Vividh Gupta, Principal, Bal Bhavan Public School, Mayur Vihar-II, Delhi – 110091. https://www.bbpsmv.com Children are special!! the reformers of future and the change makers, whereas the modern world is demanding, filled with challenges and yet full of bright prospects. When we perceive them to be nation builders, it is necessary to understand that they are what we nurture them with today. It’s fine to be aspiring when we are in a role of parent, however, let’s understand that our children look upon us as a support. For a child, an ideal world is one where setbacks don’t appear daunting, a disappointing day doesn’t shatter their spirit, and missed opportunities don’t lead to lasting regrets. It would be pleasing for them to hear “Don’t worry, I am there!!!” instead of “Why you couldn’t???”. The role of parent is significant and diligent when it comes to upbringing a child, and it’s appreciating that the modern parent aims to find best for their child. However, in our race of searching the best, we somewhere forget what our child needs. A parent often exhibit concerns when confronted with their child’s inappropriate behaviours and subpar academic performance and are disappointed at their child’s neglect to the guidance and counselling offered to them. The question that arises is, are we sufficiently cognizant of their situation? I posit that when parents entrust their children to an educational institution, they must place their faith in its guiding principles and embrace the educational endeavours that have been thoughtfully curated for the betterment of the children. The essence of this proposition is to foster cooperation, establish harmonious coordination, and stay apprised of the child’s scholastic journey. It is imperative that the domestic environment aligns itself with the child’s scholastic pursuits, thus offering a robust support system for their educational journey. Often children refrain from confiding their concerns and challenges, apprehensive of their parents’ reactions. The bedrock of this mutual trust should be carefully cultivated from the very foundation. In this extraordinary and challenging journey of parenting, there is a need to create a nurturing and empathetic environment for our children. The fast-paced and sometimes disconnected world often leave children in delusions and all a child needs is a strong support system that assures them, “I am there!!! Model Empathy: let’s be their role models, be empathetic toward them, and understand no one is same or perfect. By being empathetic we build a relation of trust with them and can leave a lasting impression on their young minds, where they are free to share their problems and issues. Encourage Child’s Viewpoint: Talk to them, understand their perspective and guide their behaviours and decisions. Engage them in conversations that encourage them to understand situations from varied point of view. Validate Feelings: Comfort your child that their feelings are valid and genuine. Create a safe space where they feel comfortable expressing their emotions without fear of judgment. Support: Support is the cornerstone upon which a child’s self-esteem and confidence are built. The reassuring words…
“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”— Aristotle Education facilitates learning, knowledge and skill. It changes our mind and personality and helps us attain a positive attitude. In such a competitive world it is a must for all to have good education as it plays a vital role in shaping tomorrow’s leaders. The world is constantly changing and requires a society that is well versed in understanding the problems arising from cultural differences and intolerance of others’ beliefs and perceptions. Empathy in education is often deemed a ‘soft skill’. As educators, many of us begin each school year by celebrating individuals’ uniqueness, striving to understand differences, and setting goals for embracing the cultures of all learners. Education inculcates values as well as knowledge and skills such as respect, courtesy and consideration which are the foundations of a civilized society. Shalom Group of Schools nurtures students to be life-long learners, independent and responsible in an ever-changing world. No matter how great a role computers and other technologies play in the schools of the future, it is only a means and learning through interaction helps greatly in various aspects of life. Interactive classrooms and teachers help children develop warm, supportive relationships and experience enjoyment and excitement about school and society. Learning at our schools is never linear; instead, students are immersed in the multidimensional and the experiential. They play, they perform, they experiment, they interact. They are encouraged towards value-led pursuits so that they comprehend their role in the larger context of the community and the world. We integrate an experiential pedagogy and extensive use of technology into our educational practices. We place considerable curricular emphasis on sports and the arts. Our faculty is challenged and empowered to engage students in processes that help them develop self-esteem, self-discipline, cooperation, and the self-motivation necessary to be successful human beings. It was this emphasis on creativity, innovation, and holistic development, which resonates most with our parents. Students at the Shalom Group of Schools are well-rounded individuals, enjoying academics, sports and the arts, and with high levels of emotional intelligence. Strong communication skills, social warmth, grit, compassion and adaptability are their hallmarks. They are curious and reflective learners, on a journey of self-discovery, but aware of local and global environments. And most of all, they have an attitude of excellence. Such children are the leaders and change-makers of the future. And we, at Shalom Group of Schools are proud to be their springboard to life. From time to time it is useful to ask how education meets the objectives of both individual and society. To the individual, an education must contribute skills, discernment and character. The skill of learning to learn independently, the ability to be discriminating about what is being taught or told, and the doggedness to hold onto one’s beliefs or complete one’s tasks in the face of adversity are perhaps paramount in the agency of education. Everything that happens in a school must be geared to these…
Dedicated educator, women’s empowerment champion and perennially eager-to-learn scholar for over six decades, Mumbai-based Meena Sunandan Divatia is the incumbent President and Managing Trustee of the Bhagini Seva Mandir Kumarika Stree Mandal (estb.1929). A pioneer women’s empowerment institution managed by women for the past 94 years, the mandal/trust manages the state board-affiliated K-10 M.P. Shah English High School (MPSEHS) inaugurated by Mahatma Gandhi in 1930, and the Kalyan Deep School for mentally challenged children which admitted its first batch in 1960. Currently, MPSEHS has 1,200 children mentored by 40 teachers on its muster rolls and Kalyan Deep has 50 special needs children mentored by eight teachers. A Gujarati literature and psychology graduate of Gujarat University, Ms. Divatia began her career in the insurance industry and worked in the administrative cadre of the Life Insurance Corporation of India prior to being inducted by the Bhagini Stree Mandal as secretary of the trust in 1972. After serving in this capacity for almost three decades, she was appointed President of the mandal in 2010. “Long before middle class women began to establish a presence in industry and business workplaces, the all-women Bhagini Seva Stree Mandal run entirely by women, demonstrated that if given opportunity and responsibility, the so-called weaker sex can manage large trusts and run schools efficiently. Over the past 93 years since it opened its doors for boys and girls, MPSEHS has acquired a good reputation for providing children excellent academic learning supplemented with high quality vocational, life skills and sports education. In 2022, MPSEHS was included in EducationWorld’s national league table of Super 30 Budget Private Schools and among the Top 5 budget private schools of Mumbai,” says Divatia. In accordance with Gandhian practices and precepts, tuition fees levied by MPSEHS are rock-bottom and vary between Rs.36,000-38,000 per year, and Kalyan Deep provides free-of-charge education to mentally, and otherwise challenged children. “Long before the demand for quotas for women in Parliament and government services was articulated, the Bhagini Seva Mandal, administered and managed entirely by women, demonstrated that we can manage trusts and education institutions efficiently and competently. Therefore, I am surprised it has taken so many decades for the Women’s Reservation Bill to be passed by Parliament,” says Divatia. Looking back on her illustrious career in education management, Divatia is “somewhat disappointed” with post-independence India’s track record in primary-secondary education. “Gandhiji believed that primary education should be given utmost importance and school curriculums should be built around teaching children to learn with head, heart and hands. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened and the education that India’s 260 million in-school children – especially in government schools with very poor learning outcomes — would have disappointed him. Moreover, the multiplicity of examination boards across the country has prevented establishment of national standards and created class divisions in Indian society,” rues Divatia. Nevertheless this indefatigable champion of holistic, quality K-12 education is determined to do her best to provide high quality English-medium education for the lower middle class and marginalised children. “Because of…
