EducationWorld November 14

INDIA HAS THE LARGEST POPULATION of children and youth worldwide. Its young manpower, if educated and skilled, could help and support several ageing nations in the near future. A favourable demography comprising 650 million citizens below 35 years of age, or 54 percent of a massive 1.2 billion population below 25 years, are indeed astonishing numbers for manpower planners, particularly of developed nations confronted with the prospect of shortages of working age people. According to one estimate, an additional 300 million Indian youth will enter the labour force by 2025, and 25 percent of the global labour force will comprise Indian youth. Another UN estimate projects the percentage of the 15-34 age group would peak at 64 in 2035. Obviously, the demographic edge won™t last forever! Nevertheless currently, there™s a huge opportunity for Indian youth in foreign job markets. But to encash the nation™s demographic dividend, we have to ensure our system of education and skilling is well-equipped and ready to avail this opportunity. For a start, we need to frankly assess whether our schools and institutions of higher learning are meeting the manpower requirements of domestic industry, agriculture and services sector. With only 30-35 percent of Indian children able to access acceptable school education (20-25 percent of them are in private education), it™s glaringly obvious that our formal and vocational education systems are pathetically inadequate. Private schools contribute significantly in achieving appropriate learning levels, as they don™t suffer the infrastructure and professional inadequacies which are a permanent drag on government schools. While brochures and annual reports of government departments and ministries regularly paint a rosy picture of the ˜achievements™ of education institutions under their management, hardly anyone trusts the credibility of such claims. Who can believe that para teachers employed in millions by state governments can impart education of adequate quality to prepare young people for jobs demanding high levels of skills? Who would believe that the majority of government schools really have sufficient resources and regular teachers? For decades it™s been known that functional separate toilets are a basic necessity in schools for educating girls. But this basic necessity has been denied ” and is still being denied ” to a majority of girl children countrywide. Claims to the contrary are totally unreliable. For instance, the Uttar Pradesh government claims to have functional toilets in 84 percent of its schools. No one even remotely familiar with conditions in schools in UP would believe this. On the other hand the neighbouring state of Bihar admits that it has no toilets in 70 percent of its schools, a grim but credible reality. Under such conditions how can quality education be dispensed to children and youth? Lethargic, insensitive and teacher-centric primary-secondary education is depriving millions of youth of diverse employment opportunities opening up globally. Despite its grandiose title, the Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 in actual practice, is making millions of children ineligible for dignified employment. Without professionally trained teachers and unchecked teacher absenteeism, children waste time…

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œHARMONY IS THE MOST valuable of all things, said Chinese philosopher Confucius two and a half millennia ago. There™s little of it in evidence in the frosty relationship between the founding director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Oregon, Bryna Goodman, and her fellow historian, Glenn May. Their offices are separated by a ten-seconds walk, but the scholars don™t exchange visits. Their palpable ill feeling reflects growing discord among Western scholars about a decade-old push by China to establish government-funded cultural centres in schools and universities abroad. Intended to boost China™s ˜soft power™, the centres take the name of the peace-espousing sage. They tap into growing global demand for Chinese-language teaching. But they™re also fuelling anxiety about academic freedom. In America, the Confucius programme has been widely welcomed by universities and school districts, which often don™t have enough funding to provide Chinese-language teachers for all who need them. But critics like Glenn May believe China™s funding comes at a price: that Confucius Institutes (as those established on university campuses are known) and school-based Confucius Classrooms restrain freedom of speech by steering discussion of China away from sensitive subjects. In June, the American Association of University Professors called for universities to end or revise their contracts with Confucius Institutes (America has 100 of them) because they œfunction as an arm of the Chinese state and are allowed to ignore academic freedom. May has also been asking the University of Oregon to close its institute, to no avail. Ms Goodman (who is no longer the institute™s director) says that in funding its interests, China is like any other donor to American universities. She says the institutes have become lodestones of what she calls a œChina fear. When China opened its first Confucius Institute in 2004 in Seoul, it hoped the new effort would prove as uncontroversial as cultural-outreach programmes sponsored by Western governments, such as the British Council, the Alliance Francaise and Germany™s Goethe-Institut. The idea was to counter fears of China™s rise by raising awareness of a culture often described by the Chinese as steeped in traditions of peace. Through the Hanban, a government entity, China provides the centres with paid-for instructors and sponsors cultural events at them. Its spending is considerable, and growing rapidly. In 2013, it was $278 million (Rs.1,700 crore), more than six times as much as in 2006. China™s funding for Confucius Institutes amounts to about $100,000-200,000 a year on many campuses, and sometimes more (Oregon received nearly $188,000 in the last academic year). By end 2013, China had established 440 institutes and 646 classrooms serving 850,000 registered students. They are scattered across more than 100 countries, with America hosting more than 40 percent of the combined total. There are plans for another 60 institutes and 350 classrooms to be opened worldwide by the end of 2015. Goodman argues that the study of China needs all the funding it can get, even if that means taking money from countries with vital interests at stake ”…

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THE NUMBER OF INDIAN students starting university courses in the UK has continued to fall after almost halving over two years, according to a new report. A survey of more than 100 institutions by Universities UK (UUK) shows that despite growth in overall overseas recruitment in the latest academic year, enrolments appear to have further dropped from some countries. Data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency shows the number of Indian students starting courses in the UK fell by 49 percent in the two years to 2012-13 from 23,985 to 12,280. Over the same period, the number of students recruited from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia dropped by 38 and 35 percent respectively. Growing recruitment from China, Malaysia and Hong Kong means the overall decline in the number of first-year students from overseas over the two years was only 1.3 percent, from 174,225 to 171,910. There™s also a 10 percent drop in enrolment in science, engineering, technology and maths courses over the two years, which UUK says is driven by declining numbers of people taking courses that are traditionally popular with students from the Indian subcontinent, such as computer science. Paul Blomfield, Labour MP and member of the Commons Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, says the œfurther significant fall in recruitment from India has created œreal risks for UK universities as they may become œover dependent on specific countries that are developing their own universities, like China. At an event at the Conservative Party Conference in September, Nicola Dandridge, the UUK chief executive, repeated calls for students to be removed from the government™s net migration target. œWe do not want to lose our leading position as a destination for the increasing numbers of students who want a higher education overseas, she told Times Higher Education. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)

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THE NUMBER OF STUDENTS completing higher education in Brazil has fallen for the first time in a decade. There was a 5.7 percent drop in the number of graduates in 2013 compared with 2012 ” the first decline in the number of university leavers since 2003. About 991,000 students graduated in 2013, a drop of almost 60,000 on 2012, despite the number of students enroled in courses across the country increasing to 7.3 million. Across the federal system (as distinct from state and for-profit private universities), the number of graduates increased by 3.8 percent. Among the disciplines to register a decline in graduates are education, health and science, according to this year™s Higher Education Census, released by the ministry of education in September. Higher education experts question whether the decrease is due to financial difficulties among graduates, prompting them to drop out, or whether Brazil has reached the limits of growth after a period of rapid expansion in student numbers. Jose Henrique Paim, the education minister, says guaranteeing the quality of courses is as important as expansion. œ(The drop in graduate numbers) is not worrying because there is a greater concern about quality, Paim said in a statement issued by the ministry of education. The census shows the fall in graduates in 2013 occurred mostly within 14 institutions, subject to œsupervisory action by the authorities, sometimes enforcing cuts in the number of student intake. In all, three state institutions and a federal institute had their number of seats cut. Dr. Fatima Bayma de Oliveira, an education expert with the Getulio Vargas Foundation thinktank, says some areas of higher education in Brazil might have reached their limits in terms of growth. œIt™s extremely worrying, she says. œThis census needs to be analysed so that we can understand which professions are seeing a reduction. Leandro Tessler, associate professor at Unicamp, the State University of Campinas in Sao Paulo, says the fall could indicate growing problems for students in accessing higher education without scholarships or grants. œWe are close to the limit of possibility for (students) paying for courses, he told Sao Paulo newspaper Estadao. Earlier this year, the ministry of education closed two universities in Rio de Janeiro ” the Universidade Gama Filho and UniverCidade ” citing low academic quality and the institutions™ financial positions. The ministry says students from these two universities would be able to graduate elsewhere. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)

