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EducationWorld September 2020

AVVU’s second Unesco chair

New Delhi, September 8. The Coimbatore-based Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham University (AVVU) has been awarded a Unesco chair for Experiential Learning for Sustainable Innovation & Development. Through this chair, the university will design a curriculum based on experiential learning which will enable the academic community to acquire the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values necessary to implement sustainable solutions among vulnerable and rural communities. The chair will be held by Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham for the next four years under the leadership of Dr. Maneesha Sudheer, dean of the university’s international programmes and director of its Centre for Wireless Networks & Applications. “This is the second Unesco chair awarded to AVVU in the past four years after it received India’s first-ever Unesco chair on Gender Equality & Women’s Empowerment. We will now be able to take our experiential learning concepts to the entire world in collaboration with other Unesco chairs and universities around the world. Through this chair, AVVU will develop an experiential learning framework to enable an understanding of the challenges faced by remote communities, and design sustainable solutions in collaboration with them,” says Dr. Sudheer. Webex Classrooms preview India, September 3. Cisco Collaboration announced a preview of Webex Classrooms, which adapts the US-based Cisco Inc’s highly secure platform to meet the specific online learning needs of hybrid classrooms. According to a Cisco spokesperson, Cisco Webex Classrooms is a “secure go-to place for teachers, students, and parents to connect more naturally”. It provides a classroom structure where students and teachers can organise classes, review syllabuses, schedule and launch classes, host virtual office hours and more. Students can easily connect with each other or simply access course resources, and parents can stay involved too — by easily scheduling virtual parent-teacher conferences. LEAD Teachers Academy Mumbai, September 3. Leadership Boulevard Pvt. Ltd aka LEAD School launched its online LEAD Teachers Academy on Teachers’ Day (September 5). The programme and certification under this initiative are free of charge for all teachers. LEAD School has already trained over 10,000 teachers in its partner-schools. “The LEAD Teachers Academy programme is free and open to 2.5 million teachers across India. Applicant teachers will be trained in batches during the three-part certificate programme designed to improve their teaching skills, update them about best pedagogies and practices and encourage them to deliver better results,” says Sumeet Mehta, co-founder and CEO of the company. Teachers can enroll for the programme by visiting join.leadschool.in/teachers_day and submit their applications. Urban development partnership Roorkee, September 4. The National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee (IIT-R) for collaboration in areas of universal design principles and inclusive development under its ‘Building Accessible Safe Inclusive Indian Cities’ (BASIIC) programme. The MoU lists cooperation in field policy research, technical support and knowledge creation and dissemination. “This partnership will strengthen emerging possibilities towards urban inclusion through exchange of research, capacity development and other partnerships with India’s emerging cities,” said Prof. Ajit K. Chaturvedi, director, IIT-R, speaking on…

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Studying psychology in times of crises & beyond—Here’s how JGU is prepared to change the narrative

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

The deep impact of human psychology has become more relevant during the Covid-19 pandemic. Today, as people count the days in lockdown abiding by social distancing norms, the signs of struggle are telling on mental health and wellbeing. As we adapt to the […]

NEP 2020 – India Needs Intent of Implementation

The progress and success quo of a country depends on the ASK- Attitude, Knowledge and Skill of its human resource. Trans- times, trans- cultures, trans- civilizations and trans- nations, a country is what its citizens are. With human capital being the biggest asset, the role of education is to optimise its potential and channelise its […]

Seth M.R. Jaipuria Schools

Salaam Teachers!

“I’ve been enjoying working in lockdown. I get to interact with my students, have heart to heart talks with my colleagues, I’m not subject to long hours of commute. Of course, there is a downside that with no domestic help allowed in the building, we have to split responsibilities for household chores. And, I’m […]

Ensuring children’s health and wellbeing in the Covid19 era

– By Mr Ankit Tibrewal, Designated Partner, Qmax World

Bringing preventive solutions that are responsive to real life problems has been at the core of Qmax World. Adapting to the changing situations, launching of products has been a priority since the outbreak of a virus that turned into a pandemic. We are all being extra careful […]

Scholars Rosary School, Rohtak: Fliplearn Edge enables online success story

The Covid-19 pandemic has posed a formidable challenge for schools countrywide. It has disrupted school education in the most abrupt manner. However, this has also been a time when some schools made an almost miraculously seamless digital transition by leveraging smart and intuitive e-learning platforms like Fliplearn Edge. Scholars Rosary School, Rohtak is one such […]

India: Academia inhibitions

A report sent to the United Nations warns that greater precarity of academic employment poses a threat to academic freedom in India, with scholars on insecure contracts potentially less willing to rock the boat with critical commentary. Dr. Nandini Sundar, professor of sociology at the University of Delhi in Academic Freedom in India: A Status Report 2020, recommends that universities should better inform their leaders, faculty unions and students about freedom-of-expression rights. The report also suggests that employment contracts should include clauses protecting academic freedom, meaning that staff “will not be penalised for extramural activities”.z “It is engagement with non-academics or the extramural activities of scholars which are most commonly contested, and also the site where academic freedom comes closest to freedom of expression,” the report says. These extramural activities could include commenting in the media or acting as experts outside of campus. One important influence on academic freedom is “the political economy of teaching and learning”. “Given the increasing precaritisation of the teaching workforce (a majority of appointments are now contractual), not only is it difficult to find the time to do research but there are also serious concerns about not alienating management, senior faculty, etc, which limit free speech,” writes Prof. Sundar. Stating that about 40 percent of employees at her institution are contractual, the report cites practices such as public universities trying to impose certain “rules” on academics writing for the press or attending demonstrations. Meanwhile, some private universities require academics to get clearance before publishing research, or even opinion columns “The biggest threats to the academic freedom of an institution come from the appointment of poor leaders who, by dint of inexperience, are typically over-compliant with norms imposed from the outside while being susceptible to pressures of an unfamiliar kind,” says the report. While cases related to academic freedom have been successfully contested in India’s courts, legal challenges can be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming for teaching staff. Prof. Sundar links freedom of expression to the level of internationalisation in a higher education system. “One of the essential components of academic freedom is academic exchange,” she writes. India hosted fewer than 50,000 foreign students in 2019, while scholars from countries deemed politically unfriendly — namely China and Pakistan — may have a hard time acquiring visas. The report also outlines broader threats to academic freedom, including an increased police presence on campus, student arrests, banned events and the communications blackout in Kashmir. It recommends that the government “restore and strengthen” universities’ institutional autonomy, and that global institutions include academic freedom as an indicator in rankings. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education) Also read: Professional education freedom verdict sparks constitutional crisis

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Chinese universities: Internationalisation problems

Chinese universities must better integrate overseas students on their campuses and give them the freedom to develop a sense of responsibility if the country is to realise its goal of becoming the largest provider of international education this half-century, says a new study The paper, which is based on insights from Chinese university staff after they had been exposed to international education practices in Canada, highlights how institutions in mainland China tend to treat international students as “a separate cohort”. Instead of being admitted by an academic department, they are usually enrolled in a faculty of international education, which “houses all international students under one roof” and as such, “becomes a silo or a small campus within a big campus”, according to the research. This is further reinforced by the fact that international students have separate accommodation because Chinese student dorms aren’t eligible for “foreign national temporary residence”. The study, published in Higher Education Research & Development, adds that student advisers at Chinese universities often function like “nannies”, managing all matters related to their students, including reminding overseas students when their study permits expire and contacting them if they are missing from their dormitories overnight. Students in China are also typically required to attend programmes or events that the university deems they will benefit from. Some Chinese staff say the Western approach of optional attendance means that students who do attend are more engaged and the programmes themselves are more student-centred. The paper argues that China must transition to a new model of international student education if it is to realise its goal — as expressed by education minister Chen Baosheng in 2017 — of becoming the most desirable destination for international students by 2049. There have also been suggestions that East Asia will emerge as a regional hub for international students in the wake of Covid-19, with China potentially becoming a major competitor to English-speaking countries. Wei Liu, administrator of the Global Academic Leadership Development programme at the University of Alberta and co-author of the paper, says there’s already an overt government policy to better integrate international education in China, but the existing model should not be rejected entirely. “Underlying the two different models (in China and Canada) are two different cultures in student development, and the Chinese approach to student development where the university undertakes more liability for student success has its advantages and should be maintained,” he says. Also read: China: Student bargaining chips

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Germany: Trojan horse fears

The University of Hamburg has decided to cut ties with its Confucius Institute (more than 500 institutes have been established by communist China around the world to teach Chinese language and culture) over fears that Beijing could use it as “propaganda instrument”, in the latest sign of a more wary stance in Germany towards Chinese government influence on campuses. Compared with the US, German institutions have until now taken a more relaxed approach, but a number of scandals involving perceived threats to academic freedom seems to have changed the debate. Hamburg would have been “blind” not to notice “the quite critical view of Confucius Institutes in other countries and the fear — perceived or real — that the institutes are used or misused as propaganda instruments”, Courtney Peltzer-Honicke, head of the university’s department of international affairs, told Times Higher Education. “Obviously that’s something that has no place at a university,” she says. “We do not want any government organisation influencing what our researchers and students work on.” Although the rationale of Confucius Institutes is that they teach Chinese language and culture, they have been dogged by accusations of meddling in academic freedom and several universities have cut ties in recent years, chiefly in the US. Sweden shut the last of its institutes earlier this year. The risk of Confucius Institutes is that they limit — or are put under pressure to limit — free discussion of topics such as the Tiananmen Square protests, Taiwanese independence or Tibet, argues Peltzer-Honicke. Hamburg’s decision to withdraw from the association underpinning the institute, which will come into effect next year, is not related to any specific recent incident, she explains. “It’s more of a general pre-emptive measure, looking at other countries.” However, six years ago the institute’s Chinese co-director was unexpectedly recalled to China after the institute hosted an event on the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests, she recalls. Carsten Krause, director of the Hamburg Confucius Institute, did not address this incident when contacted by THE. “We absolutely regret the ‘concern’ by the University of Hamburg, and we especially regret… its lack of conversation about such a concern,” he said. As tensions between China and the West have risen this year over concerns ranging from Hong Kong’s new security law to the use of Huawei technology in digital infrastructure, Germany’s government had struck a relatively muted tone, emphasising continued economic ties with its largest trading partner. But there are signs the issue is now rising up the agenda among German universities. In February, it emerged that the Free University of Berlin had accepted hundreds of thousands of euros from the Chinese government to set up a professorship and had signed a contract binding it to Chinese law, risking its academic independence, in the eyes of critics. Also read: Germany — Rising private varsities

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United Kingdom: A levels U-turn problems

