direct talk. “My investigative study of education systems around the world over five years indicated that while in developed OECD countries governments and school managements ensured that teachers received 100-150 hours of training per year to acquaint them with new teaching-learning technologies and pedagogies, in India teachers averaged a mere 6-10 hours of formal training annually. In 2018, after working with over 1,200 schools in India, we discerned an opportunity in Dubai where early acceptance of our teacher education programs by school managements, teachers and the Knowledge & Human Development Authority (KHDA) prompted us to shift our training delivery operations to Dubai. Later we forayed into the UK market and initiated our operations in London. However, our interest in the huge, high-potential Indian market for professional development of educators has been re-ignited after release of the new National Education Policy (NEP), 2020 which accords high importance to teacher training,” says Khanna. Currently, Les Transformations employs 50 full-time and an equal number of gig employees and faculty on its muster rolls and has trained over 100,000 teachers around the world. Prices range from Rs.10,000 for short-term two-weeks programmes to Rs.3 lakh for annual courses. Future plans. Having acquired valuable expertise and experience in quality-conscious and demanding markets abroad, Khanna has refocused his attention on India’s 9.8…
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 collaboration, innovation and communication skills to address the complex challenges of the 21st century. These two MIT students are among 76 from 26 countries awarded the scholarship this year. “These students have demonstrated excellence in education, entrepreneurial mindsets and genuine compassion to transform the lives of people — capabilities that we nurture in MIT and our parent Manipal Academy of Higher Education,” said Dr. H.S. Ballal, pro chancellor of MAHE in an official statement congratulating the two students. India’s first UAS programme Sonipat, April 13. O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat (Haryana) aka JGU, announced India’s first university administrative service (UAS) programme for its graduates. This unique postgrad programme offers graduate students direct access to well-remunerated and reputed career paths within JGU. “The purpose of the UAS programme is to enable highly skilled young leaders to work within administrative departments of JGU and provides a fast-track career path to selected talented individuals so they can assume administrative leadership positions early in their careers. Indian academia needs outstanding talent in high-level admin positions to formulate institution development policies and stimulate academic and research innovation to ensure that we offer the best global learning and knowledge options to our high-potential students,” said Dr. C. Raj Kumar, founding vice chancellor of JGU, speaking on the occasion. KSPP’s first scholarship awardee Hyderabad, April 22. Kolkata-based Ratnadeep Chakraborty, a journalism graduate of Christ Deemed University, Bengaluru, is the first awardee of a full scholarship from the Kautilya School of Public Policy, Hyderabad (estb. 2020) for its two-year Masters in Public Policy (MPP) programme. “We are glad to have talented graduates like Ratnadeep who has exhibited will power and academic rigour in this pandemic era on board. Creating an environment where policy education is accessible to all, is important for us at the Kautilya School of Public Policy,” said Prateek Kanwal, co-founder of the school. “I sincerely thank those who have selected me for this scholarship and look forward to contributing to addressing national development issues in the public interest,” added Ratnadeep Chakraborty. MS Tech for Good Challenge winners New Delhi, April 14. The US-based Microsoft Inc announced the winners of its global Tech for Good Challenge at its annual Microsoft Education Exchange forum. The 2021 edition of Education Exchange (E2) attracted 16,000 registrants from around the world to celebrate the achievements of educators who combine content, pedagogy and technology. This year’s E2 was a three-day event with daily keynotes, inspirational speakers and curated sessions for professional development focussing on issues ranging from social-emotional learning to STEM education. E2’s Tech for Good Challenge attracted 440 projects submitted by schools worldwide with educators and schools from India winning several awards in three of…