A tireless crusader for the institutional autonomy of private schools, Damodar Prasad Goyal has been enlightening, empowering and litigating for the rights of self-financed education institutions for the past 40 years. A commerce graduate of Rajasthan University, Damodar Goyal began his career in the foodgrains and gemstones trade with which he successfully persisted for three decades. However while serving the Shri Agrawal Shiksha Samiti (managing pre-primary to postgraduate institutions) as General Secretary and Senior Vice President, Goyal became aware that although they are supplementing the primary duty of the State by serving the cause of education, private educational institutions were being subjected to a steadily multiplying number of Central and state government laws, rules and regulations which hindered them from discharging their obligation to provide high quality education to their students. “Privately promoted schools have made a massive contribution to post-independence India’s modernisation and national development. It’s not well-known, but some of the greatest leaders of India’s freedom movement including Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhash Chandra Bose among others, were educated in private schools and colleges. And currently 48 percent of all school-going children countrywide are in private schools. Therefore, I deplore government’s suspicious and step-motherly treatment of India’s 450,000 private schools,” says Goyal. The harassment and discrimination suffered by private schools “promoted from private savings” prompted Mr. Goyal to empower, educate and unite private educational institutions. In 1997, he registered the Society for Unaided Private Schools of Rajasthan and the Rajasthan Private Aided Colleges Management Association. Since then, the Society for Unaided Private Schools of Rajasthan has grown to 140 CBSE-affiliated primary-secondaries and the Association of Aided Colleges to 74 institutions. Goyal believes that government – especially state governments — has done a great disservice to the majority of India’s children by neglecting orderly development of the country’s 1.10 million government schools while focusing their attention on regulating and controlling private schools. Well-versed in the plethora of education laws, rules and regulations enacted by the Central and state governments to regulate and control private schools, Goyal has an impressive record of famous victories in courts of law. In 1993, in Shri Agrawal Shiksha Samiti vs State of Rajasthan, he won an unprecedented court order directing the Rajasthan state government to pay interest on delayed grants to aided colleges. In 2012, in Society for Unaided Schools of Rajasthan vs. Union Government & Ors, he won a famous Supreme Court verdict exempting minority and boarding schools from complying with s.12 (1) (c) of the RTE Act, 2009. This provision of the Act mandates all private schools to provide free-of-charge to elementary (classes I-VIII) education to poor children in their neighbourhood. Similarly after his intervention, in 2007, a Central Board of Secondary Education directive to private schools to waive the tuition fees of one girl child per family was withdrawn, following a plea filed in the Delhi High Court. And in 2021, a directive to private schools to slash tuition fees during the Covid pandemic years was quashed by the Supreme…
An alumnus of the University of Calcutta, a chartered biologist, environmentalist and educationist trained under the leadership of Dr. Eleanor Duckworth of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Dr. Arup Mukhopadhyay is the Imphal-based Director of the Unacco Group of Schools, Manipur. Unacco Group comprises four CBSE-affiliated schools in Manipur with an aggregate enrolment of 6,200 boys and girls mentored by 417 teachers. In a career in K-12 education that began in 1990 at the Mirambika School, Delhi run by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Mukhopadhyay has served for 33 years with 11 progressive multicultural international for profit and non-profit schools in India, South-east-Asia, the Middle-East and Africa. Among them: the top-ranked Rishi Valley School (KFI), Chittoor, and the Science Education Centre, Maldives. In his long and distinguished career, Arup has been the Founder-Executive Director of Royal Global School, Guwahati, Founder-CEO of Imperial School, Tanzania, Dar-es-Salaam, a high-end boarding school, and the Rungta Group of Schools, Chhattisgarh. Moreover, he is also an education consultant advising the Aga Khan Education Service in Tanzania, East Africa, and Bandhan Bank, India. That’s not all. He is also Executive-Director of Taktse International School, Gangtok (Sikkim), a registered Centre for Cambridge and SAT, as well as on the Board of Directors of the Chartered Institute of Educational Resource Management, Nigeria. “My prime interest as an educator is to introduce progressive new age primary-secondary education in the under-served areas of India and developing countries. My prime objective as an educator is to generate love of learning in schools. This is a pre-condition of raising teaching-learning standards in educationally under-served communities in developing countries of the third world. It requires shaping collective leadership that provides balanced academic, co-curricular and sports education that children need for their mental and emotional well-being. During the recent ethnic violence in Manipur, we ensured that each and every one of our students received study materials delivered at their doorstep so that learning never stops” says Dr. Mukhopadhyay. A widely acknowledged expert on progressive education, over the past decade Arup has been invited as a keynote speaker to the World Education Summit, New Delhi, 2019, the African Leadership Summit in Dar-es-Salaam (2017-2020), Asian Summit on Education and Skills, Delhi from 2018 onwards and the IDA and UAE Education Summit on Year of Innovation & Creativity in Dubai (2016). In off-duty hours, he is an avid trekker, rock-climber and wildlife photographer. In acknowledgement of his promotion, growth and development initiatives in educationally under-served communities in India, South-East Asia, Middle East and Africa, the Editors and Board of Directors of EducationWorld are pleased to present Dr. Arup Mukhopadhyay the Extraordinary Achievement in Education Leadership Award 2023-24. Also read: Lifetime Achievement in Education Leadership Award 2023-24: Dr. Larry Arnn
Scholar, author, educator and political activist, graduate of Arkansas State University, Claremont Graduate School, USA, London School of Economics and Oxford University, Dr. Larry P. Arnn is the President of Hillsdale College, Michigan, USA (estb.1844). During a long and distinguished career, Dr. Arnn served for five years as Director of Research to the late Sir Martin Gilbert, official biographer of Winston Churchill. In 1980, Dr. Arnn returned to the US and was appointed President of the Claremont Institute, an education and research institution based in Southern California (1985-2000). While at Claremont, he was also the Founding-Chairman of the California Civil Rights Initiative prohibiting racial preferences in government employment, contracting, and academic admissions. Currently, Dr. Arnn is on the board of directors of the Heritage Foundation, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and Claremont Institute, after having served on the US Army War College Board of Visitors for two years. In 2020, he was appointed chairman of President Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission, established to restore an understanding of the history and founding principles of education in the United States. The 1776 Commission Report was published in early 2021 for which he was conferred the Edmund Burke Award, 2022 for Service to Culture and Society by The New Criterion magazine. A widely read and respected columnist of several national newspapers, magazines and periodicals on issues of public policy, history and political theory, Dr. Arnn has authored three non-fiction books: Liberty and Learning: The Evolution of American Education (2004); The Founders’ Key: The Divine and Natural Connection between the Declaration and the Constitution and What We Risk by Losing It (2012); and Churchill’s Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government (2015). Currently under Dr. Arnn’s leadership, Hillsdale College’s Center for Constructive Alternatives publishes Imprimis, the college’s national digest which has a monthly circulation of 5.3 million. In addition to serving as president, Dr. Arnn is professor of politics and history at Hillsdale College, teaching courses on Aristotle, Winston Churchill, 20th Century Totalitarian novels, and the American Constitution. Simultaneously, he is editor of The Churchill Documents, a sub-series of the official biography of Winston Churchill, begun in 1962 by Randolph Churchill and recently published by Hillsdale College Press. The official biography of Winston Churchill is the largest biography of its genre, and under Dr. Arnn’s direction, publication of its 23rd and final volume was completed in 2019. “Education is the most important statement we make for the future. Although it may not seem the most urgent in the present, finally it is the most urgent priority of any nation or community. It contains our authoritative statements of what we are and ought to be,” says Dr. Arnn. Looking ahead, Dr. Arnn believes there’s high potential for educational co-operation between the world’s oldest and most populous democracies. “India is a young, thriving, free country. Indo-US co-operation is the most important opportunity for the future of the world. Our two nations are very different, but also alike in this decisive respect: We share a common commitment…