Universities in the UK have warned that they might not be able to find a place for every eligible student this autumn despite the lifting of caps on numbers to accommodate a major U-turn on A-level grading. Institutions were already facing major uncertainty about their student numbers after last-minute changes to the handling of school exam results led to the prospect of thousands of grades being overturned on appeal. The publication of A-level results in England on August 13 brought confirmation that more than a quarter of a million results have been downgraded from teacher estimates as part of a standardisation process brought in to calculate grades after exams were cancelled because of the Coronavirus pandemic. But after mounting pressure, Ofqual, England’s exam regulator, announced on August 17 that original teacher estimates would be accepted, a U-turn similar to that made in Scotland the week before. The Welsh government and the Northern Ireland executive also announced that teacher estimates will be accepted. These U-turns have plunged the university admissions process into chaos. As of the morning of August 17, more than 190,000 18-year-olds had been accepted into their first-choice courses. But a further 85,000 had either accepted other places or were still deciding on their next move. These students might want to change their decision if the scrapping of standardisation leaves them with better grades. Shortly after announcing the U-turn on grading, education secretary, Gavin Williamson, said a cap on university places introduced for English students this year would be scrapped as well. Mary Curnock Cook, the former chief of admissions body UCAS, had said that lifting the cap had to be priority “number one” after the U-turn, given that so many more students would now be eligible for a place in universities. But she added that the government also needs to understand that there is now a “massive heavy lifting” exercise for universities and UCAS because “substituting one set of results for another for around 300,000 students is a huge task”. Even without a numbers cap, several people in the sector have warned that many universities might find it impossible to accept all students given physical constraints in some courses and accommodation considerations, especially as social distancing has to be maintained on campus. Matthew Andrews, university secretary and registrar at the University of Gloucestershire, says it “will be the case” that some courses around the country won’t be able to take more applicants this year. “There are some courses that will simply be full and no matter how good-willed people are, you can’t just fit more people in,” he says. Also read: United Kingdom — Endangered university bars

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United States: Alarming pandemic depression

The share of US postgraduate students suffering depression has more than doubled during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a major survey of students at nine public research universities. A survey of 30,725 undergraduates and 15,346 postgraduates by the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Consortium, based at the University of California, Berkeley, found 35 percent of undergrads and 32 percent postgraduates screened positive for major depressive order, while 39 percent of both cohorts screened positive for generalised anxiety disorder. Both disorder rates are more pronounced among low-income students, students of colour, women and non-binary, LGBTQ students and students who are caregivers, according to the study, which was conducted between May-July 2020. The rates are also higher among students who adapted poorly to remote instruction. When comparing the results with an equivalent survey carried out by the SERU Consortium in spring 2019, the data reveals that the share of postgraduates suffering mental health disorders has increased as a result of the pandemic. The prevalence of depression among postgraduate and professional students is two times higher in 2020 compared with 2019, while the prevalence of anxiety is one and a half times higher this year. The research also found that students in arts, humanities, communication and design fields are particularly vulnerable to mental health problems. Almost two-thirds (63 per cent) of postgrads studying English language and literature tested positive for anxiety, while 51 percent tested positive for depression. Social and behavioural science students are also more likely to suffer from mental health disorders. The study recommends that academics and staff in these departments receive additional training on how to identify mental health risks and refer students to appropriate resources on campus. It also suggests that universities provide extra mental health support to students who struggle with remote instruction. Igor Chirikov, senior researcher and director of the SERU Consortium, says the impact of the pandemic on students mental health is “alarming”, with the prevalence of disorders among marginalised sub-populations “especially worrisome”. Chirikov recommends that universities allocate more resources for a potential increase in students’ requests for mental health services and proactively publicise these services, while academics could embed mental health resources in their classes, for instance by including mental health modules in their learning management software programmes. Also read: United States: Reverse internationalism plan

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Cyber security programme

Bangalore, August 19. In association with HackerU, Israel’s premier cyber security training provider, Jigsaw Academy, a Manipal Global investee company, announced the launch of a new Masters certificate in cyber security (Blue Team) study programme. According to Jigsaw Academy spokespersons, cyber security has become an important subject since most organisations have started functioning remotely. There are over 3 million job openings for cyber security experts worldwide, they say. “Defensive cyber security is one of the most secure and high-income professions of the cyber world. 85 percent of the job openings in the cyber security domain are for cyber defenders, also known as Blue Team professionals. Our Masters certificate in cyber security programme will help learners build and protect the infrastructure of companies while also helping them thwart cyber predators,” said Ariel Cohen, CEO, HackerU Global Education, speaking on the occasion. Kido Home launch Mumbai, August 5. The London-based global preschool chain Kido Schools announced the launch of its online learning initiative, Kido Home. This home-based learning programme is for children aged 2-6 years who will be administered age-appropriate programmes curated by experienced early education experts. “The coronavirus pandemic has altered education. While there is no substitute for learning in enriched physical preschool environments, we have created a programme tailor made for online delivery, for youngest children. Our curriculum is a holistic balance of interactive personalised interaction between children and teachers,” says Aniruddh Gupta, founder-promoter of Kido Schools, a global network of preschools in London, Austin, Houston, Hong Kong and Dubai with centres in Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune and Gurgaon in India. UN Millennium fellowships New Delhi, August 26. Twelve students of Ashoka University, Sonipat (Gurgaon) have been awarded the prestigious UN Millennium Fellowship programme, a collaborative initiative of United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) and the Millennium Campus Network (MCN), a Boston-based global non-profit. The objective of the one semester on-campus programme is to develop young leaders worldwide. “Under the fellowship programme, our students will be working in diverse projects such as educating visually challenged people through audio calls during the pandemic; developing a telemedicine platform that connects volunteer doctors with at-risk migrant workers; cleansing water bodies; writing a policy framework for instituting waste paper recycling units in Indian universities, etc,” says Ali Imran, vice president (external engagement) of Ashoka University. For the 2020 programme, 15,000 students from 1,400 campuses in 135 countries applied for fellowships. Of them, 1,438 from 80 campuses were awarded fellowships for this year. Pearl Academy-IED agrrement Bangalore, August 1. The Delhi-based Pearl Academy has entered into an exclusive academic collaboration with the Milan-based Istituto Europeo di Design (IED), a highly reputed creative education institute with nine campuses across Europe. Under the collaboration agreement, IED will provide a 50-contact hours international module programme to Pearl Academy’s postgrad students who will be assessed by IED faculty prior to being awarded certification. “We are proud of this exclusive collaboration with IED, which has more than 50 years of experience in design, fashion and visual communication education, and campuses in Milan,…

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Rustom Kerawalla

Vocational education – Siddharth Chaturvedi

An engineering and business management alumnus of NIT, Bhopal, and the S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai, with five years of work experience in blue-chip corporates (ITC, IBM), Siddharth Chaturvedi is executive vice president of the family promoted AISECT Group (estb.1985) of higher education institutions. The AISECT Group manages 23,000 vocational skills centres in 517 districts countrywide, and five universities in Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar and Chhattisgarh with an aggregate enrolment of over 100,000 students. How satisfied are you with NEP 2020’s proposals for vocational education and training (VET)? Even if belatedly, NEP 2020 has rightly acknowledged skill development and vocational training as integral to holistic education. It seeks to develop appreciation of differing vocations through hands-on learning and projects, starting from primary school. I am delighted that NEP 2020 has accepted our long-standing demand to integrate VET into the formal education system. What are your suggestions for smooth integration of VET into mainstream school education as recommended by NEP 2020? My proposals to smoothly integrate VET into school education are: • Map schools with nearby vocational training and skill development centres • Allow trainers/faculty of VET institutes to take classes in mainstream schools • Allot equal credits to vocational subjects as to other subjects in school curriculums • Encourage schools to install practice labs in partnership with private VET institutes. NEP 2020 has set a target of 50 percent of all children and youth to master a vocational skill by 2025. How realistic is this? It’s daunting but feasible if we take a collaborative, holistic approach. To achieve this target, the country’s 1.5 million schools need to closely collaborate with neighbouring skill training centres, ITIs, polytechnics, industry, agriculture and allied sectors to develop and deliver age-appropriate VET programmes to school children. Even if we miss the target, we will still cover plenty of ground over the next five years. Your suggestions for integrating VET into higher education… • Map QP (qualification pack)-based content of industry trades with undergrad curriculums • Facilitate apprenticeship-based skilling and training of tertiary students in large and/or MSME companies • Overhaul higher education assessment systems to also evaluate practical knowledge of vocational trades and skills • Launch a nationwide VET faculty capacity building/upskilling programme to provide trained teachers for largescale infusion of VET programmes in higher education institutions. NEP 2020 has proposed a National Committee for the Integration of Vocational Education (NCIVE). What should be the composition and time frame of the committee? Careful composition of this committee is imperative for universalising VET. Therefore, NCIVE should comprise representatives from government bodies such as MSDE, NCVET, DGET, SSC, and NSDC; private sector VET experts; representatives from the Pandit Sunderlal Sharma Central Institute of Vocational Education, Bhopal to undertake training of trainers (TOT); and industry associations. The NCIVE should start work by early 2021. What do you see as major implementation roadblocks for integrating vocational education into schools and HEIs? • Resistance from faculty, perhaps parents • Identification of appropriate vocational trades by schools •…

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Atul Khosla

Higher education regulatory system – Atul Khosla

An alum of IIT-Kanpur and the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai, with work experience in high-end consultancy firms including McKinsey & Co, New York, Atul Khosla is the founder pro-vice chancellor of Shoolini University, Himachal Pradesh (estb.2009) ranked #1 in the state in the EW India Private University Rankings 2020-21. How satisfied are you with NEP 2020’s proposals for higher education? I am excited by several higher education reforms proposed by NEP 2020. A great university should be on the cutting edge of research and innovation, flexible and agile, working for the upliftment of the community and continuously challenging the status quo. NEP 2020 endorses these beliefs. The most satisfying proposals of NEP 2020 are its intent to integrate liberal arts learning into all study programmes in higher education; set up a unified regulator for higher education; encourage establishment of large globally competitive multi-disciplinary universities; permit foreign universities to establish campuses in India; establish a National Research Fund and Academic Credits Bank. This could be the start of a new India — an India respected for its knowledge economy. NEP 2020 has proposed the separation of functions of regulation, accreditation, funding and academic standard setting & establishment of the Higher Education Commission of India which will have four verticals — NHERC, NAC, HECI & GEC – to regulate HEIs (higher education institutions). Isn’t this over-bureaucratisation of higher education? According to my calculus, India will need to invest US$1 trillion (almost half our GDP in 2019) over the next 15 years to fulfill the dreams of NEP 2020. This requires massive resource mobilisation by government. However good its intentions are, government will never succeed in raising the amount of funding required. Therefore, a large proportion of investment in higher education will have to come from the private sector. Of course, it’s undeniable that too much regulation kills any initiative. When there is ease of doing business, private capital flows in, there’s competition and product quality improves. So what we need in Indian higher education is less rather than additional regulation. While the NEP scores on most points, I have reservations about the regulatory framework proposed. Admittedly, there is the danger that too many regulatory bodies will create regulatory complexity. I hope the separation of functions and a new Higher Education Commission with its four proposed verticals does not lead to over-bureaucratisation and over-regulation of HEIs. In the final analysis, profits and free pricing are critical for attracting large investments into higher education. The tragedy is that the existing not-for-profit private secondary and higher education model is a sham. It’s common knowledge that the majority of HEI trusts are not-for-profit only on paper and commercial in intent, where left pocket-right pocket monetary transfers and doubtful transactions are the norm. So why not make for-profit HEIs legal? It would encourage private capital to flow in and Indian education to blossom. What do you see as the major roadblocks in implementing the proposed higher ed regulatory structure? There is always chance of…

