EducationWorld November 16

Dilip Thakore interviewed Prakash Javadekar, Union HRD minister, over the telephone. Excerpts: Since the TSR Subramanian Committee submitted its report on April 30, considerable time has elapsed. When is NEP 2016 likely to be officially published? The report of the TSR Subramanian Committee is only one of the many inputs the Union government has invited for framing the New Education Policy. Over a period of 18 months, we have held over 29,000 meetings with citizens at the village, block, district, zonal and state levels inviting their suggestions. Moreover we have received suggestions aggregating to over 1 million pages. All these inputs need to be processed and evaluated. They will be discussed at an all-party MPs meet on November 10 before the NEP is finalised. We are determined that NEP 2016 will be a national, not party policy, based on the five pillars of access, quality, accountability, equity and affordability. One of the major recommendations of the Subramanian Committee is to raise the annual outlay for education — Centre plus states — to 6 percent of GDP. How optimistic are you of getting a substantially higher outlay for education in the Union Budget 2017-18? Currently, 4.5 percent of India’s GDP and 15 percent of the Union governments budget is allocated for education. Moreover, state governments are spending over 15 percent of their annual budgets for education. The 4.5 percent of GDP annual expenditure of the BJP-NDA government for education is more than of most countries, including China. The challenge of resources in Indian education is not adequacy but efficiency of expenditure. Early childhood care and education (ECCE) is a neglected segment of the education spectrum. What can we expect for ECCE in NEP 2016? I agree ECCE is very important and that it should cover prenatal care of mother and child, the healthcare of lactating mothers and the nutrition of newborns. Over 75 million children are covered under the Central governments Integrated Child Development Services programme, which is administered by the Union ministry of women and child development (WCD). Sufficient provision has been made for ICDS which is the worlds largest government-run programme for lactating mothers and newborns. For this purpose, the WCD ministry runs 1.6 million anganwadis or children’s creches which also provide early childhood care and education to over 75 million children. Here again, the budgetary provision is sufficient, but expenditure is inefficient. We intend to plug the gaps and loopholes in the system so the country’s ECCE system provides better quality care and education to youngest children. The RTE Act, 2009 which has many controversial and unworkable provisions — no detention until class VIII, optional exam in class X, s. 12 (1) (c) and s.19. Are you in favour of amending these provisions of the Act? There are many anomalies in the RTE Act. But India is a federation of states with education in the concurrent list of the Constitution. The policy of the BJP/NDA government is to leave the matter of implementation of the RTE Act to…

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Dr. Naushad Forbes is president of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and co-chairman of Forbes Marshall Pvt. Ltd. 1. Every college and university should be autonomous — it must swim or sink on its own. 2. Higher ed institutions must determine their curriculums, admission, fees and faculty recruitment. 3. Colleges and universities must compete for the best students, faculty and for grants and funding. 4. Government funding must be liberal but should support autonomy and competition. 5. Over the next ten years, the proportion of national R&D conducted in our higher education system must rise from 4 percent (the lowest of any major economy) to the world average of 17 percent. 6. Universities should have equal number of researchers and teachers. They must compete for research grants. 7. Stop over-subsidising higher education. Why should JNU students fees cover only 3 percent of the university’s annual budget? 8. Student loans (backed by government guarantee) to all who need them. 9. Central and state governments must stop setting tuition fees. This will end the capitation fees system. 10. The state should encourage learning assessment bodies, public and private, to evaluate and rank colleges and universities. 11. Between government and the private sector, NEP 2016 should ensure the creation of a few world-class universities. Dr. Parth Shah’s prescription Dr. Parth J. Shah is founder-president of the Centre for Civil Society, Delhi. 1. Separate governments role as regulator, financier and provider of education. 2. Use tools of per-student funding such as vouchers, direct cash transfers, and scholarships to improve efficiency and accountability of public spending and provide more choice to parents. 3. Institute learning outcomes-based school recognition and regulation of government and private schools. 4. Conduct National Achievement Survey (NAS) every year for both government and private schools. 5. Participate in all future rounds of PISA and TIMSS. 6. Make district the basic unit of education governance and revise roles of education officers to reorient school inspection. 7. Create centralised district and state-level MIS (management information systems) for better governance, and place in public domain in formats that parents can understand and use. 8. Establish independent education disputes resolution tribunals with robust online grievance redressal systems. 9. Provide unique ID to all students, teachers and principals and maintain online portfolios of their work, training and performance. 10. Allow innovations in education delivery mechanisms through blended learning, MOOCs and magnet schools for gifted and challenged students. Encourage charter and PPP schools. 11. Amend the Companies Act for registration of schools as companies with for-profit and not-for-profit options. Nishith Desai’s wish list Nishith Desai is founder and managing partner of Nishith Desai Associates, a Mumbai-based transnational legal and tax counseling firm. 1. NEP 2016 should be results oriented. Clear action plan and timelines should be set out to achieve the objectives of NEP 2016. 2. Little importance is being given to quality of education delivered. NEP 2016 should also focus on attracting talented teachers who are given constant training. 3. Uniformity in the regulatory framework…

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Although America’s universities are globally acclaimed for the academic, co-curricular and sports education they provide to 20.5 million students, including almost a million from overseas, the role they play in developing the civic responsibilities of students is not so well known. But this is an important role for this country’s 4,726 universities. Universities in the US have long been committed to educating thoughtful, knowledgeable and discerning future leaders and members of society. A university education helps students develop civic agency, defined as the skills, values and habits needed to work effectively with others to act on common problems across differences. Universities also contribute to the common good as important social institutions whose activities and resources create stronger communities. The civic work of higher education in the United States rests on five pillars. First, students are immersed in classrooms that provide them solid grounding in the skills, values and disciplines of the liberal arts. In his classic essay ‘Only Connect,’ environment historian William Cronon writes that liberally educated individuals are excellent communicators with developed listening, comprehension and speaking skills. They also can write persuasively, solve a wide range of problems, and respect rigour as a way of seeking truth. They also tend to practice respect and humility, understand how to get things done and nurture and empower people around them. Whatever disciplines students study, they need to leave universities with these baseline skills, habits and values with which they will contribute to the societies in which they live. Second, America’s great universities are laboratories for practicing democracy. They attract a diverse mix of students from around the world, offer robust environments for students to learn how to work cooperatively across differences of culture, religion, ethnicity and become problem-solvers and engaged citizens. They learn to build sustainable, harmonious communities. America’s best universities have learned to transform their campuses into laboratories for this type of learning. Students in residential halls learn to live and work with a wide cross-section of people, and harmonise different voices and views to create resilient communities. Likewise, student organisations become sites for learning the language of civic opportunity and public work. At Denison, we host more than 160 student organisations. Third, America’s great universities also teach the community to connect in addressing local issues. In the US, most colleges host community engagement centres that prompt students to become engaged with local communities by way of service and humanitarian outreach. Over the past decade, more progressive universities have introduced service-learning programs which blend academic work with community engagement. For instance in Denison University, the Alford Centre for Service Learning supports more than 600 students every year as they interface with people in the town of Newark, about five miles from our campus. Our students have a long tradition of partnering with local community organisations to whom they provide support through research and volunteerism. Simultaneously, our faculty are conducting community-based research and service learning classes. For example, an education course on literacy and learning exposes students to theories of literacy…

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All parents want the best education for their children. They want them to become healthy, happy adults who contribute to society in a positive way and to succeed financially. Most parents are willing to invest whatever resources they have to attain these objectives. For the middle class, one way of achieving this objective is to send their children to an international school. But even after weighing the often substantial costs and benefits of international education, it’s not an easy decision to make. There are several factors to consider. For example, the education infrastructure and facilities provided by international schools are substantially better than of free-of-charge government schools. Well-equipped classrooms and excellent student-teacher ratios enable teachers to draw out the full potential of students and provide targeted guidance on a one-to-one basis. Yet, great infrastructure and good teachers don’t guarantee students success or value for money for parents. The magic of education requires more than fine buildings and laboratories, and talented teachers. To acquire real education, factors which are far harder to pin down have to come into play. For instance, the culture of the chosen school has to be affirmative and supportive, providing a conducive teaching and learning environment. Relationships between teachers and students have to be positive and the leadership should be inspiring. Huge institutional budgets can’t per se guarantee these intangible qualities which are the hallmarks of an excellent international school. Some studies in the United States indicate there’s very little difference in the learning outcomes of private and public schools in America, especially in subjects such as mathematics. This is unsurprising because with relatively high levels of investment in public education, great facilities and excellent teachers, the gap between private and public schools can narrow to a slender difference. The Centre of Education Policy in the US has reported that there’s no evidence that fees-levying schools necessarily improve students’ academic performance. However, they did find evidence that private schools are better in developing the analytical and critical thinking skills of students. In the UK, researchers analysed examination results of thousands of students to ascertain if parents derive any real benefit from investing in expensive private school education. In that country, the evidence seems clear — private school students have an advantage. Although there are exceptions to the rule, this is usually because of peculiar socio-economic factors in particular localities. A more recent study conducted by UK’s ministry of education, indicates that only the most able state school students exhibited better learning outcomes than the average private school student. Moreover, a London School of Economics research study some years ago indicated there was “ample evidence” that students educated in fees-levying private schools earn more, and are more likely to land the best jobs. Indeed, the LSE study indicated that the average return on aggregate investment in private school education was between 7-13 percent — not at all a bad return in the European context. Stepping back from statistics and research results, it’s easy to see why the choice…

