Education News

Karnataka: Rash rejection unease

Reshma Ravishanker (Bangalore) The newly-elected congress government of Karnataka, which won a bitterly fought legislative election against the BJP in May, has discharged its election manifesto promise of scrapping the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 promulgated by the BJP government at the Centre. On August 21, deputy chief minister D.K. Shivakumar announced that the state government has discontinued implementation of NEP 2020 from this academic year (2023-24), and begun work on framing its own State Education Policy (SEP). However, he said that higher education institutions in the state which had already implemented NEP 2020 in academic years 2021-22 and 2022-23 — the then BJP government of Karnataka was first off the blocks to implement NEP 2020 promulgated after an interval of 34 years — will be permitted to continue with its provisions until current student batches graduate. Within the state’s academia, the dominant sentiment is of dismay that NEP 2020, which was in the works for over four years and finally approved by the Union Cabinet in July 2020 based on the 484-page NEP 2019 draft prepared by a nine-member committee headed by former space scientist Dr. Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, has been rejected. NEP 2020 has been widely welcomed by knowledgeable academics for proposing root-and-branch reform of India’s moribund education system from preschool to PhD. In particular for according high importance to early childhood care and education, flexibility in the higher education system through multiple exit and re-entry options and recommending gradual phase out of the system of undergrad colleges affiliating with parent universities. Dr. Chetan Singhai, Bengaluru-based educationist and Chief Consultant, Technical Secretariat, Committee to Draft the NEP 2020, believes that the state government is being “blind-sided” by political animosity towards the BJP. “NEP 2020 is a vision document prepared after prolonged consultation with all stakeholders from national to district levels. All states, except Tamil Nadu and Kerala, participated and presented position papers which have been incorporated into NEP 2020. The impulsive decision of the Congress government to reject NEP 2020 will adversely impact students from Karnataka when they enter higher education and the jobs market. Many universities have restructured their postgraduate programmes in alignment with NEP 2020. Blanket rejection of this democratically and painstakingly devised policy without evaluating its objectives is imprudent,” warns Singhai. This viewpoint is seconded by D. Shashi Kumar, general secretary, Associated Managements of Private Schools of Karnataka (KAMS), which has a membership of over 4,000 schools statewide. “The peremptory rejection of NEP 2020 is autocratic. The policy has incorporated several recommendations made by the Karnataka Knowledge Commission constituted by the previous Congress government. The state government needs to take a mature stand by studying the policy and changing only those proposals they disagree with. It should not reject the policy in toto,” says Shashi Kumar. However, Prof. A.S. Seetharamu, former professor of education, Institute of Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru, believes that the newly-elected Congress government is justified in revoking implementation of NEP 2020, and drafting its own SEP. “NEP has numerous flaws and internal…

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Delhi: Innovative departure

Autar Nehru (Delhi) On august 23, india began a new progression to ‘decolonise’ its school education system with the release of the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF-SE), more than three years after the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 was promulgated on July 29, 2020. The pre-draft and draft NCF-SE presented for public discussion on April 6, 2023 (see EW cover story, August) were quickly formalised into the final NCF-SE 2023 which is a detailed teachers manual to teach, monitor and assess eight major schooling areas/subjects, viz, language education, maths, science, social science, arts education, inter-disciplinary linkages, vocational and physical education for class III-XII children. According to Union education ministry sources, the 13-member Steering Committee chaired by eminent outer space scientist Dr. K. Kasturirangan prepared NCF-SE 2023 after evaluating 1,500 specific and detailed suggestions from over 100 institutions and educators, consultations with boards of school education and higher education institutions. Although this 600-page curriculum framework has been criticised for being too extensive and detailed, it is easy to navigate and contains numerous stage-by-stage curricular goals and illustrative outcomes which makes it easy for teachers to monitor and continuously assess children’s learning attainments. “Since the explicit objective of this NCF-SE is to help improve the practice of education in the reality of our schools, it has attempted to be as relatable as possible to the practitioner — by the use of illustrations, by going into details, and other methods. It is this choice that has made this volume fairly lengthy,” explains the finalised NCF-SE 2023. Although ex-facie a forbidding 600-page curriculum framework, NCF-SE has been widely welcomed by experts as a step-by-step roadmap for teachers to teach the eight core subjects specified by NCF-SE and thereby achieve the broader goal of replacing rote learning with critical thinking, learning by understanding and conceptual clarity. In EW’s comprehensive 11-page cover story (August) your editors welcomed NCF-SE for providing a clear roadmap for teaching eight specified core subjects, although we entertain reservations about implementation of the national curriculum by the country’s largely indifferent and low productivity teachers, especially in government schools. “NCF-FS (NCF for the Foundational Stage) and NCF-SE are comprehensive teachers’ manuals that can enable realisation of the goals set out by NEP 2020. The large number of CGs (curricular goals) and ILOs (illustrative learning outcomes) set out for eight core subjects and classes XI and XII explain the prolixity of NCF-FS and NCF-SE (360 and 684 pages) cf. the single volume NCF 2005 (159 pages),” wrote your editors. Nevertheless, the detailed guidelines provided to school teachers — especially government school teachers who need a lot of hand-holding — is perceived as the infirmity of NCF-SE by some knowledgeable and respected educationists. “Importantly, NCF 2023 is not what a ‘national curriculum framework’ is meant to be — a guiding document, for NCERT and the state nodal institutions to develop their own curricula, syllabi and textbooks. Indeed as NCF 2005 (with 125 pages) had pointed out, the term ‘National Curriculum Framework’ can be…