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 Unaided Schools of Rajasthan against the state government, a two judges bench comprising A.N. Khanwilkar and Dinesh Maheshwari JJ, read down, i.e modified, ss. 4, 6, and 10 of the Rajasthan Schools (Fees Regulation) Act, 2016 (FRA). The first appeal filed by the petitioners challenged the constitutional validity of several sections of the Act. In the second set of appeals they challenged an order of the state government — upheld by the high court — directing private schools to collect only 70 percent of tuition fees — and no other fees — from parents for the academic year 2020-21. The state government had successfully con[1]tended in the high court that since all schools had been under lockdown during the academic year and were teaching online, their managements had not provided co-curricular or transport and other services to students, and therefore parents are not obliged to pay for them. Moreover the syllabuses of affiliated schools had been truncated by CBSE and the state exam boards and online education was restricted to three-four hours per day. Therefore, parents should pay only 70 percent of the contracted tuition fees of their wards studying in CBSE affiliated schools and 60 percent for children in state board affiliated schools. This fees reduction order was challenged on the ground that it was issued without any authority of law and was violative of the fundamental right of the petitioners conferred by Article 19 (1) (g) of the Constitution as affirmed by an 11-judges bench of the apex court in the landmark T.M.A. Pai Foundation vs. Union of India (2002). In its detailed judgement the Supreme Court bench held that the right to determine the fees payable by students was vested in every school’s “management alone” by the Supreme Court’s judgement in the Delhi Education News T.M.A. Pai Case. The judges ruled that government can regulate the fee determined by managements of private education institutions only in cases of profiteering and levy of capitation fees. They noted that the state’s FRA prescribed an elaborate process in which the fees of schools were determined by SLFCs (school level fees committees) — drawn from Parent Teacher Associations made mandatory by FRA 2016 — with the right of either party to appeal to a divisional appellate authority and a higher revision authority. Thus the fees of every private school in the state have been agreed to by parents. Moreover under the rules of the Act the school fee fixed by the SLFC was binding for three years on both the parties, i.e. management and parents. This constituted a binding contract with which the State/government cannot interfere. The court also noted that institutional managements determine school…
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 “world-class” schools will provide gifted students special assistance in developing STEM, humanities, performing and visual arts skills to prepare them for the imminent era of hyper specialisation, said a state government communique issued on the occasion. Punjab Automatic promotions largesse Chandigarh, April 15. A day after the Central government announced cancellation of CBSE class X exams and postponement of class XII exams amid rising Covid-19 cases, Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh announced automatic promotion of children in classes V, VIII and X in state government schools. “Since the state had shut down all educational institutions till April 30 to safeguard children in the 11-20 age group, some relief needed to be given to them from the pressure of board exams,” explained the chief minister. Meghalaya Offline exams as scheduled Shillong, April 14. Meghalaya’s offline state board class XII examinations will be held as per schedule with observance of all Covid-19 safety protocols, deputy chief minister Prestone Tynsong informed the media after a cabinet review meeting. “The state government has urged parents not to panic and allow students to write the examinations scheduled to begin on April 16 and continue until May 12,” he said. Meanwhile, additional chief secretary of education D.P. Wahlang is investigating the feasibility of conducting in-school class X examinations, he added. Jammu & Kashmir New development programmes Jammu, April 25. Four model residential schools will be established in the tribal areas of Jammu and Kashmir, said Shahid Choudhary, tribal affairs administrative secretary, unveiling a programme for fast-tracking development projects in the Union territory. “Several development projects are in the pipeline including filling vacancies to strengthen the tribal affairs ministry, developing a portal for scholarships disbursement and real-time online monitoring, e-office, educational plan and Forest Rights Act implementation,” said Choudhary. Odisha Madhusudhan Law University Cuttack, April 28. Madhusudan Law College, Cuttack (MLC, estb.1869) was upgraded to the status of a university on the birth anniversary of 19th century legislator and journalist Madhusudan Das. “No institution can make progress without the collective responsibility of society. Therefore, I appeal to all stakeholders, particularly all former principals, teachers and students of this great institution to extend their support and cooperation to this ambitious new venture,” said Prof. Kamaljeet Singh, founding vice chancellor of Madhusudan Law University, speaking on the occasion. Haryana Entrepreneurship Mindset Curriculum Sonipat, April 9. Delivering the keynote address at the top-ranked private liberal arts and sciences Ashoka University’s Entrepreneurship Education Conference, Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said several former students of Delhi government schools have successfully nurtured their family businesses based on their learning from the state government’s entrepreneurship mindset curriculum (EMC). “There is urgent need to develop an entrepreneurial…