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Education policy in India ensures children’s right to sit in classrooms, but not the right to learn. Yet schooling without learning is meaningless and squanders the life-chances of millions of Indian children and jeopardises economic growth. The draft National Education Policy (NEP) 2016 and associated discussions so far have almost totally ignored the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009. But many of its provisions are harming Indian education and pushing learning levels down from the already pitiably low base of 2009. Thus, the most important objective of NEP 2016 should be to nullify the effects of such provisions by legislating a new Right to Learn Act that will supersede the RTE Act. This essay highlights four reforms that are essential for improving education in India. Use the power of incentives to reform public school quality. Section 6 of the RTE Act obligates state governments to establish free-of-charge public schools in all sizeable habitations. However, public schools are emptying due to their perceived low quality. Therefore the legislation is binding states to promote more of the type of schools students are deserting. Since 2010, student enrolment in public (i.e. government) schools countrywide has fallen by 11.3 million while enrolment in private schools has risen by 18.5 million students and the number of ‘small’ government schools (with total enrolment of only 20 or fewer students) has increased to 96,965. The major reason for parents abandoning public schools is insufficient teacher effort (high absence/low time-on-task) and the consequent poor learning outcomes of children, and not high pupil-teacher ratio (since that is only 28:1 as per official DISE data), or lack of trained teachers (public schools have a far higher percentage of certified teachers than private schools) as previously thought. The nub is teacher accountability. Therefore instead of establishing more non-accountable public schools, NEP 2016 needs to promote well-considered public-private-partnerships of the type that have worked elsewhere in the world. Such as voucher schools, since this form of student-directed funding gives schools an intrinsic incentive to provide good education to attract and retain students. Another incentivising tool is to introduce teacher appraisal and a mild form of performance-related pay and promotion. Judge school quality by learning outcomes not by inputs. S.19 of the RTE Act makes it obligatory for state governments to close down private schools that don’t comply with the physical infrastructure and pupil-teacher ratio norms specified. But since s.18 exempts government schools from having to obtain a certificate of recognition, non-compliant public schools aren’t closed down. Moreover, enthusiastic state governments have added a number of other norms and conditions for recognition which are more difficult to comply with, e.g. UP’s government order dated May 8, 2013 notifies about 40 different recognition conditions for private schools. By one estimate, state governments have closed down 4,355 private schools and given closure notices to another 15,083 for non-compliance, threatening the education of nearly 4 million children, according to a National Independent Schools Alliance 2015 report. These schools provide education at…

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To believe some young voters — especially those who showed up at Bernie Sanders rallies earlier this year — America is in the midst of a student debt crisis. In 2010, student loans overtook credit cards to become the biggest source of American household debt other than mortgages. Today, they total about 7 percent of GDP. Of those who borrowed from the federal government and began repayments in 2011, 10 percent defaulted within two years, up from 4.5 percent in 2003. The problem animates the Left: whereas Donald Trump has talked about the subject only fleetingly, Hillary Clinton has detailed policies for helping penniless scholars. Who could oppose such a worthy aim? Defaults on student debt are highest among so-called ‘non-traditional’ students. They attend community colleges, which provide short, typically two-year courses, or profit-making universities, which offer heavily marketed and pricey degrees, sometimes of dubious merit. According to Adam Looney of the treasury department and Constantine Yannelis of New York University, non-traditional students constituted more than half of all new borrowers from the federal government between 2004-2014. They accounted for fully 70 percent of those who defaulted within two years of starting repayments in 2011. The problem non-traditional students face on graduation is more often low incomes rather than high debts. In 2014, the median graduating borrower from a community college owed $11,700 (Rs.7.8 lakh), compared with $26,500 among those who had attended a selective, four-year course. Yet while 25 to 34-year-olds with bachelor’s degrees or more earned an average of $59,000 (Rs.39 lakh) in 2015, those with two-year degrees made only $38,500. Just as those with large mortgages typically have big houses, those with huge student debts usually have a graduate degree in, say, business or medicine, and can expect a bumper salary as a result. The average aspiring medic borrows $138,000 (Rs.92 lakh) for her graduate education; lawyers-to-be, $107,000. Yet the three-year default rate among graduate students is only 3 percent. At first, during the primaries, Ms Clinton promised to make community college free. She also said she would make public colleges “debt-free” — i.e, cheap — for low and middle-income students who study in their home states. This makes some sense. But a need to appeal to Sanders’ fans led her to expand her plan in July. Clinton now pledges that by 2021, no American from a household earning less than $125,000 (Rs.83.4 lakh) per year will need to pay any tuition fees at all to in-state public universities. Ms Clinton’s refreshed plan will cost anywhere between $350-800 billion (Rs.23.4-53.4 lakh crore) over a decade, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think-tank. Much of that cash will flow to students who will go on to become affluent. The returns on college education have never been higher (a fact which helps to explain Trump’s success with voters who have spent less time studying). Over a career college graduates can expect to earn twice what high school graduates make, according to one estimate. Reforms during…

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The University of Oxford has become the first UK university to top the Times Higher Education World University Rankings in the 12-year history of the table. It knocks five-time leader, the California Institute of Technology, into second place in the World University Rankings 2016-2017. Oxford’s success can be attributed to improved performances across the four main indicators underlying the methodology of the ranking — teaching, research, citations and international outlook. More specifically, the institution’s total income and research income is rising faster than its staff numbers. Its research is more influential, and it has been more successful in attracting international talent. In Asia two new universities make the Top 100 (Chinese University of Hong Kong and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)), while another four join the Top 200 — City University of Hong Kong, University of Science and Technology of China, Fudan University and Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Moreover, China’s two flagship universities have both made gains — Peking University joins the Top 30 at 29 (up from 42 last year), while Tsinghua University joins the Top 40 at 35 (up from joint 47). Asia’s leading institution, the National University of Singapore, is at 24 — its highest ever rank. Meanwhile, India’s leading university — Indian Institute of Science — is edging closer to the Top 200, claiming a spot in the 201-250 band, its highest ever position. Overall, 289 Asian universities from 24 countries make the list of 980 institutions and an elite group of 19 are in the Top 200, up from 15 last year. According to Rajika Bhandari, deputy vice president of research and evaluation at the Institute of International Education and co-editor of the book Asia: The Next Higher Education Superpower, the “sharp rise” of Asia’s universities is due to three main factors: rapidly growing populations and demand for higher education in the region; governments making “significant investments” in universities; and improvements by individual institutions. On advances at university level, she said many Asian scholars who studied at Western universities are now academics in their home countries and have “really begun to transform their own higher education sectors”.

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The European Union has long been committed to a policy of promoting “global awareness of the high quality and the rich cultural and linguistic diversity of European higher education”. Since 2014, a central programme has been Study in Europe. This initiative produces promotional material, offers expert guidance, organises real and virtual education fairs and hosts a one-stop portal on the EU’s official Europa website designed to drive traffic towards national sites. A session at the mid-September European Association for International Education conference in Liverpool set out to explore the “results and lessons” so far “from a 33-country collaboration”. Study in Europe chair Adrian Veale — who works at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Education and Culture — explains that the aim of the initiative is to “make Europe a more attractive and better-known destination for students”. It is funded by the Erasmus+ programme and includes all 28 member states as well as three in the European Economic Area (Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein) and two candidates for membership of the EU that have been willing to pay to be part of the initiative (Macedonia and Turkey). All are being promoted as potential study destinations, said Veale, through “a number of activities to get European universities better known”. There have already been live fairs in South Africa, South Korea, Ecuador and Peru this year. Virtual fairs should follow in North America, Russia, Nigeria and elsewhere. Each gives national promotion agencies and sometimes individual universities the chance to display their wares. “There is no common ‘European-ness’ in higher education we can sell,” admits Veale, so Study in Europe is “about raising the visibility of the entire range”. This should help potential students make comparisons about quality, fees level, specialisations and value for money. Yet in reality this is likely to be particularly effective in providing a platform for countries which don’t benefit from the resources and experience of the worldwide network of bigger countries. The British Council, DAAD (Germany’s academic exchange programme) and Campus France, for example, have extensive networks and do a lot of their own promotion.