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Maharashtra: IIM-Mumbai debut

Nasrin Modak Siddiqi (Mumbai) One of the curious anomalies of India’s higher education system was that until recently, neither Mumbai (nor Delhi) hosted one of the country’s 21 globally famous IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management). The first IIM was established in Calcutta (now Kolkata) way back in 1961 followed by IIMs in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Indore and Kozhikode (Kerala). Since then a total of 21 IIMs have been promoted countrywide. However, IIMs A (Ahmedabad), B (Bangalore) and C (Calcutta/Kolkata) rule the roost and are globally recognised for providing global-standard business management education with IIM-Indore and Kozhikode fast closing the gap. With the Central government promoted IIMs conspicuously absent in India’s financial and commercial capital, this space had been captured by the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS) and several private B-schools, notably the S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research, and the NMIMS B-school ranked #3 and #4 in the EW India Higher Education Rankings 2023-24. However, this oversight has been resolved by an ingenious legislative sleight of hand. The National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE) established by the visionary Prof. N.S. Ramaswamy (who also established JBIMS and IIM-B and ceremonially launched EducationWorld in 1999 but died unsung in 2012) as an engineering B-school in 1963, has been transformed into IIM-Mumbai. On July 28, the Indian Institutes of Management (Amendment) Bill 2023 was hurriedly passed by a dysfunctional Parliament which amended the Indian Institutes of Management Act, 2017 to change the name of NITIE, Mumbai into IIM-Mumbai. “It took a long time coming but we are glad that the efforts of our team have cleared the way. Our efforts and industry will finally get recognition. We have always had programs catering to the emerging needs of Indian industry but despite best quality training, our (NITIE) students used to face challenges with recognition, especially with companies abroad. That will change now. Our heartfelt gratitude to everyone who made this possible including our PM and education minister Dharmendra Pradhan,” says Prof. Manoj Tiwari, former professor of production management at IIT-Kharagpur and founding-director of IIM-Mumbai. Launched in 1963, NITIE’s conversion by legislative fiat has placed IIM-Mumbai on a par with the country’s top-ranked IIMs. It has inherited NITIE’s 63-acre campus in Powai in land-scarce Mumbai in the same suburb as IIT-B, India’s #1 ranked engineering institute. And the new IIM-Mumbai has got off to a good start with #7 B-school ranking in the latest NIRF (National Institutional Ranking Framework) 2023 of the Union education ministry. The consensus of academic opinion is that IIM-Mumbai will do well because the IIM tag apart, it has inherited an engineering tradition from NITIE. This will endow it with a differentiating tradition of engineering and manufacturing management at a time when there’s rising emphasis on increasing the value of manufactures in the country’s production and exports. “Establishment of an IIM-Mumbai has been surprisingly overlooked and was long overdue in Maharashtra, which produces almost 15 percent of India’s industrial output and Mumbai is the commerce and financial capital of…

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Tamil Nadu: Dangerous Education Politics

Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai) The DMK government of Tamil Nadu is determined to shift education from the concurrent list of the Constitution — which means that both the Central and state governments can enact legislation on education — to the state list. During his Independence Day address in Chennai, chief minister M.K. Stalin said: “Moving education to the state list from the concurrent list of the Constitution is the way forward to scrap the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET)” — the national test which determines admission into all medical colleges (703) countrywide, including public and private medical colleges in Tamil Nadu (pop.68 million). Chief minister Stalin’s remarks came on the back of heart-rending tragedies of a teen and his father, who took their own lives in August, which have shaken the state. The teenager, S. Jagadeeshwaran took his own life on August 12, after he failed to clear NEET. The student’s father, P. Selvasekar committed suicide a day later, unable to bear the loss of his son. Following consistent reports that liberal marking of class XII school-leaving exam papers by the country’s 31 state exam boards were giving their students an advantage over students writing national CBSE, CISCE school-leaving exams and getting relatively easy admission into medical colleges and Central universities, over the past few years, the BJP government has been decreeing common national entrance exams on the highly successful IIT and IIM models. The objective is to provide a “level playing field” for all school leavers. Thus in 2016, the Central government mandated NEET — a common entrance exam — whose toppers in descending order get to choose medical colleges of their choice nationwide. Similarly in May this year, the Union education ministry introduced CUET (Common University Entrance Test) for determining admission into 47 Central government universities. Centralisation of admission into India’s much-too-few institutions of near-global standards (IITs, IIMs, Central universities) has been a sore point with several state governments objecting to national common entrance tests on the ground that test papers are set to standards/syllabi prescribed by the national CBSE and CISCE exam boards which placed students graduating from state boards at a disadvantage, especially when writing NEET. Tamil Nadu’s call to bring education under the state list is not new. On earlier occasions too, the state has demanded transfer of education to exclusively state subjects listed in Seventh Schedule under Article 246 of the Constitution as in the original Constitution document. Only during the height of Emergency declared by prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1975, when most opposition party members were in jail and Parliament was in disarray, was education transferred to concurrent list. This controversy has elicited mixed response from academics in Tamil Nadu. ATB Bose, general secretary of the Association of Managements of Private Schools of Tamil Nadu, believes education should remain in the concurrent list in the interests of national integration and prevalence of acceptable standards of primary-secondary education countrywide. “As stipulated in NCF-SE 2023 in core subjects — languages, mathematics, science, vocational education…

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West Bengal: Campus chaos

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) The mysterious death on August 10 of Swapnadip Kundu, a first-year Bengali literature student of Kolkata’s high-ranked Jadavpur University (JU, estb.1905), because of alleged ragging by a group of senior students has once again brought the issue of harassment and ragging into the national spotlight. Thus far, 13 students, including three former students, have been arrested for abetment of suicide. Swapnadip’s death has sent shockwaves across the state because JU is West Bengal’s show-piece university ranked #4 nationally in EducationWorld’s government multidisciplinary universities rankings 2023-24, and #4 by the Union education ministry’s NIRF University Rankings as well. With ragging continuing in Bengal’s top-ranked varsity, it is a clear indicator that the recommendations of the anti-ragging committee constituted in 2009 under the chairmanship of former Central Bureau of Investigation director R.K. Raghavan which inter alia recommended separate hostel accommodation for first-year students and installation of CCTVs, are not being followed in West Bengal’s 26 universities. According to academics in Kolkata, one of the major reasons for persistence of ragging in JU is weak administration. After the nine year tenure of last full-time vice chancellor Suranjan Das ended on May 31, the VC’s office has been vacant because of an ongoing dispute between the state government and the Central government-appointed governor of West Bengal C.V. Ananda Bose, ex officio chancellor of all universities statewide. As reported in June by this correspondent, although this is a ceremonial office, Governor Ananda Bose suo motu appointed interim vice chancellors in 11 state universities (including JU) whose appointments were revoked by the state’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) government. Therefore on August 10 when Swapnadip died, JU didn’t have a VC and the offices of three deans were also vacant. Moreover, student union elections traditionally held annually, have not been held regularly over the past decade after the TMC government’s clampdown on them following incidents of violence. The last student union election at JU was held in 2020. So there wasn’t a students’ governing council at JU when this young scholar met his end, either. Moreover, with the UGC discontinuing its grant of Rs.4 crore per year and the state government also having slashed its budget for JU with dues pending since 2019, JU is experiencing a serious funds crunch. Evidently despite being the show-piece university of Bengal, JU has been floundering in a sea of troubles. Therefore, within the students’ community there is apprehension that the state government is all set to raise tuition fees, which have remained static for 22 years. Tuition fees are a hot potato subject in public higher education countrywide — especially in West Bengal, which was ruled by the CPI-M (Communist Party of India-Marxist) for 34 uninterrupted years (1977-2011). Currently, monthly tuition fees are Rs.75 for arts stream students, Rs.150 for science, and Rs.200 for engineering. Moreover, the hostel fee has remained frozen at Rs.25 per month since 1970. With teachers and student unions, continuing to be affiliated with the CPM, prospects of their agreeing to fee hikes to…