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Dr C Raj Kumar

Higher education: Restructuring & consolidation – Dr. C. Raj Kumar

A polymath alumnus of Madras, Delhi, Hong Kong, Oxford and Harvard universities, Dr. C. Raj Kumar is founding vice chancellor of the O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana (JGU, estb.2009). JGU is ranked among India’s Top 5 private universities by EducationWorld, and India’s #1 private university in the World University Rankings 2021 league table of the London-based Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). How satisfied are you with NEP 2020’s proposals for higher education? NEP 2020 is an outstanding policy document and has the vision and potential to revolutionise higher education in India, if executed as proposed. The policy document is wide-ranging covering pedagogy and curriculum, online learning, multidisciplinary education and research, internationalisation, digitisation, professional and vocational education, teacher education, student experiences, regulatory frameworks, institutional governance, diversity and other crucial facets of higher education. I especially appreciate the balance this policy proposes to achieve between quality and equity of access to higher education, and  its emphasis on liberal arts and research. What’s your comment on compulsory transformation of all HEIs (higher education institutions) into large multidisciplinary universities and colleges as mandated by NEP 2020? Clustering HEIs into large multidisciplinary universities will enable delivery of holistic education to students, and lead to better utilisation of available resources. To implement this proposal, it’s important for HEIs to expand into multidisciplinary universities, or cluster and consolidate themselves into viable universities. Established universities could mentor colleges to manage the transformation. Therefore, regulatory agencies should give them time, support and resources to expand their range of disciplines or cluster with neighbouring institutions. NEP 2020 has set a target of India achieving GER (gross enrolment ratio) in higher education of 50 percent by 2035. This could result in quality dilution… If we are able to successfully achieve the consolidation of HEIs and establish one HEI per district as proposed by NEP 2020, we should achieve this GER target. Other reforms such as multiple entry and exit options, award of vocational degrees and providing higher education in local languages will also translate into higher enrolment. However, there’s also need to focus on investing resources in faculty expansion and development, so that increased student intake doesn’t compromise quality or negatively impact teacher pupil ratios. A collaborative effort is needed between government, regulators, universities and private philanthropists to ensure quality is not diluted. My belief is that the use of technology, introduction of multidisciplinary education, curriculum and pedagogical reforms will ensure balance between quality and equitable access. The advantages of multiple entry and exit points in higher education study programmes. This will provide students flexibility and enable them to complete their higher education if they experience circumstantial constraints, and also reduce drop-out rates. However, implementing this NEP 2020 recommendation will require a balance of creative thinking and practical utility to develop curriculums for well-structured 1/2/3/4 year undergraduate programmes. It is critical to devise curriculums that equip students with sufficient skills to find employment when they exit the system. Also, a robust system will be needed to manage the proposed Academic Bank of…

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Teacher education – Maya Menon

An alumna of Delhi and Leicester (UK) universities, Maya Menon is the celebrated founder-director of The Teacher Foundation (estb.2002), a highly respected Bangalore-based teacher development organisation. Are you satisfied with NEP 2020’s proposals for revamping teacher education? Far from being satisfied, I am sceptical about how the proposed reforms will translate into norms and practice in the next three, five, even ten years. The teacher education reforms proposed by the NEP 2020 reads like a laundry list of ‘good-to-have’ items. What’s your comment on the proposed four-year integrated B.Ed degree programme? Should the policy have also provided for lateral entry from other professions? There is provision in NEP 2020 for shorter-term teacher training programmes. Graduates with a three-year undergrad degree have the option to complete a two-year B.Ed programme and graduates with a four-year undergrad degree can enroll for a one-year course. I believe this will enable more people, especially mature students, to make lateral entry into the teaching profession. However, I would have liked more flexibility through the development of high quality ‘teaching schools’ in every district and administrative block, which would work in close conjunction with higher education institutions (HEIs) offering B.Ed courses. This would allow aspiring teachers to practice their craft as trainees while studying for their B.Ed degree in HEIs on weekends, or during vacations or online mode. We need to devise multiple routes to teacher certification without diluting quality. Should the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) be made more stringent? The current national TET pass rate is an abysmal 10 percent… One positive recommendation in NEP 2020 is mandating TET for all teachers — foundational, preparatory, middle and secondary. Besides, now TET will have to be cleared by all teachers of government and private schools. However, there is no mention of improving or recasting TET to make it a more reliable indicator of teacher competence. The current abysmally low pass rate is not only because of the questionable quality of teachers, but also because it’s an imperfect test. This issue hasn’t been addressed in NEP 2020. Is there a case for reducing teachers’ non-teaching workload? This has been proposed earlier but without success… The NEP document says: “To prevent the large amounts of time spent currently by teachers on non-teaching activities, teachers will not be engaged any longer in work that is not directly related to teaching; in particular, teachers will not be involved in strenuous administrative tasks and more than a rationalized minimum time for mid-day meal-related work, so they may fully concentrate on their teaching-learning duties.” However, I have grave doubts whether this aspiration of NEP 2020 will be realised or whether there is any real intention to do so. As we speak, thousands of government school teachers are on Covid-19 duties. Instead, they could have been engaged to plan meaningful online and remote classes for children. The NEP mandates continuous professional development (CPD) of 50 hours per year for all in-service teachers… In principle, this is a great idea. But in a nation…

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Dr. Bijaya Sahoo

Standards-setting & accreditation for schools – Dr. Bijaya Kumar Sahoo

Dr. Bijaya Kumar Sahoo is founder-chairman of the Bhubaneswar (Odisha)-based SAI International Group comprising four institutions — the SAI International School, SAI International Residential School, Sai Angan preschool and Sai International College of Commerce — with an aggregate enrolment of 5,260 students and 756 teachers. Dr. Sahoo is also Advisor with ministerial rank of the Odisha Adarsha Vidyalaya Sangathan, tasked with the mission to establish 314 CBSE-affiliated English-medium government schools — one in every administrative block of Odisha. Read: Odisha Adarsha Vidyalaya Sangathan: Revolutionising public schooling in India Are you satisfied with NEP 2020’s proposals for regulating schools? For the first time in Indian education history, NEP 2020 has focused on learning outcomes rather than input-based standards for school education. The proposed State School Standards Authority (SSSA) will ensure accountability and improve overall quality of K-12 education. Most important, if implemented as proposed, it will ensure all schools — public and private — maintain minimum quality standards. NEP 2020 states that all public and private schools will be assessed and accredited on common criteria. In the long run greater accountability will improve overall standards. The policy separates the regulatory and operational functions of government. Is this possible with government agencies still executing all roles? NEP 2020 has separated the functions of policy formulation, operations and regulation and entrusted them to different government agencies. While the State Education Department is tasked with policy formulation, the Directorate of Education is in charge of running government schools and SCERT will set academic standards. The success of this three-tier system will depend on how effectively state governments are able to maintain the independence of these institutions. Won’t the State School Standards Authority (SSSA) tighten government regulation of private schools? An ‘independent’ SSSA is mandated with regulating public and private schools and monitor maintenance of minimum common standards. Careful selection of SSSA members is of paramount importance for maintaining its independence. Otherwise, it will end up overregulating private and underregulating public, schools. All schools are obliged to post extensive information on the SSSA and institutional websites. Doesn’t this NEP 2020 provision violate institutional privacy? While self-disclosure of all institutional information by schools will ensure transparency, regulators have to safeguard schools against harassment and misuse of disclosed information. NEP 2020 proposes a National Assessment Centre (PARAKH) to conduct numerous examinations. What’s your comment? The National Assessment Centre for Performance Assessment, Review and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development — PARAKH — has been set up to conduct exams for classes III, V and VIII in addition to classes X and XII board exams. Though this will ensure better learning outcomes, there’s the danger that too many exams will stress out children, especially in their formative years, teachers and parents. What are the major implementation roadblocks confronting NEP 2020? The success of NEP 2020 will depend on adherence to timelines in formulating regulations, validating processes and taking corrective action if required, during implementation. In my opinion, the biggest roadblock is funding. NPE 1986 recommended raising public spending…

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School curriculum and pedagogy reforms – Ryan Pinto

An alumnus of the Aston Business School, UK, and Cass Business School, London, Ryan Pinto is CEO of the Mumbai based Ryan International Group of Institutions (RIGI), India’s largest proprietorial K-12 schools chain with 137 schools and an aggregate enrolment of over 270,000 students mentored by 16,000 teachers. How satisfied are you with NEP 2020’s proposals for curricular reforms in K-12 education? NEP 2020 is a comprehensive education policy document. Its school curriculum reforms are laudable especially the proposal to eliminate rote learning in favour of competencies assessment. Moreover its emphasis on teacher training, introduction of inter-disciplinary learning and vocational education for all children from class VI onwards, are praiseworthy initiatives. NEP 2020’s high  emphasis on early childhood careand education was overdue. I am especially delighted that the policy document mandates development of curriculums and pedagogies that promote critical thinking, creativity, problem-solving and knowledge application skills. These practices were introduced in RIGI schools several years ago. NEP 2020 proposes a new 5+3+3+4 academic structure to replace the existing 10+2 school system. How easy will it be for private schools to switch to this new structure? This is a welcome initiative because it paves the way for all government and private schools to formally integrate nursery and kindergarten education into school education. While the transition may be difficult for some schools that don’t provide early years education, the new structure will soon become normative. Also, higher secondaries and junior colleges will become redundant as classes XI and XII will become integral to school education. What should be the major prioritiesof schools as they switch from rote learning to holistic, inquiry-based and experiential learning recommended by NEP 2020? Schools need to transform their teaching-learning systems in three fundamental areas: Content support. Teachers and students need to be provided curriculums /content that promote creativity, critical thinking and deep understanding of theoretical concepts. Teachers. Continuous teacher and support to implement experiential and collaborative learning pedagogies is imperative for delivering holistic curriculums. Continuous and comprehensive assessment. The evaluation system needs overhaul to enable assessment of students’ application and analytical capabilities. Will introduction of a wide range of new courses/subjects in secondary school drive up school fees? This proposal will have to be implemented with care and consideration as students will benefit from varied subject choices only if their chosen subjects benefit them in higher education. Moreover, introduction of even limited subject choices across the science, commerce and arts streams will require recruitment  of well-qualified teachers. This will drive up school fees. NEP 2020 has proposed introduction of holistic 360 degree multi-dimensional student report cards. Your comment? The NEP 2020 policy document emphasises assessment for learning and not assessment of learning. This shift will transform the way teachers teach and students learn. To implement this proposal, intensive teacher training will be required and exam/test formats will need to be overhauled to assess students across cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains. What are the major implementation roadblocks to NEP 2020? India has 250 million school-going children. This is…

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Early childhood care & education – Swati Popat Vats