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In the eyes of some Australian newspapers, the nation’s universities have been admitting “large numbers of sub-standard students”. It led Simon Birmingham, education minister in the Liberal-led government, to convene a review of university admissions transparency in February this year. The government “wants to ‘shine a light’ on the practices and habits that may be keeping students in the dark”, he said. The debate boils down to the issue of the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR), which indicates a student’s academic achievement relative to those who started high school at the same time. It is the route of entry to university for less than half of all undergraduates. The charge in the media is that universities publicly advertise high ATAR requirements to appear prestigious (resulting in some students being deterred from applying) while in reality admitting “large numbers of sub-standard students” to maximise revenues. The Sydney Morning Herald reported in September that the University of Sydney had become the second university in New South Wales “to fully disclose its admissions scores after Fairfax Media (the SMH owner) revealed that the practice of admitting students below the advertised cut-off was rife throughout the sector”. Belinda Robinson, Universities Australia chief executive, says “concerns about low-ATAR admissions are significantly over-stated”. Nevertheless, the ATAR coverage could have major consequences in undermining confidence in the demand-driven system. The system, which abolished caps on student numbers, was introduced by the Labor government in 2012. It is under fire from the Group of Eight research-intensive universities for supposedly devaluing degrees while creating unsustainable costs. Comments Hamish Coates, professor of higher education at the University of Melbourne: “Basic machinery for admissions hasn’t changed in decades, despite (a) massive change in applicants and more generally… Australia needs to evaluate how people apply for higher education, and how they succeed. Assumptions of old no longer play into new futures — better evidence is needed.” Meanwhile, students are “not informed, for example, about the non-completion risks” linked to a low ATAR score. “That is much more important information than whether they need an ATAR of 65 or 70 to be admitted,” he says. The Higher Education Standards Panel will report to the federal government on the issue later this year.

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Turkey is now the number one country for applications from under-threat scholars seeking safety in Western universities, according to two charities that help at-risk academics. With hundreds of academics sacked, suspended or under investigation in the wake of the unsuccessful coup attempt in July, the Scholar Rescue Fund is confronted with an “unprecedented” number of requests for help, its director Sarah Willcox told an audience at the European Association for International Education’s annual conference held in Liverpool from September 13-16. This New York-based charity, part of the Institute of International Education (IIE), has received 65 applications from academics looking to work outside Turkey owing to fear of political persecution, and, in some cases, imprisonment and violence since late July, said Willcox on September 15. “They all meet our criteria (for assistance) but it is a question of funding and we have to dig deep,” said Willcox, who explained that the level of applications is “unprecedented” in the IIE’s 95-year history of helping academics at risk of persecution abroad. The flurry of applications for the charity’s $25,000 (Rs.16.7 lakh) fellowships, which is then matched by universities that agree to employ the at-risk academic on a temporary basis, exceeds the recent spike in demand that followed the outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011, which led a third of all academics and 100,000 students to flee the country, says Willcox. Applications for help also soared following Iraq’s invasion in 2003, she added. “We had a different landscape for Iraq, where the US was quick to jump in and provide funding — Syria was the same,” says Willcox. The UK-based Council for At-Risk Academics (Cara) is also receiving 15-20 applications a week for help, up from four or five a week in 2015, says its executive director Stephen Wordsworth. “The largest number is now coming from Turkey, which is very sad,” he adds. Cara, formerly known as the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics, now supports 214 scholars, compared with just a few dozen in its early decades, when it helped future Nobel prize-winning scientists such as Max Perutz and Hans Krebs.

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Chinese students at top-ranked universities are less creative than those at less prestigious institutions, a new study has found, with the authors blaming China’s exam-dominated education culture and intense university workload. The research sheds further light on the long-running debate over whether Chinese graduates lack creativity and critical thinking skills or if it’s simply a comforting Western stereotype about a rising rival economic power. To measure creativity, two researchers from Kyungpook National University in South Korea tested 400 business school students across 16 universities in China and Korea with a widely used creativity survey, which, for example, asks participants to link different words and to answer a series of questions about their attitudes, such as whether they “aim for stability”. As expected, Korean students at top-ranked universities performed slightly better than their counterparts in lower-ranked institutions. But in China, the situation was the reverse: students at top-ranked universities scored considerably worse than any other group in either China or Korea. “This result is quite different from our expectation,” remarks the paper, ‘Analysis of University Students’ Creativity According to University Level and Gender: Focusing on Business School’, published in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Multimedia Services Convergent with Art, Humanities, and Sociology. The authors hypothesise that students who won entry into high-ranking universities through China’s brutal entrance exam, the gao kao — often blamed for rewarding rote memorisation over original thinking — will have already had their creativity killed. “Chinese universities ranking among the top have a study environment with fierce competition. Most students concentrate on dealing with examinations and obtaining various certificates. University life becomes an extension of (the) middle school stage,” the paper argues. This latest study, although relatively small-scale, adds to concerns over the teaching quality of some of China’s universities. Researchers at Stanford University have found that computer science and engineering students in China recorded almost no improvement in critical-thinking skills after two years of university, while Russian and US counterparts made sizeable gains, the New York Times reported in July. But student creativity is difficult to define, let alone measure. A 2011 study that interviewed German and mainland Chinese undergraduates found that the former identified philosophers, artists and writers as creative people, whereas the latter were more likely to name politicians, scientists and inventors (students in Hong Kong fell between the two groups). This is because Chinese society sees creative people as those who have worked towards the collective good, and have earned influence and recognition, whereas Western society sees creativity as a more individualistic, aesthetic endeavour.

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The best people to ascertain whether Indian education has been sufficiently liberalised — as has Indian industry since 1991 — is the country’s 300 million students’ community. They are the ones suffering the brunt of an archaic, dysfunctional education system. Unfortunately, little is being done to correct it. The doubling of India’s annual GDP growth rate since 1991 proves that liberalisation and freedom of operations are the key drivers for growth of industry. Similarly over the years, the Union government has introduced policies to liberalise the education sector. Initiatives such as 100 percent foreign direct investment, and encouraging domestic private investment in education are notable developments. However, the plain truth is that substantial and effective liberalisation of 21st-century India’s over-regulated education system is a distant dream. Education falls under the concurrent list of the Constitution of India. Therefore both the Central and state governments can legislate on this subject. While under this constitutional arrangement education could have received impetus from the Central and state governments, in effect it has resulted in a multiplicity of regulators and plethora of laws and stipulations. The end result is that complexities and compliances have disillusioned and disincentivised foreign and domestic investors from entering Indian education. Currently, the only segment of the education sector which isn’t regulated by government is early childhood or pre-primary education. Because they are unregulated, private pre-primaries and play schools have mushroomed countrywide. These schools are managed by individuals (owners and franchisees), and have created employment for thousands of teachers. However, there’s a strong lobby in favour of regulating pre-primary schools and imposing admission, teacher recruitment, tuition fee approvals and registration rules and regulations upon them. In a positive initiative to boost pre-primary education, Tamil Nadu has notified an enabling Code of Regulations for Play Schools 2015, governing preschools imparting informal education to children in the 1.5-5.5 years age group. Other states should follow suit. In the K-12 education space, barring a few exceptions such as Haryana, which allows private limited companies to establish for-profit schools, other states require educational institutions to be registered as not-for-profit entities, discouraging private educators from investing in this sector. Moreover, enactment of the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, which makes it mandatory for private schools to allocate 25 percent capacity in primary schools to children from poor households in their neighbourhoods at government-prescribed fees, has added to the financial burden of private K-12 schools. And if this isn’t enough, several state governments (Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu) have enacted legislation to regulate the tuition fees of private schools, interfering with the operational freedom of private education providers. Although such interference is against judgements of the Supreme Court, such legislation is still being enacted countrywide. In higher education, a mere 20 percent of youth in the age-group 18-24 (cf. 50-80 percent in OECD countries) are in colleges and universities. This is primarily because the education provided by most higher ed institutions in India is outdated and isn’t designed for employability. Thus,…

