Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai) Over the past 25 years since it was modestly promoted with the ambition to make education the #1 item on the sputtering national development agenda, EducationWorld (estb.1999) has relentlessly championed foundational early childhood care and education (ECCE) which had been almost totally ignored — especially in public education — for over seven decades. In 2010, EW convened the first International ECCE Conference in Mumbai. Simultaneously, the first EducationWorld India Preschool Rankings were launched to showcase the country’s best preschools in six cities. Since then, the annual EW India Preschool Rankings have been published without interruption featuring most admired preschools in 17 cities as also the country’s best (government-run) Anganwadi Centres (AWCs). Evidently EW’s sustained championing of ECCE has paid off. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 accords high importance to ECCE. To the extent that the previous 10+2 school education system has been recast as 5+3+3+4 mandating three years of compulsory pre-primary education for all children. However, according to reports from the southern state of Tamil Nadu, ECCE has now become too popular. The Federation of Private School Associations (FPSA) in the state has raised alarm over mushrooming pre-primaries, a large number of whom lack basic facilities, employ untrained staff, and disregard safety measures for youngest children. “Under the Tamil Nadu Private Schools (Regulation) Act, 2019, and the code of regulation for nursery and primary schools, all schools are required to obtain recognition from the school education department. However, hundreds of play schools are operating without any recognition,” says M. Arumugam, state president of FPSA. “Most of these schools are functioning out of homes and in overcrowded residential areas, which may be unfit and unsafe for children,” he adds. Other educationists are also sounding warning alarms. “We are witnessing an increasing number of unauthorised schools without proper infrastructure or qualified teachers being promoted, posing a significant threat to the safety and development of young children,” confirms K.R. Nandhakumar, general secretary of the Tamil Nadu Nursery, Primary, Matriculation, Higher Secondary, and CBSE Schools Association. According to Nandhakumar, a large number of the 9,000 pre-primaries approved by the state government’s Directorate of Private Schools, also operate in residential areas. Parents are obliged to pay “hefty fees” for half-day learning, and many teachers are either higher secondary (class XII) or only Montessori certified. Despite the state government having prescribed stringent guidelines for private pre-primaries, enforcement remains weak, says Nandhakumar. “In Chennai, there are at least 1,000 self-styled play schools operating without supervision and affiliation, in violation of law. The government should monitor these institutions more closely. In many cases, classrooms are overcrowded, and the schools lack adequately trained staff qualified to provide the necessary care and educational support to youngest children. With minimal regulatory oversight, too many preschools ignore critical safety measures such as fire safety protocols, first-aid facilities, and CCTV surveillance, putting the lives of children at risk,” says Dr. S. Somasundaram, a Chennai-based educationist. In 2004, a horrifying fire at the Sri Krishna Saraswathi English Medium School at…
“This quiet revolution, this subtle shift, in the way Kashmir engages with democracy, may well be the most profound transformation of all.” Mohammad Tabish, a Chevening Scholar, on high voter turnout in the recent Jammu & Kashmir assembly election (Outlook, October 11) “Legend has it that one of the earliest forms of the prasad was documented way back in 1715. Today, so coveted is the sweet offering that the temple produces some 300,000 daily contributing Rs.500 crore to the annual kitty of the world’s’ richest Hindu shrine.” Amarnath K. Menon, journalist, on allegations that Tirupati laddoo (prasad) was contaminated with animal fat (India Today, October 14) “Even in difficult times, the Tata Group under his leadership was seen as a uniquely benign employer. It did not swindle, it paid its debts, it stood behind its products—and it was largely, if not entirely, free from scandal. It also placed a tremendous effort on philanthropic activities.” The Economist (online) on death and legacy of Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Group (October 10) “Even the BJP was conceding to challenges on a number of fronts: corruption, unemployment, agrarian distress and urban dysfunction. To fritter this opportunity will hurt; it changes the momentum of Indian politics. It strengthens Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was beginning to look very shaky, and is indicative still of a large residual resistance to accepting Rahul Gandhi.” Pratap Bhanu Mehta, public intellectual on Congress party loss in Haryana assembly election (Indian Express, October 9) “Some of Tata Group’s acquisitions have indeed helped make it enough of a household name across countries, for it to emerge as the only Indian brand among the world’s top 100 most valued brands, per Brand Finance global rankings.” Editorial analysing why Tatas apart, no Indian corporate is a global brand (Times of India, October 11)
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) Two months after the gruesome rape and murder of a 31-year-old trainee doctor in the seminar hall of RG Kar Medical College, Kolkata on August 9, public protests and demonstrations continue on the streets of the ‘City of Joy’. The horrific murder of the young medical intern which exposed the lack of safety, governance, and legal accountability of medical institutions in the state, has shaken the bhadralok (refined middle class) out of its torpor. Unusually, they are taking to the streets with rage, staring down the state’s administration. Moreover with more doctors speaking out against mismanagement in medical colleges, systemic bullying, threats and an environment of fear perpetrated by the ‘North Bengal lobby’, i.e, people with close ties to the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) party, public anger is boiling over. Meanwhile, responding to the fourth status report submitted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to the Supreme Court on September 30, a bench headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud observed that “substantial leads” have emerged about the rape-murder of the resident doctor and alleged financial irregularities at the hospital perpetrated by former principal Dr. Sandip Ghosh, who was arrested by CBI on September 14. The bench acknowledged the possibility of an “inter/intra state or broader nexus of smuggling bio waste material” into Bangladesh. The apex court also pulled up the state government for “tardy progress” in improving safety measures to protect doctors in government hospitals across the state. CBI has been investigating the case since August 13 with the Supreme Court taking suo motu cognizance of the case on August 20. According to CBI sources, the ‘North Bengal lobby’ has acquired huge influence in the past decade. They reportedly dictate transfer, recruitment, and promotions within the state government’s Department of Health and Family Welfare. They also enjoy extra-constitutional power as exemplified by the controversial Dr. Sandip Ghosh, who following the rape-murder was transferred to head another government hospital. Preliminary CBI investigations indicate that Ghosh was indulging in illegal body trafficking and biomedical waste disposal, with the aid of Dr. Sudipto Roy, TMC MLA and head of West Bengal Medical Council. Moreover a spate of resignations including 18 junior doctors working in government hospitals in North Bengal due to unfavourable workplace conditions, are indicative of deep rot in the state’s 34 medical colleges with an aggregate enrolment of 5,125 students. As a result, chief minister Mamata Banerjee who usually brooks no dissent and is too thin skinned to tolerate even slightest criticism, has bent to the protesting medicos and accepted much of their five-point charter of September 16. The demands included transfer of several Kolkata police personnel and state health department top brass.Banerjee also sanctioned Rs.100 crore for infrastructure development in hospitals for doctors and reconstitution of patient welfare committees, creation of a special task force to tackle safety-security measures in hospitals and setting up an effective and responsive grievance redressal machinery across hospitals and medical colleges. After these concessions, the junior doctors of state…
Vidya Pandit (Lucknow) A dispute over the recruitment of 69,000 government school teachers in Uttar Pradesh escalated to the Supreme Court of India. On September 9, the apex court overruled an order of the Lucknow high court to draw up a fresh list of recruitees in response to petitions alleging that affirmative action rules were not followed in the recruitment process. In December 2018, the UP government notified recruitment of 69,000 assistant teachers for the state’s 1.33 lakh government schools. In January 2019, 4.1 lakh candidates wrote the qualifying exam, the results of which were published in May, 2020. A total of 146,000 candidates cleared the exam which stipulated varying cut-offs for differing categories of candidates. For unreserved (general) candidates, the cut-off was 67.11 percent; for Other Backward Castes (OBC) 66.73 percent; and 61.01 percent for Scheduled Castes (SC) candidates. The final list of 67,867 selected candidates was released in two batches — June and October 2020. The remaining 1,133 positions for ST (Scheduled Tribes) candidates were left vacant due to lack of minimally qualified applicants. Almost immediately there was a chorus of demands for category-wise disclosure of successful candidates. It was alleged that over 50 percent of selected teachers were drawn from the unreserved (merit) category, with only 3.86 percent instead of the mandatory 27 percent being drawn from the OBC category, and 16.2 percent rather than the mandated 21 percent drawn from SC/ST categories. It was alleged that 15,800 seats which should have been awarded to OBC and SC/ST graduates were allotted to the general category candidates. In July 2020, this allegation was heard by the National Commission for Other Backward Classes. After enquiry, the commission found discrepancies in the criteria adopted for defining OBC and SC/ST for the exam. “There were 34,589 unreserved seats in the examination. As per real figures (sic), 18,851 OBC candidates qualified for admission under the unreserved merit category. However, the first list prepared by the education ministry had only 13,007 OBC candidates in the unreserved category. The remaining 5,844 OBC students were placed in reserved category despite their having qualified in the unreserved category,” said the commission. As a result the OBC reserved category was reduced by 5,623 seats. On January 5, 2022, the ministry prepared a list of 6,800 candidates who would have qualified but for misclassification, and promised to issue appointment letters “shortly”. However, since it was the year of legislative assembly elections and with the model code of conduct in force, the letters were not issued. Therefore, the government’s inaction was protested in a petition filed in the Allahabad high court. In March 2023, the court observed that there were several anomalies in the reservation process of the examination and directed the state to issue a new composite list of successful candidates within a period of three months. During the hearing before the Allahabad high court, the state government acknowledged that the Reservation Act had not been properly implemented. In response, a revised selection list was issued on January…