Staged over two days on October 13-14, EWISRA 2023-24 attracted participation of over 2,000 education leaders including institution promoters, trustees, principals and senior teachers from every corner of the country, writes Summiya Yasmeen The EducationWorld India School Rankings 2023-24 Awards (EWISRA) conclave — the largest gathering of K-12 educators countrywide — concluded amid great jubilation on October 14. A sequel of the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (estb.2007) — the world’s largest and most comprehensive school ratings and ranking survey which ranks over 4,000 schools in 434 cities countrywide — EWISRA attracted participation of over 2,000 education leaders including institution promoters, trustees, principals and senior teachers from every corner of the country. Staged over two days (October 13-14) at the expansive ballrooms of the world-class JW Mariott, Aerocity, Delhi, high-ranked primary-secondary schools in four main categories — day, boarding, international and vintage legacy — and 14 subcategories under them, were awarded certificates and display plaques. In the galaxy of principals and education leaders who were conferred awards on the occasion were Lt. Gen. Surendra Kulkarni, Director, Mayo College, Ajmer; Deepak Madhok, Chairman, Sunbeam Group of Educational Institutions, Varanasi; Dr. Sonal Parmar, principal, Cathedral & John Connon School, Mumbai; Nishi Misra, principal, Scindia Kanya Vidyalaya, Gwalior; Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Arjun Ray, CEO and Sarojini Rao, principal of the Indus International School, Bengaluru; Dr. Gunmeet Bindra, principal, Daly College, Indore; Nooraine Fazal, CEO, Inventure Academy, Bengaluru; Dr. Arunabh Singh, director, the Nehru World School, Ghaziabad; Zarene Munshi, advisor, Dhirubhai Ambani International School, Mumbai, and Rekha Krishnan, principal of the Vasant Valley School, Delhi. Moreover on the occasion, Dr. Larry Arnn, President, Hillsdale College, Michigan (USA); Meena S. Divatia, President and managing trustee of the Bhagini Seva Mandir Kumarika Stree Mandal, Mumbai; Damodar Prasad Goyal, President, Society for Unaided Private Schools of Rajasthan were conferred the EW Lifetime Achievement in Education Leadership Awards 2023-24. Simultaneously Dr. Arup Mukhopadhyay, Director, Unacco Group of Schools, Manipur, was conferred the EW Extraordinary Achievement in Education Leadership Award 2023-24. Specially written citations were read out to the assembly and presented to these outstanding educators. The keynote address was delivered by Dr. Raymond Ravaglia, former director of Pre-Collegiate Studies at Stanford University and Sheila Bauer, CEO of AccessMCA — A Better Way to College, Michigan on ‘Artificial Intelligence, Freedom, and Human Development — from High School to College to Career’. Also on the packed agenda of the two-day event was felicitation of unsung high-potential schools under the EW Grand Jury India School Rankings 2023-24. They were ranked by a specially constituted Grand Jury of eminent educationists and conferred awards under differentiated parameters including campus architecture and design, design thinking leadership, career counseling, high happiness quotient, SDGs committed schools etc (see p.84). EW’s partners for the event were Grayquest Education Finance Pvt. Ltd, Mumbai; Mindler Education Pvt. Ltd, Delhi; Popcorn Furniture & Lifestyle Pvt Ltd, Delhi; Edunext Technologies Pvt. Ltd, Noida; Startup U, Bengaluru; Indus Training & Research Institute, Bengaluru; WoodApple Resources, Indore; The Lodha Genius Program; Instrucko, UK;…
During the past 24 years since it was launched in 1999 with the ambitious objective to “build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda,” EducationWorld has continuously highlighted nationally important education issues. For the past almost quarter century, we have told the stories of thousands of dedicated educationists, philanthropists, teachers, edupreneurs and voluntary services groups (NGOs) working unsung — and often in opposition to interfering politicians and bureaucrats — to raise teaching-learning standards in the country’s schools, colleges and universities. In this 24th Anniversary Special Retrospective, we present 33 selected turning point lead features which have shaped the national discourse and moved education to near centre of the national development agenda. Writes Summiya Yasmeen Y2 confidence in IIM-C Against the backdrop of the global Y2 scare on the eve of the millennium, the EW inaugural cover story reported on the confidence within the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta, India’s first business school, that the global panic was unwarranted. (EW November 1999) India’s #1 exporter of education This cover feature highlighted the success story of the Manipal Education & Medical Group which, unsung in the hinterland, had quietly grown into a professional education (engineering, medical, pharmacy, hotel management services) multinational. (EW April 2000) Disgust & disaffection on Teachers’ Day To mark Teachers’ Day (September 5), this story beamed a spotlight on the long-suppressed grievances of the country’s primary-secondary teachers including poor pay packages, dilapidated education infrastructure, suffocating bureaucratic micro-management and lack of social respect for teachers in Indian society. A strong case was made for a new deal for the country’s neglected teachers’ community. (EW September 2001) 93rd Amendment: Entitlement or illusion? The Constitution (Ninety-third Amendment) Act, 2001, which promised to deliver the long-cherished dream of universal primary education, was unanimously passed by the Lok Sabha on November 28, 2001. This cover feature while heralding the landmark Act, raised the question whether it was legislation which would be practiced more in the breach than observance. (EW January 2002) Supreme Court’s freedom charter for Indian education This cover story detailed the Supreme Court’s judgement in T.M.A. Pai & Ors vs. State of Karnataka & Ors in which a 11-judge bench decreed that all citizens have a fundamental right to practice the “vocation” of education and establish schools/colleges of their choice, regulate admissions based on merit, determine reasonable tuition fees and administer them without government interference. (EW February 2003) OUTRAGE! Joshi’s IIM-grab angers middle class India In 2004, Union HRD minister Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi issued an order directing IIMs to slash tuition-cum-residence fees by 80 percent from Rs.1.5-1.75 lakh to a uniform Rs.30,000 per year. Our story joined the storm of protest from industry and academia against this diktat. In 2004, the BJP was defeated in the general election and Dr. Joshi lost his Lok Sabha seat. (EW March 2004) Dirty dozen corrupt practices destroying Indian education In an unprecedented cover story, we presented a list of 12 corrupt practices (such as pernicious licence-permit-quota regime,…
The escalating diplomatic row between Ottawa and New Delhi has the potential to deter thousands of Indian undergraduates from studying in Canada, academics have warned. After Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau suggested that India might have been behind the assassination of a Sikh leader and Canadian national in British Columbia, New Delhi closed its visa-processing centre for Canadians, halting the issuing of new visas. Academics warn that if the rift continues to grow, it could have devastating consequences for student mobility. “If the Indians and/or the Canadians…cancel visa issuing, that’s a huge problem,” says Philip Altbach, professor of higher education at Boston College. Altbach says one doesn’t have to look far to see what happens when a country weaponises education, with the Trump-era attempts to stop issuing US visas to Muslim countries causing a large dip in student numbers from affected countries. Although the number of India-bound Canadian scholars and students is so small as to be a “non-issue”, traffic in the other direction is substantial, he said. More than 40 percent of the 800,000 international students in the country in 2022 were from India, making it the largest source country for overseas learners. Ratna Ghosh, professor emerita of education at McGill University, suggests that Indian students might choose to head elsewhere. “Since Covid, international student flows have taken a turn, and Indian students are going to other countries in Europe and Asia. With international universities opening branch campuses in India, many have the choice to get foreign degrees without the extra cost of going and living in Canada,” she says. Although scholars doubt that India could stop students from going to Canada, they say it could still wreak considerable damage. “They could discourage Indian students by many means,” says Roopa Trilokekar, an associate professor of education at York University, including warnings about security risks, or playing up instances of anti-immigrant sentiment.