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“With the arts made marginal to culture as a whole and with religion in relative decline, especially in its communal ritual elements, we are left with sports as a last resort” — Thomas Moore, The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life (1996) I am indebted to my college teammate, friend and collaborator, Dr. David Epperson, for the title of this article and much of the originality of thought that follows. The title, Sports For Us, is a way of underscoring the sense of connection and responsibility that members of sports communities can develop inter se. The title, also, represents an opportunity to challenge the sports-for-the-next-level culture that has become the foundation of contemporary market-driven sports systems. The mission of this article is to raise the awareness of families and school administrators about how much more youth sports can do for them and their communities, and to encourage citizens to consider options for transforming a monolithic youth sports system (such as we have in the US) shaped by the needs of college, Olympic and professional sports organisations, into a pluralistic system that offers inclusive, collaborative, connective and expansive options. The stated purposes of elite sports organisations are to entertain spectators to generate income for their stakeholders, owners, coaches and athletes. Entertainment sports are undeniably driven by market considerations. On the other hand, youth sports clubs provide opportunities for young people to enhance their sports skills in environments which provide experiences to develop life skills and personal characteristics that will prepare them for success in life. Sports For Us is an option for those who recognise that participation in the current market-driven system is undesirable for families and schools. It’s an option for people who believe the dominant market-driven youth sports culture isn’t allowing all children to realise their full potential through sports education. As we have worked with parents to help them support their children’s participation in sports, we have identified attitudes, habits and skills that will equip them to play in ways that minimise potential damage and improve the quality of lives of their families. The ideas and insights we have acquired recommend an approach to sports that is significantly different from mainstream sports culture, and are offered hereunder. Sports educate sportspersons and their families. My journey through life has been substantially shaped by my sports education. I believe families, athletes and sportspersons can benefit from the challenges and setbacks inevitable in sports and games. One can discover oneself through sports. The climate of sports needs to be changed so it nurtures us. I believe sports strengthens relationships. Thus, the focus of our critique of sports for youth is on building relationships. We aspire to strengthen bonds between parents, athletes and coaches by endowing sports education with new meaning. Sports should encourage collaboration and minimise confrontation. From my freshman year at Stanford until today when I spend most of my waking hours designing, developing and implementing my private, non-profit initiative Leading2Play, I have been attempting to connect sports education with families and communities…

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Islam and The Future of Tolerance — A Dialogue by Sam Harris & Maajid Nawaz Harvard University Press; Price: Rs.859; Pages: 138 Sam Harris is a well-known American atheist ideologue. Maajid Nawaz is a former Islamist activist who experienced a momentous change of heart and mind and is now member of a circle of reformers committed to combating Muslim extremism, deradicalising Muslim youth and promoting Islamic reform. This slim book documents a dialogue between the two about issues of great import for the future of Islam and Muslims in a rapidly globalising world. Harris raises thought-provoking questions — such as indiscriminate atrocities in the name of Islam and Muslim attitudes towards people of other creeds. Responding, Nawaz acknowledges the gravity of the challenges, highlights the possibility of using Islamic arguments to counter religious extremism and reflects on the need to foster secularism, democracy and human rights in Muslim societies trapped in conformity. The amicable exchanges between the two scholars reveal that although their appreciation and understanding of religiosity may differ radically on many points, a confirmed atheist and a religious reformer can find sufficient common ground to have an engaging and meaningful dialogue towards commitment to peace, democracy, secularism (understood as separation of religion and state) and justice. Today, the violence flowing out of extremism and terrorism in the cause of Islam is a global issue of grave concern. The conversation between Harris and Nawaz focuses mainly on this subject. Harris argues that contrary to the claim of Muslim reformists, Islam is not a religion of peace. He contends instead that Islamic extremists are “implementing what is arguably the most honest reading of the faith’s actual doctrine”. Nawaz responds by pointing out that “polarisation of this debate between those who insist that Islam is a religion of war and proceed to engage in war for it, and those who insist that Islam is a religion of war and proceed to engage in war against it” has led to an intractable situation, adding that religious texts can be diversely understood and that they need to be interpreted. The Quran, like any other text (religious or otherwise) can be interpreted in various different, often mutually-contradictory ways. If radical Islamists champion a violence-driven, politics-centric interpretation of the holy book, Muslim reformists articulate diametrically different readings of Islam, rooted in peace and harmony. What people read into a text depends heavily on their cultural and ideological baggage. The thrust of peacenik Nawaz’s case is that multiple interpretations of any scripture (or any other text for that matter) are inevitable. Hence, he says, “all variant readings of a holy book become a matter of differing human perspectives”. He challenges the claim of militant Wahhabists to be in possession of the Absolute Truth, and contends that several verses in the Holy Quran, as well as many hadiths attributed to Prophet Muhammad, propagate peace, compassion and friendly relations between Muslims and people of other faiths. “The best way to undermine extremists’ insistence that truth is on their side is…

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It’s hardly surprising that master manipulator and skilled practitioner of corporate intrigue and machinations, Ratan Tata has emerged victorious from the dramatic October 24 boardroom coup in Bombay House, Mumbai, head office of the globe-girdling Tata Group and India’s largest business conglomerate (annual revenue: Rs.726,000 crore). In the coup d’etat, the unsuspecting Cyrus Mistry, chairman of Tata Sons Ltd — the holding company of the Tata group — was peremptorily dismissed by a packed board without any notice at the end of a routine board meeting of the company, clearing the deck for the re-appointment of Ratan Tata who had retired as chairman of Tata Sons after a 21-year innings in 2012. The official (leaked) reasons for Mistry’s unceremonious ouster are declining revenue and profitability of Tata Group companies during his four-year tenure and in particular his decision to sell the bleeding Tata Steel Europe Ltd, UK, and a bitterly fought arbitration battle between Tata Teleservices Ltd and the Japanese telecom giant NTT Docomo which is purportedly against the undefined Tata culture. However, it’s pertinent to note these “legacy hotspots” were inherited by Mistry. Indeed, it’s now becoming increasingly apparent the real reason behind Mistry’s peremptory ouster is that he naively misread Tata’s real intent to control Tata Sons even after retirement. Significantly, after he retired as chairman of Tata Sons, Ratan unprecedently retained chairmanship of the Tata Trusts which own 66 percent of the equity of Tata Sons. Therefore, when Mistry started acting too independently for Ratan’s comfort, he played the major shareholder’s card to stage-manage a coup against his own hand-picked successor. Yet even if Mistry was surprised by Tata’s boardroom putsch, your editor isn’t. Over two decades ago when the late JRD Tata was dithering about selecting his successor as chairman of Tata Sons and the late Russi Mody was publicly ridiculing Ratan’s business track record, the latter persuaded your editor to argue his (good) case in several columns I was writing in the media. Years later when I attempted to cash his IOU by way of advertising support for this then struggling publication, Ratan declined on the ground of poverty. Now with Mistry hitting back and highlighting his predecessor’s arbitrary decision-making and skulduggery, the true face of this Machiavellian practitioner of corporate politics is about to be exposed to the public. Colonial value premises An entirely wrong set of regressives with skewed prejudices seem to have captured the entertainment industry in contemporary India. Despite the country having attained independence from white colonial rule over six decades ago, these anti-social elements continue to be enamoured with Western norms and value premises. How else can one interpret the spate of rude comments about her skin tone directed at actress Tannishtha Chatterjee — who if this benighted nation was invested with some pride in its ethnicity would be classified as a beauty — on a programme of the popular television channel Colors titled Comedy Nights? During this hour-long programme in which comedians are ribbed or “roasted”, i.e, teased, put…

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“What we need is not a Uniform Civil Code but uniformity of rights across different religions. For this we need to follow the premise, ‘Reform from Within’ in the same way Hindu law was reformed, Christian Law was reformed and the Muslim law has been reformed without invoking any major political controversy.” Flavia Agnes, well-known lawyer, on the NDA/BJP government’s call for enactment of a Uniform Civil Code (Outlook, October 11) “Hillary Clinton’s lead over Donald Trump may be increasing. But it is an open question whether the prospect of her victory will be enough to reassure the world about the crisis of American democracy… American democracy has given unprecedented space to a man with deep tyrannical instincts.” Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, president, Centre for Policy Research, on the US presidential elections (Indian Express, October 13) “Around 44 million Indian children under 5 are stunted. That makes it harder for them to learn in school and subsequently earn a living as adults. Their lifetime earnings potential is almost a quarter less than of their healthy peers.” Sue Desmond-Hellman, CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, on widespread malnutrition in India (The Times of India, October 20) “For realising the full potential of sports, it is essential that we take effective steps to promote it in educational institutions without any further delay.” Vijay Goel, Union minister for sports and youth affairs, on making sports compulsory in schools (India Today, October 25) “I have to say that the board of directors has not covered itself with glory. To ‘replace’ your chairman without so much as a word of explanation and without affording him an opportunity to defend himself… must be unique in the annals of corporate history.” Cyrus Mistry, former chairman of Tata Sons, in his email to board members over his unceremonious ouster from the Tata group (October 26)