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EVIDENCE IS EMERGING OF A decline in the power of US universities in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2014-2015, despite the California Institute of Technology™s claim on the top spot for the fourth consecutive year. The west coast institution heads a Top 10 for 2014-15 that still consists almost entirely of US-based universities, with only the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and Imperial College, London preventing a clean sweep. But despite the fact that Harvard, Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton, the University of California, Berkeley and Yale all make the Top 10, there™s evidence of an overall decline for US universities, with significant losses further down the league table. The US has 74 universities in the top 200, down from 77 last year. Some 60 percent of these institutions rank lower than they did 12 months ago, with an average fall of 5.34 places per university. Conversely, the leading Asian institutions continue to rise, and the continent now has 24 universities in the world Top 200, four more than last year. Two Asian universities make the world Top 25 (the University of Tokyo and National University of Singapore), while six feature among the Top 50. œWestern universities, in many cases starved of vital public funding, are losing ground, says Phil Baty, THE rankings editor, adding that there™s œsomething approaching a crisis for US state institutions. Philip Altbach, director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, says the œserious hit in funding to the œgreat American public universities has major implications for US science and competitiveness. In Europe, Germany gains two new Top 200 representatives (Eberhard Karls Universitat Tubingen and Technische Universitat Dresden), to overtake the Netherlands as the third most represented nation behind the US and the UK. The THE World University Rankings, powered by Thomson Reuters, use 13 performance indicators to examine universities™ strengths. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)

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EDUCATION IS FLUSH WITH DATA comparisons, from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) run by the OECD, a mainly rich-world think-tank, which ranks 15-year-olds in core subjects every three years, to TIMSS and PIRLS, tests of younger pupils™ mathematics, science and reading levels administered by national research institutions. But such tests can™t tell governments how much they should spend on education, or what the money should go on. Two new research studies shine light on these questions. An ˜efficiency index™, published on September 5 and constructed by academics working with GEMS Education Solutions, a consultancy, analyses the impact of spending on outcomes in 30 rich and developing countries. The OECD™s annual Education at a Glance, published on September 9, looks more broadly at school financing and structures, and how these affect results and progress to university and work. Both offer lessons for governments worldwide. The link between results and teachers™ pay is surprisingly weak. An experienced Finnish teacher earns on average $42,800 (Rs.25 lakh) per year. But Switzerland pays teachers at the same point in their careers $68,000 (Rs.40 lakh), and though it gets creditable maths results, coming ninth out of 65 in the most recent PISA assessment in 2012, it does much less well in reading and science. The figure in Germany is $54,000 a year. Its results have improved recently, but at a cost that leaves it a lowly 25th in the efficiency ranking. Education spending depends not only on what teachers earn, but on how many of them are there ” and in many places that number is rising, as rich countries cut class sizes in the hope that children will learn more. Parents, convinced that their children will do better with fewer classmates, are keen on the policy, too. But again, the data provide little support. Both Korea and Finland have high pupil-teacher ratios (third and fifth highest of the 30 countries GEMS studied, respectively). France and Norway, with few pupils per teacher even by rich-world standards, trail in performance rankings, coming 25th and 30th in PISA 2012. Portugal, one of Europe™s laggards, has just half as many pupils per teacher as Finland (partly because the number of teachers did not drop as birth rates fell). Only when classes become truly unwieldy do outcomes seem to suffer: along with Brazil, the other country with a higher pupil-teacher ratio than Korea is Chile, which also has poor results. Adam Still of GEMS thinks many of the highest spenders have probably passed œpeak efficiency ” the point at which more money brings diminishing returns. Andreas Schleicher, the data-gatherer who oversees PISA, reckons that differences in spending explain less than a fifth of the variation in countries™ outcomes. Such conclusions run counter to claims of teaching unions, which generally argue that smaller classes and higher pay are essential if outcomes are to improve. (Excerpted and adapted from The Economist)

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SEXUALLY ILLITERATE and repressed Indian academia and society in which the older generation suffers ˜sexual envy™ on a mass scale and a society in which it™s generally accepted that girls/women who dress ˜provocatively™ are inviting sexual molestation and assault, could learn a lot from US academia™s initiatives to protect the rights of women students in higher education. On September 28, Jerry Brown, California™s governor, signed a bill requiring all colleges which receive state government money for student financial aid to enforce a standard of œaffirmative consent, or œyes means yes. This means both parties must agree to sexual contact, either through verbal communication or clear, non-verbal cues. Moreover, they must do so at each stage of an encounter. An initial œyes to a kiss doesn™t constitute a œyes to sexual intercourse. Sexual violence in America has declined sharply since the mid-1990s. According to the National Crime Victimisation Survey ” the gold standard for measuring crimes that are often not reported ” the proportion of women subjected to rape or sexual assault fell 64 percent between 1995-2005, and declined slightly further by 2010, to 1.1 per 1,000 women per year. Nonetheless, colleges are under unprecedented pressure to make campuses safer. Activists talk of an alcohol-fuelled œrape culture. A student at Columbia University has vowed to carry her mattress around all day until the man she says raped her, is expelled. Images of what she describes as a piece of performance art, ˜Carry That Weight™, have landed her on the cover of New York magazine. On September 19, Barack Obama also launched a campaign to prevent sexual assaults in college. This is not the first time his administration has weighed in. In 2011, the department of education sent colleges a letter suggesting that if they didn™t take steps to curb sexual violence, they could fall foul of a federal anti-discrimination law called Title IX. The letter cited an estimate that about one in five women are victims of a completed or attempted sexual assault while in college ” a much higher figure than other studies find. In the past, accusations of sexual assault were typically dealt with privately by schools, usually behind closed doors. Earlier this year, Obama™s administration began publishing a list of colleges and universities under investigation for violations of Title IX; it now includes more than 70, including Harvard, Princeton and Berkeley. Pushed by government and their own students, many institutions are adopting more stringent standards for dealing with sexual violence on campus. Every member of the Ivy League except Harvard has now adopted the œaffirmative consent standard. So have many, perhaps most, other universities. Supporters of the policy say it educates students about the nature of consent and gives them a vocabulary to use during awkward sexual encounters. œIt tells students very clearly that sex without consent is sexual assault, says Suzanne Goldberg, a law professor at Columbia University. Other states ” and colleges ” are likely to follow suit. œNormally the government doesn™t tell schools (colleges/universities) how…

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WITHIN A DECADE, technology has so completely transformed the lives of people worldwide that it™s hard to imagine life without it. It has changed the way we communicate, socialise, cook, shop, entertain ourselves, store and use information. Inevitably, technology is also changing the way children learn. Driven by technology, educators are exploring innovative ways in which ICT (information and communication technologies) can make teaching-learning learner-centric. The flipped classroom model is a high-potential innovation which has turned traditional classroom pedagogy upside down. American high school teachers Jonathan Bregman and Aaron Sams of Woodland Park High School, Colorado, are credited with the development of the flipped classroom model in 2007. During their many years in the school™s classrooms, they discovered they were spending considerable time conducting backup classes for students who had missed classes. This prompted them to record their live lectures and post them online for reference. Soon they discovered their online lectures were also being accessed by students who had not missed class, for reinforcement and review. This led to the idea of the ˜flipped classroom™ model in which students view lectures and instructional videos at home, and utilise classroom periods to discuss the lectures, raise questions, and engage in collaborative activities which promote higher order thinking. In traditional pedagogy, the role of a teacher is of a sage on stage. She spends most of her classroom time lecturing, with students listening and taking notes. The comprehension of students is tested by prescribing homework and projects. On the other hand, in the flipped classroom, the teacher is not a dispenser of facts (sage on stage) but a designer of learning environments. Students ˜attend™ pre-recorded lectures or interactive videos at home. In-class time is used to develop higher order cognitive skills including analysis, synthesis, and problem-solving. Classroom sessions are utilised to field queries, encourage peer-to-peer learning, promote critical thinking and application of theory. The flipped classroom model which is becoming increasingly popular in the US, UK, and Australia among other countries, not only results in better student learning outcomes but also frees up teachers™ time to improve the quality of teaching. The advantages of switching to the flipped classroom model are: Self-paced learning. Every student learns at her own pace. The availability of online lectures and supportive material enables every student to pace the learning process according to her need. Students can choose to pause, rewind, or replay an instructional video ” which they can™t do in a conventional classroom. This helps them understand concepts, compile queries, and make time for in-classroom clarifications. Multiple ways of learning. Since the teaching-learning process is not restricted to classrooms, teachers can prescribe enabling supplementary content ” interactive animations, simulations, informative websites and other content which can help students grasp theory and concepts. Better time utilisation. As students listen to lectures at home and note queries and questions in advance, during classroom periods teachers have time to entertain questions, encourage discussion, and provide additional inputs. Student-centred learning. Classroom time can be used by teachers to…