Autar Nehru (Delhi) C counting of votes of the delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) elections which concluded on September 27, has been postponed by the Delhi high court. Responding to a petition filed by advocate Prashant Manchanda seeking directions to the government to take action against students who defaced public property during the hustings, the court permitted the university to continue with the election but barred it from counting the votes until it satisfies the court that all posters, hoardings, graffiti, and other campaign-related material are removed and public property is cleaned up. The next hearing is on October 21. While hearing the petition, the bench comprising Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela reprimanded the university for failing to take disciplinary action against students campaigning in the DUSU election and for “lacking moral authority and courage”. In an affidavit filed with the petition, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) declared that it removed four truckloads of material that included 16,000 billboards, 7,000 hoardings, 200,000 posters/pamphlets and 28,500 banners from the campuses of DU and its affiliated colleges. The petitioner contended that the Lyngdoh Committee Report (2006) was violated by DU students despite its endorsement by the Supreme Court. The committee was constituted 18 years ago by the Union ministry of human resource development (renamed Union education ministry), following a Supreme Court order to eliminate the influence of money and muscle power in student union elections. It inter alia prohibited students with criminal records or misconduct from contesting elections and limited expenditure to Rs.5,000 per contestant. The guidelines also banned the use of printed posters, pamphlets or any other printed material for canvassing, permitting only hand-made campaign material. In addition, the high court order directed the university to pay MCD Rs.4.55 lakh for removing illegal hoardings, posters, and banners. It also directed DU to bear the expenses incurred by other authorities, including government departments, and Delhi Metro, for restoring public property and to recover the costs incurred from candidates responsible for defacement of public property. Meanwhile despite feverish poster campaigns, social media relays, rallies and dispensing freebies (chocolates, cosmetics, movie tickets and alcohol), only 35 percent of 100,000 eligible DU and affiliated college students cast their ballots for the 21 candidates contesting the posts of president, vice-president, joint secretary and secretary. The main contestants for the four posts were backed by Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) the student wing of the BJP, and National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) of the Congress. Last year, ABVP won three seats, NSUI one. Although all major candidates were backed by national parties, the issues in the DUSU elections were trivial and self-serving, related to tuition fees concessions notwithstanding the reality that DU and affiliated colleges fees (Rs.4,000-60,000 per year) are arguably the lowest worldwide. For ABVP candidates, the main poll issues were ‘one course, one fee structure’ for all postgrad courses, centralised allocation of residential accommodation and scholarships for SC/ST, OBC and EWS categories. NSUI campaigned for greater funding for campus infrastructure,…
Ditsa Bhattacharya (Delhi) The ninth edition of the nirf (National Institutional Ranking Framework) 2024 released by the Union education ministry on August 12 has generated considerable excitement in some higher education institutions (HEIs), especially government colleges and universities. Several low-profile universities which have been awarded high rank in NIRF 2024, have gone to town with expensive full-page ads in national dailies. This year, a total of 6,500 HEIs submitted data to the Union education ministry to be ranked in NIRF 2024. All of them submitted data in prescribed formats to become eligible for inclusion in NIRF’s ‘overall’ Top 100 league table and in each category — colleges, universities, research, engineering and business management. They were assessed under five broad parameters — teaching, learning and resources; research and professional practice; graduation outcomes; outreach and inclusivity and public perception — with institutions in each discipline required to submit documentary evidence of academic progress. A notable feature of the annual NIRF is that participation and submission of data in the prescribed format is voluntary. Most new genre private universities top ranked in the annual EducationWorld and India Today league tables did not participate. Undoubtedly NIRF 2024 is detailed and elaborate and considerable effort has been invested by NBA (National Board of Accreditation), a unit of AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education), a subsidiary of the Union education ministry, which has assessed the data and finalised the rankings. However the NIRF league tables have not resonated with the public because it is patently prejudiced in favour of government HEIs, and biased against private institutions which dominate higher education and provide good, bad and indifferent learning to 70 percent of the country’s 43 million youth in higher education. The Top 17 HEIs in the Overall Top 100 category are government promoted/funded institutions headed by five IITs and Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru. The private sector Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani (BITS-Pilani, estb.1964), commonly accepted as the equivalent of the top IITs and whose alumni include former IISc director Goverdhan Mehta, Sabeer Bhatia, co-founder of Hotmail, is ranked a lowly #23. The unfancied private sector Amrita School of Engineering (#18) and Savita School of Engineering (22) are ranked above it. Even in the engineering category, BITS-Pilani is ranked #20 following all IITs as also Jadavpur University (12) and S.R.M. Institute of Technology (13). On the other hand, in the EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings (EWIHER) 2024-25 — which excludes heavily subsidised government IITs and NITs — BITS-Pilani is ranked India’s #1 private engineering university. Moreover Amity University — India’s top-ranked private multi-disciplinary university (by EducationWorld and India Today) which has established campuses in 13 countries around the world and has an aggregate enrolment of 37,000 students — is ranked #49 in NIRF 2024. The infirmity of the NIRF Rankings is that participation is voluntary — unlike in the EducationWorld, India Today and other media rankings which invoking the constitutional right to freedom of expression and right to evaluate institutions open to the…
Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai) In a reaction to the dmk government’s refusal to implement the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and writing its own State Education Policy (SEP) under the guidelines of the Justice Murugesan Committee which submitted a 550-page draft to the state government on July 1, the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre has withheld the first installment of Rs.573 crore payable to Tamil Nadu under the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) scheme. Under SSA (preschool-class XII) development allocation of the Union education ministry, Tamil Nadu was allocated Rs.3,586 crore for 2024-25, with the Union government to contribute Rs.2,152 crore (60 percent) and the state government covering the remaining Rs.1,434 crore. The funds were to be disbursed in four installments of which the first installment was due in June. However, despite several reminders and letters from the state government, the Centre is yet to release the first installment. This delay has raised alarm about its impact on the state’s education infrastructure and students enrolled in 37,217 government and 8,403 government-aided schools. D. Girija Devi, principal of Anna Gem Science Park Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Chennai, which has 1,400 students and 70 teachers on its muster rolls, says a severe setback for government schools is imminent. “Government school students depend on state government funds to purchase essential textbooks, uniforms, and laboratory equipment. If the state doesn’t receive funding from the Centre, there will be a cascading effect. Education should not be entangled in political disputes between the Centre and states.” The immediate worry is that it is likely to delay the payment of salaries of an estimated 15,000 government and aided school teachers. Moreover, lack of funding could disrupt other critical educational services, including reimbursement of fees for students admitted under the 25 percent quota of the Right to Education (RTE) Act, transportation and escort services provided for children in remote rural areas, teacher training programs, and self-defence training for girls in classes VI-XII. Addressing the media in Kootapuli, Tirunelveli on August 31, education minister Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi highlighted that the Centre had already withheld Rs.230 crore — the final installment of the previous year — and is now refusing to release the first installment of Rs.540 crore due in June. He said that the Tamil Nadu government’s opposition to NEP 2020, which has aroused the ire of the Central government, is primarily due to NEP’s mandate that all students countrywide need to compulsorily learn three languages, including Hindi. This is opposed by all political parties in the state, especially DMK since 1965 when Hindi was first declared India’s national language by the Congress government at the Centre in pursuance of an ill-advised constitutional mandate. Political parties in peninsular India — especially Tamil Nadu whose people pride themselves on the classical vintage and rich vocabulary of Tamil — have vehemently opposed imposition of Hindi as the national language (despite it being the mother tongue of an estimated 47 percent of the country’s population). Tamils believe that declaring it as such would…
Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) Unable or unwilling to improve infrastructure and/or learning outcomes in the state’s 49,679 government schools, officials of Karnataka’s education ministry have continuously targeted the state’s 19,650 private schools for alleged violation of rules and regulations under a plethora of Acts of Parliament (RTE Act, 2009, NEP 2020) and of state government circulars and orders. This has forced private schools to initiate legal action from time to time. On August 6, 11 private unaided/independent schools’ associations grouped under the banner of Karnataka Private School Managements, Teaching & Non-Teaching Staff Coordination Committee (KPMTCC) announced that August 15 would be observed as ‘Black Independence Day’ to protest against “open, continuous and uninterrupted” harassment of private unaided schools by various government departments especially of the education ministry. KPMTCC alleged that numerous government departments — fire safety, public works, revenue, child rights, and police — have been continuously interrupting their operations by demanding bribes for alleged infringements of the law and by way of demanding title, licences and a plethora of documents. Confronted with the prospect of severe embarrassment to the state’s one-year-old Congress government, education minister Madhu Bangarappa — famously described as MIA (missing in action) minister — called a three-hour meeting with KPMTCC on August 13, smoothing their representatives’ ruffled feathers after which the protest was called off. But not without the association presenting the minister with a 14-point memorandum detailing the grievances of private unaided schools. On condition that KPMTCC called off its protest and directed member schools to celebrate Independence Day with the usual pomp and ceremony, the minister assured the committee that a nodal officer appointed by the education ministry will coordinate with KPMTCC president C. Puttanna to discuss and resolve private schools grievances. With the agitation called off, member schools observed Independence Day as usual. The memorandum presented to the minister lists 14 major grievances of private unaided (financially independent) schools which have piled up over the years. Among them: different fire safety, minimum infrastructure, land conversion and other rules for schools established before 2018 when the state government issued a general circular laying down norms for newly-promoted private schools. A major demand of KPMTCC is for 620 private unaided schools declared “illegal” for having additional ‘sections’ than permitted in February 2023, to be regularised. The memorandum also demanded that the syllabus of schools affiliated with the Karnataka state board be brought on a par with the CBSE and CISCE, and textbooks also be revised, to match standards of these two national boards. Another major demand in the 14-point memorandum is that the accreditation renewal period be restored to once in ten years instead of annually, to prevent excessive paper work and demand for illegal gratification (described as “office expenses”) which has become normative. In an unexplained about-turn, since 2022 the education ministry has been demanding that private schools renew their accreditation annually instead of every ten years. “This is very cumbersome for schools because of the heavy paper work involved and recurring demand for bribes.…