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Exactly 17 years ago we launched EducationWorld — The Human Development Magazine with the avowed mission to “build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda”. Quite clearly that mission hasn’t been accomplished because public opinion is insufficiently, if at all, aroused. Therefore, neither the Central nor state governments have pushed public education significantly higher up their socio-economic development agendas. However, there has been some progress in the direction of attaining our mission statement. EW has made an impact on India’s influential and growing middle class which has welcomed this initiative to raise K-12 and higher education standards to global norms. Proof of this assertion is provided by the unprecedented enthusiasm exhibited by private education institutions, pre-primary to K-12 English-medium schools in particular, for this publication and its several initiatives to acknowledge excellence and innovations in education. The readership of EducationWorld — arguably the sole publication of this genre — is estimated at over 1 million per month. Moreover, the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings Awards, flowing from the annual EW India School Rankings, have generated tremendous enthusiasm, transforming our awards function into perhaps the largest celebratory conclave of school promoters, trustees and principals of reputed schools worldwide. But given that there are 1.40 million schools including 320,000 private schools, 37,000 colleges and 800 universities countrywide, self-evidently we haven’t succeeded in getting EducationWorld, which debates root and branch reforms in Indian education, to a critical mass of policy formulators, educators and students. As an English language publication, we haven’t been able to get our message across to the vast majority unfamiliar with this link language of India. And despite our offering almost free-of-charge translation and publishing rights to vernacular and multi-language publishing media companies, there’s been no response from their purblind managements who can’t seem to grasp the elementary proposition that a better educated populace is in their interest as it will boost the circulation and readership of their flagship publications. Moreover, post-liberalisation India’s smug middle class which has en masse enrolled its children in private schools, has little interest in public education. It also fails to grasp the elementary proposition that the higher productivity of a universally educated citizenry will make India an economic super-power again. Nevertheless in EducationWorld, we draw some comfort that due to our sustained efforts, education has moved from the bottom of the national development agenda to the middle. Therefore on our 17th anniversary, we reiterate our resolve to continue to beat the drum of access, equity and quality across the education spectrum. We are confident that governments and the public will soon see the light. Unending agony of benighted Bihar With the state’s overweening and ill-educated politicians riding roughshod over them, there seems to be no hope for the people of benighted Bihar (pop. 104 million). On October 19, the son of a prominent state politician of Gaya district was granted bail by the Patna high court despite his having brazenly shot dead a youth in broad…

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The cover story profiling the UK-based Cambridge International Examinations (EW October) was enlightening. The diligent and meticulous manner in which this exams board revises and updates its syllabuses every six years is an example to our Indian exams boards, particularly state boards. Sadly in India, most state boards revise syllabuses after 15-20 years and even then, it’s a ritual process involving faux educationists chosen by politicians and bureaucrats. Important stakeholders such as academics, parents and teachers, and industry leaders are seldom consulted. That’s why a majority of our school-leavers are ill-prepared for university education, and subsequently the workplace. In his interview, CIE chief executive Michael O’Sullivan says the Cambridge-based board is advising several national governments to formulate their school syllabuses. Therefore, it would be advisable for India’s laggard state governments to elicit CIE’s help in designing syllabuses and also formulating assessment systems which go beyond the sudden death final exams which test and reward rote memorisation. In today’s globalised world, it’s not good enough for our students to shine nationally. They must be prepared to compete with the best worldwide. Sundar Rao Hyderabad Wrong category In your EducationWorld India School Rankings 2016 published in September, you have ranked day, boarding and international schools separately. Unfortunately, you have listed Ramakrishna Mission Vidyapith, Deoghar under the co-ed day schools category. Please note we are a boys boarding school affiliated with CBSE. Please issue a corrigendum in your next issue. Swami Tyagarupananda Secretary, Ramakrishna Mission Vidyapith, Deoghar, Jharkhand We regret the error — Editor Bitter surprise In the EducationWorld India School Rankings 2016 (EW September), DPS, Indira Nagar, Lucknow is ranked #10 in Uttar Pradesh and #6 in Lucknow in the co-ed day schools category. This ranking has come as a bitter surprise to us as our school has always performed well in the areas of curricular and co-curricular education. In 2015, our school won great laurels and accolades. Even your magazine had ranked us #4 in Lucknow city and #8 in the state in your survey last year. It’s strange that no one from your end came to collect our data in spite of various reminders. It is ironical how the results have been declared when the information still rests with us. Where is the authenticity of your rankings? Ghazala Afsar Principal, Delhi Public School, Indira Nagar, Lucknow All schools in the league tables are rated and ranked according to the perceptions of an independent, variable sample of respondents. Please see page 42 of our September issue for the rankings methodology — Editor Brexit opportunity Thank you for your brilliant editorial on unwarranted Brexit apprehensions (EW August). It is wise as it is succinct, and as always most beautifully written. It was a joy to read an example of English writing at its best. Your points are very well made. I really don’t know why the self-styled intellectuals tend to be so dismissive of imperial achievement at its best. A common link language, legal system, training of an elite that could govern…

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The Indian institute of Management (IIM) Bill, 2015, which created a furore because it severely circumscribed the autonomy of the country’s 20 IIMs (see EW cover story August 2015 on www.educationworld.in archives) and was subsequently cold storaged, is being readied in a new variant and will be presented to the Union cabinet shortly. The new Bill has reportedly been reworked after dropping several controversial clauses and is being vetted by the law ministry before it is presented to the Union cabinet prior to being tabled in the winter session of Parliament. Chairing his first IIM Coordination Committee meeting at IIM-Shillong on September 20, Union human resource development (HRD) minister Prakash Javadekar assured IIM directors that the new Bill, which will give them greater autonomy, will soon receive cabinet approval. Although they are highly ranked and acclaimed globally for producing corporate and business leaders for Indian and foreign companies, the IIMs, whose number has risen to 20 after a new IIM-Jammu was announced on October 13, don’t have statutory power to confer degrees or Ph Ds. Instead, they award institutional diplomas and fellowships to their graduates. Primarily to invest them with degree granting power, former HRD minister Smriti Irani drafted the IIM Bill, 2015. However, when the draft Bill was made public, it generated a national outcry because it severely abridged the autonomy of the IIMs, including the globally respected ABC (Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta) institutes, whose graduates are snapped up by the world’s top-rated corporates. For instance, the Bill proposed that of the 15 members of each institute’s board of governors, the Union government would nominate seven, directly or indirectly. Moreover, the chairperson would be appointed by the HRD ministry as would the directors of all IIMs. Indeed under Irani’s Bill, all decisions taken by the board of governors relating to the appointment of committee chairpersons and faculty members, prescribing tuition fees and faculty remuneration and introducing curriculum changes would require the HRD ministry’s approval. Understandably, the bull-in-a-china shop provisions of the IIM Bill, 2015, which was cold storaged by the Narendra Modi-led BJP/NDA government following national outrage, was a major factor in Irani’s ouster from the HRD ministry in July this year. Subsequently, since Javadekar took charge of the HRD ministry four months ago, the Bill has been reworked to inter alia completely abolish the office of Visitor (President of India) of the IIMs, and also reduce the number of government nominated members on their board of governors. “If what we hear about the new IIM Bill is true, it will be a positive step of the BJP/NDA government. The earlier Bill was strange because it advised gurus how to run gurukuls. Government should repose trust in institutional managements, particularly the IIMs which have won themselves global reputations. If government is serious about improving business management education in India, it should close down the new IIMs it has created and build an ecosystem as in the US where both public and private institutions flourish,” advises Dr. Kamaljit Singh Anand,…