Dr. Swati Popat Vats is president of the Early Childhood Association (ECA, estb.2011) which has a membership of 38,000 preschools countrywide, and president of the Association for Primary Education and Research. How satisfied are you with NEP 2020’s recommendations for early childhood are and education (ECCE)? NEP 2020 clearly acknowledges that over 85 percent of a child’s cumulative brain development happens prior to the age of six years and that ECCE is the foundation of all future learning. This is cause for celebration. To its credit, the policy has made sensible proposals to improve all ECCE programmes except in the area of teacher training. What are your implementation/suggestions for the following: National Curricular and Pedagogical Framework for Early Childhood Care and Education (NCPFECCE)? ● NCERT has been tasked with developing NCPFECCE within two sub-frameworks — for 0-3 year-olds and 3-8 year-olds. I hope the philosophies and pedagogies of globally respected ECCE pioneers such as Friedrich Froebel and Maria Montessori and Indian educationists Gijubhai Badheka, Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Tarabai Modak and Anutai Wagh will be reflected in the frameworks. ● We need to follow the lead of developed countries that have designed common core ECCE curriculum guidelines such as EYFS (UK), EYLF (Australia) and EYDL (Singapore). These are excellent documents that detail standards covering infrastructure requirements, safety processes, curriculum goals, assessment systems, etc, providing high-quality benchmarks for ECCE centres, teachers and parents. NCERT must study these countries’ ECCE policies and adapt their best practices. There’s no point wasting time on reinventing the wheel. ● NCERT and SCERTs should invite curriculum and child development experts and organisations such as the ECA which have a wealth of experience to contribute to the design of  NCPFECCE. ● Currently, there’s too much focus on the development of cognitive rather than social skills in ECCE curriculums. NCPFECCE should strike a balance between the two to develop socially and emotionally capable and ‘happy to learn’ children. Strengthening the country’s 1.4 million anganwadis and their integration into school complexes/clusters as recommended by NEP 2020. For historical reasons, government promoted anganwadis lack qualified ECCE teachers, quality learning materials and infrastructure. Against this backdrop, integrating anganwadis into school complexes/ clusters as proposed by NEP 2020 is a good idea as it will enable them to share resources and ensure learning continuity. But care needs to be taken to ensure that the development needs of youngest children are prioritised. Most important, we need to design a mechanism to develop quality teachers and improve  learning outcomes in anganwadis countrywide. ASER has developed an assessment scale for preschools which should be strengthened and deployed in all preschools countrywide. But to do this, it’s imperative to increase the budgetary allocation for the ICDS programme. In Union Budget 2020-21, a mere Rs.20,532 crore was allocated for 1.4 million anganwadis. This needs to be tripled to implement the ECCE reforms proposed by NEP 2020. Restructuring of ECCE to include 5 years of foundational learning (3-8 years) For this proposed restructuring to succeed, clear planning is…

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Implementing NEP 2020: Expert advice for central government

Against the backdrop of spreading pessimism, EducationWorld presents suggestions and recommendations of seven carefully selected education leaders for implementing the new education policy in seven critical domains – Summiya Yasmeen The initial euphoria that greeted the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 promulgated on July 29, is dying down as the sobering realities of implementing this elaborate policy prescription to transform India into “an equitable and vibrant knowledge society by providing high-quality education to all, and thereby making India a global knowledge superpower,” are dawning on the commentariat. The ambitious school, higher and vocational education reforms set out in the country’s first education policy of the 21st century require that the Central and state governments — education is in the concurrent list of the Constitution — to constitute a bewildering array of committees and regulatory bodies, and legislate dozens of new education laws. Some state governments have already expressed their apprehensions about implementing NEP 2020. For instance, on August 31, a six-member committee constituted by the West Bengal government to evaluate the NEP 2020, rejected the policy on the grounds that it “lacks clarity and may not be equally applicable to the entire country due to its differing cultural heritage”. Certainly the shadow of bureaucracy looms over NEP 2020. “The policy is an amalgam of high rhetoric clouded by implementation uncertainty because of its conspicuous failure to make a clean break with bureaucratic controland- command,” wrote Dilip Thakore, editor of this publication, in the August cover story of EducationWorld, titled ‘NEP 2020: Visionary charter, educracy shadow’ (see www.educationworld.in). More important, the billion dollar question increasingly being posed in print and social media analyses of NEP 2020 is about funding the grand architecture and design of NEP 2020. With the Covid-19 crisis wiping out tens of thousands of businesses and livelihoods, and the economy contracting by an unprecedented 24 percent in the first quarter of fiscal 2020-21, tax revenues of the Central and state governments have plunged and social welfare expenditure including education, is certain to be slashed. Despite NEP 2020 reiterating government resolve to raise spending on public education to 6 percent of GDP (NPE 1986 and its predecessor Kothari Commission in 1966 had made similar pleas), current government (Centre plus states) spending on public education is a mere 3.1 percent of GDP. The universal expectation is that far from increasing, government expenditure on public education will decrease during the next three years, as recovering industry and business growth momentum — and add to that additional defence expenditure because of the China threat in the north-east border region — become the top priorities of government. Nevertheless, in a live broadcast to the nation on August 7, prime minister Narendra Modi reiterated the Central government’s determined resolve to implement NEP 2020. “It is natural for some people to question that after sucha big reform was brought on paper, how will it be implemented at the ground level. That is, now everyone’s eyes are towards its implementation. All of you are directly…

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They said it in July

They said it in August

“In the year after the pandemic schools will have to revisit, in some part at least, the instruction undertaken during the pandemic months and allow their students some leeway to accommodate the gaps that may have crept in… The idea is not to treat them with kid gloves…. rather focus on allowing children to regroup and resettle after the unnatural times of the pandemic.” Historian Sharmistha Gooptu on how to correct for the unevenness of home-based schooling post the pandemic (Times of India, August 20) “Although nurseries routinely use the rhetoric of play-way, their programmes are mostly a downward extension of school. This social reality makes early childhood education in its present form a mixed blessing. By promoting foundational literacy and numeracy as a key educational target of early schooling, we are likely to further stress an already embattled childhood.” Krishna Kumar, former director of NCERT, on the NEP 2020 and perils of prematurely imparted literacy (The Hindu, August 27) “The New Education Policy has set ambitious goals. It is short, however, on how these goals will be achieved… where will we find teachers who will be able to deliver these? How will we replace or transform inadequately prepared and poorly incentivised and often absent teachers that currently exist?” Bhagwan Chowdhry, professor of finance at Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, on NEP 2020 implementation challenges (Deccan Herald, August 27) “At a time when India faces a huge threat from COVID; at a time when the economy is in deep trouble; at a time when people are struggling to get businesses back on track; when China has virtually invaded a part of Indian territory and refuses to back off — at this time, the wall to wall, tabloid, grotesque TV coverage of the Sushant Singh Rajput story is even more sickening.” Nidhi Razdan, associate professor of journalism, Harvard University, on the television coverage of the Sushant Singh suicide story (www.ndtv.com)

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West Bengal: Good ill-wind

– Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) Postponed twice for fear of spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, the IIT-JEE (Joint Entrance Examination) for admission into the IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) and top-ranked engineering colleges countrywide was held from September 1-6, even as the aggregate number of coronavirus positive cases in India crossed 4 million. There has been a continuous chorus for postponement of this exam and NEET, the national common medical colleges entrance exam, because of fear of examinees contracting the dread virus. Opposition leaders including Congress’ Rahul Gandhi, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, her Odisha counterpart Naveen Patnaik, DMK leader M.K. Stalin in Tamil Nadu and Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia had demanded postponement. However on August 17, the Supreme Court dismissed a public interest litigation writ seeking postponement of the two exams, stating a “precious year” of students cannot be wasted and life has to go on. By some accounts the world’s most competitive exam, IIT-JEE is held in two stages — Mains and Advanced. It selects students to be admitted into the country’s 23 blue-chip IITs, 31 NITs (National Institutes of Technology) and Centrally Funded Technical Institutions (CFTIs). IIT-JEE Mains was written by 9.58 lakh higher secondary school-leavers from September 1-6. The top-ranked 2.5 lakh students will become eligible to write the IIT-JEE (Advanced) exam scheduled for September 27 for mission into the IITs, NITs and CFTIs. The other common national exam — National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), a pen-paper exam — is scheduled for September 13 with 1.5 million school-leavers having registered to write it. The Central government’s National Testing Agency (NTA) claims that all arrangements were made to ensure smooth conduct of the exams, and that more than 99 percent of the candidates were given their first choice of centres and cities to write their exams with the number of examination centres increased to 660 from 570 for IITJEE, and 3,843 from 2,546 for NEET. Moreover, the number of examinees per shift was reduced from 1.32 lakh to 85,000 for IIT-JEE, with the number of shifts increased from eight to 12 to maintain social distancing norms. However according to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, because of national lockdown constraints, 75 percent of IIT-JEE (Main) candidates from West Bengal couldn’t write the exam held on September 1. “Out of 4,652 candidates registered for IIT-JEE, in Kolkata only 1,167 wrote the exam despite all arrangements made as per NTA directives,” said Banerjee at a media conference held on September 2. With her forecast that conditions were not conducive for holding these two national exams vindicated, the chief minister urged the Centre to reconsider the situation of the 75 percent who couldn’t write IIT-JEE this year. In West Bengal, 188 engineering colleges, including one IIT, one NIT and Jadavpur University (NIRF ranking 17) admit 32,700 engineering students in 1,588 courses every year. Moreover, 18 medical colleges  13 government-run, four private and one Central government-run — offer a mere 2,600 seats. Every year, 150,000-200,000 school-leavers from West Bengal (pop.…

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Tamil Nadu: Needless resurrection

– Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai) Although the All India ADMK (AIADMK) ruling party is an ally of the BJP/NDA government at the Centre, the three languages learning formula for all school-going children proposed in the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has been rejected outright by the state government and indeed by all political formations in Tamil Nadu (pop. 68 million). On August 3, chief minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami forthrightly said that the people of Tamil Nadu would never accept the Centre’s threelanguage policy, and would continue to teach two languages in the state’s 37,500 government schools. Nor would it enforce the three-language mandate of NEP 2020 in private schools statewide. NEP 2020 approved by the Union cabinet on July 29, mandates two language learning proposals — all school-going children should learn three languages but “no language will be imposed on any state,” and secondly, “wherever possible, the medium of instruction until at least grade V, but preferably till grade VIII and beyond, will be the home language/mother-tongue/local language/regional language… This will be followed by both public and private schools”. Although seemingly liberal, these proposals are like a red rag to a bull for Tamil Nadu’s politicians and two major political parties – AIADMK and the opposition DMK — which rose to power in the 1960s when Hindi was proposed to be legislated as the national language of India. “The three-language formula reiterated by NEP 2020 is a covert attempt to once again impose Hindi as the national language. Since schools cannot afford teachers for all 29 major languages of India, and Hindi is widely spoken, the assumption behind the three-language formula is that most schools will adopt Hindi as one of the three languages mandated by NEP 2020. I am not against Hindi being taught to school students. But the three-language formula violates equality. In 1968, the Union government had said that Hindi, English and one southern language would be taught in all states. Hardly any of the Hindi-speaking states have followed this formula,” says Aazhi Senthil Nathan, convenor of the Chennaibased Campaign for Language Equality and Rights (estb.2015). Also the author of several books including Mozhi Engal Uyirukku Ner, a 500-page tome on language rights movement in India, Nathan believes that Tamil Nadu’s two language formula introduced in 1968, has served the state well. “The two-language formula of Tamil Nadu has been quite successful. The state’s literacy rate was 80.33 percent in 2011, way above the national average. While we regard English rather than Hindi as the official and link language of India, we are in favour of all children having the right to get primary education in their mother tongue,” adds Nathan. A version to Hindi being imposed upon the country as the national language has a long history in Tamil Nadu. Before India wrested its freedom from British rule, founder of the Dravidian movement Periyar E.V. Ramasamy opposed a decision of the revered C.R. Rajagopalachari, then chief minister, to accept Hindi as a compulsory subject in secondary…