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AMBITIOUS STUDENTS AIM HIGH FROM a surprisingly early age. Aspirational teenagers as young as 15-16 are already planning for careers with big name multinational corporations. Their targets predominantly are corporate organisations in the financial services, new media, and the creative sectors whose activities increasingly define our daily life. According to CNN Money™s 2013 survey ˜World™s Top Employers for New Grads™, firms such as Google, Ernst and Young, Goldman Sachs and PwC top students™ shortlists. In turn, multinational corporations are revising their personnel selection criteria as they draw new recruits no longer just from their base countries, but from the global talent pool. Strong academic performance gets you to first base, but won™t result in an appointment letter. Conventional interest in the breadth of a student™s school experience continues to play a part ” it tells an employer much about an applicant, not least the ability to balance priorities and manage time effectively. Goldman Sachs, for example, looks back to an applicant™s school record for evidence of extracurricular activities. œWe look at the types of activities that candidates have been engaged in through school, such as team sports, events or group projects; or even outside school where they may have volunteered for a charitable organisation, says  the Goldman Sachs careers blog. A trawl of the world™s top employers™ websites highlights a new emphasis on capabilities that have become known as 21st-century skills. These are skills which indicate new ways of working and thinking in the rapidly changing global economy. Traditional interest in an applicant™s problem-solving skills, for example, has moved to a new focus on her expertise in working collaboratively to solve problems. Indeed, collaborative problem-solving skills are highly valued by multinational companies. They enable effective knowledge management and the ability to examine issues from multiple perspectives, skill-bases, and a global perspective. There™s widespread recognition that the ˜silo mentality™ ” national, functional, or organisational ” inevitably results in sub-optimal and wasteful solutions which are anathema to cost-conscious multinational corporations. The well-known management consultancy firm Deloitte™s recruitment guidance for applicants emphasises this. œThe ability to collaborate and solve problems is key to securing a job here. Similarly, IBM stresses that œcreativity, curiosity, and strong collaborative skills are valued in would-be recruits. Stacy Savides Sullivan, Google™s chief culture officer and director of human resources, puts it another way: œI would characterise the (our) culture as one that is team-oriented, very collaborative and encouraging people to think non-traditionally, she says. In fact, collaborative problem-solving is now so widely valued as a key skill in the 21st century that from 2015, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) will conduct an international survey of the effectiveness of different educational systems in developing this skill. The ability to communicate, co-operate, respect, and support colleagues in a team has long been sought by employers, big and small. But what™s different today is widespread awareness that teams tend to be culturally diverse, internationally focussed and often virtual in composition. Therefore it™s not enough for ambitious young professionals to…

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I™m a second year BE (electronics) student. After graduation I want to work with ISRO. Please advise. Mani Iyer, Chennai Focus on completing your engineering degree programme and aim for at least a first division. Visit www.isro.gov.in to know more about how graduates are recruited. Be prepared to face tough competition. I™m a final year B.Com student interested in a career in investment banking. What educational qualifications do I need to qualify for a career in this field? Anil Joseph, Bangalore To qualify as an investment banker, you need to sign up for an MBA (finance), chartered accountancy or any other finance-related course after graduation. Several private institutions and deemed universities offer courses in finance/management. I will complete my bachelor™s degree in interior design next year. Which reputed institutions offer Masters programmes in design? Neena Patel, Ahmedabad The top-ranked institutions offering postgraduate programmes in design are the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad; Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore; Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology University, Ahmedabad; and MIT Institute of Design, Pune. I™m interested in a career in food technology and want to enroll with the Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI), Mysore. What are the eligibility requirements? Nalini Rajan, Trivandrum Admission notices for the M.Sc (food technology) degree programme of the University of Mysore at the Central Food Technological Research Institute, Mysore (www.cftri.org) are usually advertised in May. The eligibility requirement is a B.Sc with chemistry, or agriculture/engineering/technology with maths at the Plus Two or degree level. An entrance/aptitude test is usually held in Mysore and New Delhi in July. After completing my B. Tech (biotech) degree in 2016, I want to write CSIR-NET (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-National Eligibility Test) as I™m very keen on teaching and research. Will I be eligible to write the exam? Sunil Trivedi, New Delhi CSIR has revised its study programmes to include chemical, earth, atmospheric and ocean, planetary, physical, and engineering sciences in its B.Sc (Hons), BS (four years), BE/B.Tech, B.Pharm, MBBS, integrated BS-MS and M.Sc degree programmes. To encourage engineering students to pursue Ph D and lectureships, CSIR has also introduced a sixth paper in engineering sciences common to all engineering disciplines. The sample paper and syllabus is uploaded on the CSIR website www.csirhrdg.res.in. The minimum qualifying percentage is 55 percent for general category (50 percent for SC/ST) students. Only the top 15 percent candidates in the NET merit list for each subject and category (based on aggregate scores) will qualify and become eligible for lectureships. After completing Plus Two I want to enroll in a five-year integrated LLB course. I™m keen on a career as a lawyer. Please advise. Sujoy Chakravarty, Kolkata You need to write law entrance exams such as CLAT, SET, ISAT-India exam, etc for admission into the five-year integrated law degree programme offered by several institutes/colleges to Plus Two school-leavers. I™ve been learning German for the past few years while reading for a BA degree. I want to pursue a career as a…

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With 20 percent of global GDP being expended on infrastructure and construction projects, the demand for professionally qualified PMs is set to explode IN THE NEWLY-EMERGENT competitive global economy, project management is a skillset for which there™s huge and rising demand, given that an estimated 20 percent of the world™s GDP is being expended on infrastructure and construction projects of varying shapes and sizes. And with many project management professionals scheduled to retire in the near future because of ageing populations in developed OECD countries ” which according to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) will impact 64 percent of building and construction corporates worldwide ” the demand for professionally qualified project managers is set to explode. Simply put, project management entails setting and achieving realistic project completion goals. It requires planning, organisation, and managing people and resources efficiently to achieve targets within set financial and time frames. Unlike specialist managers who supervise functional departments, project managers in effect oversee and co-ordinate the completion of entire projects. For instance, a project manager who™s overseeing the development of a new product or service will be required to supervise marketing, IT, and finance personnel. Inevitably, project managers (PMs) are pivotal players in industries such as construction, engineering, architecture, manufacturing and real estate. But career opportunities for PMs exist beyond these traditional industries. In the hi-tech, biotech and pharmaceutical industries for example, project managers are discharging responsibilities of launching new products, developing new technologies, and managing collaborative programmes with strategic partners. Moreover, large corporations such as insurance companies and banks are hiring PMs to implement new standards and practices in branch offices, and online businesses are leaning on PMs to oversee website launches and development of new applications. In short, when a project involves releasing a product, building a new office site or launching a rocket, PMs are called upon to make sure everything comes together within time and cost frames. Towards this end, they need to possess multi-tasking capability, analytical thinking, and excellent communication skills. Study Programmes Education qualifications required of project managers vary according to the type of projects in which they specialise. For construction, a civil engineering degree is usually required. High-tech projects need PMs with a degree in electrical or computer science engineering preferably supplemented with postgrad business management education General programmes apart, diploma programmes of the Project Management Institute (which has an India office) or Prince 2 (Projects in Controlled Environment, version2), UK provide an excellent understanding of the fundamental terminology and processes of effective project management. These diploma programmes are online examinations for which graduates can register at their convenience. œThe demand for project managers has been rising exponentially in the past decade. Employment opportunities are aplenty in conventional infrastructure and construction companies in which remuneration packages at the entry level range between Rs.7-10 lakh per annum, rising to Rs.10-14 lakh in middle management, and Rs.14-20 lakh at senior levels varying from industry to industry, says Anup Gandhi, manager (global production) of HERE Solutions India Pvt.…