– 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 students from CBSE, CISCE, IB and other schools for admission into junior colleges (classes XI-XII) of their choice. This year 1.65 million students of state board schools were scheduled to write their class X exams from April 29-May 20. But on April 20, the state’s education minister Varsha Gaikwad announced cancellation of this school-leaving exam. Maharashtra follows a 10+2+3 education system with higher secondary classes XI-XII commonly referred to as junior college. This system classifies class X students as school-leavers and requires them to seek fresh ad[1]mission into junior colleges. Class X exam results are thus an important determinant in securing admission into the best of the state’s 7,000 junior colleges where admission cut-offs are in the 80-90-plus percent range for all streams. Moreover, junior colleges admit class X school-leaving students of all boards including CBSE, CISCE, etc on the basis of their average scores. This intensifies competition for admission into class XI aka FYJC or first year junior college. In the past academic year 2020-21, 2.83 million students registered for admission into junior colleges in the Mumbai metropolitan region under the state’s centralised online admission process. Little wonder ad[1]mission cut-offs of top-ranked junior colleges which are often integrated with undergrad colleges such as St. Xavier’s, Mumbai are 95 percent-plus. Traditionally, students from schools affiliated with national boards (CBSE, CISCE) score highly in class X exams due to the more lenient marking system of these boards compared to their state board counterparts. This is because the national boards follow a system under which board examiners award 80 marks for answer papers and the remaining 20 marks are awarded by affiliated schools’ teachers. State board school parents believe internal marking gives CBSE and CISCE students advantage against MSBSHSE students — all of whom compete for FYJC admissions. The education minister’s announcement that the minis[1]try will “work out a process to mark state board students on the basis of internal assessments,” has not assuaged parents’ fears. “Nobody expects the class X assessments to be fair this year if the onus of awarding marks is on schools rather than board examiners. With all schools shut down for the past year because of the pandemic, CBSE and CISCE affiliated schools conducted well-planned tests and projects evaluation. On the other hand, state board schools have been unable to conduct internal assessments, home assignments, check daily online attendance and project work continuously. Thus with no uniformity in teaching and marking systems of exam boards, marks assigned through internal exams will not be reliable. There will be a huge number of undeserving students who will clear class X. Had the state government heeded our demand to hold online instead of offline exams in urban…
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 Excellence, Dewas (Madhya Pradesh) and Little Flower Public School, Bengaluru. Nithin Nagaraj of Little Flower, Bengaluru was adjudged runner-up. Earlier in the four elimination rounds which began in early October, Abishek bested 9,900 students countrywide in the 22nd edition of TCSITW to win Amazon vouchers valued at Rs.30,000, a gold medal, a winner’s certificate and an outsized champions trophy for his school. A general knowledge quiz started in 1999, TCSITW is the world’s largest inter-school quizzing competition sponsored by IT behemoth Tata Consultancy Services (TCS, annual revenue: Rs.1.67 lakh crore, headcount: 4.17 lakh) to “build awareness, emphasise the importance of IT skills and enable students to view technology from a holistic perspective”. The grand finale of the 22nd edition of the competition presided by N.G. Subramaniam, COO of the company, was conducted as usual by renowned quizmaster Giri ‘Pickbrain’ Balasubramaniam. The elder of two children of single mother Hemlata Rateria, coordinator of G.D. Goenka Public School, Siliguri, Abishek is delighted that all finalists were from tier-II and III cities and towns. “New ICT-driven study programmes have closed the learning gap between schools in metros and small towns of India, especially in these Covid pandemic times. For instance, I learned the finer points of advanced programming from YouTube. Our school management is also supportive of co-curricular activities such as quizzing and science competitions. My computer science teacher Mrinmoy Paul and quiz teacher Prashanto Chakraborty in particular, took great pains to prepare me for TCSITW 2020,” acknowledges Abishek. Currently in the thick of preparing for his class XII board exams, this new digital technologies enthusiast has his future mapped out. “I intend to write IIT-JEE and graduate in computer science engineering. Thereafter, I aspire to research newage technologies,” he says. Go Bro! Baishali Mukherjee