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) The horrific rape and murder of a second year postgrad trainee doctor on August 9, inside the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, Kolkata (estb.1886), which ironically hosted India’s first practicing woman medical practitioner (Kadambini Bose Ganguly), has rocked Kolkata and the medical practitioners’ profession countrywide. The 31-year-old woman doctor was resting in the seminar hall of the medical college-cum-hospital after a 36-hour shift on that fateful night when she was sexually assaulted and murdered reportedly by several individuals. Kolkata Police’s Special Investigation Team (SIT) has taken ‘a police civic volunteer’ into custody as the prime suspect, and under pressure, has transferred the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on August 13. Meanwhile the Supreme Court in Delhi has also taken suo motu cognizance of the case. The brutal murder, which according to India’s top court has “shocked the conscience of the nation”, has sparked a series of protest marches, with large crowds including practising medical practitioners taking to the streets to protest deteriorating law and order in the state, and especially the safety of working women. All medical graduates are obliged to serve as trainee or junior doctors in residence for three years before they are permitted to practice medicine. Now there is unprecedented apprehension that women will think twice about entering the healers’ profession in West Bengal where the law and order and justice systems are crumbling and crimes against women doctors and paramedics are multiplying. According to junior doctors, most of the five women’s hostels on the campus of RG Kar Medical College are deserted. Of the full strength of 700 resident junior doctors, only 30-40 women and 60-70 men doctors are currently resident on campus. There’s a general consensus within the state’s establishment this atrocity will be a huge setback for West Bengal which has an ancient and widely admired tradition of women’s emancipation and enrolment in higher education institutions. The state has a rich legacy of excellence in competitive exams, with around 150,000-200,000 school-leavers from Bengal writing national competitive exams such as IIT-JEE and NEET every year. In 2024, 102,557 students from Bengal wrote the centralised NEET-UG exam which determines admission into medical colleges countrywide. Of this number 59,053 (more than 50 percent women) have qualified and will soon commence to study medicine in the state’s 34 medical colleges including the Central government-run AIIMS Kalyani, 24 state government medical colleges (six of which were started by Banerjee in 2019), one state government aided and eight private medical colleges. For women medical students, the gruesome RG Kar rape-murder incident has come as a great shock confirming lack of safety and security on college campuses. A state government August 17 directive to hospitals to avoid night shifts for women doctors is being interpreted as interference with their fundamental right to practice a vocation or profession without hindrance. Moreover, this horrific incident and the state government’s casual and inept response to it — the rape-murder was initially described as a suicide, the crime…
“Every day when I pick up the newspaper there is some incident… Some women have been assaulted. It could be a college student, a child, or a middle-aged lady. (There must be) something wrong with Indian men if we can’t address this problem… This goes back forever but is now talked about since the Nirbhaya tragedy of 2012 and now the R G Kar Hospital rape and murder of 2024.” Shashi Tharoor, Congress MP, on rising sexual violence against women countrywide (August 31, Deccan Herald) “The size of the civil service is quite small by international standards, and its composition needs considerable change – there are too many clerical and administrative staff, and too few technocratic experts, teachers and health workers.” Ajay Chhibber, co-author Unshackling India, on why India’s needs major administrative reforms (Business Standard, September 5) “While a four-medal haul in Rio was India’s best at the time, they captured 19 medals at the deferred 2020 Tokyo Paralymics and have gone past the 20-medal mark in Paris, winning more golds than the total tally in Rio.” Deepti Patwardhan, sportswriter, on the dream run of Indian para athletes at the Paris Paralympics 2024 (Mint, September 7) “Consider this: India has won just 41 medals at the Olympics since 1900. China, on the other hand, clinched 91 medals in Paris alone. India spends roughly $5 million on its athletes. The United States spends $200 million and China $350 million.” Vishal Menon in an essay titled ‘India’s Olympic-sized ambition’ (Business Standard, September 7) “Our present education system is what it is, but it cannot take us to 2047. We need a tsunami of upskilling and uplearning by using the power of the digital and online space that can solve things at scale…” Ronnie Screwvala, co-founder upGrad and Swades Foundation (Business Today, September 15)
“This is a budget that will take the country’s villages, poor and farmers on the path of prosperity. In the last 10 years, 25 crore people have come out of poverty. This budget is a budget for the continuation of the empowerment of the newly emerged Neo Middle Class.” PM Narendra Modi on the Union Budget 2024-25 (Mint, July 23) “Coaching has become commerce, a flourishing industry with high returns… Every time we read a newspaper, the front one or two pages are filled with ads from coaching centres. Every penny spent on advertisement is coming from the students, every new building is coming from the students.” Jagdeep Dhankhar, Vice President of India, on the death of three students at a coaching centre in Delhi (July 29, Rajya Sabha) “It’s a critical moment. I’m a boy from Bombay and it’s great to see an Indian woman running for the White House. And my wife is African American, so we like the fact that a Black and Indian woman is running for the White House.” Salman Rushdie, author, endorsing Kamala Harris, Democratic nominee for the US Presidency (India Today, July 29) “… Since the government is already slow walking its promise of more visas to the Chinese, this moment must trigger action on the real culprit: woeful Indian education.” Ashoka Mody, former Princeton University professor, on why India’s economic growth increasingly depends on foreign expertise, particularly from China (The Hindu, July 30) “Our employment problem is mainly an education problem. Substandard schools and colleges have produced millions of semi-educated, unemployable young people with degrees, but no real skills. Overhauling the entire education system will take decades.” Swaminathan Aiyar, economist-columnist (The Economic Times, August 1)
Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai) A draft of Tamil Nadu’s state Education Policy (SEP), developed as an alternative to the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, has been submitted to the ruling DMK government by the Justice Murugesan-led panel. After the DMK was voted to power in the legislative assembly election of 2021, while presenting the new government’s budget for 2022, Chief Minister M.K. Stalin announced that an exclusive education policy for Tamil Nadu would be formalised. In June 2022, he established a committee of experts from various fields, chaired by Justice (Retd.) D. Murugesan, to formulate the SEP. On July 1, the Murugesan Committee submitted a 550-page report in English and a 600-page report in Tamil, to the chief minister. Major recommendations include that the state government takes appropriate measures to ensure that ‘Education’ is brought back to List II (the states list) of the Constitution; that Tamil language should be the medium of instruction in anganwadis (mother-child care centres) and child development centres; Tamil is the first language of education right from primary school to university level; continuation of Tamil Nadu’s dual-language policy of promoting English and Tamil, and abolition of public examinations for classes III, V and VIII. Moreover, the Murugesan Committee has proposed that the admission age into class I in Tamil Nadu’s 39,300 government and government-aided schools affiliated with the Tamil Nadu Board of Secondary Examinations (TNBSE) and nearly 5,000 Matriculation Board schools should be five years. This despite the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, prescribing the entry age for class I as six. The Justice Murugesan Committee’s recommendations for the proposed SEP has ignited a lively debate in academia about its provisions, and whether an SEP at variance with NEP 2020 is in the larger interest of children in the state (pop.84 million). “If Tamil is introduced as the medium of instruction through school all the way to university, it will surely enable students from rural backgrounds. However, if the DMK government wants education to be brought back in the States list, it should ensure that the education system won’t be diluted. It should ensure teaching-learning quality in the state is on a par with national standards,” says K. Palanivelu, a Chennai-based educationist and former director of the Centre for Climate Change and Adaptation Research at Anna University. This problem of standardisation necessary to enable mobility of students and later professionals, from Tamil Nadu to other states and abroad, worries other knowledgeable educationists as well. “As many as 72 competitive examinations are held every year across the country including IIT-JEE and NEET. If all states follow NEP 2020, there will be standardisation of syllabi and perhaps learning outcomes. This is especially important for maths and science. Moreover, the Murugesan Committee has recommended the primacy of Tamil as the medium of instruction. But the previous DMK government had decreed this 16 years ago. Yet the middle class paid no attention. It continues to send its children to private English-medium schools. Parents’ choice…
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) A month after writing to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to abolish the National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test (NEET) for admission into medical colleges countrywide, on July 24 the state’s cabinet headed by chief minister Mamata Banerjee passed an official resolution calling for the abolition of NEET. This official resolution came a day after the Supreme Court dismissed all writ petitions seeking cancellation and re-test of NEET-UG 2024. Evidently, Banerjee drew inspiration from the Tamil Nadu legislative assembly which unanimously passed a resolution urging the Centre to scrap NEET. On July 25, Karnataka became the third state — after TN and Bengal — to officially request exemption from NEET. The resolution to abolish NEET — a single Central government exam — is being interpreted as demand for state governments to control admissions into medical colleges within their jurisdiction. NEET-UG was first proposed in 2012 to eliminate the burden of school-leavers aspiring to become medical practitioners having to write multiple exams conducted by states in the hope of being admitted into one or other college, and more importantly to standardise numerous entrance exams. The suspicion was that some state governments were setting the admission bar too low and question papers were set to favour students from state board schools. On the other hand, state governments contend that the common NEET-UG exam is based on the syllabus of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), a subsidiary of the Union education ministry which has a mere 28,960 schools affiliated with it. This places students from the country’s other 66 school-leaving exam boards at a disadvantage. In this context, it’s pertinent to note that prior to 2012, CBSE used to conduct an All India Pre-Medical Test (AIPMT) for admission into Central government medical colleges, while states conducted their own tests for medical colleges under their jurisdiction. In 2012, the UPA government at the Centre introduced the one-country, one-exam, NEET-UG for admission into all 706 medical colleges countrywide. After more than 80 writ petitions were filed opposing NEET-UG, in July, 2013, then Chief Justice of India, Altamas Kabir struck down NEET-UG as the common medical entrance examination. Challenging this judgement, the Medical Council of India (MCI) filed a review petition and on April 28, 2016, the Supreme Court upheld NEET-UG as the sole entrance exam for admission into medical colleges countrywide. However, ab initio the Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal has been protesting that the centrally conducted NEET poses major challenges for students from Bengali-medium schools of the state. As a result, MCI agreed to NEET-UG being written in Telugu, Assamese, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil and Bengali. In 2017, question papers were set in different languages for NEET-UG. But immediately, protests surfaced that the Bengali language question paper was “tougher” than the Hindi language paper. The TMC alleged that the agenda of the BJP government at the Centre was to make sure that Bengali-medium students ranked lower, or not at all in the NEET merit list. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who was…
Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 presented to the nation after an interregnum of 36 years, accords high importance to early childhood care and education (ECCE). To the extent that it mandates integration of three years of compulsory ECCE into the formal school education system reconfigured as 3+5+3+4 to replace the previous 10+2 system which had no provision for ECCE. However a new study of anganwadis in five districts of Karnataka reveals gross neglect of ECCE four years after NEP 2020 became law. Promoted under the Centre’s Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS, estb.1976), anganwadis are Central and state government run nutritional centres for newborns and lactating mothers which also provide rudimentary early childhood education to youngest children The report, released in early June titled ‘Study of Anganwadis in 5 Districts of Karnataka, India: Infrastructure Facilities and Schemes through the Anganwadis’ and written by Ensuring Social Protection (ESP), a collective of NGOs and activists, reveals that a mere 25 percent of 315 anganwadis surveyed provide milk to children five days a week as mandated by the state government; only 21 percent have functional toilets; 18.7 percent lack a functional filter for drinking water; and over 70 percent compromise on mid-day meals as “vegetable supply had been halted for four years”. The anganwadis surveyed have found cheaper “food alternatives” compromising the nutritional needs of youngest children. The timing of this report — soon after the state government announced plans to upgrade the state’s 65,000 anganwadi centres (AWCs) with an enrolment of 3.6 million children — has embarrassed the year-old Congress party government which against expectation, was voted to power in Bengaluru with a large majority primarily because it promised a wide range of freebies. Among them: including free bus travel for women, free electricity upto 200 units, and Rs.2,000 monthly assistance to women heading families. However, the mandate of NEP 2020 to integrate ECCE with primary schools is bad news for the state’s 69,000 anganwadi workers, who fear for their jobs. Therefore in early June, the state government assured them it will not promote any new pre-primary sections in its schools beyond the 2,786 already sanctioned. AWC workers were assured the government will focus on training them to deliver formal ECCE. Now with the ESP report exposing the pathetic condition and record of AWCs in fulfilling their primary mandate of providing nutrition to youngest children, educationists are sceptical about their preparedness to provide acceptable quality pre-primary education. “Anganwadis need significantly greater budgetary allocation. It’s sad that the Union Budget 2024-25 has not increased allocation to the ICDS programme. Nor did it talk about the government Poshan bhi padhai bhi and Saksham (nutrition with learning schemes) for anganwadis. If anganwadis are to be upgraded and AWC workers trained to deliver ECCE, the Centre and states need to substantially boost budgetary outlays for AWCs,” says Dr. Venita Kaul, professor (emirata) and founder-director of Centre for Early Childhood Education and Development at Ambedkar University, Delhi. As has been repeatedly highlighted by EducationWorld,…
Ronita Torcato (Mumbai) The highly reputed multi-campus Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS, estb.1936) — India’s first major postgrad institution for the study of social sciences including habitat education, gender, media, labour and management, rural development studies — has suffered a severe embarassment. On June 28, the management of the institute fired 115 teaching and non-teaching staff of the TISS Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies (ACWS) employed in its Mumbai, Tuljapur, Hyderabad, and Guwahati campuses. These TISS-ACWS employees were informed that their employment contracts would not be renewed. The reason advanced for this mass firing was that on June 30, the Tata Education Trust — one of several charitable trusts of the multi-billion dollar Tata Group of salt to software companies (annual revenue: Rs.13.8 lakh crore) — had ceased to pay toward their salaries and remuneration. However the 115 TISS-ACWS employees have been granted a last minute reprieve. On July 30, Ratan Tata, the chairman of Tata Trusts, announced that TET will resume payment of the dismissed TISS employees’ salaries and restore the status quo ante. Explained Prof. Manoj Tiwari, Director of TISS, in an interview with the business daily Mint: “These staff were appointed under various projects under funding of the Tata Trust. The funding for these projects have stopped for the last few months. Considering this, we allowed these teachers to work under clock-hour basis in the institute. But now we are unable to garner financial aid, so we decided to stop (sic) their services. We will reappoint them once funding from the (Tata) Trust resumes.” Meanwhile the abrupt termination of such a large number of TISS faculty and staff has brought the low-profile TISS — ranked among India’s Top 100 universities under the Central government’s National Institutional Rankings Framework 2023 — in the national limelight and aroused indignation in India and abroad. Over 1,200 academics signed a joint petition dated July 9 calling upon the TISS management to reinstate the sacked employees. “The faculty, students and alumni of ACWS have contributed significantly to advancing critical scholarship in women’s studies. The ongoing uncertainty regarding job security, Ph D supervision and course instruction undermines their collective efforts,” reads the statement. The back story behind this contretemps is that for several years, the BJP government at the Centre has been packing boards of centrally-funded higher education institutions with ideologically aligned nominees, including at TISS (described as ‘Grant-in-Aid Institute’ by the Ministry of Education). Last June after TISS’ long-tenured director Prof. S. Parsuraman retired, UGC (University Grants Commission) — the country’s apex-level higher education regulator — appointed several government officials to the TISS board, tightening Central control over the institute. This provoked the Tatas’ loss of interest in TISS and a backlash against continuing to fund its operations. Given the good record of the Tatas in funding education institutions, academics are uncritical of them. Comments Dr. Kurush Dalal, director at Instucen School of Archeology, Mumbai. “If government wants control of TISS, it should pick up the bill. But that they will…
Vidya Pandit (Lucknow) A July 8 order issued by Uttar Pradesh’s BJP government which directed government school teachers to mark their attendance digitally — proclaimed as a first countrywide — was rescinded on July 16 after statewide protests by the teachers community. Political commentators in Lucknow, the admin capital of India’s most populous state (215 million), are unanimous that revocation of the July 8 order signals a major climb down by the state’s BJP government and acknowledgement of the political power of the teachers’ community. With by-elections for ten legislative assembly seats due to be held later this year, the BJP government headed by Hindu monk-turned-saffron robes-clad chief minister Yogi Adityanath has chosen the path of discretion over confrontation. Especially after the state BJP performed poorly in General Election 2024 when it won only 33 Lok Sabha seats — 29 fewer than in General Election 2019. Evidently, the BJP leadership in Lucknow has decided not to antagonise the 6.28 lakh-strong government teachers’ community on the eve of the important assembly bye-elections. UP’s government school teachers represented by the Uttar Pradesh Shikshak Sangh union objected to the daily digital attendance register on several grounds. One, that the privacy of teachers, especially women, could be breached as there was no saying how the selfies they would take to upload for attendance would be used. Secondly, that it was an “affront to teachers’ dignity” to suggest that teachers’ late-coming and truancy is widespread and thirdly, “technical glitches” could prevent them from registering attendance on time. Moreover, the union says teachers are often late because of issues beyond their control, such as bad roads and public transport shortages. The quick cave-in of the state’s BJP government to the teachers’ agitation has disappointed objective educators because it’s well-known that government primary-secondary school teachers in north India — especially Uttar Pradesh and Bihar — are highly indisciplined and responsible for the rock-bottom learning outcomes of children in UP’s government schools. According to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) of the Pratham Education Foundation, 29.2 percent of 1,531 teens from 1,203 households in 60 villages in UP’s representative Hathras district can’t read class II level textbooks in any language and 54.3 percent can’t manage basic division sums. That an estimated 40-50 percent of highly paid (relative to private schools) government school teachers are absent every day is a related statistic. “Teachers with security of employment, salary and perks have a substantial say in the education system. Parents and their committees that check teaching and mid-day meals, among other things, also have a stake in the system. The only people who have no say in education is children. They cannot demand that they are taught and taught well. That is the tragedy of school education in UP and countrywide,” says Sarvendra Vikram Singh, former director of basic education. However Rajendra Prasad Mishra, vice president and spokesperson of the Uttar Pradesh Madhamik Shikshak Sangh (secondary teachers association), which has membership of 52,000 teachers from government aided secondary schools,…
Autar Nehru (Delhi) Under fire for the NEET-UG exam scandal from opposition parties as well as a swelling number of monitors of India’s failing education system, Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan has constituted an Education Advisory Council (EdAC) to advise the ministry of education (MoE) on critical aspects of implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 four years after it was presented to Parliament and the nation. The proposed eight-member EdAC will be professedly an independent body to advise MoE, the Women & Child Development ministry, agencies, and institutions involved in education, to accelerate implementation of NEP 2020 which is proceeding at glacial pace. With the BJP and allied parties seriously lacking intellectual heft and getting little support from academics in top-ranked universities, the onus of writing up numerous documents and roadmaps for implementing NEP 2020 has devolved upon Dr. K. Kasturirangan, chairman of the NEP 2020 drafting committee, who has written the FLN (foundational literacy and numeracy) and NIPUN (National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding) documents for early childhood education. But with octogenarian Dr. Kasturirangan experiencing health problems, the promised curriculum frameworks for teacher education and adult education are stalled. Informed academics in Delhi are also questioning the necessity of establishing EdAC as yet another education advisory body when NEP 2020 has already mandated over half a dozen school and higher education monitoring committees. For instance, to oversee and regulate higher education, NEP 2020 mandates establishment of a Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) with four verticals viz, National Higher Education Regulatory Council (NHERC), National Accreditation Council (NAC), Higher Education Grants Council (HEGC), and General Education Council (GEC). Similarly, several supervisory and regulatory agencies — especially an SSSA (State School Standards Authority) in every state — has been decreed for school education. However one of the major terms of reference of the new EdAC is to “revamp and rejuvenate” CABE (Central Advisory Board of Education) to “enhance coordination and collaboration between the Centre and states”. Under the BJP/NDA rule, CABE has fallen out of favour and no CABE meeting has been held since 2019. But with several state governments expressing opposition to common entrance exams (NEET-UG, CUET) and greater say in framing their own education policies, wisdom has dawned upon the mandarins of the ministry to revive CABE which offers a forum for state education officials. Greater cooperation between Delhi and state capitals is necessary if NEP 2020 on which the BJP/NDA government has placed a large bet, is to be implemented. Some educationists interpret the establishment of EdAC as a move towards greater centralization with nominal reference to the revival of CABE. “As soon as it was voted to power at the Centre in 2014, the BJP abolished the Planning Commission on which states were represented and replaced it with NITI Aayog comprised of Central government appointees, doing away with the federal character of the planning body. Now EdAC is likely to replicate this initiative. This is dangerous. Education is not just about classroom academics.…
Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai) Despite Tamil Nadu having been ruled by anti-upper caste political parties for almost half a century, caste-based atrocities against Dalits — the lowest caste in the iniquitous Hindu varna system — have been on the rise in the state, particularly in primary-secondary schools. This paradox highlights the complex and deep-rooted caste prejudice in the state, despite efforts of successive administrations to eradicate it. The ruling DMK party founded by CN Annadurai and later led by M. Karunanidhi, and currently his son M.K. Stalin has been consistently campaigning against religious orthodoxy, and promoting rationalism, social justice, and even atheism. DMK claims to have legislated several affirmative action laws to reduce social iniquities and provide scholarships to Dalit students. However, the spate of atrocities against Dalits indicates that legal and policy measures are insufficient to eradicate caste prejudices deeply embedded in social practices and mindsets. On August 9 (2023), unprovoked violence against a Dalit student and his sister by classmates from an intermediate dominant caste in Nanguneri, Tirunelveli district, highlighted the persistence of caste violence at the grassroots level. This incident spurred new calls for more comprehensive education reforms, and societal intervention to uproot casteism in Tamil society. Chennai-based educationists and social reform activists are unanimous that caste consciousness and bigotry need to be addressed and uprooted in K-12 education to eradicate caste discrimination in society more effectively. They argue for more content highlighting injustices of the caste system in school curricula. At a seminar organised by the State Platform for Common School System-Tamil Nadu (SPCSS-TN) on May 27, a resolution was passed to include lessons on promoting equality and fraternity to combat caste discrimination in education institutions. Speakers called for educating students about the historical and social contexts of caste discrimination to create empathy and awareness, encourage critical thinking about social injustices and promote constitutional and ethical values. “It is not enough to include chapters in textbooks. School curricula should be designed to eliminate caste discrimination by multiplying content highlighting the iniquities of entrenched casteism. Academic bodies should re-cast syllabuses and assessment practices,” says Prince Gajendra Babu, general secretary of SPCSS-TN. On June 18, a one-man committee headed by Justice K. Chandru, a retired Madras high court judge, submitted a report to chief minister M.K. Stalin and school education minister Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi. In the 610-page report, Justice Chandru called upon the state government to issue a directive to all schools statewide to prohibit students from wearing coloured wristbands, rings, or forehead marks indicative of caste. “Despite these efforts, the entrenched nature of caste discrimination in society poses significant challenges,” says Dr. Sakthi Rekha, an educationist and social activist. “Incidents of caste violence and discrimination within schools reflect broader societal attitudes and behaviour emanating from beyond the education system. The persistence of caste-based atrocities highlights the need for multi-faceted initiatives that combine policy reforms with broader societal change.” Against this backdrop, the Centre for Social Justice and Equity, funded by the Tamil Nadu government and based at the…
“Young India wants jobs more than temples… For most of us, a good education was the passport out of poverty into the middle or affluent class. Now, a young person with a college degree is NINE times as likely to be unemployed as her illiterate counterpart, according to an ILO report. This indicates both the quality of degrees as well as the low-end nature of work that is available.” Ravi Venkatesan, co-founder, Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship on solving India’s unemployment problem (Times of India, June 9) “Programmes like Atal Tinkering Labs, Start-up India and Stand-up India have helped improve the capacity of youth of the country. It is due to these efforts that today India has become the third largest start-up ecosystem in the world… Earlier, students who studied in Indian languages faced an unfair situation. With the implementation of the new National Education Policy, my government has been able to remove this injustice. Now students can take up engineering courses in Indian languages.” President Droupadi Murmu in her joint address to the 18th Lok Sabha (PTI, June 27) “It was agony to watch a befuddled old man struggling to recall words and facts. His inability to land an argument against a weak opponent was dispiriting.” Editorial on President Biden’s performance in the first presidential debate with Donald Trump (The Economist, July 4) “In the 2024 summer triumph, all that Labour leader Keir Starmer has had to do is be banal, avoid the curse of a self-goal, and accuse Sunak of being out of touch, which has the merit of being true. Rishi Sunak is out of line, out of reach, out of depth, out of ideas, and by the end of this week will be out of time.” M.J. Akbar, author-columnist, on the British elections in which Rishi Sunak-led Conservatives lost (Open, July 5)
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) The political storm generated in Parliament in Delhi by the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG) scam, in which as many as 67 students scored a perfect 720, and over 1,500 were awarded booster “grace marks”, has come as a fortuitous opportunity for Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) government and chief minister Mamata Banerjee to strike back at the BJP. Banerjee and TMC have been vocal critics of the centralisation of education, including the imposition of national exams such as NEET. Therefore, the NEET-UG scandal, which led to the peremptory cancellation of NEET-PG and UGC-NET, has provided her an opportunity to build a strong narrative of spreading discontent with the education policies and initiatives of the BJP/NDA government at the Centre. On June 24, Banerjee wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to abolish NEET-UG and revert to the system of states conducting their own medical college entrance exams. “The decentralised system was later changed to a unitary and centralised system of examination (NEET) so as to take complete control of admissions in the country to medical courses without any involvement of state governments. This is completely unacceptable and violates the true spirit of the federal structure of the country. Further, the present system has led to massive corruption which benefits only the rich who can afford to pay (for coaching classes), while meritorious students belonging to the poor and middle class suffer and are the biggest victims,” said the missive from Banerjee to the PM. She also added that states spend over Rs.50 lakh per doctor towards education and internship, which is why states “should be given freedom to select medical students through joint entrance examination”. This year, 1.02 lakh students from West Bengal wrote NEET-UG 2024 of whom 59,053 passed with three scoring the maximum possible 720 marks. It is pertinent to note that students from West Bengal, which hosts 34 medical colleges, have always excelled in medical entrance exams. In a state where unemployment is rife — a major problem inherited by Banerjee who routed the Left Front in the historic state legislative election of 2011 — the desperation of school-leavers to succeed in exams such as NEET, which provides entry into employment with an average salary of Rs.50,000-60,000 per month, is intense. Unsurprisingly, 150,000-200,000 school-leavers from Bengal write NEET-UG exam every year. However, with centrally conducted NEET-UG having transformed into the sole medical entrance exam since 2017, students of Bengali-medium schools have been at a disadvantage in terms of English fluency and differences of syllabus. The test prep fees demanded by coaching schools of Rs.2-3 lakh per year is exorbitant for most Bengali medium school students who tend to be from underprivileged backgrounds. Therefore in January, the TMC government introduced Yogyashree, a comprehensive social welfare scheme in which 50 test prep centres across the state started providing free NEET-UG and IIT-Mains training for scheduled caste and scheduled tribe students. This initiative has proved a great success. In its first year of launch, 75 Yogyasree…
Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) After the national education Policy (NEP) 2020 mandated reconfiguration of the 10+2 primary-secondary schooling system into a new 5+3+3+4 continuum formally integrating early childhood care and education (ECCE) into elementary education, several states across the country have begun the process of integrating three years of early childhood education by introducing kindergarten sections in composite primary/secondary government schools and/or upgrading anganwadis — Central/state government-promoted nutritional centres for newborns and lactating mothers — into pre-primary schools. In the southern state of Karnataka (pop.69 million), an initiative to upgrade 20,000 (of a total 62,580) anganwadis into pre-primaries to make them ‘NEP compliant’ was announced by the state’s BJP government in 2022. A year later, a new Congress government was voted into power in the legislative assembly election of May 2023. Fortunately, although it has rejected and scrapped statewide implementation of NEP 2020 legislated by the BJP government at the Centre, it has continued to upgrade the state’s anganwadis. Indeed, according to some ECCE educators, the state’s Congress government has ventured beyond upgrading anganwadis, and permitted 262 composite government schools to start kindergarten sections (LKG and UKG) in 2023-24. With these KG sections running successfully, on June 11, the state’s education ministry issued an order to start pre-primary/KG classes in an additional 1,008 government primary schools in the Kalyana Karnataka region (educationally backward districts of Bidar, Kalaburagi, Raichur, Yadgir, Ballari, Vijayanagara, and Koppal) and 578 schools in other districts. However, this latest government initiative has riled the state’s 69,000 anganwadi workers who fear loss of employment. They apprehend that parents will enrol youngest children for pre-primary classes in government schools rather than in anganwadis. Simultaneously, this initiative of the state government has escalated simmering tension between the education ministry and the women and child development (WCD) ministry as government schools fall under the former’s jurisdiction and anganwadis under WCD. Reacting, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has ordered chief secretary LK Atheeq to initiate parleys between the two ministries and arrive at a workable solution. On June 24, a meeting was called by the chief minister between Madhu Bangarappa, minister for school education and literacy, and Laxmi Hebbalkar, minister of WCD. After these parleys, the CM’s office announced that the education ministry has been directed not to start any new pre-primaries in government schools beyond the already sanctioned 2,786, and that a committee of experts will soon be constituted to chalk out a plan to upgrade the state’s anganwadis to deliver equivalent quality early years education. But the challenge of transforming anganwadis into pre-primaries is that the overwhelming majority of anganwadi workers are class X secondary school-leavers with no formal training in early childhood education. “Anganwadis were promoted under the Centre’s Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) in 1976 and entrusted with five responsibilities — immunisation of children, provision of nutrition, provision of health checkups, health/nutrition education and pre-primary education. Until NEP 2020 was legislated, no government emphasised the education function of anganwadis. Now they want anganwadi workers to transform overnight into early childhood teachers…