Universities across China are raising their tuition fees as the academic year begins, in a move that some academics believe could signal a shift to a Western-style market system. After roughly a decade of stagnant fees, this year dozens of institutions have announced hikes — at some, charges have gone up by more than 50 percent compared with last year. Experts say such rises had been a long time coming, after years of relatively cheap education and growing financial pressures on institutions. At the East China University of Science and Technology, annual tuition fees for 2023-24 have climbed from RMB 5,000 (Rs.56,802) to RMB 7,700 (Rs.87,477) — a 54 percent rise. At Shanghai University of Electric Power, the standard tuition fee, previously capped at RMB 5,000, has been raised to RMB 7,000. A number of local educational authorities have also adjusted their guidance to universities, with Shanghai, Jilin and Sichuan among the provinces that have announced similar adjustments since January. China’s government had sought to hold fees low for many years in a bid to promote higher education’s expansion, ordering a five-year freeze in 2007 in response to universities’ increases. There was another round of hikes in 2014, but fees have remained largely stable since then. If such increases become widespread, they could bring China closer towards a Western-style higher education system, where the cost of study is tied more closely to demand, some scholars believe. “I think this sort of market mechanism…will eventually be the norm in Chinese universities, especially as they’re gearing up to be a world-class university system,” says James Chin, professor of Asian studies at the University of Tasmania. According to Chin, such a change might also help to prepare institutions to take in “a lot more” international students. “Right now, most of the international students studying in Chinese universities go to only the elite universities. I suspect they want the number to spread wider, with more…going to non-elite universities, especially the regional universities, places like Hunan, which is not widely known,” says Chin. Edward Vickers, who researches contemporary history of education in Chinese societies at Kyushu University, says there was “already an element” of the market system at play, with China’s elite public universities tending to charge less than private ones — and cost often having an “inverse relationship” with quality or prestige of universities. But he believes the recent fee changes has more to do with China’s economic stagnation. This policy shift is fundamentally related to growing concern in government circles over very high levels of unemployment among educated youth in China’s cities. “It is actively seeking to deter many young people from pursuing university education, because it fears the socially and politically destabilising effects of increasing graduate unemployment,” says Vickers. Other scholars are less convinced that China’s higher education system is heading towards marketisation. “The vast majority of students will not go to cheaper universities or not go to university because of tuition increases,” says Futao Huang, professor of higher education at Hiroshima University. Still, universities should…
The Biden administration is signalling its willingness to accept degree programmes with fewer than 120 credits, potentially triggering a rush of consolidations that could further weaken struggling campuses. The idea hit a milestone this summer with one of the six major US accrediting agencies, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, approving pilot three-year bachelor’s degree programmes at Brigham Young University-Idaho and Ensign College. The US Department of Education, after allowing prolonged uncertainty over the matter, has now made clear that it sees no basis for interfering with the decision. “The Department of Education does not regulate the length of a baccalaureate degree programme or set and approve credit hours,” the department told Times Higher Education in response to a query over its position on the matter. “Instead,” the department said, “our regulations rely heavily on accrediting agencies and institutions to determine that credit hours appropriately represent a student’s academic work, and expect that accrediting agencies ensure their standards and evaluation of credit hours are rigorous to allow the department to sufficiently evaluate institutional practices.” The norm of four years and 120 credits has a historical basis unrelated to academic merit. Those two numbers have, however, been long-accepted elements of a system through which the federal government recognises accrediting agencies such as the Northwest Commission, which in turn give institutions the approvals needed for benefits that include student aid eligibility. But with students confronting fast-rising levels of tuition fees and accumulated debt, US institutions have faced constant pressure to make the standard college experience cheaper and faster. With the Northwest Commission approving the pilot in which three-year degree programmes at BYU-Idaho and Ensign will require only 90 to 96 credits, and with the Biden administration indicating consent, a rush of other accreditors and institutions is likely to follow them, says Robert Kelchen, professor of higher education at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. And while any net benefits to students may take time to assess, the nation’s many struggling colleges and universities — primarily the less-selective public and private campuses — are likely to suffer even more financially, says Prof. Kelchen. “You may get some more students in the door” by reducing their total time of enrolment, he says. “But enough to offset the loss of credit hours? Probably not.” The effect on students is less clear. The Northwest Commission agreed to try the idea, says its president Sonny Ramaswamy, with the understanding that BYU-Idaho and Ensign will show comparable student outcomes over time. As part of the pilot programme, which begins this coming April, the measures subject to comparison include course success rates and post-graduation outcomes such as career accomplishments and entry to graduate schools. Naming rights controversy Ideological conflict in US higher education is moving into the realm of naming rights, with activists on both the left and the right fighting upstart entrants on the grounds of protecting students from confusion. In the state of New Hampshire, a partisan producer of classroom instructional videos, Prager University has been accused by…
Textbooks often cause controversy. Parents object to what they teach children about sex. History can be ideologically charged. Maps sometimes provoke anger in neighbouring countries. But rarely have textbooks caused such an uproar as in Mexico, when the government issued new books for the start of the school year on August 28. The governors of several states refused to distribute them. Parents have burned them. Mexico is among the few countries in which the national government produces approved textbooks for all schools — public and private. Cuba, North Korea and Nicaragua, all dictatorships, are among the others. Mexico began its policy in 1959, saying that obliging schools to use the same books, and providing them free, would help reduce inequality in a stratified society. Most six- to 15-year-olds study in the public system: some 21.5 million compared with just 2.7 million in private schools. When the state writes textbooks, the government can impose its ideology on schools. That has been especially true since 1980, when the education ministry took over direct responsibility for writing the books from a semi-independent body (which now prints them). It is perhaps no surprise that Mexico’s populist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is taking full advantage of the opportunity. He sees himself as a transformational leader, and