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The fiercely guarded academic autonomy of these institutions of excellence is anathema to the country’s politicians. Therefore from time to time efforts are made by government to pack their governing boards THE ONLY HIGHER EDUCATION institutions anywhere near global standards established in post-independence India are the country’s Top 8 (out of 16) Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and 13 Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). Sited on sprawling campuses of hundreds of acres, the Central government-promoted IITs and IIMs are superbly equipped with excellent infrastructure, libraries, laboratories and residential accommodation, and globally famous for the high quality of graduates and postgrads they certify. The great reputation of IITs and IIMs is not just the outcome of stiff entrance examinations which enable them to choose the country’s brightest and best higher secondary school-leaving students (IITs) and graduates (IIMs), but also because of the fiercely guarded academic autonomy of these institutions. Naturally, this is anathema to the country’s overweening politicians used to having their way. Therefore from time to time, subtle and not-so-subtle efforts are made by government to control and/or pack the governing boards of these prized institutions. The most blatant attempt to grab control of the IITs and IIMs was made by Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi, a former physics professor appointed Union HRD minister of the first BJP-led NDA government, in November 2003. Searching for an excuse to interfere with these inconveniently autonomous institutions, Joshi attempted to ingratiate himself with the middle class by unilaterally slashing the already heavily-subsidised tuition fees to Rs.30,000 per year, to increase their dependence upon ministry grants. Moreover, he decreed that all donations and endowments received by Central government-run education institutions had to be made to a Bharat Shiksha Khoj fund controlled by the HRD ministry, which would allocate them at its discretion. Naturally, some HRD bureaucrats had to be inducted into the governing boards of the institutes to ensure compliance. EducationWorld which unambiguously condemned this backdoor takeover conspiracy in two detailed cover stories described Joshi as the “proverbial bull in a china shop who could wreck Indian education” (EW January & March 2004). Fortunately a few months later, Joshi was banished into political wilderness following the unexpected defeat of the BJP-NDA coalition in General Election 2004. Curiously, Joshi’s abortive IITs and IIMs smash-and-grab attempt which ended in disgrace, didn’t deter Kapil Sibal, another bull-in-china shop Union HRD minister from attempting to fix the IITs which didn’t need fixing. Eight years later in May 2012, “in a burst of nationalist passion”, decreeing “one nation one test”, Sibal abolished the traditional IIT-JEE conducted by the IITs, and introduced a common entrance exam for all Central government-run engineering colleges (including the IITs). The minister’s insistence that the new exam format be introduced with immediate effect without allowing time for careful examination of its full  implications, prompted the faculties and alumni of several IITs to raise the banner of revolt.  In particular, there was grave concern given that quality of curriculums prescribed by the country’s numerous examination boards is…

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Enterprises of great pith and moment launched to transform the world’s largest population of children and youth were proclaimed, analysed and discussed threadbare, to little avail. Although in the new millennium, the needs and rights of the country’s 450 million child citizens are receiving greater attention, they remain the world’s most malnourished, under-educated and under-protected children. Dilip Thakore & Summiya Yasmeen report THE INTERREGNUM OF 15 years (1999-2014) since EducationWorld was modestly launched into the dark and uncharted waters of Indian education with the mission statement to “build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda,” has been a history of great failures and small successes. Enterprises of great pith and moment launched to transform the world’s largest population of children and youth — the unintended consequence of the failure of the family planning programmes of the first three decades after independence, but glibly translated into a demographic dividend — were proclaimed, debated, analysed and discussed threadbare. But to little avail. Although in the new millennium the needs and rights of the country’s 450 million child citizens have started receiving greater attention, this massive cohort of vulnerable under-18s remains the world’s most malnourished, undereducated, under-protected and under-developed children. Even though the country’s myopic political leaders and establishment and a self-centred middle class don’t seem to care, the pathetic condition of the country’s 550 million children and youth augurs ill for the future. Almost 47 percent of children under age five suffer moderate to severe malnutrition and danger of brain damage and stunting because the country’s 1.4 million Central government-sponsored anganwadis (child care and nutrition centres) can provide for only half of them. Moreover, vitally important early childhood education  was a blindspot of  the country’s educationists and central planners for over six decades until last September. Teaching-learning outcomes and conditions in the country’s 1.20 million (mainly state) government schools defined by lack of drinking water, electricity, toilets, multi-grade teaching in single classrooms and mass teacher truancy (1.25 million teachers of government primaries are absent every day) are so abysmal  that of the 230 million children who are in primary schools at the beginning of each academic year, over 40 percent drop out and only 51 million complete secondary education of whom a mere 26 million enter institutions of higher education. Nor is the general quality of education dispensed by India’s 37,000 colleges and 735 universities — some of them of more than 150 years’ vintage — much to write home about.  According to a 2005 McKinsey World Institute-Nasscom study, 85 percent of liberal arts and 75 percent of India’s engineering graduates are unfit for employment in multinational companies. Perhaps the only inspirational stories in post-independence India’s education development history — and particularly of  the new millennium — are from the country’s non government organisations (NGOs) and 80,000 (200,000 according to the Union HRD ministry which enumerates the kindergarten, primary, upper primary, secondary and higher secondary sections of composite schools as separate units) private schools, 7,000…

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DESPITE CONSIDERABLE SOUND AND fury, there™s been no explicit education policy formulation in post-independence India notwithstanding the National Adult Education Policy (NAEP, 1978), National Policy on Adult Education (NPAE, 1981) and National Policy on Education (NPE, 1986), all of which were described as policy initiatives. In effect, education development in India during the past 64 years has been Constitution-driven in primary-secondary schooling, and market-driven in technical, medical, pharmacy, dental, management and professional education. NPE was the outcome of the constitutional dream of 1950, while NPAE and NAEP have remained day-dreams. Likewise, collegiate and university education is a result of upward pressures of the growth of school education and pressure from the domestic and global markets. Research and development in institutions of higher education has received little more than lip-service. An analysis of education development in India at various levels substantiates this line of argument. Adult literacy. Ex facie considerable progress has been made in adult literacy which has risen from 16 percent in 1951 to 75 percent in 2011. However, on closer examination, this achievement translates into 61 percent in 60 years or 1 percent annually. On the other hand, most South-east Asian nations were fully literate by 1990. Primary-secondary education. Curiously, only in 2009, 59 years after promulgation of the Constitution, was elementary education provision declared a fundamental obligation of the State (Central and state governments). But even so the Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 is not time and targets-driven. And this belated initiative was prompted by the media and judiciary who have been critical about the snail speed of universalisation of primary education, globally acknowledged as the pre-requisite of national development. Indeed, a hidden policy relating to school education in India is discernible. It™s to silently encourage the growth and multiplication of private schools and surreptitiously command and demand government quotas within them to create opportunities for rent-seeking by the politician-bureaucrat nexus. The inclusion and validation of s.12 (1) (c) in the RTE Act which makes it mandatory for private schools to reserve 25 percent capacity for poor and disadvantaged children in private primary schools is the first step towards backdoor control of private education. Instead, the rational option for the State would have been development of a chain of high quality government schools under NPE, 1986 which would have obviated the need for dispossessed children to look to private schools for K-12 education. Professional education. The predatory policy of the State is visible with greater clarity in professional education. Showpiece government institutions such as IITs, IIMs, NITs, AIIMS, JIPMER etc apart, much of the growth in professional education has been in the private sector. Privately promoted technical and management institutions sprang up across the country in the wake of the new economic policy (1991) which spurred the growth of the IT/BT/BPO industries in the 1990s. The number of IT training institutes and the demand for engineers grew by leaps and bounds leading to promotion of over 4,000 private sector engineering colleges countrywide. But…