Autar Nehru (Delhi) National council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the country’s largest publisher of K-12 textbooks, is again in the throes of a controversy following its “rationalisation-cum-revision” of class XII social science (history) textbooks, widely prescribed by schools countrywide including 29,662 upscale schools affiliated with the Central Board of Secondary Examinations (CBSE), India’s largest schools national exams board. NCERT and CBSE are purportedly autonomous subsidiaries of the Union education ministry. The rationale of the recent revision of class VII-XII textbooks is the world’s most prolonged closure of schools during the Covid-19 pandemic (2020-21) and learning loss experienced by school-going children. This necessitated pruning of syllabuses and curriculums by NCERT to reduce student stress. However, the selection of deleted content has generated controversy since the first revised textbooks were published in 2022. Critics, including authors of the textbooks, charged NCERT with hasty deletions with many contending that selected chapters were rewritten to suit the political and ideological propaganda of the ruling BJP. For instance, Darwin’s theory of evolution which posits that human beings are descended from apes — anathema to the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mentor organization of the BJP — was dropped from science textbooks in 2023, prompting 1,800 scientists and educators to sign a protest petition. This time round, the revised edition of the class XII political science textbook has evoked sharp reactions from several educators and authors who allege that selective portions have been omitted and/or edited to suit the political agenda of the BJP. In the revised political science textbook released by NCERT in mid-June, the Babri Masjid is not mentioned by name (“three-domed structure”) and all references to BJP chieftain LK Advani’s rath yatra from Somnath (Gujarat) to Ayodhya; vandalisation of Babri Masjid by RSS/BJP kar sevaks; communal violence after destruction of Babri Masjid in 1992, and imposition of President’s Rule in BJP-ruled states have been omitted. Reacting on June 16, Prof. Dinesh Saklani, director of NCERT and a historian himself, justified the changes saying that the deletions were necessary as NCERT wants “to create positive citizens, not violent and depressed individuals.” “Hatred, violence are not subjects of teaching in school and shouldn’t be the focus of textbooks,” he explained. This chopping and changing of textbooks has outraged well-known public intellectuals Suhas Palshikar and Yogendra Yadav, who were chief advisors to the pre-Covid class IX-XII political science textbooks. In a letter to NCERT (June 17), they requested Prof. Saklani to delete their names from the textbooks. “Both of us don’t want NCERT to hide behind our names to pass on to students such textbooks of political science that we find politically biased, academically indefensible and pedagogically dysfunctional… The new editions of these books that have been published with our names should be withdrawn from the market forthwith… If NCERT fails to take immediate corrective action, we may be forced to take legal recourse,” wrote the duo. However, all political parties tend to rewrite history. When the Congress government established NCERT in 1961,…
“At the very least, the result pricks the bubble of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s authority. He made this election about himself: His performance, his omnipotence and omniscience, and his ideological obsessions. Modi is, for the moment, not the indomitable vehicle for History, or the deified personification of the people. Today, he is just another politician, cut to size by the people.” Pratap Bhanu Mehta, former vice-chancellor of Ashoka University, on General Election 2024 results in which the BJP did not win a majority in its own right (Indian Express, June 4) “Voters have sent an unmistakable message that India is not going to become a saffronised fiefdom of the BJP. Communal hate speech has not won votes. Dissent and media criticism, muzzled n the last five years, will no longer be easily tamed. It is a victory for all fundamental values of a democracy.” Swaminathan Aiyar, reputed economist and columnist, on General Election 2024 results (The Economic Times, June 4) “India’s swelling GDP and its new status as the world’s fifth largest economy have been closely tracked by soaring unemployment, which has risen from 3.2 percent to 7.6 percent since 2013. This contrast reflects the gulf between the benefits of Modi’s economics for the rich and poor.” Anastasia Piliavsky, senior lecturer, India Institute at King’s College London in an essay titled ‘Back to practical Hinduism’ (Times of India, June 4) “Indian democracy can now breathe easy. The core values of the Constitution, which came under severe stress in the past 10 years, now stand well-protected. The BJP’s politics of communal polarisation which looked invincible has been held in check… the verdict is for change. But the way to read the outcome of the 2024 elections is to see that change has come wearing the deceptive mask of continuity.” Sudheendra Kulkarni, aide to former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (The Hindu, June 4)
Vidya Pandit (Lucknow) Medical education in Uttar Pradesh — India’s most populous state (215 million) — is a mess. For one, the entire state covering an area of 243,286 sq. km is served by 72,757 registered medical (allopathic) practitioners, a ratio of 1:3800 doctor per 100,000 population cf. the proportion of 1:1,000 recommended by WHO (World Health Organisation). Moreover, these qualified medical practitioners are clustered in UP’s major cities — Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi and Gorakhpur. Citizens in the sprawling state’s hinterland are obliged to make do with the services of ayurvedic, unani and self-styled medical practitioners. On May 20, presumably to raise standards of the profession, the newly constituted National Medical Commission (NMC, estb.2020), which replaced the scandals-ridden Medical Council of India three years ago, imposed fines ranging from Rs.2-20 lakh for “irregularities” on several of UP’s 65 medical colleges. The irregularities included acts of commission and omission such as less than required faculty, inadequate equipment and poor infrastructure maintenance. According to academics in Lucknow, the fines have been imposed to prompt medical colleges to clean up their act even as the state’s BJP government is expanding the capacity of medical colleges statewide. This year total capacity in medical colleges which is currently 3,828 seats is scheduled to be increased by 1,300 seats in 35 government medical colleges (cf. 30 in private sector). The minimum number of seats a licensed medical college is obliged to provide is 100 (the most common number). Some large colleges offer more seats with the largest number of 250 provided by Rajshree Medical Research Institute, Bareilly; Mayo Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow; Rama Medical College and Research Centre, Hapur among others. The number of seats available in the show-piece All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Gorakhpur — chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s constituency — is 225. Although the popular belief is that private medical colleges cut corners and disregard rules, the highest penalty of Rs.20 lakh has been levied on the government-owned King George’s Medical University, Lucknow, widely regarded as one of the best countrywide. The medical college of Banaras Hindu University has been slapped with a Rs.12 lakh penalty. NMC has provided all errant colleges a time window of two months to set things right. According to monitors of higher education in Lucknow, rules-breaking and scams are rife in medical education in UP. “While inspecting medical colleges, I have come across the very same patients in attached hospitals of two medical colleges. Teaching faculty is also shuffled between colleges to show minimum numbers when inspectors arrive. Even when a college is granted full recognition, half of the faculty is made up of visiting lecturers — all violations of minimum numbers prescribed by NMC,” says Shugar Lal, retired superintendent of a Lucknow hospital, and member of the former MCI task forces despatched to evaluate colleges prior to their being granted permission to introduce new courses. According to Mridula Singh, director at the KNS Memorial Institute of Medical Sciences, Barabanki, a major problem of medical colleges in…
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) West Bengal’s multi-crore teacher recruitment scam which has marred the entire third term in office (which began in 2021) of chief minister Mamata Banerjee has ballooned into a major General Election 2024 issue. In General Election 2019, the resurgent BJP won an unprecedented 18 of West Bengal’s 42 seats in the Lok Sabha, Delhi. This time around, the BJP is confident of increasing its tally because of the prolonged stink created by the stymied teacher recruitment process in the state where teachers’ jobs — especially in government schools — are highly prized. The sheer scale of the teacher recruitment scam under Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) government has angered the electorate and judiciary as well. On April 21, the Calcutta high court nullified the appointment of 25,753 teachers recruited following a TET (teacher eligibility test) conducted by the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) in 2016. TET 2016 was written by 2.3 million aspiring school teachers, of whom 25,753 were selected and appointed in 15,302 government and aided secondary and higher secondary schools. However, writ petitions were filed in Calcutta high court in which petitioners claimed that many candidates who received low grades were surreptitiously placed high on the merit list and some who submitted blank papers, were appointed. Although the Supreme Court granted an interim stay of the Calcutta high court’s sweeping judgement, it has provided temporary respite to the teachers appointed under TET 2016. The sword hanging over their heads has not been removed. While granting the interim stay on May 7, the SC bench comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, directed WBSSC to re-examine the TET 2016 answer-sheets and differentiate between teachers appointed on merit and non-meritorious candidates. This task has to be completed by end-July. Meanwhile the Calcutta high court’s cancellation of appointment of all teachers recruited under TET 2016 has triggered apprehension that teachers appointed after writing TET 2014 may suffer a similar fate following hearing of petitions alleging malpractices in TET 2014. A writ petition against TET 2014 is listed for hearing on June 12. If the petition is upheld, it could lead to cancellation of the recruitment of 42,000 candidates appointed primary school teachers. Cases alleging favouritism in compiling the final list of candidates who wrote this exam are pending in the Calcutta high court. In this connection, it’s pertinent to note that the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) was introduced by West Bengal’s CPM government in 1998 and conducted smoothly until 2010 when the CPM which ruled Bengal uninterruptedly for 34 years (1977-2011) was routed by TMC in the legislative assembly election of 2011. However, after TMC was swept to power in West Bengal in 2011, hundreds of writ petitions alleging irregularities and corruption in the annual TET have flooded the Calcutta high court. Although 98,648 teachers and non-teaching staff have been recruited and appointed through TETs in the past 13 years — 28,322 in 2012, 18,793 in 2013, 42,000 in 2015 and 9,533 in…
Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) By several metrics, the southern state of Karnataka (pop.70 million) is India’s most educationally advanced. Bengaluru, the state’s admin capital, is widely regarded as the Silicon Valley of India for hosting a large number of new genre ICT (information communication technology) companies and huge back offices of IT multinationals including Google, Microsoft, Intel and Accenture. The garden city also hosts several top-ranked science and technology higher ed institutions including the Indian Institute of Science, National Institute of Advanced Studies, IIM-Bangalore, National Law School of India University with Karnataka hosting 290 engineering colleges. Unsurprisingly, the state contributes 20 percent of India’s annual exports of ICT services valued at $58 billion. However, the quality of school-leavers entering the state’s vaunted higher education institutions (HEIs) is set to diminish because of continuous chaos and confusion in public K-12 education. In particular, under supervision of the one-year-old Congress government and education minister Madhu Bangarappa, K-12 education in the state is experiencing unprecedented chaos and confusion. In March, the Karnataka high court issued an order barring the state government from conducting ‘board exams’ for class V, VIII and IX students of 56,157 government and private schools affiliated with the Karnataka School Examination and Assessment Board (KSEAB). Subsequently on appeal, a two-judge bench of the high court directed KSEAB to conduct the exams without delay “in the interest of students”. On April 8, the Supreme Court restrained the state government from publishing results of the board exams on the ground that conduct of exams for children in elementary classes (I-VIII) violates the landmark Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, which prohibits formal exams for primary/elementary school children. Simultaneously, another row erupted over conduct of the Karnataka Common Entrance Test (KCET) 2024, which determines undergrad admissions into 290 engineering colleges statewide. The KCET test papers, written by 3.34 lakh class XII students on April 18-19, included 50 questions which were beyond the syllabus prescribed for state board pre-university college (PUC) students. Following strident protests from faculty, students and parents’ associations, the state government issued a statement (April 28) saying that the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) has been directed not to evaluate students’ answers to the 50 out-of-syllabus questions. Even as the dust was settling down on this mess, on May 8, the Congress government issued a notification scrapping implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 formulated by the Dr. K. Kasturirangan Committee after a hiatus of 34 years, and proposed formulation of its own State Education Policy under the chairmanship of Prof. Sukhadeo Thorat, former chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC). As a result, all undergrad colleges statewide which had introduced the four-year bachelor’s degree mandated by NEP 2020, reverted to the previous three-year degree programme. The outcome of swirling confusion in the state’s education sector manifested in the state’s class X SSLC (Secondary School Leaving Certificate) exam. Of the 8.59 lakh students who wrote the exam, a mere 54 percent (cf. 84 percent in 2023) passed.…
Autar Nehru (Delhi) The Delhi-based University Grants Commission (UGC) has greenlighted direct entry of graduates with four-year Bachelor (Hons) degrees into PhD programmes. On March 13, UGC gave formal approval to the UGC (Minimum Standards and Procedure for Award of PhD Degree) Regulations, 2022, enabling graduates of four-year undergrad programmes (FYUP) introduced by the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, to sign up for doctorate programmes. In effect, the commission has eliminated the necessity of FYUP undergrads completing the Masters programme prior to signing up for research-intensive PhD programmes. The objective of this relaxation is to “open up” opportunities for students to begin engaging with research and innovation at “very young age,” UGC chairman M. Jagadesh Kumar told news agency ANI (April 22) to attain a major mandate of NEP 2020 which is to strengthen the research ecosystem in Indian academia. “When we permit undergraduate students into PhD programs, you will have a lot of young people getting into research at a very young age, and they are really creative,” says Kumar. However, admission of FYUP grads into PhD programmes comes with several riders. First, direct admission into PhD programmes of universities is open only to students who complete the four-year honours undergrad bachelors degree programmes of undergrad colleges (NEP 2020 permits earlier exits with certification). Moreover, aspirants should average a minimum 75 percent or equivalent grading in the four-year honours programme. Subsequently, candidates are obliged to clear the UGC-NET exam conducted by NTA (National Testing Agency) biannually (June and December) to be awarded Junior Research Fellowships and/or become eligible for the position of assistant professor in licensed universities. Evidently, this initiative to prompt young graduates into research is driven by the common complaint that research and innovation is accorded inadequate importance by academia, government and industry. Countrywide, the allocation for research and development (R&D)aggregates a mere 1 percent of GDP cf.3.5 percent in the US, 4.8 percent in South Korea and 4-5 percent in OECD countries. Moreover, 66 percent of the annual national research outlay is expended by government in bureaucratic establishments such as the Soviet-inspired Council for Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) which 82 years after it was established, has precious little to show for its efforts. India Inc’s R&D record is worse. It barely expends 0.50 percent of GDP on research and innovation and has earned an imitative, me-too reputation for reverse engineering and disrespect for patents and intellectual property worldwide (see edit p.16). In the circumstances, the relaxation of norms for young graduates to qualify for research grants and junior professorships is welcomed by some academics who believe that the abolition last year of the M.Phil program — a bridge course between the Masters degree and PhD — and now the Masters degree, are steps in the right direction. “Direct entry into PhD programmes is good for students with academic interests. But colleges need to prepare students for research and teaching by making the four-year undergrad programme more robust so that they develop the aptitude for research.…
“The protests are a product of that suffocating sense of thwarted political agency that a lot of young people feel… The students are, perhaps inchoately, attempting that work of moral repair.” Pratap Bhanu Mehta, former president, Centre Policy Research, on pro-Palestinian student protests at US university campuses (Indian Express, April 24) “The share of youth with secondary and high-school education who are unemployed has increased from 35.2 percent in 2000 to 65.7 percent in 2022.” Ajay Chhibber, co-author Unshackling India, presenting an agenda for the next government (Business Standard, April 26) “The Act has faced three broad challenges. First, at the administrative level, there has been a noticeable increase in harassment and evictions of street vendors, despite the Act’s emphasis on their protection and regulation.” Aravind Unni, urban practitioner-researcher & Shalini Sinha, Asia strategist at the Urban Policies Program, WIEGO, on implementation of the Street Vendors Act 2014 (The Hindu, May 1) “Five high courts – Allahabad, Punjab and Haryana, Gujarat, Bombay and Calcutta – have reportedly 171 vacancies as of April 1, 2024, accounting for over 52 percent of total vacancies of 327 posts in 25 high courts. Sanctioned strength of judges across all high courts is 1,114, and 29.4 percent of positions are vacant.” Editorial titled ‘Fix the judicial supply-demand gap’ (The Economic Times, May 4) “The Prime Minister’s tirade against the Opposition and the minority community only shows that he has no positive issues to persuade them to vote for him. His statements clearly fall foul of the Model Code of Conduct and also amount to corrupt practice as declared by the Supreme Court… If he ceases to be the role model, nothing will be left of our great democracy.” Dushyant Dave, senior advocate (The Hindu, May 6)
Despite a plethora of legislation including the Indian Penal Code 1860, Juvenile Justice (Care & Protection of Children) Act, 2000 and the RTE Act, 2009 expressly prohibiting corporal punishment of children, the ancient tradition of teachers inflicting physical punishment for real and imagined misbehaviour is widespread in India’s 1.60 million schools. Reports of teachers inflicting cruel and unusual punishment on hapless children are commonplace in daily newspapers. The majority of school teachers seem unaware that s.17 of the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, expressly prohibits all corporal punishment — and mental cruelty — to children. On April 25, Justice S.M. Subramaniam of the Madras high court issued an unambiguous directive to the Tamil Nadu state government to implement the Guidelines for Elimination of Corporal Punishment in Schools (GECP) framed by the Delhi-based National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) to safeguard the physical and mental health and well-being of 5.26 million children across the state’s 68,000 government and private schools. The court directed the state government to disseminate the guidelines to all educational institutions and District Educational Authorities to “sensitise school authorities” about protection of children’s physical and mental health; conduct seminars and awareness camps to effectively implement NCPCR guidelines, and initiate prompt action by “competent authorities for any lapse, dereliction or negligence”. “This directive of the high court is overdue. Regrettably, corporal punishment is more frequent in government schools, compared to private institutions. Strict implementation of these guidelines will create safer and more nurturing learning environments, which is essential for effective learning and well-being of children. This stern directive sets clear standards for educational institutions and authorities to follow, and mandates strict adherence to child protection laws,” says Chennai-based educationist Dr. S. Somasundaram. With the rising number of student suicides and stress-related mental disorders among children routinely reported by the media, Justice Subramaniam’s directive with special emphasis on teachers and education officials to “protect” children’s mental health and well-being has been widely welcomed by bona fide educationists. “It’s important that District Education Authorities and education ministry officials impact the importance of the NCPCR guidelines on government and rural schools in particular. In government schools, where parental involvement is usually lower, there is general acceptance of corporal punishment. In private schools, parents are more engaged in their children’s education, and this works as a deterrent against corporal punishment and mental cruelty. They operate under stricter regulations and are mindful of their reputation as enlightened institutions. They also tend to allocate substantial resources towards alternative disciplinary measures and teacher training programs to promote supportive environments conducive to joyful learning. Nevertheless it’s high time a clear and unambiguous message goes out to all school managements, teachers and parents that corporal punishment and mental cruelty imposed on children is obsolete pedagogy. Children learn best in conducive stress-free environments,” says A. Karuppasamy, former director of Matriculation schools. However while the high court directive to school managements and educators to abolish corporal punishment is clear and unambiguous,…
Students writing KCET: out-of-syllabus questionsAn education mess in this southern state which has appropriated its description as the Silicon Valley of India, has become messier. On April 8, the Supreme Court restrained the state’s Congress government from publishing results of board exams held in March for classes V, VIII and IX students of KSEAB (Karnataka School Examination and Assessment Board)-affiliated schools. Because the landmark Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, prohibits stressful formal exams for children in elementary (classes I-VIII). Now, another controversy has erupted over conduct of the Karnataka Common Entrance Test (KCET) 2024, the gateway for undergrad admissions into 290 professional education colleges statewide. Soon after 3.34 lakh class XII students wrote KCET on April 18-19, social media was flooded with complaints that test papers included over 50 questions which were beyond the syllabus prescribed for state board pre-university college (PUC) students. Several higher secondary PUC colleges (class XI-XII), faculty and parents’ associations have registered protests with the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) which conducts the test. KCET is a make-or-break competitive exam for PUC students because it determines admission into all professional colleges statewide providing non-medical higher education — engineering, pharmacy, veterinary science etc. Under a seat-sharing agreement between the state government and private professional college managements, 45 percent of seats in private colleges are allotted to successful KCET students at a subsidised annual fee of Rs.20,000-80,000 (cf. Rs.83,000-Rs.2.3 lakh). This year, an estimated 120,000 private college seats are available for top-ranked KCET students. According to aggrieved students and parents, several questions were taken from class XI-XII syllabuses of the pan-India CBSE and CISCE exam boards. They contend that this put the majority of students, enrolled in PU colleges affiliated with the state’s Pre-University Board at a disadvantage. Moreover, the state government had ‘rationalised’ the pre-university syllabus in 2023-24, i.e, deleted some chapters of textbooks to reduce curriculum load of higher secondary (PU) students. With the chorus of public protests getting louder while voting in General Election 2024 has commenced (the first round of voting in Karnataka concluded on April 26 and the second concludes on May 7), the state’s Congress government elected last May (2023) issued a statement on April 28 saying that KEA has been directed not to evaluate students answers to the 50 out-of-syllabus questions. “An Expert Committee Report has determined several questions from the deleted chapters of the rationalised syllabus of 11th and 12th PUC syllabus of 2023-24. Keeping in view the Expert Committee report and opinion of many stakeholders and the paramount interest of protecting the legitimate interests of the students in mind, KEA is directed to remove questions that are out of 2023-24 syllabus from the assessments, and assess (answers to) only the remaining questions. Two questions with incorrect solutions will also be awarded grace marks,” said the complex statement ruling out a re-exam. Moreover, “the KEA is directed to prepare a detailed Standard Operating Procedure for setting question papers for KCET”. Dr. M. Mohan Alva,…