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Maharashtra: Faculty predicament

– Dipta Joshi (Mumbai) Faculty of an estimated 62 engineering colleges in the Mumbai metropolitan region have not received their salaries since end-March when the BJP/NDA government at the Centre decreed a national lockdown of industry, business and all education institutions. According to data collected from 48 engineering colleges by the Bombay University and College Teachers’ Union (BUCTU) which represents 4,000 teachers from 350 colleges affiliated with Mumbai University (MU, estb.1857), only 13 colleges have made full and regular payment to teaching and non-teaching staff during the past six months. The defaulters list also names colleges which haven’t paid faculty salaries for over 12 months. The Mumbai metropolitan region hosts 72 engineering colleges including 70 private colleges affiliated with MU with an aggregate enrolment of 1,00,000 students. Their annual tuition fees aggregate an estimated Rs.1,295 crore with the faculty and staff salaries bill totalling Rs.500 crore. Moreover it’s pertinent to note, since engineering colleges collect their annual tuition and other fees upfront in August/September, students’ fees for the recently concluded academic year were collected last year long before the national Covid-19-induced lockdown began. Surprisingly far from accepting their fault, college managements are blaming the state government’s social welfare department. They claim the state’s social welfare ministry owes them “huge arrears” on account of scheduled tribe, scheduled caste and other backward castes (OBC) students admitted under (ST/SC/ OBC) scholarship schemes. It is this delay in release of funds owed to them that has resulted in their inability to pay faculty salaries of the past five months, they argue. However, BUCTU leaders don’t buy this explanation. “Under government and MU rules, they should have set aside a third of their revenue towards salaries last August/September. Clearly they have not done so and are now trying to pin the blame on the government. Moreover, most defaulting colleges have not been submitting their accounts to MU every quarter as mandated by affiliation rules, so their claims cannot be scrutinised by MU,” says Chandrashekhar Kulkarni, a Mumbai University Senate member and professor at the Thadomal Shahani Engineering College, Mumbai. Unfortunately despite engineering colleges being answerable to three competent authorities — MU and the director of technical education (DTE) as also the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the apex governance body for technical education in the country — salaries of faculty and staff are routinely delayed, and several other violations of rules and regulations remain unchecked. It’s also noteworthy that s.72 (10) of the Maharashtra Universities Act (2016) empowers MU to withdraw the affiliation of colleges violating affiliation norms. However when BUCTU raised the matter at the MU Senate committee meeting held on August 25, apart from assuring quick resolution of the matter, the university’s administration failed to initiate any action against colleges defaulting on timely payment of faculty salaries, a prime condition of affiliation. Even as the MU administration and state government’s DTE, which directly supervises MU-affiliated colleges, have remained passive spectators to the predicament of thousands of university and college faculty and staff,…

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Delhi: Reopening dilemma

– Avtar Nehru (Delhi) The unlock 4.0 guidelines announced by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs on August 29 which extended the long period (since mid-March) of the closure of all education institutions until September 30, has opened a small window for their early reopening. According to education insiders in the national capital, the Union cabinet has finalised a plan to restart schools and higher education institutions in a phased manner with effect from September 21 until November 14 (Children’s Day). Under this plan, from September 21, outside local containment zones, 50 percent of teaching and non teaching staff will be permitted to resume offline teaching/telecounseling and related work. Further, under the guidelines, classes IX-XII children will be allowed on a “voluntary basis’’ to visit their schools to seek guidance from teachers. In higher education institutions, research scholars and postgraduate students will have access to laboratories and libraries. ITIs and other skilling institutions including NSDC-partnered training centres, will also commence gradual re-opening from September 21. Coterminously, the ministry of health and family welfare is in the process of drawing up broad SOPs (standard operating procedures) for schools and higher education institutions (HEIs) within home ministry guidelines, and a task force appointed by a group of ministers on Covid-19 management, headed by Union health minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan, is working on the modalities of the reopening plan, which is expected to be unveiled by end-September. However, state governments will have the final say in the matter and will calibrate reopening of education institutions in accordance with locally prevailing pandemic conditions. Hill states of north-east India and other states where the virus infection is low will be the first to restart senior schools. But, informed opinion is unanimous that when schools reopen they should be restricted to class VI upwards, and to a few hours. Also, schools will be advised to run at onethird capacity with students to follow staggered timings as well as alternating school days. The schools reopening plan has been on the table of several minisdelhi Education News tries for a few months now. A feedback survey of parents conducted by the Union education ministry indicated that the great majority of urban parents are not in favour of reopening until the rising curve of the Covid-19 pandemic is flattened or an anti-coronavirus vaccine becomes available. Ranged on the other side are business/industry leaders who are of the opinion that the toll the pandemic lockdown has taken on livelihoods and the economy is becoming unbearable. A rising number of academics are veering around to this viewpoint as well. They say the loss of learning and emotional/mental damage to students caused by the prolonged national lockdown is also becoming unbearable. According to Ambarish Rai, national convener of the RTE Forum — a coalition of over 10,000 education NGOs — as acknowledged by NEP 2020, 32 million children are out of school and if they don’t reopen soon, this number will double immediately as 70 percent of the country’s children haven’t been…

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Children’s evangelist: Nivedita DasGupta

– Paromita Sengupta (Bangalore) Pune-based Nivedita DasGupta is the country head of Miracle Foundation India (MFI, estb.2011, head count: 55) — the Indian division of Austin (USA)- based non-profit Miracle Foundation (MF). The parent foundation was registered in the millennium year to provide for orphaned and other vulnerable children in approved Child Care Institutions (CCIs) that implement the foundation’s welldesigned education, nutrition, health and protective programmes to prepare them for life. MFI is a member institution of a global network of non-profits committed to eliminate traditional orphanages and CCIs by 2040. Among their prominent corporate donors are G.M.R. Vanalakshmi Foundation and Bajaj Auto. Newspeg. Following the Covid-19 induced mass closure of schools in mid-March, Miracle Foundation India has introduced a remote education programme to ensure that the children in the foundation’s 17 approved CCIs continue their education. Leveraging digital learning platforms such as Skype and Zoom, CCI teachers and computer professionals engaged by MFI are providing online classes — including career counseling and life skills education — to 11,542 MFI supported children. History. On the India leg of a world tour in 2000, US-based Caroline Boudreaux, an alumna of Louisiana State University (USA) and a young ‘global leader’ of the Davosbased World Economic Forum, made a visit to a conventional orphanage in a remote village in Odisha. Appalled by the living and learning conditions of eager-to-learn children, Boudreaux quit a promising corporate career and registered the Miracle Foundation in the US with the objective of helping “orphaned and vulnerable children reach their full potential with the broader objective of reuniting abandoned children with their families and encouraging adoption of orphaned children”. Over the past two decades, Miracle Foundation has empowered 15,000 children in 300 approved CCIs countrywide, and reunited 25 percent of them with kith and kin. Moreover, 342 ‘graduates’ of Miracle Foundation India are enrolled in higher education, 18 are in productive employment and 906 have ICT (information and communication technologies) certification. Direct talk. “There are 29.6 million orphaned and abandoned children in India, the largest number of any country worldwide. Our children, mostly first generation learners, receive loving, nurturing care of carefully selected caregivers, periodic health check-ups, three nutritious meals daily and a safe environment in our approved CCIs. We ensure they are enrolled in the nearest government school and proceed into higher education. Moreover, they are provided after school remedial education within the premises of their CCIs. For vocational education, they are enrolled with nearest ITIs (Industrial Training Institutes). We pride ourselves for nurturing our children and ensuring their success in life,” says Nivedita DasGupta, an alumna of Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai with four decades of experience in social work and child development, who was appointed country head of MFI in 2011. Future plans. Looking ahead, Nivedita DasGupta has drawn up an extensive expansion plan for Miracle Foundation India. “In the next five years, we intend to support at least 30,000 orphaned and vulnerable children in approved CCIs while working towards reuniting them with their…

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Man for all seasons: T.K. Chandra Mouli

– Summiya Yasmeen (Bangalore) T.K. Chandra Mouli is director of Grafiprint Pvt. Ltd which runs the W.Q. Judge Press (estb.1952), Bangalore, one of the garden city’s oldest printing presses specialising in printing stationery, books and magazines, especially for education institutions. Moreover he is a multi-skilled polymath with a vast repertoire of skills spanning public speaking, graphology, theatre, pranic healing, story-telling and wine tasting, and also communications trainer and transformational coach who has mentored over 10,000 individuals countrywide. Newspeg. Recently, Chandra Mouli has written to over 500 schools, colleges and universities offering communication training and coaching services. History. A commerce graduate of Bangalore University with numerous certifications in print technology and management, Chandra Mouli began his career in 1985 at the familyowned W.Q. Judge Press. Since then over the past 35 years within its deceptively old world premises in Bangalore’s central business district, WQJ has transformed into the city’s most popular printing press with a clientele spread across India and the US, UK and Canada. Simultaneously, Chandra Mouli pursued his diverse interests by signing up for several short-term study programmes. “Every birthday, I resolved to learn and develop a new skill. And that’s how over the years I developed capabilities in public speaking, communication and personality development training, theatre, graphology, pranic healing, wildlife, adventure sports and wine tasting,” says Chandra Mouli, a member of the Toastmasters International (358,000 members in 141 countries), a US-based non-profit that operates clubs worldwide to promote communication, public speaking and leadership skills Direct talk. “My objective is to enable corporate professionals, teachers and students to develop verbal and written communication capability, body language, etiquette and public speaking skills. With college/ university students and especially business executives working from home, this is an opportunity for them to develop good communication skills. It will enhance the CVs of working professionals and employability of students in an uncertain economy,” says Chandra Mouli, a professional trainer certified by the Indian Academy of Training and Development (ITAD), Chennai. Future plans. Despite prevailing gloom and pessimism, Chandra Mouli is confident about the future and predicts a 30 percent upsurge in business after the pandemic lockdown is lifted. “The Indian economy will experience a V-shape recovery. The focus on Make in India and Atmanirbhar Bharat initiatives will drive demand for indigenous goods and services, including printed products. I am also confident of an increasing number of professionals and students signing up for communication skills training to enhance their job prospects and employability,” says this indefatigable polymath. Also read: Children’s evangelist: Nivedita DasGupta

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Leadership missionary: Shobhit Mathur