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With elections to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) — the country’s richest municipal body with a 2016-17 budget of Rs.37,052 crore — scheduled for next February, antagonism between Maharashtra’s ruling alliance partners — the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Shiv Sena (SS) — is spilling into the open. Although the minister of state for education in the Maharashtra cabinet is the Shiv Sena’s Ravindra Waikar, on October 15, the Sena organised a protest march against the BJP, targeting it for declining education standards in the country’s most industrialised state (pop. 114 million). The “KG to PG march” was led by Aditya Thackeray, son of Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray and head of the Yuva Sena, the party’s youth wing, and included over 10,000 party members. During a halt in the march, Aditya blamed BJP education minister Vinod Tawde for “inaction” on policy issues in the education sector. “Despite several promises, Tawde has not made education a priority in the state,” said the youngest Thackeray to have (inevitably) emerged as a Shiv Sena leader. While addressing party faithfuls, Aditya raised several populist issues such as abolition of parent interviews at the time of kindergarten admissions, reducing the load of children’s school bags and facilitating online admissions for junior college students. Unsurprisingly, this sharp attack by an ally has irked Tawde. “The objective of the Shiv Sena’s sudden awareness of BJP neglect of education is to establish Aditya Thackeray as a leader of the Shiv Sena ahead of the Mumbai civic elections,” says Tawde. Adds a Tawde aide who spoke on condition of anonymity: “Had the Sena done its homework, it would have known that the state government is already seized of most of the issues raised at the Sena rally. For instance, we conducted 11 online admission rounds this year and ensured 100 percent online admissions to junior colleges in Mumbai.” Quite clearly, sudden awareness of the acts of omissions and commissions of the BJP minister and government in education has been provoked by the looming BMC election. BMC with its huge budget, is a rich prize and offers vast scope for shakedowns and patronage that the Shiv Sena, which has ruled it since 1985 (with BJP support), has become accustomed. Naturally, the BJP, which rules at the Centre and in Maharashtra state, is keen to make it a hat-trick and rule the BMC as well. Therefore, as the parties gear up to fight the BMC election separately early next year, the decline of education at all levels in the country’s #1 industrial state is a good stick with which to beat the BJP. Indeed, Aditya believes the Sena’s record in contemporising primary education in Maharashtra is better than the BJP’s. Taking a dig at the Central government’s Digital India initiative, he says that whereas the Sena-ruled BMC has distributed 22,170 tablets to class VIII students of the 1,200 municipality-run schools under its ambitious e-learning programme which cost the civic body Rs.15.30 crore, BJP’s Digital India drive announced by prime minister…

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Karnataka’s public school system, comprising 50,190 government primary-secondaries with an aggregate enrolment of 5 million students, is mired in a major textbook printing scam. The state’s primary and secondary education minister Tanveer Sait has ordered an inquiry into reports that government-contracted private printers have printed sub-standard textbooks and pocketed “crores of rupees” by lowering the government-mandated paper quality of 60 grams/square metre (GSM) to 45-50 GSM. The result: brittle pages of government-issued textbooks which cannot withstand ordinary wear and tear, raising fears of their inability to last a full academic year. For the academic year 2016-17, the state-owned Karnataka Textbook Society (KTBS) has awarded printing contracts valued at Rs.112.57 crore to 23 private printers (and the Government Press) for producing an aggregate 45.7 million textbooks. Of them, 33.5 million were for free distribution to 56,996 government and aided schools, and 12.2 million for sale to 19,004 unaided schools affiliated with the Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board. However, in a departure from past practice wherein all textbooks were printed on 70 GSM paper, this year the education ministry’s primary and secondary education department decided to lower the paper quality to 60 GSM to save the state exchequer Rs.10 crore. But according to informed sources within the education department, several printers further lowered the paper quality to 45-50 GSM to “make money”. Moreover, there’s reportedly a wide quality difference between the free textbooks distributed by the state government and those sold in the retail market. However Nagendra Kumar, managing director of the Bangalore-based KTBS, the apex body responsible for commissioning, printing and distributing textbooks to all state board-affiliated schools, rules out any malpractice in the printing process. “None of the sample textbook copies are printed on inferior paper. Tenders were invited for 60 GSM paper through our e-portal and the selection procedure was completely transparent. A thorough quality check of the printed textbooks will be done before payment is made to printers,” says Kumar. Unfortunately, despite Kumar’s claims of a “transparent and efficient” textbook production and publishing process, it’s an open secret that contracts for printing millions of Kannada language textbooks (in particular) are farmed out to ill-qualified printers at inflated prices in return for kickbacks. Moreover, unprofessional teachers are commissioned to write them after which they are forced on captive teachers and students in government schools. According to Prof. A.S. Seetharamu, former professor of education at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore and currently education advisor to the Karnataka government, the state government’s textbooks production and publishing system needs a complete overhaul. “The entire process of textbooks publishing from selection of academics to write them, to awarding printing contracts is opaque, and not based on merit, but political considerations. Indeed, the textbook printing and production process needs to be privatised; the government should not be involved in floating tenders and selecting printers. It should restrict itself to setting textbook standards. The production process should be handed over to reputed private publishers,” says Seetharamu. But given the vested interest of…

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The Tamil Nadu state government is likely to continue with the no-detention until class VIII policy stipulated by section 30 (1) of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, following the decision of the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) — the country’s apex advisory body on education — to leave the choice of retaining or abolishing the no-detention policy to state governments. Following the 64th meeting of CABE on October 25 in New Delhi, Union minister for human resource development (HRD) Prakash Javadekar clarified that the no-detention provision of the RTE Act would be made mandatory in all 29 states and seven Union territories for children until class V. However, state governments will have the discretion to persist with the policy until class VIII. The TSR Subramanian Committee’s Report on the National Policy on Education 2016 (see cover story) had recommended detention of children who don’t make the cut for promotion after class V. The decision to allow state governments to take a call was made after some of the 21 state education ministers who attended the CABE meeting complained that learning outcomes in primary and upper primary schools are falling sharply because of the no-detention until class VIII provision of the RTE Act. Other key decisions taken at the meeting include: defining learning outcomes of students in each class and including them in state governments’ RTE Rules, amending the Act to extend the deadline for teacher training from 2015 to 2020 and completing the task of training 500,000 untrained teachers in the next five years. Section 30 (1) was inserted into the RTE Act by former Union HRD  minister Kapil Sibal to reduce exams stress, and replace exams with Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) under s. 29 (2) (h) of the Act. Under this provision, schools are expected to evaluate students’ learning continuously rather than subject them to stressful make-or-break exams. However, the great majority of primary teachers haven’t been adequately briefed about CCE, with the result that they administer weekly/monthly tests, which has paradoxically increased children and teachers’ stress. The Tamil Nadu government’s stand in favour of the no-detention policy at the CABE meeting has evoked mixed response from educationists and school administrators in the state. Principals and teachers in the 53,000 government primary-secondaries affiliated with the Tamil Nadu State Board of School Education (TNSBSE) are seriously worried about falling learning outcomes which they attribute to s.30 (1). “Many students, who cannot read or write simple sentences despite introduction of child-centric activity-based learning (ABL) in primary school, are continuously promoted to class VIII. Therefore, when they enter high school in class IX, they are unable to cope with the curriculum and exams,” says the headmistress of a government upper primary school in Coimbatore. Several surveys such as the National Achievement Survey (NAS) 2015 commissioned by the Delhi-based National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), and other government and private organisations which have highlighted poor learning outcomes in Tamil Nadu’s primaries, are…

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Returned to power in West Bengal (pop. 91 million) for the second time in the 16th state assembly elections held in summer this year, Trinamool Congress (TMC) party supremo and chief minister Mamata Banerjee is now shifting her attention to the education sector which experienced neglect during the TMC’s first term (2011-16) in office. Prior to 2011, West Bengal experienced 34 years of uninterrupted rule of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM)-led Left Front government (1977-2011) during which the state’s once vaunted school and higher education system was almost destroyed. With a complete freeze in teacher recruitment, incidents of rampant campus violence, mass copying and teacher recruitment test scandals, the TMC exacerbated the situation. However, with the buzz of disapproval becoming louder and transforming into growing street demonstrations, the TMC government is turning its attention to introducing the much-proclaimed poribartan (‘change’) in the state’s languishing school and higher education systems. To start with, results of the primary and upper primary Teacher Eligibility Test (TET), which have been long pending due to court cases, were declared following an order passed by Justice C.S. Karnan of the Calcutta high court. On September 14, immediately after the high court’s order, the School Service Commission (SSC) and the West Bengal Board of Primary Education published the scores of 492,000 candidates who wrote the upper primary TET held on August 16, 2015, and of 2.2 million who wrote TET primary on October 11 last year. The declaration of results was followed by prompt attempts to recruit TET toppers to fill the 41,559 teacher vacancies in the state’s 75,000 primary schools. A circular inviting 125,000 primary teachers who had cleared the primary TET was issued on October 12, for interview, scheduled between October 19-28. At the time of filing this dispatch, the state’s education minister Partha Chattopadhyay said that in the ongoing interviews being conducted and monitored by District Primary School Councils, preference will be given to trained TET toppers followed by teachers undergoing training, reserved category candidates and finally untrained toppers, in that order. Though initiation of the recruitment process has given a much needed boost to the standing of the TMC government with the influential bhadralok (educated middle class) who were fast losing faith in Banerjee and the TMC government, a writ petition filed by Rita Haldar, mother of a seven-year-old government primary school student, challenging the circular for recruitment of primary teachers, has aroused fears that the recruitment process will be stayed again. According to the petitioner, by agreeing to recruit untrained TET toppers, the state government is compromising the learning outcomes of primary school children. While admitting the petition on October 20, the Calcutta high court ruled that the state government can continue with the recruitment process, but observed that appointment of teachers will be subject to the verdict of the court on Haldar’s petition. Tulsi Masant, convener of the DL.Ed (diploma in elementary education) Students Forum, which represents teachers who failed TET 2015, believes there’s considerable merit in Haldar’s writ petition.…