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 delay and slows the cognitive development of 20,000 children per year nationwide — through hi-resolution images. If detected early as Saanvi’s model — which has since been integrated into a free-of-charge Down Syndrome Detection mobile application — does, the worst effects of Down Syndrome can be mitigated. This is not the first time this inventive teen has won this competition. Four years ago when she was in class VI, she ideated a digital textbooks donation platform to distribute school texts among children of poor households. That app was also declared a winner in the Google India Code to Learn Contest, 2016. Initiated in 2015, the Google India Code to Learn Contest — an initiative of the Indian subsidiary of tech giant Google Inc, USA — is open to students of classes V-XII countrywide. The 2020 national contest introduced a new Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) category for class IX-X students with participants provided a Google Cloud Auto ML engine to enable their projects. The elder of two children of Vibhor, a private equity investor and corporate advisor, and Smriti Mehra, a senior software professional at Adobe Systems, Saanvi attributes her prize winning digital innovations to sustained parental and school support. “Shriram Millennium is very supportive of new ideas and innovations. I’m especially grateful to my computer teacher Shalini Khurana for her valuable guidance in both versions of the contest,” acknowledges this young digital native. With time on her hands because CISCE has cancelled the class X ICSE board exams due to Covid-19 pandemic risk, Saanvi is ideating her next innovation. “I want to do my bit for social causes such as education, employment and healthcare. I believe technology-driven solutions/apps can transform the lives and livelihoods of underprivileged children very quickly,” says this young innovator with a strong social conscience. Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru)
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 Top 100 non-autonomous colleges 2021-22 The Indian media dominated by beneficiaries of licence-permit-quota raj in higher education seldom debates or covers it. Yet pervasive control-and-command of institutions of higher education by the Central government in post-independence India has dumbed down the country’s higher education system. None of India’s 979 universities, some of them of over 150 years vintage, are ranked among the Top 200 in the authoritative annual World University Rankings of the London-based Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) and Times Higher Education (THE), while neighbouring communist China has seven universities ranked among the Top 200 of both rating agencies. A major cause is that India’s State-dominated patchwork higher education governance system is a welter of confusion and contradictions. For instance, the Delhi-based, Central government-funded University Grants Commission (UGC) which monitors, licences and controls all of India’s 29,000 arts, science, and commerce colleges (10,300 engineering, technical colleges and business management institutes are controlled by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE)) has conferred academic and administrative autonomy on only 827 undergrad colleges that are high performance institutions and certified as such through an ‘A’ rating of the Bengaluru-based National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC). However there seems to be no logical rationale for conferring autonomous status. Consequently a large number of privately-promoted undergrad colleges with excellent reputation are not autonomous. They are compulsorily affiliated with and governed by parent universities strictly supervised by UGC. Conversely a large number of private colleges with arguably lesser reputation and learning outcomes have been granted full autonomy. Despite being awarded NAAC ‘A’ grading which is a mandatory precondition of autonomy, many are tied to the apron strings of their affiliating universities. While these fine distinctions tend to be ignored by mainstream media such as India Today, Outlook among other news magazines which lump and rank them together, in EducationWorld — a specialist education-focused news publication — we believe it is incumbent upon us to acknowledge these fine differences. Therefore in our annual EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings of the past few years we have been ranking privately-promoted autonomous, non-autonomous and government autonomous colleges in separate and distinct league tables. This classification confusion rooted in the reluctance of government to cede full governance of education institutions to professional academics is typified by the anomalous status of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. Although this privately promoted institution is consistently ranked India’s premier arts, science and commerce undergrad college by most media publications and is eminently qualified for full autonomy, it enjoys less autonomy than St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai and indeed all 229 private autonomous colleges ranked in this issue of EducationWorld. While SXM has full freedom to set its syllabuses and curriculum, St.…