– Avtar Nehru (Delhi) Shobhit Mathur is executive director of the Delhi-based Vision India Foundation (regst.2014) and co-founder and dean of the Rashtram School of Public Leadership, located within the newly promoted Rishiwood University, Sonipat (estb.2018). A highly qualified alum of IIT-Bombay, University of Washington and ISB-Hyderabad, Mathur previously worked for Amazon.com in Seattle and served as Joint National Organizing Secretary of Youth for Seva, a Bangalore-based NGO. Newspeg. The Rashtram School of Public Leadership, an initiative of Vision India Foundation, was all set to start its two-year fully residential Masters programme in leadership, but has deferred its launch to next year because of the Covid-19 national lockdown. History. Together with IIT-B classmates — Sahil Aggarwal, Kumar Subham and Raghava Krishna — Mathur conceptualised and established the Rashtram School of Public Leadership (RSPL) in 2019. Prior to undertaking this initiative, the team has been running an annual Policy BootCamp and providing fellowships and governance programmes under the aegis of the Vision India Foundation. The rising popularity of these programmes attended by 1,300 fellows in four years led to a 12-month accelerator programme and eventually to the Masters programme and promotion of RSPL. According to Mathur, the promotion of RSPL is inspired by Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques (Sciences Po), France and The Matsushita Institute of Government and Management, Japan. “We need thought, social and also political leaders rooted in the soil to represent the will of the people and place the nation above self. There is a dearth of this type of leadership in contemporary Indian society,” says Shobhit Mathur. Graduate students of RSPL will be trained in three domains — academia, politics and civil society. Direct talk. “During my days at ISB, Hyderabad with nothing to do on weekends, I started working with Youth For Seva. It was then that I discovered that our youth are disconnected from society and there is need to re-connect them with the country’s grave socio-economic problems. After I moved to the US, I retained contact with several of my IIT batchmates. And then one day, I decided to pack my bags and head homewards because I wanted to pursue my passion of creating impactful change agents and joined the Vision India Foundation. That was the start of my journey to actualise my ambition of making India a better nation through interventionist leadership training,” recalls Shobhit Mathur. Future plans. Looking ahead, Mathur believes that generating awareness of the civilisational riches and wisdom of ancient India in executive education programmes can produce a new generation of leaders. “Currently, RSPL has five areas of focus: civilisational studies, wellness, foreign relations, innovation in governance and social leadership. By integrating these focus subjects into a postgrad study programme, we can produce the type of leaders India urgently needs,” says Shobhit Mathur. Wind in your sails!

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Go-getter edupreneur: Deep Udeshi

– Dipta Joshi (Mumbai) Mumbai-based Deep Udeshi, chairman and managing director, Educational Software Technologies (EST, estb.2001) and Vibrant Publishers, Colorado, USA (estb.2010), has been a publisher of academic, test prep books and online solutions in India and the US for more than two decades. To meet continuous demand from test takers, the two companies have published 60 hardcopy titles and devised 30 simulated online tests for GRE (Graduate Record Examinations), GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test), SAT, TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and ACT (American College Testing) etc, serving over 100,000 students annually. Vibrant Publishers also publishes self-help books popularly known as the Self-Learning Management Series, as well as vocabulary flashcards to assist Indian school-leavers to learn and improve their English language skills. Newspeg. A strong proponent of flashcards as memorisation aids, Udeshi launched an updated second edition of 1,500 English language vocabulary flashcards on August 15. “Flashcards help school-leavers and graduates to improve their English vocabulary and learn and master new words. We have always had flashcards in our product portfolio which contain as many as 4,300 words. Our recent research indicates that students can do well in SAT, GRE and other English language tests by concentrating on only 1,500 words included in our latest edition of flashcards,” says Udeshi. History. One of the first providers of online test prep material in India, Udeshi’s entry into this business was quite by chance. During his last semester at the Mumbai-based Thadomal Shahani Engineering College, Udeshi’s penchant for software programming prompted him to create digital versions of then available GRE, GMAT and other test prep books. The unexpected demand for his online tests led him to promote Educational Software Technologies and enter the test prep publishing business 20 years ago. A decade later while vacationing in the US, Udeshi became aware of the massive price differential between text prep books produced in the US and India. Spotting a business opportunity he set up Vibrant Publishing. Vibrant test prep books printed in India and sold in the US, are priced at less than half the market price of $75-150 in the US. Direct talk. “Last year, over 4 million high school-leavers in the US wrote the ACT and SAT exams, and over 100,000 Indian graduates wrote GRE to qualify for admission into universities abroad. We have been offering value for money to students by pricing our books and solutions at affordable rates. We have a team of 50-60 content creators who write content that our young readers can understand easily,” says Udeshi. Future plans. Udeshi is bullish about growth of the test prep books which are still popular in India. In particular he believes that the large teenage population in India’s tier II-III cities has huge business potential. “We have been focused on metros so far, but are now looking to expand our reach to small-town India and the US. We also believe the lucidity of our content, particularly our Self-Learning Management Series, makes our reading material ideal for students…

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Accomplished philanthropist: Kiran Nadar

– Dilip Thakore (Bangalore) An English literature graduate of Delhi University with multi-industry experience in advertising, garments manufacture, IT industry and also an international bridge player, Kiran Nadar is chairperson of the eponymous Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA, estb.2010). This museum houses India’s largest collection of modern art comprising 7,000 exhibits of art, sculpture, installations and conventional paintings in its two galleries in Noida and Delhi. Newspeg. KNMA has finalised a blueprint to construct a new, consolidated museum of art, culture and heritage in Delhi. Designed by Ghana-based celebrity architect Sir David Adjay, this new public museum will have double the capacity of its two predecessors. Work on building the new KNMA facility will begin as soon as economic activity resumes after the Covid-19 national and local lockdown of business and industry is lifted. History. After graduating from Delhi University’s top-ranked Miranda House, Nadar (nee Tandan) began her career in 1970 with Mass Communications and Marketing (MCM), then the dominant and most respected advertising agency in the country. However after short stints in MCM’s Delhi and Bombay (Mumbai) offices, she returned to Delhi to help her mother manage her garments manufacturing company Alumna India Pvt. Ltd. Meanwhile in 1975, she met with and wed Shiv Nadar, then employed in the DCM Group’s electronic calculators manufacturing division. In 1976, Shiv Nadar promoted Hindustan Computers Ltd (HCL) to manufacture micro-processors for India’s then nascent IT industry. In 1980 when Shiv moved to Singapore to establish HCL’s Singapore operations, Kiran teamed up with Rajendra Pawar and Vijay Thadani to establish NIIT Ltd, where she served as promoter-director for three years (1982-1985). In the mid-1980s she took a sabbatical to play competitive bridge, transforming into a worldclass player winning several national championships and represented India in tournaments abroad. In 1994 together with her husband Shiv, who in the meanwhile had developed HCL into a transnational IT services heavyweight (annual revenue: Rs.72,304 crore in 2019-20), Kiran Nadar co-promoted the Shiv Nadar Foundation (SNF). Shiv Nadar Foundation. During the past quarter-century SNF (annual budget: Rs. 689 crore) has promoted the SSN University, Chennai and Shiv Nadar University in Dadri (Uttar Pradesh) with an aggregate enrolment of 6,900 students mentored by 906 faculty. Moreover, the foundation has also established four free-ofcharge thoroughly modern Vidyagan boarding schools for children of economically weaker sections in UP, and KNMA. Direct talk. “In SNF, we believe that K-12 education should be as broad as possible, give children a wider perspective and invest them with knowledge of our rich civilisational history, culture and heritage. This is essential for development of national pride and unity,” says Kiran Nadar. Future plans. As soon as KNMA in its new avatar is up and running after the lockdown is lifted, the museum will commence lectures and seminars on art, culture and heritage and invite four-five school groups including parents to visit and participate in these activities. “KNMA will become a major hub of art, culture including performing arts and heritage education. I believe our activities…

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Delhi: ARIIA Rankings 2020

– Paromita Sengupta with bureau inputs New Delhi, August 18. Union education minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ released the annual Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovations Achievements 2020 (ARIIA, estb.2018) which ranks higher education institutions and universities for innovation and entrepreneurship development in six categories. Under the category of Centrally-funded institutes of national importance, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi are top-ranked followed by IISc, Bangalore and IIT Kharagpur. Bhubaneswar’s Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology is top-ranked among private universities, followed by SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai and the Vellore Institute of Technology. This year a new category of women’s higher education institutions was introduced to encourage women and gender parity in innovation and entrepreneurship. The Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women, Coimbatore, is top-ranked in this category of ARIIA 2020. Punjab Smart Connect Scheme Chandigarh, August 12. Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh launched a Punjab Smart Connect Scheme (PSCS) under which smartphones were gifted to six class XII students in a symbolic gesture. State ministers and MLAs were entrusted with the task of symbolically distributing 20 smartphones each to students in various districts to mark launch of the scheme. During the first phase ending November 30, 1.74 lakh class XII government school children including 1.11 lakh in rural Punjab will be gifted smartphones valued at Rs.92 crore under PSCS. Nagaland Absenteesim notices Kohima, August 9. Showcause notices have been issued to eight teachers including the headmaster of a government school in Phek district for being absent from school since end-March after imposition of the national emergency lockdown following the Covid-19 outbreak. Addressing media, Thuvopisu Vesathu Dozo, chairman of the School Management Board (SMB) which issued the notices, said: “Despite the government’s orders directing teachers to be present in their schools, these teachers were absent from duty. We want teachers to make their presence felt so students can clarify their doubts and attain quality education.” Shanavas C, principal director of school education, clarified: “There are no holidays for teachers. Schools may have shut down due to the pan demic but teachers are required to be present in their schools for preparing notes and worksheets for distribution to students.” West Bengal Rebel headmaster Midnapore/Kolkata, August 12. Defying government directives on schools closure following the Covid-19 outbreak, the management of Hatsarberia B.C. Roy High School in the state’s Daspur area of Paschim Mednapore district restarted classes for class X students. “We started classes following all social distancing norms and standard protocols. Our students were very enthusiastic about attending school after staying at home for several months,” said headmaster Brindaban Ghatak explaining his decision. “Several parents had also requested us to restart classes,” he added. In a late evening development, an education ministry official said the headmaster has been issued a show-cause notice. Goa Tripartite agreement Panaji, August 13. In a unique collaborative initiative, the Goa government has signed a tripartite agreement to introduce dual world-class German vocational education and training in the…

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Media Mephistopheles

The tragic alleged June 14 suicide in Mumbai of Sushant Singh Rajput, a personable rising Bollywood film star, has transformed television into a media circus. A lurid latter-day tragedy of sex, suicide, murder, conspiracy, drug abuse, financial shenanigans and political intrigue is being played out in drawing rooms of rich and poor households across the country. Leading the charge of the idiot box wolf pack is Arnab Goswami, promoter-director of Republic Media Network and chief anchor of the Republic English language television news channel, and indisputably the most infamous TV news anchor countrywide. On his nightly prime time (9-11 p.m) show, participants with Goswami in the lead, outshout, badger, bully and humiliate invited (reportedly for handsome consideration) guests, to the obvious delight of the public, which has given Republic News the highest TRPs (television rating points which translate into advertising revenue) of any English news channel. Goswami is reportedly a postgraduate of Cambridge University (UK). Quite obviously, the one-year duration Masters programme of British universities is not enough for learning good drawing room manners for which Brits are famous. Be that as it may, for the past two months Goswami has obsessively latched on to Rajput’s alleged suicide which he insists was a carefully planned murder and/or suicide abetment case, with terrier-like ferocity. In support of his contention, he assembled a substantial body of evidence and a national signature campaign which persuaded the Supreme Court to transfer investigation into the case from the bumbling Mumbai police to the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation). However instead of being content with this major victory, driven by TRP greed and megalomania, this runaway news anchor has continued his parallel investigation and pilloried the late actor’s girl-friend, Rhea Chakraborty as the vamp behind this alleged skulduggery. For the past several weeks paying scant attention to major issues such as the rampaging coronavirus, China’s incursions on the north-eastern border, and severe contraction of the economy, Goswami has fixated his amphibious stare on this case, now embellished with speculations of drug running, Bollywood debauchery and nepotism, political conspiracy and cover-up. But to her credit, Chakraborty, a struggling actress, has hit back in interviews with rival news channels tearfully alleging a vicious media trial, persecution and character assassination by Goswami and Republic TV. Slowly but inexorably, the tide of public opinion is turning against this latter-day media Mephistopheles who blinded by greed and ambition, has clearly overreached himself. And far from winning public plaudits as a champion of the “forgotten middle class”, he is arousing the hatred, ridicule and contempt of right-thinking members of society.