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BY ALL MEASURES, THE interaction between Indian school children and prime minister Narendra Modi on Teachers Day (September 5) was an unprecedented success. It was ˜first ever™ on many counts ” but perhaps most importantly in its scope and format. Employing new media technologies in a live town-hall setting, an authentic, inspirational and at times humorous conversation unfolded between the leader of the world™s most populous democracy, and millions of children who will lead the nation in generations to come. Video feeds from classrooms and schools across the country were networked-in, and the event was telecast live. However, a large group of children who would have certainly benefited from the caring and motivational words of the prime minister were left out of this national celebration viz, the country™s estimated 8.15 million out-of-school children. It is imperative to reaffirm our commitment to them as we approach Children™s Day celebrated on November 14. A recent (2014) report ” a collaboration between Unesco, Unicef and the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry released at the National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA) ” indicates that out of an estimated 190 million 6-13 year-olds, approximately 8.15 million children (or 4.23 percent) are out of school today. The total number of out-of-school children would actually be much higher if one considered the full schooling cycle i.e. children up to 18 years of age. These are hard facts. Yet India can confront and overcome educational exclusion of its children only if it can realise the potential of the landmark Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009. Understanding who is out of school and why, is critical to delivering the promises of the RTE Act to India™s children. The good news is that we already know a great deal in this regard. In a compendium titled Who Goes to School? (Oxford University Press, 2011), the contributing authors presented brilliant analyses of the social, cultural, political and economic factors that keep children out of school. The Unesco/Unicef 2014 report reinforces these analyses. Disproportionally large numbers of children from traditionally vulnerable groups ” girls, children in poverty, and from Muslim, scheduled caste and scheduled tribe communities ” continue to remain out of school. More fundamentally however, education research worldwide continues to indicate that children who are most vulnerable, are also most likely to be in schools least equipped to serve their learning needs. In other words, getting children into school per se is not a panacea if the schools are not places where they can grow and thrive with real learning ” cognitive as well as affective. Hence the focus of the campaign to get out-of-school children back into classrooms shouldn™t be ˜back to school™, but rather back to education and learning. And this raises the question of what™s the point of celebrating Teachers Day. First, the capability of teachers is the touchstone of education quality. What teachers say and do with children in their classrooms, constitutes the core of teaching-learning. Hence a successful back-to-education campaign…

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DESPITE ITS HUGE 1.25 billion population, India wasn™t able to win even one gold medal at the London Olympics 2012. Not a single Indian university is ranked among the Top 200 in the World University Rankings 2013-14 league tables of the highly-respected rating agencies QS and THE. Why? Because both sports and education are dominated by government. Regardless of which party is in power, government control breeds mediocrity. The legions of officials, clerks, and other functionaries who form the massive government machinery are products of the rote and prejudice system that is, was, and unless there™s radical reform, will remain in higher education. All talk of global success stories scripted by individuals or diasporas are about marginal phenomena. India™s 735 universities are the dysfunctional crown of an education system which starts with mass illiteracy and progresses to schools without teachers, irrational quotas, poor matriculation rates, and impossible college admissions. As such, there™s no room in the universities for the poor even if they surmount the odds against graduating high school. Those who can afford to, skip Indian universities altogether: they enroll in US, British or Australian universities on the strength of money power or skill in bagging scholarships. The plain unvarnished truth is that Indian higher education institutions simply cannot cope with 21st century demands such as innovation, creativity, ethics, and wisdom. The current system churns out job seekers, careerists and political cannon fodder. Simultaneously, consumers ” students and parents ” regard education as a stepping stone to jobs, income, wealth and influence. They seldom make qualitative demands, just a ticket to rewards. They are preoccupied in the first instance with securing admission; then coping with irrelevant syllabuses; managing inadequate teachers and the gargantuan academic bureaucracy and finally confronting the uncertainty of placement. How have things come to such a sorry pass? At the root is the firm conviction of the academic bureaucracy that higher education for the middle class is more important than universal literacy; the belief that the poor need roti, kapda, makaan and that the government™s role is to create schemes and programmes which provide these basic necessities. The provision of universal primary education could have empowered the poor, equipping them with the basic literacy, skills and tools to earn their livelihood. Instead, the bureaucracy seems to have persuaded the political leadership that paternalistic policies of handouts and subsidies are more appropriate for lifting the illiterate masses out of poverty. In the education sector, you need only to look at the acronyms of regulators to understand how completely the bureaucracy controls it: NCERT, AICTE, NCTE, SCERT, UGC, ICCSR¦ and what not! These opaque organisations set syllabuses according to the flavour of the political season; oversee staff recruitment respecting quotas; conduct examinations and hand out grades based on arbitrary invigilation. The academy itself ” teachers ” has become a unionised anachronism and its young wards unmotivated and cynical. Campuses are dominated by the crowd and stormy wings of established political parties. The best students who discern the Potemkin…

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INDIA’S EDUCATION SYSTEM is complex, brimming with problems and challenges. In tertiary education there are several higher education institutions supported by the Central government, some of whom provide high quality education. Moreover, a large number of universities are supported by governments of India™s 29 states and seven Union territories in addition to several privately funded colleges/universities. Most of the latter are under-funded, especially state government colleges and varsities. Restricted capacity, poor infrastructure and inadequate facilities of state government institutions have spurred the growth of private institutions of higher education driven by commercial objectives. But an uncomfortably large number of private engineering, medical, and business management colleges and deemed varsities are also suffering faculty shortages and lack adequate facilities. Although the Central government has been increasing its annual outlay for education marginally over the past few years, the promise that the annual allocation for education (Centre plus states) would rise to 6 percent of GDP, of which at least 2 percent would be spent on higher education, has not been honoured. Inadequate investment is the main factor behind the indifferent quality of education, and low productivity in industry and agriculture. Moreover excessive bureaucratic control and political interference have adversely affected the performance of government-supported education institutions. Now with a new government at the Centre, it™s high time serious attention is paid to the problems of publicly-funded higher education institutions. At one time, universities were the main drivers of scientific research in India. Today, they contribute a small percentage to the research output of the country. This is the main cause of not a single Indian university being included in the annual league tables of the world™s Top 200 universities published by the London-based rating agencies QS and Times Higher Education. Therefore the country™s 700 universities have to reduce their exclusive focus on teaching and step up research activities not only by publishing more papers but also improving quality of research output substantially. This is necessary for Indian industry to become internationally competitive. The highly enabling environments created for academic research by the neighbouring countries in Asia should serve as examples to universities and the Union HRD ministry. It™s my hope India will be able to publish 5-10 percent (instead of 1 percent currently) of the top 1 percent of global research papers in the next ten years. This optimism is fuelled by the successful R&D (research and development) initiatives of several postgraduate universities/institutes supported by science departments of the Union government. For instance, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research supported by the Department of Atomic Energy, and the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) supported by the Department of Science and Technology (which admit only Ph D students) produce excellent research papers. Ditto the laboratories of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. The latter is the oldest and probably the finest institution of research in India with more than 1,300 students pursuing research-intensive doctoral studies. Unfortunately, the number of institutions offering…