“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 epidemiologists rather than his penchant for the spectacular and dramatic.” Historian Ramchandra Guha (The Wire, April 20) “There is no logic of incentives or crosssubsidies or a free market in these decisions. There is no epidemiological logic. This is ad hoc social Darwinism. The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must. A perfect metaphor for our healthcare system.” Dr Pratap Bhanu Mehta, former president, Centre for Policy Research, on the Centre’s rudderless Coronavirus policies (April 28, Indian Express) “It is an extreme irony that while we want our children to study science in school, we don’t want to apply scientific thought in our process… Millions of people went to take a dip in the Kumbh Mela. The world laughed at us, as images of record cases and choked hospitals contrasted with lakhs of people at the river banks.” Chetan Bhagat, author, on how contempt for science has prompted spread of the Covid-19 pandemic (Times of India, April 25) “It is one thing to say that the State may regulate the fee structure of private unaided schools to ensure that the school management does not indulge in profiteering and commercialisation, but in the guise of exercise of that power, it cannot transcend the line of regulation and impinge upon the autonomy of the school to fix and collect ‘just’ and ’permissible’ school fees from its students.” Supreme Court judgement in Indian School, Jodhpur & Anr vs. State Government of Rajasthan (May 3, 2021)
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 as MSMEs in its pandemic relief package qualifying them for bank loans, interest moratoriums and other benefits. As you rightly say, the world over governments have provided generous grants and soft loans to schools and direct benefit transfers to poor households to maintain the nutrition and learning continuity of children. It’s time our callous politicians begin to acknowledge the role and contribution of private education in the national development effort. Maria Gonsalves, Pune Excellent suggestions I was alarmed to read about the extent of learning loss suffered by India’s school-going children in your cover story (EW April). The nine recommendations for reviving post-pandemic school education by Sahle-Work Zewde, chairperson of the International Commission on the Futures of Education, are excellent. They should be urgently adopted by the Indian government. Malia Bhattacharya, Delhi Brilliant initiative Your Special Report ‘CENTA TPO 2020: Growing enthusiasm for teacher development’ (EW April) is a timely celebration of private and government school teachers who have risen to the challenges of con[1]ducting online classes amid the raging Coronavirus pandemic. Teachers have indeed emerged as the heroes of the past few months by readily and enthusiastically stepping up to the challenge of providing remote virtual teaching to children. Congratulations to CENTA for its brilliant Teaching Professionals Olympiad (TPO) initiative. All the award winning teachers have heaped praise on the test for evaluating teachers’ subject expertise as well as capability to manage classrooms and implement innovative pedagogies. I salute Ramya Venkatraman who sacrificed a lucrative corporate career to promote CENTA with the mission of providing the nation high-quality teachers. Rimlee Das, Bengaluru Entrepreneurial mindsets I am in full agreement with Sarojini Rao, author of your Teacher-2-Teacher column (EW April) about the need to build entrepreneurial mindsets within children and youth. I run a small family business and I believe the distinguishing factor of any successful entrepreneur is her ability to communicate, solve problems, think creatively and build self-confidence and resilience. Seema Suri, Gurugram Inspiring young idealist I am a regular reader of EW, especially your Young Achiever section. It was a delight to read about Radhika Ghetiya and her recent 12-medal haul for topping the B.Sc (Agriculture Hons) final exam of Anand Agricultural University. There’s hope for this country as long as there are young idealists like Radhika ready to serve in rural India and revolutionise agri-farming practices. Kudos Radhika! Bihu Aggarwal, Ahmedabad Doomed democracy I enjoyed reading the brilliantly argued essay of Dr. Shiv Visvanathan about Prof. Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s exit from Ashoka University (EW April). Academic freedom is indeed under grave threat in India with the ruling dispensation clamping down on all dissent within universities — whether by faculty or students. But as Visvanathan highlights, dissent…