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Latter-day Scrooge: N Chadrasekaran

There’s a memory lapse within the country’s smug establishment and middle class that the national Covid-19 lockdown has ruined thousands of small-scale businesses and resulted in an estimated 18 million job losses in industry, especially in the small-scale sector which pays meagre wages to 90 percent of the country’s 420 million labour force. Against this grim backdrop and latest news indicating that the national economy has contracted by 24 percent in the first quarter of 2020-21, a Times of India (August 28) report flashed the tragic news that the annual remuneration of N Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Sons Ltd, the holding company of the salt to steel Tata Group of companies (annual revenue: Rs.827,025 crore), plunged to Rs.58 crore in 2019-20 from Rs.66 crore in the previous year. In his path-breaking book Capital in the 21st Century (2013), French economist Thomas Piketty laments that since the 1980s, income inequality around the world has become sharply pronounced. Although he advocates additional taxation of wealthy citizens, this option is unacceptable in India and other third world countries, because profligate, untrustworthy governments are notorious for wasting tax revenue and likely to dissipate it by way of additional establishment expenditure and/or vainglorious projects. For instance, currently over 20 percent of the tax and other revenue of the Central government is swallowed up by establishment expenditure (salaries, rent, perks). In sharp contrast, a mere 1.87 percent of the revenue of Reliance Industries Ltd, India’s largest private sector company, is spent by way of establishment expenditure. Unsurprisingly, there’s huge resistance to higher income, wealth and other taxes. Hence, the sky-high pay packets of dozens of mediocre CEOs – including N Chandrasekaran — of India Inc. The plain truth is that N Chandrasekaran is over-harvesting the fruit of Tata Consultancy Services, the sole Tata Group company solidly in the black. And it’s pertinent to recall that TCS was built byte-by-byte by Fakir Chand Kohli — widely acknowledged as father of India’s booming IT industry – during his long tenure (1968-2000) as CEO of this now globally respected software development and ITES (IT enabled services) company (annual revenue: Rs.157,000 crore; headcount: 443,676). Since the mid- 1980s, TCS has been contributing over 80 percent of the net profit of the Tata Group of 30 major companies. A visionary and champion of quality foundational STEM education, Kohli was a staunch supporter of this then struggling education-focused publication. With his support in 2007, we introduced the annual TCS EducationWorld Teachers awards under which the country’s best dozen government and private schools primary and secondary teachers selected by an eminent jury after testing and interview, were awarded modest cash prizes, given media coverage and felicitated at a grand annual function. Recommended: India’s most innovative school teachers 2008 But as soon as N. Chandrasekaran was appointed CEO in 2009, he terminated this TCS- sponsored project (annual expenditure Rs.5-6 lakh) on grounds of “unaffordability”. In the very same year, his annual remuneration doubled to Rs.16 crore. Admittedly there is animus against this latter-day Scrooge…

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Poetic melancholia: Small days and nights

Small days and nights – Tishani Doshi; W.W. Norton & Company; Rs.350; Pages 261 Small Days and Nights is a rich work of fiction with an inter-racial love story, probably a portrait of the author’s own parents, a Welsh mother and an Indian, Gujarati father. It impresses by its radical exploring of the root idea of inter-cultural love and the ‘in between space’ that Doshi explored in her first novel (The Pleasure Seekers (2010)) about the offspring of the original inter-racial adventures. This story is of the second generation. It shows that Grace, the daughter of the inter-racial lovers, has no predefined script to follow. For, unlike in the case of the Welsh Sian and the Indian Babo of The Pleasure Seekers, whose love endures, the lovers in Small Days and Nights — Indian Mira and the Italian Giacinto, but also the Indian Grace and American Blake — drift apart. The wrecked marriage of parents has consequences for their daughters, especially for the elder Grace, the protagonist of this novel, who grows up utterly alienated and lonely due to her estranged parents. In a key passage, Grace recounts why she is the way she is. “I cannot imagine the security of being born in a place and knowing it to be mine. To think of ancestors whom I resemble, who knew this land, its language, its people. There must be such confidence in this existence, this knowledge that everything you have lived has been lived before by your parents and their parents. All my life I have stood outside, like my father, like my mother, standing behind a glass, looking in.” This quote — especially the expression ‘standing behind a glass’ — serves as a metaphor for the Indian novel in English, its desire to view Indian life through an estranging, and, somewhat distorting, lens. Above all, Small Days and Nights sets out to tell a woman’s story, of woman as an outsider and a survivor. Freed of myths about the “binding vine” of the great Indian family and clan, Grace observes the diverse facets of modern consumerist India, its accelerated urbanisation with little regard for the environment, the widening class and caste divides and the criminalisation of Indian politics. More to the point, she can cut through all this hardness and craze of modern life to its essential source in men’s desire for mastery of the ‘softness’ — read mother nature — of women in their nurturing avatar, that the world needs. In what is probably a manifesto-like passage on eco-feminist writing in recent literature, Grace describes how troubles stem from the desire to use the body as a weapon, as a ladder — for “climbing, conquering, descending, dwindling” — rather than seeing it as a spreading ‘lake’. Though spoken in the context of lovemaking, the vocabulary expands to acquire a wider connotation about how to relate to other people and to nature. The novel has layers of reminiscence — these are reflections wrapped around a slender thread of…

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Think on these things - J. Krishnamurti

Profound insights: Think on these things

Think on these things – J. Krishnamurti; Krishnamurti Foundation; Rs.250; Pages 267 Legendary philosopher, spiritual guru, educationist and one of the world’s pioneer environmentalists Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895- 1986) travelled the world for six decades, delivering illuminating commentaries on the scriptures, philosophy and education. The wisdom he shared, much of which was compiled in the form of books, has a timeless quality and universal reach. Unlike many philosophers, sages and seers whose teachings are oft interred with their bones or relegated to unfrequented library spaces, Krishnamurti’s education philosophy, based on his vision of human progress, lives on in several highly respected bricks-n-mortar schools promoted by the Chennai-based Krishnamurti Foundation India (estb.1928 as the Rishi Valley Trust and renamed KFI in 1970). Today KFI supervises six environment-friendly, no-frills schools across the country with the pioneer Rishi Valley School, Chittoor (Andhra Pradesh) ranked India’s #1 co-ed boarding school for seven years consecutively in the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings. “A school is a place where one learns about the totality, the wholeness of life,” said Krishnamurti famously. “Academic excellence is absolutely necessary, but a school includes much more than that. It is a place where both the teacher and the student explore, not only the outer world, the world of knowledge, but also their own thinking, their  own behaviour.” This book is a collection of some of Krishnamurti’s musings and interactions with students, parents and teachers in India. It covers a wide canvas in which the philosopher-seer reflects on a host of issues related to the human condition — from ambition, desire and acquisitiveness to love and freedom, to intelligence, creative discontent, life and death, religion and God. As Think On These Things, the title of the book urges us — they are the core of human existence. The merit of this compendium is that it awakens the reader to a deeper understanding of the mind of this revered seer. The content is thought provoking, profound without being pedantic, guiding gently without being preachy. Consider for instance, his thoughts on education, a subject with which he was deeply engaged. They raise provocative questions about the meaning and purpose of education. Why do children struggle to be educated? Is it merely to pass examinations for job preparation and to secure gainful employment? Krishnamurti unambiguously expresses his dissatisfaction with conventional education. In his view, the purpose of education is to improve the mind and character of young people, to help them understand the entire process of life. “Having a job and earning one’s livelihood is necessary, but is that all? Are we being educated only for that?” he asks. “Surely life is not merely a job, an occupation; life is something extraordinarily wide and profound, it is a great mystery, a vast realm in which we function as human beings. If we merely prepare ourselves to earn a livelihood, we shall miss the whole point of life. And to understand life is much more important than merely to prepare for examinations and become very proficient in mathematics, physics…

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Reforms required for democratic certification

– Bhuvana Anand is director of research at the Centre for Civil Society, Delhi. Tarini Sudhakar is a research fellow at CCS For the first time in 58 years of its history, the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has scrapped its school-leaving classes X and XII national exams. Thousands of students from schools affiliated with this and several state boards are grappling with the challenge of limited exit certification options. The shutdown of all academic institutions countrywide because of the Covid-19 pandemic, provides an opportunity to re-examine the possibility of multiplying exit options, to think beyond traditional school examination board certificates and democratise certification. Students who opt for traditional brick-and-mortar schooling in India usually write exams conducted by CBSE, Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE), state boards or offshore examination boards such as International Baccalaureate and Cambridge International (UK). These boards provide ‘exit-certification’ to students, signalling their readiness for higher education and the jobs market. However, traditional especially CBSE and CISCE certification, is not available for children who opt out of the conventional brick-and-mortar school system, e.g, homeschoolers or drop-outs. For instance, a teen who fails board examinations as a ‘regular candidate’ is eligible to write the CBSE examination as a private candidate. A regular candidate is “a student enrolled in a school, who has pursued a regular course of study in a school and seeks admission as such to the All India/Delhi Senior School Certificate/Secondary School Examination of the Board.” Private candidates are not permitted to write CISCE examinations. The only option they have is to write school-leaving exams of the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), state open school boards, or Cambridge International (UK). But these options provide limited, rather than clear, pathways to undergrad colleges. In a society that celebrates CBSE and CISCE toppers, NIOS and open school board certificates don’t carry much weight with parents or employers. They are perceived as an option for children unable to cope with traditional school curriculums. This adversely affects the credibility of certificates awarded by NIOS and open school boards. Indeed until 2015, the Pharmacy Council of India didn’t accept NIOS certification for admission into approved pharmacy study programmes provided by colleges and universities. Similarly in 2017, the Medical Council of India issued a notification disallowing students with NIOS and state open school certification to write the National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET) for admission into medical colleges. MCI cited lack of practical education in open schooling syllabuses as justification. Responding, the NIOS management argued that NIOS offers its courses through schools equipped with laboratories and its examinees are required to perform practicals. In 2018, the Delhi high court dismissed MCI’s disqualification order as unconstitutional and awarded parity to NIOS and open schools’ certification. Cambridge International (UK) — now known as Cambridge Assessment International Education (CAIE) — has run into problems with the Association of Indian Universities (AIU), a professional body that assesses the equivalence of certification awarded by foreign examination boards “to help people with…