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THE EU-INDIA SOCIAL SCIENCES and Humanities Platform (EqUIP), a new programme aimed at giving impetus to European Union-India research collaboration, was launched in Delhi on October 14. EqUIP is a ‚1.5 million (Rs.11.5 crore) project funded by the European Commission and will link 12 European research funding organisations with key funding agencies in India, to develop a stronger strategic partnership in social sciences and the humanities. œThe European Union is proud to support ten European countries joining with the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) to enhance networking and coordination in the social sciences and humanities. This cross-cutting cooperation is crucial for enhancing the socio-economic impact of research and for evidence-based policymaking, said Dr. Joao Cravinho, EU ambassador to India, speaking on the occasion. Describing the launch of EqUIP as a œhistoric event, Dr. Sukhadeo Thorat, chairman ICSSR, added: œResearchers from European countries and India will now be enabled to conduct collaborative research. We intend to extend this platform to other European partners as well, connecting with academics and researchers as widely as possible. We hope this will open up new opportunities and infuse new energy into social science and humanities research in India and Europe. Higher research stipends AKHIL BHARATIYA Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student™s wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party, has welcomed the notification issued by the Union ministry of science & technology on October 21, to increase the stipends paid to research scholars from Rs.16,000 to Rs.25,000 per month for junior research fellows, and Rs.18,000 to Rs.28,000 for senior researchers excluding house rent allowance. œThough the new stipends are welcome, timely disbursement of fellowships/scholarships is a major concern in all universities barring a few top institutions. For instance, in the University of Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru University, research students face a lot of hardship in getting their fellowship disbursements. It™s important that fellowship disbursals are made timely and hassle-free, says Saket Bahuguna, secretary of ABVP (Delhi state unit) calling upon the Union HRD minister to clarify the status of students in non-DST (department of science & technology) funded research institutes. Women leaders initiative THE US-BASED IT multinational IBM announced a collaboration with the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B) and Catalyst India WRC to launch a cross-industry women™s leadership development programme Tanmatra (˜potential™ in Sanskrit) in Bengaluru on October 13. According to a company spokesperson, the programme will leverage the best collective practical experience and research to prepare women for leadership roles in the Indian business community. In this collaborative programme, IBM is the knowledge partner, contributing the organisation™s experience in the advancement of women. Catalyst India WRC is the research partner, offering its research expertise to Tanmatra™s faculty. IIM-Bangalore is the education partner. œIBM places great emphasis on building women leaders who will help transform the businesses of tomorrow. We have industry-leading and recognised in-house interventions that focus on attracting, developing, and retaining woman talent, globally and locally. We are delighted to be the knowledge partner of Tanmatra as it supports our vision towards building…

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Arunachal Pradesh Teacher transfer committees THE STATE government has constituted two committees headed by the directors of elementary education and school education departments to study œgenuine problems confronting teachers in the mass transfer of 567 teachers in September from East Siang district, the Arunachal government™s secretary for education, Bamang Felix informed media personnel in Itanagar on October 17. œIt is the objective of the state government to ensure quality education is provided to each and every child of the state. For ensuring this, rationalisation of teachers™ postings was necessary as many schools in interior villages suffer teacher shortages, while others have an excess of them, explained Felix. Nevertheless, Felix assured teachers that the two committees will study individual cases on health and other grounds and stay transfer orders for œgenuine reasons, adding that all transfer orders will be kept in abeyance until the committees submit their reports. ODISHA Gram panchayats empowered THE STATE government has proposed standing committees on education at the gram panchayat (village council) level to look into school education, health, and sanitation within their jurisdiction, a government spokesperson said in Bhubaneswar on October 16. Headed by sarpanches, the committees will be empowered to monitor teachers™ attendance, and will recommend action to be taken against absentee teachers by block development officers. The committees will facilitate and monitor implementation of the annual plans of government schools, and provide necessary support. They will also meet at least once every quarter of the academic year for coordination with school management committees established under the RTE Act. Uttarakhand Taiwan™s helping hand THE GOVERNMENT of the Republic of Taiwan has signed an agreement with the Uttarakhand state government under which the former will help the Uttarakhand government develop its food processing industry. Moreover, cultural and educational exchange programmes for higher education students will be initiated, a state government spokesperson said in Dehradun on October 14. The agreement was signed by representatives of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Centre and Uttarakhand chief minister Harish Rawat. Selected universities in Taiwan will work with universities in Uttarakhand. Addressing the media, Chung Kwang Tien, who led the Taiwan delegation, called for greater business relations between Taiwan and Uttarakhand. œWe can help Uttarakhand develop its food processing industry by providing technical assistance. In return, raw materials from here can be used in food processing units of Taiwan, he said. Himachal Pradesh VET neglect warning A RECENT inspection by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan officials in primary-secondary schools has revealed that vocational education trainers across the state are being given non-teaching assignments by school managements. Addressing mediapersons in Shimla on October 19, SSA nodal officer Girija Chauhan said vocational education and training (VET) courses devised by the state™s education department, National Skill Development Corporation, and All India Council for Technical Education are languishing because in several schools, teachers direct VET trainers to undertake administrative work as they tend to be computer literate. Therefore, in a directive to the managements of 200 senior secondary schools where VET programmes are mandatory, the state™s…

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œCleaning up the country cannot be the sole responsibility of sweepers. Do citizens have no role in this? We have to change this mindset. If people of India can reach Mars with minimal expenditure, why can they not keep their streets and colonies clean? Prime minister Narendra Modi launching the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India campaign) on the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi (October 2) œTo question is to be suspect. Democratic dissent is equated with disloyalty. Those in opposition are enemies… A richly endowed, complex culture has been reduced to a sterile simplification: don™t talk, vilify; don™t discuss, condemn; don™t differ, just follow. Pawan K. Verma, MP, on the shrinking space for dailogue in public life (Times of India, October 25) œThe UPA and the NDA are in broad consensus on the need to make students apolitical, amenable, responsible citizens… Continually, all possibilities of a democratic life within universities are curtailed, mocked, denied. Brinda Bose & Prasanta Chakravarty, Delhi University professors, on censoring of student dissent within the university system (Outlook, October 27) œI have been invisible because those I work for have been invisible. Kailash Satyarthi, the low-profile child rights activist who was recently conferred the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaign againt child labour (India Today, October 27) œIf you deserve a raise, you should just ask. Satya Nadella, Microsoft™s CEO retracting widely criticised comments that it™s œgood karma for women to have œfaith that the system will actually give you the right raises (Time, October 27) œThe twin maladies of losing children in government schools and minimising the idea of school in the private sector are putting our schools in grave danger. We as a society seem to be far from realising that civilisations depend on education and schools are primary sites of education. Rohit Dhankar, professor at Azim Premji University, on saving India™s schools (The Hindu, October 28)

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WITH COLLEGE CAMPUSES in west bengal and kolkata in particular in a state of ferment reminiscent of the Naxalite agitations of the 1960s with bandhs, gheraos and student insurrection a routine feature, the prolonged students™ protest at Jadavpur University (JU) pressing for an independent investigation into the molestation of a woman student inside a hostel on August 28, continues to receive support of all sections of society. JU students have been demonstrating and agitating for removal of interim vice chancellor Abhijit Chakraborty since September 17, when he ordered a brutal police crackdown to break up a peaceful sit-in by students. However, despite strident demands for his removal, on October 5, Chakraborty was confirmed as vice chancellor of JU by West Bengal governor K.N. Tripathi, the ex-officio chancellor of the university. œThe trouble at Jadavpur University is being fanned by outsiders. Let the university not be politicised, said Tripathi on September 25. Yet in West Bengal™s academy it™s common knowledge that the ruling Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC), which ended 34 years of uninterrupted rule (1977-2011) of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) in the state by sweeping the state legislative assembly election of 2011, is behind Tripathi™s decision to confirm the unpopular Chakraborty as vice chancellor. According to informed monitors of West Bengal™s chaotic higher education scene, the TMC top leadership is hell-bent upon appointing its nominee as vice chancellor of JU because the dominant teachers and students™ unions at the university are affiliated with the CPM. With Chakraborty at the helm, the chances of TMC-affiliated teachers and students™ unions breaking the stranglehold of the communists on the campus, will improve. However, Chakraborty™s appointment as VC has outraged professors and alumni, and a host of political leaders, including state BJP president Rahul Sinha, and Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who have demanded Chakraborty™s resignation over the brutal police attack on peacefully agitating students on September 17. Simultaneously at a convention held on October 21, Jadavpur University Teachers™ Association (JUTA) renewed charges that Chakraborty had plagiarised his doctoral thesis. Moreover, the JU students™ union has called for a students™ referendum on October 30-31 to press for Chakraborty™s resignation. Established in 1955, JU is one of West Bengal™s few showpiece universities. Therefore as in Presidency University ” another hallowed institution ” behind the scenes there™s a grim struggle between cadres of the CPM and TMC for dominating college campuses in West Bengal, and the big stand-off in JU is no exception. But given the huge trust deficit between Chakraborty and students, teachers, alumni, and professors emeritus, there™s skepticism about the new vice chancellor being able to discharge his role effectively. Comments Prithwis Mukherjee, programme director of business analytics at the Praxis Business School, Kolkata: œA person so universally disliked by students and faculty and an individual without any claim to scholarship or administrative capability, should never have been appointed chancellor of JU. The students™ demand for his removal is justified. As JU students prepare to stage a referendum on October 30-31, the…