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If chronic teacher absenteeism and pathetic infrastructure were not enough, children in Uttar Pradesh’s 169,000 government primary and upper primary schools are experiencing a chronic shortage of textbooks, seven months into the academic year. Classes I-VIII students are yet to receive the full complement of textbooks which the state government is obliged to distribute to them free of charge under the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009. On October 17, a bench of the Allahabad high court called for details of textbook distribution across the state. Commented a two-judge bench of Justices A.P. Sahi and D.K. Upadhyay: “…it has also been indicated that the process of distribution of the books is still on. We cannot appreciate such a situation. The academic session as per the scheme of the state government itself starts from April 1 every year. Six months’ time has already elapsed since the academic session commenced and till date, the total number of books has not been procured, what to say about their distribution.” Two days later, the government admitted before the court that only 69 percent of the required textbooks have been distributed thus far. Even this inadequate figure was questioned by the petitioner (Sarva Seva Trust) who claims a mismatch of 12-60 percent between the number submitted by the government and of the trust, which conducted a survey in two divisions of Basti and Gorakhpur districts. In Gorakhpur, while the government claims 58.7 percent of the required textbooks have been procured and distributed, the trust’s survey indicates 39.5 and 32 percent respectively. According to the petitioner trust, prior to the start of the academic year 2016-17, 100 million textbooks should have been printed and distributed, of which a mere 8.43 million books have been delivered to students, i.e, only 8.08 percent. While the court has asked for a detailed list of textbooks distributed — with supportive evidence — by the state government in all of UP’s 75 districts to be submitted by November 11, mid-term exams have already been held in 169,000 government and aided schools statewide with the majority of students never having seen textbooks prescribed for study. Under the state government’s rules and convention, class I-V children are expected to receive a total of 30 books (including 10 workbooks) each, and class VI-VIII students 40 books. The State Text Book Office, housed within the Directorate of Basic Education, bears the responsibility for printing textbooks. Assuming a modest average paper and printing cost of Rs.30 per primary textbook, the minimum expenditure incurred by the state government on 100 million textbooks is Rs.300 crore. Therefore, if 90 million books haven’t been printed at all, the loss to the state government aggregates a massive Rs.270 crore. And if figures are fudged to indicate an inflated number of printed and distributed books, kickbacks paid to UP’s notoriously venal bureaucrats — a distinct possibility — could be enormous. Comments Shashank Singh, advocate for the petitioner trust: “This is a blatant fraud on the state’s…

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I’m a final year B.Sc (microbiology) student interested in a career in virology. Please advise which universities offer study programmes in virology.                                                                                                        Narendra Swamy, Chennai The Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education & Research, Chandigarh, Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati, National Institute of Virology, Pune and University of Pune offer Masters programmes in virology. Career options include teaching, academic and industrial research (development of new drugs and vaccines) and working with government and international health agencies. For instance, virologists investigate disease outbreaks (epidemiologists) and work for the health departments of governments and the World Health Organisation. Qualified virologists can also use their knowledge to pursue careers as science writers and in business administration, and as technical and legal advisors in pharma companies. After graduating in B.Sc (zoology) next year, I wish to pursue a career in life sciences. Which of three subjects — medical biotech, biochemistry, biomedical — should I choose for postgraduate study? Also which universities abroad offer Masters programmes in these subjects? Ashok Rao, Bangalore A Masters in medical biotech opens up careers in pathology, clinical research and medical investigative procedures. Top-ranked British universities reputed for their bio-related programmes are Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, Manchester, Bath, Sheffield, Bristol, York, and Edinburgh universities. Admissions are based on official academic records of three-four years, referrals, personal statement of objectives, research projects, internships plus IELTS or TOEFL scores. In the US, the top-ranked universities for biomedical studies are Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Pittsburg. I have completed class XII (PCM) and want to study mass communications. What are my options? Neena Desai, Ahmedabad You could sign up for a bachelors degree in science, arts or commerce followed by a postgraduate programme in mass communication or an MBA degree/diploma. An alternate path is a bachelors degree in mass media/mass communication or in business administration/management studies (BBA/BMS). Please assess your talents and personality attributes before making a career choice. I want to sign up for a full-fledged animation course after completing my BE (IT) degree next year. Please advise. Anil Dhawan, Mumbai You could apply for the two-year Master of design programme in animation offered by IIT, Mumbai (www.idc.iitb.ac.in). Admission is through the Common Entrance Examination for Design. The National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad also offers animation/design-related postgraduate programmes — new media design software, user interface design and design for digital experience — while the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Mohali offers a one-year postgraduate diploma in animation and multimedia. Your background in IT will be a big advantage for postgraduate animation studies. I’m studying biomedical engineering. What are the job opportunities in this field? After completing my degree, should I start working right away or study further? Avinash Chawla, New…

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Assam Youth mentoring programmes Addressing 200 serving and retired civil servants of the Assam cadre in Guwahati on October 22, chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal launched ‘Arohan’, a mentoring programme for the state’s aspirational youth. The chief minister underlined the programme’s importance in guiding youth to fulfill their career goals and appealed to the bureaucracy to aid the programme with dedication. “All serving IAS, IPS and IFS officers of the state should inspire youth to aim big and become worthy citizens of the country,” he said. Present on the occasion, education minister Dr. Himanta Biswa Sarma also reminded the audience of the state government’s ‘Gunotsav’ programme under which serving and retired officers are enabled to visit government schools and monitor their functioning, participate in school activities and even join students for the free mid-day meal. Tamil Nadu Cellphone usage breach Seven teachers of three government and aided schools in Erode district have been issued showcause notices for using mobile phones in their classrooms, in breach of a 2007 government order. This was disclosed to the media by chief educational officer (Erode district) P. Ayyanan, on October 20. “During a surprise inspection carried out in some schools recently, teachers were found using mobile phones in classrooms during official school hours. This is against the directive given to all headmasters of state government and aided schools to strictly prohibit the use of mobile phones during class hours,” said Ayyanan, adding that a notice had also been issued to headmasters in this connection. Haryana Women’s safety directive Chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar has directed the state government’s public transport ministry to provide special single sex buses for girl students in higher and technical education institutions across the state. Presiding over a meeting to review the functioning of the transport, housing and prisons ministries/departments on October 13, the chief minister underlined that provision of safe and convenient transport facilities for women college and university students is a top priority of the government. He also directed the transport ministry to construct well-lit bus stops in the vicinity of education institutions for the convenience of students, and urged officials to draw up a plan to ensure that all undergrad students acquire learner’s driving licenses before they graduate. Odisha Czech award for Samanta The Metropolitan University of Prague (MUP) — the oldest and largest private university in the Czech Republic — has conferred an honorary doctorate degree on Achyuta Samanta, founder-director of the Bhubaneswar-based Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT, estb. 1992) and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS, estb. 1993). Samanta was awarded the honour at the graduation ceremony of MUP for integrating quality education with human values and social service, said a KIIT communiqué issued on October 16. Since its inception, this is the first time MUP has conferred an honoris causa degree, it added. Jammu & Kashmir Child protection initiative The education ministry has deputed a team of officials to sensitise students, teachers and heads of 14 selected education institutions about child protection and abuse…