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Parochial politics endangering unity

Adamantine in its obstinate refusal to fully liberalise and deregulate the Indian economy by consigning the socialist era licence permit-quota regime to the dustbin of history, the neta-babu brotherhood is endangering the unity of India. With unemployment ballooning across the country as the desultory rate of economic growth has been worsened by the Covid-19 induced national economic lockdown, several state governments have issued ordinances, notifications and enacted legislation to reserve 70- 75 percent of jobs for sons of the soil. Given that in 1956, the boundaries of the country’s 29 states were ill-advisedly redrawn on the basis of the language spoken by the majority in each state, in effect this means that government jobs will favour the linguistic majority of every state. On August 19, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced that the state government is “making all legal provisions” for reserving 75 percent of all new government jobs for state residents. In July, the Haryana and Andhra Pradesh governments went a step further and vowed to impose similar quotas on private sector industry. Apart from being unconstitutional because Article 19 (1) of the Constitution expressly confers fundamental rights upon every citizen to move freely and reside in any part of India to practice a trade, profession or occupation, such laws are generating tensions within state boundaries. Because over the past seven decades since independence, tens of millions of rural citizens from across the country have migrated to industrialised states such as Maharashtra, Karnataka and Delhi. The solution to rising unemployment in states is not reserved job quotas, but for the Central and state governments to get their acts together and attract domestic and foreign investment and double their rates of GDP growth to automatically increase employment. Mandating reserved quotas is perhaps the worst pathway towards full employment. Moreover as any amateur economist will vouch, restricting mobility of labour, business professionals and capital within national borders is an invitation to inflation, low productivity and economic backwardness. It’s a fundamental tenet of economics that corporations and entrepreneurs must have freedom to freely marry labour and capital with best priced natural resources for the growth of national economies. In the circumstances, the nativism and parochialism being propagated and practised by a rising number of state politicians is regressive, anti-national and disruptive of national unity. If they really care about the alarming spectre of unemployment staring the country’s youth in the face, state governments should smooth the path for the entry of capital and labour by slashing red tape and introducing single window, time-bound clearances for businessmen and entrepreneurs. Retreat into narrow parochialism will make a bad economic situation worse. Also read: Neta-babu brotherhood destroying private education

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Foolish resurrection of settled issues

Despite a long and troubled history of rejection, Hindi language chauvinism is on the march again in BJP-ruled India. Prime minister Narendra Modi and members of the Union cabinet seem unaware that 56 percent of the nation’s population is unacquainted with Hindi. On August 9, Ms. Kanimozhi Karunanidhi, a member of Parliament from Tamil Nadu, was insulted by a woman officer of the Central Industrial Security Force at Chennai airport for not being familiar with Hindi, “the national language”. On August 21, an official of the Union Ayush (traditional medicines) ministry asked government officials unfamiliar with Hindi to leave his training class. Curiously the reaction of chief ministers and politicians in India’s southern non-Hindi speaking states to this concerted effort to impose Hindi — the lingua franca of the country’s most socio-economically backward BIMARU (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) states which grudgingly host more than half of the country’s 1.30 billion citizens — has been muted, if not of resigned acceptance. This despite the south having bitterly resisted imposition of Hindi as the national language in the 1960s. At that time when Hindi was declared the national and official language, there were protests and threats of secession in the southern states. The objection of peninsular India states to adoption of Hindi as the national language is that it would give citizens of BIMARU states a natural advantage in bagging jobs in government and academia and to dominate the professions. On the other hand, adoption of English creates a level playing field as everybody has an equal chance to learn it. Moreover, since the geographical spread of English is greater than of Hindi, it’s best for inter-state communications. These arguments are as valid today as they were half a century ago Despite this historical backdrop, the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has resurrected the medium of instruction and three languages issues. In essence, it recommends that over half the country’s 260 million in school children learn in Hindi “up to class V or preferably until class VIII” and the other half in 20 disparate languages, and years later graduate with weak English communication skills. The policy also mandates that children should learn three languages, “two of which should be Indian languages”, implying that English, or more accurately Inglish, is not an Indian language. The design is that all children will opt for Hindi as one of the three. The formulators of NEP 2020 seem ignorant of the fact that the medium of instruction issue has been settled by the Supreme Court. In KAMS vs. Government of Karnataka (2014), the apex court decreed that choice of the medium of instruction in school education is entirely of children’s parents. Unsurprisingly, the ruling AIADMK party in Tamil Nadu — ironically a BJP ally — has rejected forthwith, NEP 2020’s three languages prescription reiterating the state government’s established two compulsory languages — English and Tamil — in K-12 education with all other languages optional. Thus through continuous resurrection of well-settled issues, the country’s…

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Berklee College of Music, USA

Berklee College of Music, USA

Among the world’s most prestigious institutions for study of music and the performing arts, Berklee alumni have won 297 Grammy, 34 Emmy, seven Tony and eight Academy awards Established in 1945, the Berklee College of Music, Boston (aka Berklee), is among the world’s largest and most prestigious higher education institutions for the study of contemporary music and the performing arts. CEOWorld magazine ranked Berklee among America’s Top 3 music schools in 2019, while The Hollywood Reporter ranks it among the Top 25. Moreover, Berklee is ranked #3 in Forbes’ rankings of colleges with most Oscar, Emmy and Grammy-winning alumni. To date, 126 Berklee alumni have won 297 Grammy, 34 Emmy, seven Tony and eight Academy awards. Founded as Schillinger House in 1945 by musician and MIT graduate Lawrence Berk, the college initially provided jazz music education. In 1954, when the curriculum expanded to include other music genres, it was renamed the Berklee School of Music and re-christened the Berklee College of Music in 1970. On January 20, 2016, Berklee signed a merger agreement with The Boston Conservatory (estb.1867) — one of the world’s oldest and pre-eminent performing arts conservatories. The combined institution is known as Berklee with the conservatory renamed The Boston Conservatory at Berklee. With its main campus in Boston, a second campus in New York, and an international campus in Valencia, Spain, Berklee offers study programmes in music and the performing arts to 6,439 undergraduate and 560 graduate students. The faculty-student ratio is an enviable 1:4. However, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, all Berklee programmes are being offered remotely/online for the current fall semester Boston. The capital of Massachusetts state, Boston (pop.8.2 million) is the sixth largest city in the US. But perhaps more important, Boston is the ultimate gown town and provides an exhilarating academic experience with more than 50 colleges and universities situated in the Greater Boston area. The climate in Boston is continental, with cold, snowy winters and warm to hot and humid summers, punctuated with frequent thunderstorms. Campus facilities. Berklee’s main campus hosts 25 buildings in Boston’s Back Bay area. Classrooms are specially designed to enable music learning and equipped with audio-visual and stereo sound systems, overhead projectors, whiteboards, musical instruments and excellent acoustics. The main dining hall is housed within a floor-to-ceiling glass structure that transforms into a concert venue. Berklee’s sprawling campus houses 12 performance venues, the largest being the Berklee Performance Center. This 1,215-seats concert hall hosts performances and productions by students, faculty, touring artistes and community organisations. Renowned Indian musicians A.R. Rahman and Shankar Mahadevan have performed at the centre jointly with Berklee students. For sports and games, Berklee students are entitled to utilise health and fitness services of the neighbouring Northeastern University, YMCA, Boston Sports Club and the Tennis and Racquet Club at discounted rates. Admission. Each study programme at Berklee specifies its own admission criteria. For admission into undergraduate programmes, students must submit online application forms together with academic transcripts evaluated by a credential agency (Span…

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Avasara Academy, Pune

Affiliated with the UK-based Cambridge International, Avasara is a need-blind class VI-XII day-cum-boarding school for meritorious girl children from socio-economically disadvantaged communities – Dipta Joshi Nestled in the azure green Lavale valley, 10 km from Pune (pop.7 million), Maharashtra’s second-largest city, is Avasara Academy (estb.2015), a unique class VI-XII day-cum-boarding school for meritorious girl children from socio-economically disadvantaged communities. Affiliated with the UK-based Cambridge Assessment International Education, Avasara Academy, Pune is a need-blind admissions school, i.e, it admits students on merit and provides means-tested scholarships to girls who need them. Students are selected through a rigorous entrance process and taught a unique leadership, entrepreneurship and Indian studies (LEI) curriculum. Founded by Roopa Purushothaman, chief economist and head of policy advocacy at Tata Sons Ltd, the Mumbai-based holding company of the transnational Tata Group (annual revenue: Rs.792,710 crore (2018-19)) and her US-born educationist husband Joseph Cubas, Avasara Academy’s mission statement is “to empower girls of promise to lead lives of distinction and impact”. Currently the school has an enrolment of 393 girl children mentored by 31 teachers. “We have designed a well-rounded curriculum with special emphasis on stimulating intellectual curiosity and developing academic skills required to succeed in world-class universities. Our goal is for Avasara girls to develop the vision and skills required to become entrepreneurs, public change-makers and corporate leaders. The school’s unique LEI curriculum prepares every Avasara student to confront the most pressing challenges in their own lives, their country, and around the world,” says Purushothaman. An alumna of the globally high-ranked Yale University, USA and London School of Economics, Purushothaman began her career with Goldman Sachs, London and achieved international fame for co-authoring a 2003 investment research report predicting growing global power for BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations by 2050. In 2006, she moved to India to work with Everstone Capital, a well-reputed private equity and real estate investment firm. Simultaneously, alarmed by research data highlighting poor learning outcomes and low societal status of adolescent girl children and women in India, she became deeply interested in women’s education and began collaborating with NGOs such as Akanksha and Teach for India (TFI), and conducting after-school classes and science camps for socio-economically disadvantaged girl children. In 2015, she teamed up with husband Joseph Cubas, a fellow Yale alum and director of institutional advancement at the American School of Bombay (ASB), to promote a “leadership and educational academy to educate girls of exceptional promise for a lifetime of leadership and contribution to society”. IT major TCS was the first institutional donor which funded the school’s three-storey building in suburban Pune that now also hosts the TCS Centre for Entrepreneurship. This was quickly followed by generous grants from other corporates that have funded the academy’s Nishar Centre for Leadership, Godrej Library, Oberoi Hall, Honeywell Center for Advancing Girls in Science, and the Mittal Centre for India Studies. The school’s Founders Circle comprises highly respected leaders of India Inc including N. Chandrasekaran, chairman, Tata Sons; Nisaba Godrej, executive chairperson, Godrej Consumer…

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