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 closure for over a year and school leaving exams have been postponed indefinitely. The devastation inflicted by way of children’s learning loss for over 12 months, damage of the country’s already severely under-developed human capital and its implications for national productivity in years to come, can only be speculated upon. Yet while expert analyses have correctly diagnosed the proximate causes of the second wave which is likely to undo all the gains of the national lockdown of last year, there is negligible acknowledgement of the root cause of the pandemic. It is continuous neglect of public education since the dawn of independence. It’s shameful that contemporary India hosts over 300 million comprehensively illiterate adult citizens — a cohort equal to the entire population of the United States of America. In the circumstances, it’s unsurprising that the logic of masking, social distancing and observing elementary rules of hygiene is widely ignored. It’s also a measure of the cognitive and logical capabilities of the country’s political class that it is unable to discern the inherent contradiction in asking the public to social distance while simultaneously addressing mammoth election rallies in which Covid safety rules are flouted with impunity. Likewise in defiance of all reason and common sense, the Kumbh Mela which reportedly attracted 13 million Hindu devotees to the temple town of Haridwar since February, was per[1]mitted to be held. Therefore although self-serving politicians tend to blame the partying middle class for irresponsible pandemic behaviour, the fault is with themselves that the second Covid surge has attained monstrous proportions. The plain truth is that there is a direct cause-effect linkage between the political rallies called by all party leaders (including prime minister Modi), the Kumbh Mela and congruent spike in Covid positive cases and fatalities. In short, the nation is paying a deadly price for sustained under[1]investment in education and human capital development. In the Spanish flu pandemic of 1915-20 when 75 percent of the Indian subcontinent’s 300 million population was illiterate, the death toll was six 14 million. This time around when one-third of the 1.5 billion population is illiterate and another third only functionally literate, the loss of lives and livelihoods may be less because of advances in medical science, but is still likely to be very heavy by contemporary standards. The writing on the wall is very clear: Pull out all stops to provide quality education for all. Or perish.
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 has gained momentum not so much because of reluctance of the general populace to wear masks and maintain hygiene and social distancing, as by mass political rallies — legislative assembly elections have recently concluded in five states — and religious festivals including the Kumbh Mela which attracted 9 million people to the holy city of Haridwar in April. Less than six months ago the Indian economy began the process of recovery from the world’s most stringent industry and business lockdown hurriedly decreed by the Centre on March 25, 2020. The future looked bright because the country accidently hosts the Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII) — which is not as the name suggests a public sector company, but an entirely privately promoted business enterprise. In June 2020, SII signed a contract with the UK-based pharma company AstraZeneca to manufacture one billion doses of Covishield, an anti-Coronavirus vaccine developed in record time by AstraZeneca in collaboration with Oxford University. Typically, instead of signing a mega-bucks contract with SII and paying the customary advance, the BJP/ NDA government signed its first contract with SII for 110 million vaccine doses at a concessional price as late as end April. On the other hand, the US signed with AstraZeneca for 300 million doses in April 2020 and 100 million doses with Pfizer last July. Similarly, Britain signed a contract for 90 million doses with AstraZeneca in April 2020. The outcome of India’s foolish penny-pinching is that SII didn’t have the capital required to ramp up production, and was reduced to begging the government for a loan of a “few thousand crores”. Belatedly in April this year, the Centre sanctioned urgent suppliers credit of Rs.3,000 crore for SII and Rs.1,500 crore for Bharat Biotech (another private vaccines manufacturing company) to urgently augment production capacity. Simultaneously, distribution of vaccines has been decentralised to state governments and private hospitals to enable all citizens over 18 years of age to be vaccinated. However, because it was compelled to give priority to Union government needs, SII has damaged its relationship with AstraZeneca by not meeting its contracted supply obligations. Such delay because of petty bar[1]gaining, bullying private enterprises while reposing over-confidence in the capabilities of the neta-babu brotherhood and government monopolies combined with contempt for contracts has ruined the Indian economy. Regrettably, the so-called educated middle class is complicit. The world over governments have promptly paid market prices for vaccines so that corporates with capability and reputation can ramp up production as fast as possible. It’s India’s tragedy that foolish, time agnostic neta-babus persist with negotiating while the citizenry is being decimated by the Coronavirus pandemic