textbooks are a cheap way to bring about big changes. This year, the fifth of his six-year term, he has introduced a shake-up of the curriculum, textbooks included, that he calls the “New Mexican School”. Mexico needs education reform. It performs poorly on PISA, an international test of the reading, maths and science skills of 15-16-year-olds. But experts doubt that the New Mexican School is what the country needs. More contentiously, students will now be schooled in President Obrador’s ideology. The books denounce individualism, capitalism and ‘neoliberalism’, which allegedly “has eliminated worker gains”, says one. They extol the president’s pet building projects, including a museum and an airport in Mexico City. One of the officials who directed the textbooks’ composition is a Venezuelan who used to work for Hugo Chávez, that country’s late left-wing dictator. A guide for teachers urges them to ask themselves whether they are “oppressed or an oppressor”. The new textbooks are also full of mistakes. One suggests that herbal tea can treat Covid-19. Another puts a Mexican state in the wrong place on a map; another gets the birthdate of Benito Juárez, a 19th century president wrong. Teachers have received little training for the new content. That’s not surprising, since López Obrador has slashed the budget for teacher training, from 1,644 pesos ($88) per teacher per year in 2016 to just 85 pesos today. “I had to do a lot by myself and still have many questions,” says Vianney Narváez, a history teacher. The President has weakened education in other ways. On taking office in 2018, he reversed a reform by the previous government that curbed the power of the teachers’ union and introduced performance reviews. He disbanded a body that evaluated the quality…
Staged in grand style on October 13-14 in New Delhi’s J.W. Marriott Hotel, the EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) 2023-24 Awards Nite — proclaimed as the greatest education felicitation and celebrations show on earth — has come and gone. The two-day event attracted over 2,000 leaders (and their uninvited guests who blew the budget) from 1,200 schools across the country. It required unprecedented logistics, hotel bookings, trophy design and certificates printing, provision of free-of-charge meals and beverages on an enormous scale. And although the great majority of award winners complimented your editors for the conduct of a smooth and time-bound event, along with the bouquets there were some brickbats. For one, given the logistics of transporting and arranging an estimated 1,400 trophies, certificates and other encomiums from Mumbai to Delhi, and lining up trophies backstage to align with the order in which they were announced on stage, required high order event management skills. This delicate synchronization was often disturbed by several awardees whose nears and dears suddenly suffered near-fatal heart-attacks and other illnesses which necessitated out-of-turn awards presentation causing disruption. As a result some school leaders were not awarded their trophies in time and went away sorrowful, although they were presented interim facsimile/dummy trophies and certificates for all-important photo-ops. To those who went away sorrowful, mea culpa. Moreover for your editors the pain of being on-stage to present over 1400 awards was compounded by a lecture delivered by a autocrat grey eminence who chose the occasion to sermonise at length that one of our several associates is not PLU (people like us) and this pioneer publication is insufficiently “transformative”. He was backed up by a shrill chorister who opined that EW had become “too commercial”. Such are the crosses that one has to bear even when we felicitate, celebrate and award the country’s best school leaders. Also read: EW India School Rankings 2022-23 Awards
Some people never learn. Instead of being repentant that the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty which led post-independence India down the socialist road that bankrupted the country destroying the modest material aspirations of one — perhaps two — generations, Rahul Gandhi, the latest scion of the dynasty, seems determined to use the wrecking ball to destroy Gautam Adani, one of the few industrialists to survive socialism and the devilish licence-permit-quota regimen designed to strangle private enterprises at birth. According to a Times of India report (November 1), Rahul, who God forbid could become yet another Nehru-Gandhi prime minister should the opposition INDIA alliance of myriad parties win General Election 2024, has been targeting Adani, who within the short span of two decades has established massive nation-building infrastructure projects — ports, power and cement plants, airports, green energy, edible oils, warehousing — to emerge as one of the few billionaire businessmen of the 21st century with real assets on the ground. According to RaGa Adani’s success is due to the full backing of prime minister Modi and that he is the front man of the prime minister. Steeped in the mindset of licence-permit raj of his ancestors, this latest scion of the dynasty evidently believes that business success is still impossible without political backing. Nor despite his top job aspirations does he understand that it is the PM’s job to encourage and back the country’s enterprising entrepreneurs. Years ago, the late public intellectual Romesh Thapar described the Nehru clan as baba log — overindulged rich brats — playing government. RaGa is the latest of this lot who have never got a college degree or held a job, and plays high politics without care or concern of who or what he knocks down. Adani’s fault is that like Dhirubhai Ambani before him, he has skirted the thousands of irrational laws, rules and regulations designed to cabin, crib and confine the entrepreneurial genius of India’s businessmen. Creation of employment and payment of taxes is the high crime Adani has committed against this would-be prime minister steeped in the socialism mindset. Also read: The Importance of being Gautam Adani
The appointment of Rishi Sunak as prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and his durability in office for over a year, is a reality way beyond the imagination of the most inventive writers of the fantasy television serial, Bridgerton. This popular sitcom set in the 19th century which was a big hit in Blighty and Anglosphere countries, featured lords, ladies and nobility — and even a queen — of colour. At the time of its airing the TV serial served as catharsis for Brits who practiced rigid apartheid in India and the colonies they ruled until the mid-20th century, when their hypocrisy and sanctimonious humbug relating to the white man’s burden was punctured by “naked fakir” Mahatma Gandhi, prompting the global British empire to collapse like a house of cards. But nobody in their wildest imagination could ever have forecast that the day would come when a brown-hued practicing Hindu would rise to the position of prime minister and rule imperial Great Britain from No.10 Downing Street. And stay put there for over a year. Certainly not your editor who read law in London and was active in British politics. Although Sunak is unlikely to remain in office after next summer when a general election is scheduled because the Conservative party is trailing in all opinion polls, the fact that he survived in office at No.10 for so long vindicates your correspondent’s belief that native Brits — the flotsam and jetsam that ruled the colonies were sui generis — are less race, than class prejudiced. Sunak with his Winchester, Oxford and Stanford education — and most important RP (received pronunciation) accent — passes the class test, the prerequisite of rising to the top in class-obsessed Britain. It also vindicates your editor’s opinion that of all colonial imperialists of the 18th-20th centuries — French, Dutch, Germans and Belgians — the Brits were the best of a bad lot.