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The Bangalore-based Indus Training and Research Institute (ITARI, estb.2009) and the University of Bath (UoB), UK, have formed a strategic alliance to offer dual certification postgraduate training programmes for teachers. A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed in Bangalore between Prof. Jeff Thompson (a founder of the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO), Geneva), Dr. Mary Hayden, professor of education at UoB and Lt. General (Retd.) Arjun Ray, chief executive of ITARI, on October 17. Under the terms of the tripartite agreement, ITARI will offer postgraduate IB teacher certification programmes in international education exclusively customised to meet the requirements of schools affiliated with IBO, Geneva. Moreover, ITARI will also offer the Masters in education programme of UoB. “In 2003, there were a mere 11 IB schools in India. In 2016, there are 132 IB schools which offer one or more of four IB programmes. This tremendous growth has led to a huge demand for teaching professionals qualified for the IB curriculum. Therefore the dual certification postgraduate programme of MA + IBEC offered by ITARI is a bridge for teachers to obtain valuable training and certification at affordable cost,” said Gen. Ray, speaking on the occasion. Tata-GE Healthcare initiative The Mumbai-based Tata Trusts and GE Healthcare have inked a partnership agreement to train 10,000 youth in various technical areas of healthcare over a three-year period. The partnership will focus on bridging the skills gap of technical or operating healthcare personnel. The announcement was made in Mumbai on October 17 by Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Trusts, Terri Bresenham, president and CEO, Sustainable Healthcare Solutions, GE Healthcare, and Banmali Agrawala, president and CEO of GE South Asia. Under the partnership agreement, GE Healthcare Education Institute (GE HCI) will design, develop and teach these courses through a mix of  classroom training and interactive training exercises. The courses will help students qualify as X-ray, radiography, medical equipment, anaesthesia, operation theatre and cardiac care technicians, as well as diabetes education counselors. Speaking on the occasion, R. Venkataramanan, managing trustee, Tata Trusts said: “Tata Trusts aim to drive improvement in healthcare delivery by enabling availability of skilled healthcare personnel. We believe this partnership with GE Healthcare will allow many bright young minds, especially women, to come forward and bridge the demand-supply gap in healthcare professionals.” Amrita students enter CSAW contest finals Team biOs, a 10-member strong students team of the Coimbatore-based Amrita University, has entered the final round of the Cyber Security Awareness Week (CSAW) Catch the Flag Contest. Organised by the New York Polytechnic University, USA, the contest is the largest and most prestigious student-run cyber security event worldwide. More than 2,000 teams from around the world participated in the event. The final round will be staged in the US, India and the UAE this month. Mentored by Vipin Pavithran, Amrita University’s Team biOs competed with thousands of students, hobbyists and professional ethical hackers to reach the World’s Top 50. It was ranked first among all Indian teams and 48th internationally. A team from IIT-Roorkee was ranked…

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At a boarding gate in Delhi’s chaotic Terminal 1, an Armani-clad young man bristling with the accoutrements of wealth: flashy phone, big watch, designer sunglasses, tried to push past me. “Excuse me, we’re all going to board the same aircraft; it will not leave without you,” I admonished him. He stared back uncomprehendingly, insolently. It was not language that was his problem; what he didn’t understand was why I was not letting him through. The civility of queuing up seemed to be completely beyond his experience. This young man is a representative of the newly emergent middle class that the early decades of 21st-century India have thrown up: crass, belligerent and reckless. This new middle class is the polar opposite of the privileged class that presided over socialist India: snobbish, full of intrigue and cautious. There’s not much to choose between the two. The new one is vile; the other was servile. The new middle class is just as hideous as the privilegentsia. I call them the vulgarians. The privilegentsia was bred on elitism: the right connections, the right schools and Oxbridge. The vulgarian instinct is to push and shove; and when push comes to shove, to buy their way out. Similarly, while mouthing homilies about the rule of law, privilegentsia held themselves above the law. They never waited their turn for anything and without the slightest bit of embarrassment bent rules, flouted regulations and scorned the law. The new vulgarians make no such pretence: they seem to believe everything has a price: schools, colleges, hospitals, and more worryingly: bureaucrats, policemen and judges. During privilegentsia raj, India had to reckon with parasitic elites who drained state coffers, extorted usurious taxes and provided almost no public goods or services in return. Under their dispensation, ordinary citizens were cruelly ignored: no power, water, public transport, or roads, no airports, telephones, jobs, no primary education, housing, public healthcare and sanitation. The minuscule unprivileged middle class was targeted by privilegentsia policies and in many cases, driven into exile in the United States, Canada and Britain. Those who couldn’t emigrate witnessed rapidly declining conditions: famines, civil disturbances, war, scarcity, suspension of civil rights under the Emergency proclamation of 1975 and finally total national bankruptcy, which forced the government to fly out the country’s gold reserves in secret and mortgage them to the Bank of England. Forced to free the shackled economy, the government scrapped industrial licensing and numerous other controls. In the process, it unleashed the long-suppressed entrepreneurial spirit of the people which has transformed the economy. From being pitied as a ‘basket case’, India quickly gained admiration as an emerging world power with a dynamic economy. With the annual GDP growth rate doubling to 7-9 percent, millions were lifted out of poverty. From being an apostrophe in the demographic profile, the middle class burgeoned and global business rushed in to cater to it while local businesses shaped up to provide quality goods and responsive service. Sadly, post-independence India’s long neglected education system inhibited the…

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It is generally accepted that every level of Indian education and research, from primary schools to universities, has very few institutions of high quality. The demographic dividend that India expects to leverage during the next 30 years is predicated on the young age of its population. The premise is that their youthful energy and high aspirations will make them productive and accelerate economic growth. Yet, the country’s youthful workforce must become better educated and acquire 21st century skills. Without these inputs, the ‘dividend’ will become a nightmare. Dissatisfied youth (either unemployed or in low paid casual work) will become restive and crime and criminality will increase. India will become a sick economy unless investment in education and skills development increases manifold. In effect, this means India must invest not merely to increase enrolments but also to upgrade education quality by producing trained faculty on a massive scale. Restricting this essay to higher education, it’s quite clear the most teaching and research is conducted in government-owned and controlled institutions, although some higher ed research-oriented institutions are privately owned. Yet despite the country hosting 37,000 colleges and almost 800 universities, standards and ethics in education (including research) have been steadily declining. There’s an enormous dearth of adequately qualified teachers and researchers. There are too many faculty vacancies in engineering, medical and other professional education institutions with even the globally-renowned IITs experiencing a 35 percent shortage. Too few teachers are recruited and most have superficial knowledge of their subjects and minimal professional training. In addition to this dearth of qualified teachers, absenteeism is rife and teachers often delegate surrogates to teach. As a result, the majority of India’s poorly educated students are unready for jobs required in industry and services of the future. To compound the numerous problems of higher education in India, administrative and supervisory bodies are rigid, bureaucratic, prescribe ill-researched, outdated curricula and discourage innovation. The University Grants Commission (UGC) which supervises liberal arts, sciences and commerce education, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) which rigidly controls technical and professional education, and the Medical Council of India (MCI) have diminished, instead of raising, learning and research standards. Moreover, they have a penchant for creating new institutions by cloning the reputed ones, hurting the image of the originals. An IIM, IIT or AIIMS in each state is a noble dream. But great reputations take many years to build. They cannot be decreed without academic leadership, large-scale faculty training and recruitment and infrastructure development. The country’s colleges and universities also need good governance. Therefore, scholars with administrative skills, leadership qualities, knowledge and competence should be appointed to institutional boards and governing councils, and vice chancellors must be appointed on the basis of competence rather than connections. Currently, the governing boards of universities tend to be packed with bureaucrats and small-time businessmen, notwithstanding the reality that they have little to contribute. Boards must be small, include people who are successful practitioners or specialists, and able to rejuvenate the systems and processes of…

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The inaugural Educationworld grand jury awards 2016 were instituted in September to felicitate low-profile and/or emerging schools which have introduced best 21st-century practices in primary-secondary education. To shortlist and select low-profile and/or newly-promoted progressive schools countrywide, we invited nominations from educationists, individuals and schools themselves supported by evidence of best practices in ten categories such as Green Schools, STEM Education Excellence, New Technologies Usage, Campus Architecture and Design and Communications Excellence, among others. Duly evidence-supported nominations were received for 500 schools countrywide. To assess the evidence and rank nominated schools in each category, a Grand Jury comprising eminent educationists including Rohit Mohindra (Raj Mohindra Consultants, Mumbai), Jawahar Surisetti (Delhi-based education consultant and advisor), Divya Arora (American Field Services, Delhi), Dr. Niren Suchanti (Pressman Advertising Ltd, Mumbai), Dr. Shayama Chona (Tamanna, School of Hope, Delhi) and the Hyderabad-based Jaideep Gupta (Univariety Pvt. Ltd) was constituted. The Grand Jury duly assessed the nominations and supportive evidence and ranked the Top 10 schools in each category. Of them 3 were conferred awards at the EW India School Rankings Awards 2016 function on September 23-24. The Top 10 EW Grand Jury Rankings 2016 are presented below.

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