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PREDICTABLY PROPAGATION of hindi and Sanskrit by Hindi zealots of the educationally backward BIMARU (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh) states with the tacit support of bigwigs of the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre, has provoked a backlash in anti-Hindi peninsular India. On September 18, the AIADMK government of Tamil Nadu (currently led by Jayalalithaa proxy O. Paneerselvam) resurrected the dormant Tamil Nadu Tamil Learning Act, 2006 (introduced by the Karunanidhi-led DMK government which was in power 2006-2011) making Tamil a compulsory language in all schools statewide including primary-secondaries affiliated with the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) from the next academic year (2015-16). For the first time, all 565 CBSE and 468 CISCE-affiliated schools have been asked to introduce Tamil in class I next year, and ensure that all students up to class X learn the state™s dominant language by 2024-25. The applicability of the Act to CBSE and CISCE schools comes nine years after it was made compulsory in 2006 for 52,303 government schools and 6,500 unaided private matriculation schools (unique to Tamil Nadu and governed by the Directorate of Matriculation Schools) affiliated with the Tamil Nadu Board of Secondary Education. Government and matriculation schools were directed to make Tamil language learning mandatory for class I students in 2006 and scale it up to class X by 2015-16. Hitherto, government schools followed the state™s two-language policy ” Tamil and English ” introduced in 1967 following the anti-Hindi agitation of 1965, but private matriculation schools offered students the choice of Tamil or Hindi up to middle school and Tamil, Hindi, French or other languages in high school as the elective second language. Therefore, a letter issued to all 6,500 affiliated schools by the director of matriculation schools on February 10 stating that Tamil will become a compulsory language paper for class X students in the academic year 2015-2016 and asking schools to submit preparedness reports, has evoked strong protest from the Association of Matriculation Higher Secondary Schools which has appealed to the Madras high court for a stay order. œAlthough the Tamil Nadu Tamil Learning Act was enacted in June 2006, the state government appointed officials to monitor its implementation only in April 2012. As many schools have yet to start teaching Tamil as a second language, it will be difficult for class X students studying other languages to suddenly shift to Tamil. Moreover, since Tamil Nadu has a two-language policy, students whose mother tongue is not Tamil and those whose parents are on transfer from other states shouldn™t be forced to study Tamil. Imposing Tamil on unaided minority institutions also adversely affects their fundamental rights. Students should have a right to choose their second language, says K.R. Nandha Kumar, state general secretary, Tamil Nadu Nursery, Primary, Matric and Higher Secondary Schools™ Association. The latest diktat of the state government to matriculation schools is yet another blow to their autonomy. Five years ago, the Tamil Nadu Schools…

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AN OUT-OF-THE-BLUE proposal of the Karnataka state government to cap tuition fees chargeable by private schools across the board — pre-primary, primary, secondary, and higher secondary — has created a furore within the state’s 11,475 private unaided (financially independent) schools. A “draft fees structure” posted on the website of the department of public instruction (DPI) on September 30, proposes a ceiling of Rs.11,500, Rs.6,800 and Rs.13,130 per year as the maximum chargeable tuition fees of pre-primary, primary and secondary schools in the state. This proposed ceiling is also applicable to schools affiliated with the pan-India CBSE and CISCE examination boards which are usually exempted from state government legislation. Moreover, ‘development fees’ levied by private schools have also been capped at Rs.10,000 per year, with all fee hikes subject to approval by a majority of parents. The DPI has invited private schools to file their comments and objections to these proposals by November 10. WITH TUITION FEES IN bangalore’s high-end international day schools as high as Rs.4 lakh per year and of CBSE and CISCE-affiliated schools averaging Rs.50,000-100,000 per year, the DPI’s fees-capping proposal has drawn scorn and derision. On October 16, the Karnataka Unaided Schools Management Association (KUSMA) and the Associated Managements of English Medium Schools in Karnataka (KAMS) lodged an official complaint with the DPI against the “impractical proposal” and zero representation of CISCE/CBSE or state board-affiliated private unaided schools in the sub-committee constituted by it for drafting the new fees structure. “We don’t know on what basis the DPI has come up with such an absurd fees structure. Currently, tuition fees charged by private unaided schools in Bangalore vary between Rs.15,000-1 lakh per year. Uniform fees cannot be mandated for all private schools in each sector. Parents who protest against tuition fee increases need to realise that if private schools begin charging the DPI prescribed fees, we will very quickly transform into under-equipped and under-performing government schools,” says Shashi Kumar, general secretary of KAMS, which has a membership of 600 private schools statewide. The proposed cap on tuition fees is only the latest instance of continuous interference and official harassment heaped upon private unaided schools by successive governments of the state for over two decades. In 1994, the government passed an ordinance prohibiting the promotion of new English-medium schools. Only schools offering Kannada or mother tongue as the medium of instruction in primary classes (classes I-V) were licenced and ‘recognised’ by the state government. Unsurprisingly, this directive was practiced more in the breach than observance, and Karnataka’s notoriously corrupt educracy had many field years shaking down private school managements for turning a blind eye to their providing English medium primary-secondary education in a state which has a long tradition of English education. After a long battle in the courts, the educracy’s party was interrupted by a judgement of the Karnataka high court in 2008, which quashed the government’s 1994 ordinance as being violative of parents’ fundamental right to choose the medium of instruction of their children. Subsequently on…

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A SYMPOSIUM ORGANISED BY the Akhil Bharatiya Itihaas Sankalan Yojana (ABISY) ” a subsidiary organisation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) founded in 1978 with the objective of rewriting Indian history from a nationalist perspective ” in Delhi on October 5, has sent a chill down the spines of liberal academics countrywide. It has resurrected apprehensions that the BJP-led NDA coalition which swept to power at the Centre five months ago, is set to resume its hindutva agenda interrupted by its shock defeat in General Election 2004, to infiltrate Hindu mythology into school curriculums. The symposium was convened by ABISY at the National Museum to commemorate Maharaja Hemchandra Vikramaditya (1501-1556), described as the forgotten Napoleon of India and œlast Hindu emperor of India. A former general of Sher Shah Suri who revolted against the Afghans and Mughals, Hemchandra reportedly won 22 battles in quick succession and declared himself Emperor of Delhi in 1556. œWe are always in favour of recognising and remembering our forgotten real heroes who were deliberately ignored by biased historians of the Mughal and British era, says B.M. Pande, organising secretary, ABISY and convenor of the symposium. At the packed-to-capacity symposium, speakers rubbished reputed historians with BJP ideologue Subramanian Swamy œin a nakedly communal speech, positing that it was œdue to the struggle of people like Hemu that Muslims and Christians failed to convert 80 percent of Hindus, reports Pragya Tiwari in firstpost.com (October 9). Moreover, Swamy opined that œbooks written by Romila Thapar, Bipin Chandra, and other historians of Nehru must be burnt in a bonfire. Quite clearly, drawing inspiration from the comprehensive electoral victory of the BJP ” widely regarded as the political arm of the RSS-headed sangh parivar and the fact that prime minister Narendra Modi is a former RSS pracharak (foot soldier) ” in General Election 2014, Pande believes ABISY™s time has come. œThe Indian Council of Historical Research receives an annual grant of Rs.20 crore from the Central government. Earlier, all grants used to go to the leftist Aligarh, JNU and Calcutta universities. Now it must go to the correct places, he says. In this context, it™s pertinent to note that one of the new government™s first appointments was of Dr. Yellapragada Sudershan Rao, a former history professor at Kakatiya University, Telengana whose current research project is to discover the definitive date of the Pandava-Kaurava war described in the Mahabharata, as chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research, Delhi (estb. 1972). Within months of the BJP-led government being sworn-in, liberal intellectuals in academia and education regulatory organisations are feeling the heat. On October 9, Prof. Parvin Sinclair, director of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), who had acquired a reputation for standing up to the diktats of the Union HRD ministry, put in her papers reportedly because of a written allegation made against her by Dina Nath Batra, a leading light of Vidya Bharati, the education wing of RSS. The octogenarian Batra, who forced the Congress-led UPA government…