Land, Guns, Caste, Woman: The Memoir of a Lapsed Revolutionary Gita Ramaswamy Navayana Rs.454 Pages 432 Memoirs of Indian revolutionaries are few and far between. This book relates to revolutionary struggles in the post-independence period Memoirs of Indian revolutionaries are few and far between. Those relating to revolutionary struggles in the post-independence period are nearly absent. In this sense Gita Ramaswamy’s Land, Guns, Caste, Woman: The Memoir of a Lapsed Revolutionary is an important watershed. Divided into 25 sections, it covers the period from her childhood to 2013, by which time she was living the life of a “lapsed revolutionary”. Beginning with her childhood, Ramaswamy discusses her early experiences of growing up in an orthodox Brahmin family. From the point of view of class and caste, this accident of birth provided her several privileges, especially those related to education. Her relatively comfortable socio-economic background gave her an opportunity to receive quality education in some of the best convent schools in Bombay (Mumbai) and Madras (Chennai). That her mother was unable to receive even basic education due to her family’s conservative views, a fact sensitively stressed by the author, this was indeed a privilege. Even though Ramaswamy’s family was open to the idea of her getting the best education, when it came to menstrual taboos, they did not make an exception. According to the author, an important turning point in her life came when she began her studies in Kendriya Vidalayas, at the age of 14. For it was here that she was exposed to scientific ideas, which besides being liberating, provided her opportunity to question prevailing superstitions and rituals. The years spent at school not only gave her self-confidence, but also made her aware, as she notes, of the atrocities committed against women. And perhaps, it was this training which gave her confidence to oppose acts of cruelty like domestic violence, which her sister faced routinely. Following graduation from school she joined the prestigious Osmania University in Hyderabad, where her intellectual and political education continued unabated. At university, Ramaswamy voraciously read the works of English, Russian and French writers, as well as of various feminist writers, which familiarised her with “a rational, liberal world where there were explanations for everything”. No major surprise that while she was still at Osmania she came in contact with a Left-wing students’ group, whose leader George Reddy was brutally killed in April 1972 by students of the Right-wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad students’ organissation. Thus, in a sense, 1972 was a year which signalled the beginning of Ramaswamy’s political career. In due course she emerged as an excellent orator and was invited to political meetings of Left-groups all over India. She reveals that for quite a long time she was able to keep her family in the dark about her involvement in student politics. In 1973, at the height of the Naxalite movement in Andhra Pradesh, the author along with some of her college mates, joined the Chandra Pula Reddy group (CPI-ML) of the…
The spectacular rise of members of the Indian diaspora to dizzying heights in business, politics, the academia and other vocations and professions abroad, even as upward socio-economic mobility in 21st century India remains an arduous climb, raises the question: why do Indians succeed and thrive the world over, except in their own country , writes Dilip Thakore A curious phenomenon draining and debilitating the Indian economy is somewhat belatedly receiving media, even if not official, attention — the continuous talent and enterprise drain from the country. According to the International Migration Report 2023 published by OECD which attracted front page headlines in the Times of India (October 24), contemporary India is the world’s largest exporter of HNWI (high net worth individuals) and skilled professionals to English-speaking OECD countries. Between 2021 and this year, 3.61 lakh citizens emigrated abroad. Nor is this a recent phenomenon. For the past seven decades after India under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi wrested political freedom from nearly two centuries of exploitative British rule, when free citizens should have awoken to a new invigorating dawn of freedom, there’s been a steady exodus of talent and human resource from India which has been ignored — even celebrated — by the increasingly discredited media. As a result, the Indian diaspora around the world has grown to an estimated 32 million. And denied opportunities at home, its members have risen to prominent apex positions in politics, business and academia in the Western world, including imperial Great Britain which during its oppressive rule over the Indian subcontinent, drained its wealth to accumulate the seed capital that fired the Industrial Revolution of Britain and the West. The spectacular rise of members of the Indian diaspora to dizzying heights in business, politics, the academy and several other vocations and professions abroad, even as upward socio-economic mobility in 21st century India remains an arduous climb, if not an impossibility for the vast majority of the native population, raises the question: why do Indians succeed and thrive the world over, except in their own country? To be sure, there isn’t a shortage of supra-nationalists who will dispute the validity of this question. They will highlight the growth of GDP from $40 billion in 1947 to $3.7 trillion currently; increase in the average lifespan of citizens from 31 to 71 years; increase in annual per capita income from Rs.40,000 to Rs.172,000; success of the Green Revolution; rise in adult literacy from 16 percent in 1947 to 74 percent; exponential increase in number of college graduates, and perhaps the success of the Chandrayaan-3 moon mission. Yet the flaw of establishment spokespersons and supra-nationalists is that they measure progress in terms of where we were to where we have reached today. Although commonplace, this is an erroneous measurement metric. The correct, more meaningful metric is to make international comparisons, especially with the People’s Republic of China, which has a comparable land area and population. Viewed from a global lens, independent India’s wealth creation and socio-economic development record…
-Autar Nehru (Delhi) Corporate captain turned philanthropist Vineet Nayar is founder-chairman of the Noida-based Sampark Foundation (estb.2005), an NGO working towards improving learning outcomes in government primary schools in eight states across the country. Over the past 18 years since it was registered, the foundation has positively impacted 10.49 million children and trained 672,000 teachers in 1.23 lakh government schools. The foundation works in eight states — Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra — without levying any charge to the states or pupils. Currently, the foundation has 800 field staff who monitor and facilitate its learning improvement programme in 123,500 schools in eight states. Newspeg. In July, Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, inaugurated the Sampark Smartshala-Smart Block programme, under which 58 government schools in Gorakhpur and 68 in Chargawan districts were equipped with LED TVs and maths and English learning kits. History. An alumnus of GB Pant University of Agriculture & Technology and XLRI Jamshedpur, Nayar signed up with HCL Technologies in the company’s infancy in 1985, steadily rose up the ranks and was appointed CEO in 2007. During his six-year term HCL’s sales revenue rose from Rs.16,600 crore in 2007-08 to Rs.41,500 crore and the company’s market cap from $0.7 billion (Rs.5,250 crore) in 2005 to $4.7 billion in 2013. In 2005, at the instance of his school teacher-mother Janak Nayar (1936-2017), Vineet and his wife Anupama registered the Sampark Foundation with the objective of improving education standards in government schools. Until 2013, the foundation funded approved projects of NGOs. But, after a thorough impact study indicated marginal impact, the foundation resolved to adopt a more hands-on approach using technology to make teacher-pupil interaction more engaging and enjoyable, a strategy devised by Anupama, also an alumna of GB Pant University of Agriculture & Technology and a qualified special educator. Subsequently in 2015, the foundation designed its Sampark Smart ShalaTM (SSS), a unique low-cost programme to improve children’s learning outcomes. The SSS kit comprises 16 components including a rechargeable audio device — a voice mascot named Sampark Didi — which delivers 112 carefully researched lessons. The foundation’s objective is to scale the programme to reduce the cost to $1 per child per year. In 2022 the foundation rolled out Sampark TV in 25,000 government schools. The duo is committed to invest $100 million (Rs.820 crore) in the foundation. Direct talk. “To implement SSS effectively, we trained teachers in the SSS app Sampark TV, and activity-based pedagogy. Our tag line is sahi kram, sahi dang (right sequence, right methodology) which translates into equipping teachers with skills to improve the learning outcomes of pupils. Moreover, we have deployed TV screens in classrooms to empower teachers to deliver engaging and immersive lessons,” says Nayar, who adds that there’s been a dramatic decrease in dropout rates in targeted government schools after implementation of the Sampark programme. Future plans. Enthused by the success of Sampark TV in public schools, the duo plans to extend it to select budget…
-Dilip Thakore (Bengaluru) Ravi Sonnad is a highly qualified social entrepreneur with over three decades of transnational business experience and currently founder-director of the Singapore-based Enabling Leadership Foundation (ELF). The objective of ELF, which has a headcount of 80 full-time employees and 200 part-time faculty, is to develop leadership skills that Sonnad and the foundation believe are latent in every child, especially girl children. Newspeg. In end September, Sonnad visited the foundation’s facilities in Delhi, Bangalore and Dharwad (Karnataka) to take stock of their progress. Currently, ELF is developing the leadership skills of 10,000 children in government schools in India, Cambodia and Singapore. History. An engineering and business management graduate of IIT-Madras and Tulane University, New Orleans (USA), Sonnad began his professional career with the Amsterdam-based Intralox Llc, a transnational plastic conveyor belts manufacturing company. After a successful career with Intralox in Amsterdam (1992-2017) and Shanghai where he established the company’s Shanghai and India (Bangalore) manufacturing and marketing operations, in 2013 Sonnad quit corporate life and set up ELF as a not-for-profit foundation to develop a future generation of leaders equipped to provide employment and direction to children in Asia, especially in India. Currently ELF teachers are deployed in government schools in India, Cambodia and Singapore to teach “transferable skills” to students. These skills are taught twice a week by ELF teachers using components of the popular game Lego, playing football and learning music. Direct talk. “By using Lego building blocks, children learn to develop imagination and life skills of teamwork and co-operation while improving hand-eye coordination. By playing the popular and affordable game of mixed gender football under supervision, they learn the importance of physical fitness, teamwork, and unity. And by learning music, they develop a sense of aesthetics and appreciation of the arts. In ELF, we believe that every child can become a leader if she develops these competencies over a sustained period of time. Developing the latent leadership skills of children is a gap in most education systems, and ELF is here to nurture teachers who will teach other teachers to motivate their students to grow into trustworthy leaders with strength of character and sense of community,” says Sonnad. Future plans. Ten years on after ELF was registered, Sonnad believes the not-for-profit foundation has developed the science of teaching leadership skills through experiential and enjoyable pedagogies. “We also intend to market our build, play and music leadership programme to private schools on a payment basis. This will enable us to raise resources to develop and nurture the large number of leaders that India and countries in Asia and Africa need to eliminate poverty and take the high road to national prosperity,” says Sonnad. The force be with you!
-Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru) Edupreneur Mohit Patel is founder-director of the Cambridge (UK)-affiliated The Northstar School, Rajkot (TNS, estb. 2016) — promoted by the family-run Talaviya Trust which also manages RK University. Patel believes TNS is redefining education through innovative pedagogies centred on experiential learning, self-discovery, and strong connect with the environment. Since the school admitted its first batch of 25 students seven years ago, enrolment has grown to the maximum capacity of 500. With a campus sprawled across 15 green acres, Northstar claims its per student space allocation is “one of the largest in India”. Newspeg. Early this year Patel, who also has business interests in the hospitality industry (Raga Svara Wellness Centre, Rajkot), rolled out a plan to construct an additional academic building with a built-up area of 80,000 sq. ft. History. An education, technology and industrial systems graduate of the globally top-ranked Harvard (USA) and Cambridge (UK) universities who returned to India in late 2013, Patel promoted TNS after deeply researching curriculum design on the main campus of RK University (estb. 2005), the first privately promoted professional education university in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat which has an aggregate enrolment of 6,000 students. Subsequently, after studying best schools in India, US, Singapore, and Denmark, and consulting with architects and designers from Columbia, Harvard, Bauhaus-Universität (Germany) universities, and CEPT University (India), he designed the state-of-the-art campus of TNS. “TNS was started as a course project at Harvard University, where I was exploring K-12 education from three perspectives: curriculum, experience and space design. Simultaneously, I researched the institutional history and organisational culture of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From these studies I became aware that conceptualising, designing and constructing a K-12 school in India which is a safe haven of true expression for children, educators and parents, was necessary and possible. After nearly three years of foundational work, TNS admitted its first batch in 2016,” says Patel, who also teaches philosophy and literature at this avant garde day school. Direct talk. “Unlike the competitive school education landscape that promotes rote learning, TNS is driven by the philosophy that learning should be enjoyable, meaningful and relevant to students. It was a challenge convincing parents in a tier II city to embrace a new school with a contemporary philosophy and learning approach. Here students are encouraged to find their own learning path through a unique foundational program christened the Northstar Exploratory Learning Approach. It empowers them to choose their preferred subjects and skills to promote a sense of ownership and passion for learning. The program not only enhances academic engagement, it also nurtures critical thinking and decision-making skills. The school’s curriculum, assessment structure, and architecture have been carefully designed to implement this philosophy. Moreover, our teacher to student ratio is 1:7 resulting in highly personalised learning,” says Patel. Future plans. Looking ahead, Patel is hopeful of making TNS’ path-breaking learning programs accessible to educators and students nationwide. “In TNS, we are constantly exploring new ways of designing learning experiences. While growing student…
-Dilip Thakore (Bengaluru) A polymath alum of Jadavpur University, Kolkata, IIT-Delhi and professor at the high-ranked IIT-Delhi for over three decades (1978-2014), Dr. Bishnu Pal is Founder-Dean of the Ecole Central School of Engineering (ECSE) of the new age, multi-disciplinary Mahindra University, Hyderabad. Promoted by the Mumbai-based Mahindra Group, the well-known heavyweight in automotives (Mahindra & Mahindra — automobiles and tractors) and IT and ITES (Tech Mahindra — IT enabled services), Mahindra University (MU) was established in May 2020 under The Telangana State Private Universities Act, 2018. Currently, it offers undergrad, postgrad and doctoral programs in engineering, business management and law, to 4,000 students mentored by 230 highly qualified faculty. Newspeg. As Dean Academics (ECSE) of the largest school of Mahindra University which hosts over 2,500 students, Dr. Pal was recently (July) in Bengaluru to attend the International Biennial Conference on Photonics, 2023 held at the top-ranked Indian Institute of Science. History. In 2014 Tech Mahindra signed a tripartite technical cooperation agreement with the Ecole Centrale Superlac, Paris (estb. 1829), one of France’s most respected Grand Ecoles “with a rich entrepreneurial tradition since the industrial revolution era” and “the cradle of top-level engineers and executives who continue to constitute a major part of the industry leadership in France” and the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad. Four years later when Mahindra University was established, ECSE (India) was integrated into it. Within a short period, it has acquired a national reputation for turning out high-quality graduates and research scholars in engineering and applied sciences. Direct talk. “French education philosophy is to develop engineers with strong grounding in mathematics and physics and this is reflected in the ecosystem of ECSE. This focus enables our students to develop excellent design, innovation, and entrepreneurial skills for which French engineers are known to be among the best globally, at par with the best in America. In ECSE, the core subjects of mechanical, civil, and electronics & communication engineering are supplemented with cutting edge technical education in computer science, electronics and computer engineering, artificial intelligence, mechatronics, nano technology, biotechnology, computational biology and computation and mathematics. I am confident we are well on our way to developing engineers with high-quality competence in core engineering theory and practice, supplemented with training in new emerging technologies,” says Prof. Pal. Future plans. Unsurprisingly, Pal is optimistic about the future of MU and especially its Indo-French engineering school. “The Mahindra Group has a well-established tradition of manufacturing high quality engineering goods and providing IT and ITES services. This combined with the excellent engineering education and research tradition of ECSE is certain to develop highly skilled research scholars — we already have 150 Ph D students in our campus and expect to touch the 250 mark by 2025 — for the Indian economy and industry. We have got off to an excellent start and I am very confident that within ten years, MU which has been established as a multi-disciplinary research university as per the mandate of the National Education Policy 2020 right…