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, insolence of office, the proud man’s contumely, force majeure, acts of God and inevitable accidents, we have never failed to hit the newsstands on or near the scheduled date. The utter mismanagement of the Covid crisis which is devastating the economy and society makes it especially important for us to aid, enable and advise our core constituency — educators, parents and students — on ways and means being employed by the Republic’s most respected schools, colleges and universities to ensure that children and youth continue learning in spite of the ill-advised shut down of all education institutes since mid-March 2020. Although children of the urban middle class have switched to digitally enabled online learning with a fair measure of success, the vast majority from low-income and rural homes have been left in the lurch, to learn best as they can from an alphabet soup of one-way online and televised government programmes. It’s a matter of deep regret that mitigating the learning loss of 80 percent of India’s 500 million children and youth has received so little attention within mass media and the establishment. Nevertheless, for school-leavers making up for learning loss in the year past at the collegiate level is a matter of vital importance. Therefore they need to carefully choose colleges which are in sync with their aptitudes and aspirations. As usual our league tables ranking India’s most respected ASC (arts, science and commerce) and private engineering colleges are based on field surveys as against the more popular (and less expensive) jury rankings. Our trusted partner, the Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting & Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore, estb. 2000), arguably India’s most respected market research and opinion polls company (all its recent assembly election forecasts proved correct), interviewed a well-balanced mix of 6,479 educationists, faculty, students and industry representatives to constitute a database of knowledgeable sample respondents. These league tables provide parents and students invaluable information to enable them to choose colleges most suited to their aptitudes and aspirations. And they also provide college managements valuable SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
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 been considered the cornerstone of all democracies. The 19th century French philosopher, Voltaire, put it succintly, “I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” This should be the non-negotiable stand of every true democrat. India could with some justification proudly claim that for over four decades after independence, except for Indira Gandhi’s 19 months of Emergency rule (1975-77), it had arguably the most independent press of the developing world. The only way the government could exert pressure on a newspaper critical of official policies was by withholding government advertising or not releasing sufficient newsprint imports (newsprint was then in short supply) — pressures that worked against small publications but not against mass circulation newspapers and magazines. The Indian media scene changed radically with the advent of private cable TV news channels. Doordarshan lost its monopoly over the electronic media and became a sideshow, at least in urban areas, while private channels became dominant. Today, they are competing with the print media for influence and power. As a result, they have attracted the attention of large business houses such as Reliance and the Birlas, who have bought into these channels. Nevertheless, the Central — and to a lesser extent — state governments are able to arm-twist them to give prominence to their viewpoints. This trend has become particularly pronounced ever since BJP supremo Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014. The result is that Freedom House, a London-based non-profit that measures media freedom worldwide, has downgraded Indian democracy to ‘partially free’ status because of government shackles on freedom of expression and right to dissent. Almost simultaneously, in recent years the flooding of markets worldwide with instant connectivity smart phones, has ushered in a new age of information. It has changed our lives in ways that we have yet to come to terms with. Whereas the press and television are subject to legal rules and regulations, social media is a no-holds-barred unregulated phenomenon enabling every individual to transmit whatever he/she likes for public consumption. Over 300 million Indians now have smart phones connected to the Internet. This enables them to access social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, and Twitter, on which they can globally broadcast their views and news. Recent corporate entrants are news portals such as The Wire, Print and Scroll which are more outspoken than television channels. The BJP leadership recognised the reach and influence of social media even before General Election 2014 in which it routed the Congress and allied parties. But although it has substantially tamed the press and television channels, it evidently fears the unrestrained freedom…