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

Appeal to edupreneurs CONGRATULATIONS TO EDUPRENEURS spearheading the promising initiatives featured in your cover story ˜Big bang initiatives revolutionising Indian education™ (EW October). From curriculum enrichment and experiential learning to robotics, music education, and sports and fitness programmes, their initiatives are slowly but surely adding value and substance to conventional school education. However, it seems these programmes are restricted to elite private schools affiliated with CBSE, CISCE and international exam boards. My appeal to these edupreneurs is to broad-base their activities to reach budget private and state government schools in urban as well as rural India. It was also heartening to read about the recently launched Ashoka University in Delhi NCR. Liberal arts and humanities education has long been neglected in India and the establishment of Ashoka University modeled on top American liberal arts colleges is sure to revive interest in the study of humanities. I also noted in the story that several other universities are establishing liberal arts schools, a welcome development. Anil Varma Mumbai Protect public sector RE YOUR POSTSCRIPT item ˜Decline & fall of HMT™ (EW October), it™s sad how one of India™s best watch manufacturing companies, HMT, is facing closure as it has failed to compete in the globalised market. Recently, Hindustan Motors stopped production of the Ambassador car; now HMT is on the verge of closing down. How unfortunate that foreign brands are taking over the Indian market! One hopes prime minister Narendra Modi will stop this trend which is threatening indigenous companies. It would be better to sell ailing public sector companies to Indian private corporates so the former don™t lose their identity. Mahesh Kumar Delhi Disheartening omission WE HAD GREAT FAITH IN EducationWorld but it™s really disheartening and demotivating for students, staff and parents to note that the survey has omitted to include City Montessori School & College, Kanpur Road, Lucknow ” one of the biggest schools in India and one with exceptional achievements and extraordinary merits. It™s an irony that out of the 8,263 knowledgeable fees-paying parents, educationists, principals and teachers whom your team interviewed, none happens to be from our school. We have self-assessed our school on the parameters of the EW India School Rankings 2014 and find that it has distinguished itself on all parameters. I request you to send your team to survey the campus so as to do justice to our students, teachers and parents. Dr. Vineeta Kamran Principal, City Montessori School, Kanpur Road, Lucknow The flagship City Montessori School, Gomti Nagar, Lucknow is ranked in the EW 2014 survey ” Editor Unbelievable faux pas I READ YOUR EW India School Rankings 2014 (EW September) with some amusement. The biggest faux pas among many others, was the ranking of Bishop Cotton School, Shimla as India™s #1 boys boarding school. I would not rate it even in the Top 5. This faux pas has made you lose credibility. Some other rankings in other categories are also plainly unbelievable. You need to do something about the rankings methodology. I wonder…

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

ALTHOUGH NEWLY-ELECTED prime minister Narendra Modi has blindspots and several deep prejudices which could abort his ambitious plans to develop laggard India into an economic super-power, there™s no denying he™s got his priorities right. Hard on the heels of his maiden Independence Day (August 15) speech emphasising the importance of clean and useable toilets, particularly for girl children, on October 2 (Mahatma Gandhi™s birth anniversary) he launched a national Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (clean India campaign),  picking up the broom himself and symbolically sweeping the neglected alleys of a slum colony in Delhi. Yet it will take more than mere resolve of the prime minister and photo-op symbolism to clean up the accumulated mess of the past 67 years since the country imprudently adopted the Soviet-style centrally planned socio-economic development model which has patently failed. Mounds of garbage, filth, plastic waste, and untreated sewage poisoning the country™s rivers and groundwater is being generated on a daily basis by a population which has tripled in six decades ” because of foolish neglect of primary education and healthcare. Certainly if the clean India movement is driven by the superficial causes of filth, dirt and inevitable diseases which threaten to overwhelm the nation, cleaning up the country is likely to prove a Sisyphean endeavour. But it can succeed if first, there™s candid acknowledgement that the vast majority of citizenry is ignorant of the importance of aesthetics, hygiene, and health, because the country™s prescribed syllabuses in primary, secondary, and higher education are faulty. Seven decades after independence, it™s painfully clear these values were not ” and are not ” integrated into the bloodstream of the education system. Therefore, there™s urgent need to ensure that genuine educationists rather than political cronies, debate and develop school and collegiate syllabuses transparently. Another initiative which requires serious attention to halt accumulative growth of the muck glacier which is slowly suffocating the citizenry, is implementation of the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution which moot wide administrative powers in elected village panchayats (councils) and municipal governments down to the ward level. These 1993 constitutional amendments are a dead letter because of the obstinate refusal of state governments to respect their decentralisation objectives. Self-evidently, the proper authorities for supervising waste disposal and maintenance of hygiene in municipal wards are locally elected committees of householders with a stake in property value appreciation. Moreover, a major share of property taxes should be determined and  collected in each ward by locally elected committees and shared with state governments as is normative in most OECD countries. In short, if it™s not to dissipate into mere symbolism, the Swachh Bharat campaign needs deeper analysis and commitment to curricular reform and decentralised governance. Nobel prize and indictment THE ANNOUNCEMENT MADE on October 10 by the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee conferring the Nobel Peace Prize 2014 jointly upon Pakistan-born Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi of India œfor their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to…

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THE SUBJECT MATTER of the cover feature on the 15th anniversary of this sui generis newsmagazine is perhaps unprecedented in Indian journalism, and has proved a more arduous task than anticipated. To facilitate readability, the history of Indian education essayed in this milestone edition of EducationWorld, has been divided into 22 narratives ” big issues which have impacted Indian education since 1999 ” on the presumption that readers would prefer separate narratives rather than a single linear history. Therefore since each chosen subject has been written as a discrete, composite story, committed readers who read the entire history presented herein are likely to encounter some repetition, cross references and overlapping commentary for which I apologise in advance. (References made to historical EW stories may be accessed at educationworldonline.net archives.) You might have noticed that although anniversaries are usually celebrated, I have refrained from using the word in my introductory paragraph. That™s because as indicated in the title of the cover feature, since this publication was hesitantly launched into the uncertain and uncharted waters of Indian education 15 years ago with the lofty ambition to œbuild the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda, that goal has proved elusive. Despite India grudgingly hosting the world™s largest population of children and youth (550 million), education ” pre-primary, primary, secondary, vocational and higher ” still figures only peripherally on the national development agenda. Therefore, there™s little cause to celebrate. As recounted in the cover feature and in the essays of the insightful columnists who have contributed to this anniversary issue, right across the spectrum from K-Ph D, syllabus and curriculum formulation, delivery and implementation is largely ineffective, and the education sector has become the happy hunting ground of post-independence India™s uniquely amoral politicians and bureaucrats who brazenly place profit and self-aggrandisement before the interests of the country™s uncomplaining and high-potential children and youth. Perhaps the only promising development in the area of darkness that is Indian education, is that despite the dreaded licence-permit-quota regimen that laid Indian industry low until the turn of the century spilling over into education,  and the  unease of doing business in the education sector, driven by the spirit of enlightened self-interest, a growing number of citizens in all age groups are launching enterprises and institutions to drill and skill India™s children and youth who yearn for ” and deserve ” high-quality and fulfilling early childhood, school and higher education. Admittedly, despite our best efforts, education ” especially public education ” is nowhere near the #1 item on the national agenda, but the nation is approaching tipping point. And our intent is to accelerate progress towards it.

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