– Somasekhar Mulugu (Hyderabad) Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh)-based athletics star Jyothi Yarraji (24) is on a roll this year. At the recently concluded XIX Asian Games staged in Hangzhou (China), she won a silver medal in the 100 metres hurdles clocking 12.91 seconds — .13 seconds faster than her own national record. Earlier in July, this lanky (5 ft 9’) athlete won gold at the Asian Athletics Championships held in Bangkok. Despite the less than enthusiastic reception she received on her return from the Asian Games, Jyothi is undeterred. “I feel blessed for winning a silver medal for my country although I was awarded it after a false start by a Chinese athlete which almost disqualified me. Truth prevailed in the end and the judges disqualified her instead. Overall this has been a good year for me,” says Jyothi. The younger child of Yarraji Suryanarayana, a security guard of a popular retail chain, and Yarraji Kumari, a homemaker, Jyothi took to athletics at age 15 when she was in class IX. “Encouraged by my physical education teacher who had great faith in my capabilities, I invested time, practicing daily. My first break came in 2016 at age 17 when I was selected for training at the Sports Authority of India (SAI) in Gachibowli, Hyderabad,” she recalls. Since then, in her eight-year career in competitive athletics which started with the 2016 Youth Games in Kozhikode (Kerala), Jyothi has won over 20 national and five international medals. Between 2016-2019, she was under the tutelage of national athletics coach N. Ramesh, and won the national 100 m hurdles every year from 2017-2022. In 2021, Jyothi was shortlisted in the Reliance Foundation talent hunt and relocated to Mumbai to train under British coach James Hillier, the foundation’s athletics director-mentor. According to this can-do athlete “there is no substitute for hard work, especially in international events”. A final year arts student of VTJM College, Guntur, she follows a daily regimen comprising rigorous three-hour training sessions in the mornings and evenings. “Although my eyes are set on the Paris Olympics 2024, I have some catching up to do. Currently my timing is under the Olympic qualification timing by .01 second. Therefore, over the next few months my focus is on qualifying for the Olympics,” says this sprint hurdles champ. Way to go, Sis! Also read: National Sports Day 2019: Women representing India at Olympics 2020
– Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru) Back in Kolkata from the XIX Asian Games — which concluded in Hangzhou, China with a blaze of colour on October 8 — Ayhika Mukherjee (26) and Sutirtha Mukherjee (28) brought home a bronze medal in table tennis (women’s doubles). En route, they derived considerable consolation from having bested world champion Chinese pair of Chen Meng and Wang Yidi in the quarter final. That’s quite an achievement considering that TT is China’s national sport. “Defeating the Chinese in their national sport was like climbing Mount Everest. We are hugely motivated by this achievement which can only help us improve our game further and win more tournaments,” says Ayhika. Born and raised by sports loving families (Ayhika’s father was a member of the Border Security Force football team while Sutirtha’s father is an Army officer and plays multiple sports) in the Naihati suburb of North 24-Parganas of West Bengal, Ayhika and Sutirtha met in 2003 at the Naihati Youth Club where their parents had enrolled them to learn the nuances of this fast-paced game. “Sutirtha was my senior at the club and became my role model as she started winning district, state and national tournaments. Although I have studied her every move we have completely differing play styles. I play defense while she attacks. Last year (2022), we started playing professional doubles tournaments and our contrasting styles have paid off,” says Ayhika, who moved to Kolkata at age 19 after she landed a job with the Reserve Bank of India as assistant manager. Likewise, Sutirtha relocated to Kolkata after Indian Railways appointed her a commercial inspector. Currently the duo trains for 3-4 hours daily at the south Kolkata-based Dhanuka Dhunseri Academy. Looking ahead, the girls are training intensively for the Paris Olympics scheduled for March 2024. “Although the women’s doubles event was scrapped in 1988, we are determined to win an Olympic medal for India by competing in singles and mixed doubles events. We are very grateful to Dhanuka Sir for all his support and are on the lookout for more sponsors. Unfortunately, our salaries cover only part of our training expenses.” says Sutirtha. Power to your elbows!
NYAF 2023 Singapore/New Delhi, October 6. BriBooks, billed as the world’s largest creative writing platform for school students, launched the 2023 edition of the National Young Authors’ Fair (NYAF) in India in partnership with EducationWorld. NYAF 2023 anticipates participation from over 1 million students in 10,000 schools. They will be writing, publishing, and promoting their books on the AI-powered BriBooks platform, the start of their journey towards becoming young entrepreneurial authors. “This event is the gold standard for nurturing creative writing in India. Our mission remains unwavering: to empower children to write, publish, and share their tales in the printed books format,” said Ami Dror, founder and CEO of BriBooks, speaking on the occasion. Added Bhavin Shah, CEO of EducationWorld: “It is essential that we encourage our children to unlock their creative potential. We are proud to offer this free-of-charge platform where aspiring young writers can share their stories with the world and realise their dream of becoming published authors.” OPJU–StockGro partnership Bengaluru, October 5. Chhattisgarh-based OP Jindal University (OPJU) signed an exclusive educational partnership with StockGro, a fin-tech platform, to teach students stock market investing. Under this two-year partnership, StockGro’s platform will be integrated into OPJU’s curriculum with learning assessment conducted on the StockGro platform. This programme will begin with seminars providing students insights into key financial issues, including basic finance, personal finance management, wealth management, and potential career paths within the financial sector. After attending these seminars, students can put their newfound knowledge and abilities into practice on the StockGro platform to enhance their knowledge of financial securities. “Our collaboration with OPJU, is dedicated to providing students with practical financial skills and knowledge that will serve them well throughout their lives,” said Ajay Lakhotia, founder & CEO, StockGro, speaking on the occasion. Dr. R.D. Patidar, vice chancellor of OPJU, is optimistic about this collaborative venture. “This partnership will equip our students with the financial acumen needed for their future success. Through initiatives like this, we aim to prepare them for the challenges and opportunities of the financial world,” he added. Finland Exploration Programme New Delhi, October 31. Suyash Bhatt, a University of Cambridge alum and founder-CEO of the UK-based Cambridge Education Lab, organised a Finland Education Exploration Programme to Helsinki and Turku for 24 Indian school promoters in collaboration with the Delhi-based NISA (National Independent Schools Alliance). School leaders from nine Indian states experienced an illuminating journey into the heart of the Finnish education system from October 22-28. “This six-day programme divided between the cities of Helsinki and Turku, provided a comprehensive understanding of the Finnish education model, celebrated worldwide for its innovative pedagogies and exceptional outcomes” says Bhatt. The programme included a visit to the Finnish National Agency for Education, where delegates were provided deep insight into the foundational principles of the Finnish education system. It included an overview of how Finland’s education system is uniquely structured within a robust two-tier national administration system. “One of the highlights of the tour programme was technology usage to create…