Mamata Banerjee: credibility challenge A series of teacher recruitment scandals have plagued three-term West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee since 2011 when her Trinamool Congress (TMC) party famously routed the CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist)-led LDF coalition which had ruled the state continuously for 34 years. Employment in government schools in which salaries for primary school teachers start at Rs.33,000 per month after implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission (2020) recommendations, is highly prized in West Bengal (pop.91 million). During 34 years of uninterrupted Marxist rule (1977-2011), the state suffered continuous capital flight and de-industrialisation. Therefore, jobs in industry, business and commerce have been scarce for decades. Unemployment (7.6 million registered unemployed youth) is pervasive and in small and medium-scale industry, salaries are rock-bottom. Therefore government school teacher jobs are so prized that families desperate for sons and daughters to be employed as teachers in government-run schools — private school salaries are several multiples lower — sell property and take huge loans to pay bribes upto Rs.20 lakh to government officials to land these jobs. Therefore, an April 21 judgement of a Calcutta high court division bench nullifying a 2016 teacher eligibility test (TET) conducted by the West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC) and written by 2.3 million aspiring school teachers, of whom 25,753 were selected and appointed in 15,302 government and aided secondary and higher secondary schools, has generated huge statewide shock. In its ruling, the high court directed the state government to initiate a new TET within a fortnight of declaration of Lok Sabha election results on June 4. Meanwhile, all 25,753 “illegally recruited” teachers have to return their entire remuneration earned within six weeks. The bench also directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe into the appointment process and submit a report within three months. Two days later on April 23, the state government moved the Supreme Court contending that the high court’s cancellation of 25,753 teacher appointments would create a huge vacuum in government schools in the coming academic year. After an urgent hearing on May 7, the apex court has stayed the Calcutta high court’s April 21 order while permitting a CBI probe against government officials. Meanwhile, over 200 candidates who had written and passed TET 2014 and TET 2016 but hadn’t received appointment letters, have been staging protests before Mahatma Gandhi’s statue in Esplanade in Kolkata’s central business district since 2019. They are protesting the court’s order directing new TET exams as they have become age ineligible (40 years) to write TET again. West Bengal’s government schools teacher recruitment and appointment imbroglio has a long back story. In May, 2022, a single bench of the high court ordered a CBI investigation into alleged irregularities in the recruitment process following writ petitions filed by some candidates who passed TET 2016 but were not recruited. On July 23, 2022, CBI arrested education minister Partha Chatterjee, who during a long innings as education minister (2014-21) had presided over SSC. Chatterjee’s arrest after a huge stash…
Nasrin Modak Siddiqi (Mumbai) A top priority of left — communist, socialist — governments worldwide, is compulsory, free-of-charge early years and primary education for children. Yet despite newly-independent India’s Congress party passing a resolution in 1956 to establish a “socialist pattern of society”, compulsory primary education wasn’t decreed until 2009 when another Congress government at the Centre enacted the landmark Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009. The RTE Act makes it mandatory for the State (Central and state governments) to provide free and compulsory elementary (class I-VIII) education to all children in the 6-14 age group. Moreover, under s.12 (1) (c) of the Act, all private aided and independent schools are obliged to reserve 25 percent of capacity in class I for poor children in their neighbourhoods, and retain them free-of-charge until completion of class VIII. The expense of educating poor neighbourhood children thus admitted into private schools is mandated to be paid by state governments on the basis of average per child cost incurred by government for educating children in public schools, or actual fee charged by private neighbourhood schools, whichever is less. Inevitably this “backdoor nationalisation” of 25 percent capacity of private elementary schools was challenged in the Supreme Court. In Society for Unaided Private Schools of Rajasthan vs. Union of India & Anr (Writ Petition (C) No. 95 of 2010), a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court by a 2-1 majority upheld the constitutional validity of the RTE Act, 2009, and particularly s.12 (1) (c). However, the apex court exempted private boarding and minority schools from applicability of s.12 (1) (c). Since then and especially after financially stressed state governments started foot-dragging on the issue of reimbursing the cost of poor neighbourhood children admitted into private schools under the formula of the Act, private schools have devised several ways and means to avoid admitting poor children into their elementary classes. While the Supreme Court’s logic exempting boarding schools from admitting poor children under s.12 (1) (c) is self-explanatory, the definition of ‘minority schools’ has prompted considerable litigation. Private school managements contended that apart from institutions promoted by religious minorities, schools promoted by linguistic minorities of every state are also exempt. Thus a large number of private schools have successfully skirted provisions of s.12 (1) (c). Moreover, several state governments, especially in Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra, further diluted s.12 (1) (c) by amending Rules under the Act by decreeing that private schools would be exempt from admitting poor children if there is a government school within 1 km of poor neighbourhoods. In April, a writ petition was filed before the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay high court by an NGO — Yavatmal-based Parivartan Samajik Bahuddeshiya Sanstha — questioning the constitutional validity of this amended Rule. The petitioner contends this Rule change further dilutes s.12 (1) (c) and exempts private schools from the responsibility of educating poor children in their neighbourhood as mandated by the RTE Act. The petitioners’ plea was heard on…
Autar Nehru (Delhi) One of the most enduring — and justified — criticisms of K-12 education in post-independence India is addiction to rote learning through memorisation rather than comprehension. Obstinacy of the country’s 69 school examination boards to reward students’ memorisation rather than originality, critical thinking and problem-solving skills in K-12 education is to a great extent the cause of India’s economic backwardness and pervasive poverty. Although a small minority of academics and development economists as also EducationWorld (estb.1999) have been advocating switch to comprehension aka competency-based learning for several decades, a decisive shift to competency-based learning began just five years ago when the nine-member Dr. K. Kasturirangan Committee in its 484-page draft National Education Policy (NEP) recommended several sensible and overdue reforms. Among them: stress on ECCE (early childhood care and education), high priority for functional literacy and numeracy of all children by age eight; encouraging holistic school education with compulsory vocational learning; exam reforms to test children’s conceptual comprehension, creativity and critical thinking capabilities rather than memory; introduction of continuous formative assessment systems to replace summative exams, and promotion of new digital technologies in school education. In July 2020, the 60-page National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 accepting the Kasturirangan Committee’s draft in toto was approved by the Union cabinet. Four years later, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) — the country’s largest national school-leaving examinations board which has 29,187 primary-secondary schools including several top-ranked private schools (Emerald Heights International, Indore, Mayo College, Ajmer, DPS, R.K. Puram, Delhi, Modern School, Delhi among others) — affiliated with it, has announced a calibrated switch towards competency-based assessment which will perforce change teaching-learning/pedagogy in affiliated schools. In a circular dated April 3 to the heads of all affiliated schools CBSE stated: “The Board in accordance with National Education Policy, 2020 has taken multiple steps towards implementation of Competency Based Education in schools, ranging from aligning assessment to competencies, development of exemplar resources for teachers and students as well as continuous capacity building of the teachers etc. The main emphasis of the Board was (sic) to create an educational ecosystem that would move away from rote memorisation and towards learning that is focused on developing the creative, critical and systems thinking capacities of students to meet the challenges of the 21st century.” Come 2026, the country’s 29,187 CBSE schools (as of date) will switchover to 100 percent competency-based assessment and by that logic, move away from exam-centric rote learning to competency (skills and critical thinking)-based learning. The move will coincide with the CBSE holding examinations twice a year for which it is reportedly at an advanced stage of finalising an announcement soon. However in light of the long history of rote and/or memorisation learning, CBSE’s shift to competency-based assessment is being calibrated. In the academic year 2024-25 starting July-August, the share of competency-based questions for the year-end board examination (theory) for classes XI-XII will increase to 50 percent and rise to 100 percent in the academic year 2026-27. However, the assessment format…
“The 52 primers in Indian languages have paved the way for the beginning of a new civilisational renaissance.” Dharmendra Pradhan, Union education minister, launching 52 school textbooks in Indian non-scheduled languages (Hindustan Times, March 9) “The government will probably claim that it was simply following the law; that Kejriwal was not responding to summons. But the law was already being applied in a way that was highly discretionary. If you have a government that does not allow the Opposition to mobilise, organise and govern, it is hard to pretend that we are a democracy. The election is already being vitiated.” Pratap Bhanu Mehta, former president, Centre for Policy Research, on the arrest of Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal (Indian Express, March 24) “We just need to get basic primary and secondary education right. We are very, very far away from being able to produce a fit, healthy and able workforce that will positively contribute to making the country a Viksit Bharat by 2047, irrespective of whichever path of development we choose.” Economist Rohit Lamba on enhancing human capital (Business Standard, March 28) “We aim to democratise technology in schools and ensure that every child, regardless of background, has access to quality education.” Prime minister Narendra Modi in conversation with Microsoft’s Bill Gates on India leveraging AI to revolutionise education (March 29) “Yet again a journalist has asked me to identify an individual who is the alternative to Mr. Modi. The question is irrelevant in the Parliamentary system. We are not electing an individual — as in a presidential system — but a party, or coalition of parties, that represents a set of principles and convictions that are invaluable to preserve India’s diversity, pluralism, and inclusive growth.” Shashi Tharoor, Congress MP (Times of India, April 3)