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Maharashtra: Solomon-like decree

Nasrin Modak Siddiqi (Mumbai) Despite the landmark right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, having decreed that in the interests of joyous, stress-free learning in primary education (class I-VIII), children won’t be subjected to public examinations and every child shall be promoted until class VIII (s.16), Maharashtra’s breakaway Shiv Sena and BJP coalition government has re-introduced make-or-break examinations in classes V and VIII. Children who fail these exams twice will be held back and not promoted to the next class. This is in line with the amendment to the RTE Act legislated by the BJP/NDA government at the Centre in 2019. The Maharashtra education ministry’s gazette notification dated June 23 decrees: “There shall be an annual examination at the end of every academic year of class V and VIII. The State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), Maharashtra (Academic Authority) shall determine the format and procedure for the annual examination, re-examination and evaluation of classes V and VIII. If the (sic) child fails to pass the annual examination, then such a child shall be provided additional supplementary guidance for the respective subjects and re-examined within two months from the declaration of the result of the annual examination. If the child fails in the re-examination, he shall be held back in the class V or class VIII as the case may be. However, no child shall be expelled from the school till the completion of elementary education.” After over a decade of adherence with s.16 of the RTE Act and compliance with the no-detention decree, this initiative has been welcomed by the majority of parents and principals. “It’s important that children study seriously in their foundational years to build a strong platform for future learning. Now with exams back we will be able to measure the actual progress of children and ensure they are prepared for secondary education,” says Sheetal Dhotre, speaking as a teacher (AM Naik School, Powai) and parent. Ophelia Barreto, principal of Podar International School, Santa Cruz, admits that the workload of primary teachers will increase, but it’s important for children and teachers to take primary education seriously and test children’s learning outcomes every few years, if not annually. “In the new digital age, evaluation systems have changed for better and will ease teachers load. Therefore, it’s good that these exams have been re-introduced,” she says. Swapnil Jagatap, headmaster of Natwar Nagar Mumbai Public School, Jogeshwari agrees. “The prospect of detention in the same class will certainly bring back the level of seriousness for learning which went missing in primary education during the past few years. Moreover, social attitudes towards failure need to change. Repeating a class means that the learner has a chance to re-learn, rather than carry on to the next class with half-baked learning,” says Jagatap. In this connection, it’s notable that make-or-break exams have not been introduced for every year of primary/elementary education (class I-VIII). To that extent, the Maharashtra government’s exams re-introduction order is well-spaced out and accepts…

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Tamil nadu: Shocking outcome

Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai) In the popular imagination, the peninsular state of Tamil Nadu (pop.68 million) is India’s most educated state churning out lakhs of well-educated doctors, engineers and scientists year on year. Therefore, a big slippage in school learning outcomes in the Union ministry of education’s Performance Grading Index (PGI) 2021-22, released on July 8, which ranks the state among the bottom 10, has come as a big shock to all in this southern state. This is a significant drop from being among the Top 5 states at Level II in the PGI 2019-20 to Level III in 2021-22. PGI assesses the performance of school education systems in states countrywide. It was revised in 2021-22 and renamed PGI 2.0, with the new assessment structure including 73 parameters grouped into two categories: Outcomes and Governance Management. The outcomes category includes access, infrastructure and facilities, equity, and outcomes. The governance management category includes teacher education and training. In PGI 2021-22, under the head of learning outcomes — “the most important and ultimate goal of the index” — Tamil Nadu is awarded a score of 41.20 out of 240 — the lowest among all states and Union territories collated from the National Achievement Survey 2021. Under the parameter of access, it is ranked among the Top 8 with a score of 66.16. Under infrastructure and facilities among the Top 10 (93.48); equity #2 (229.25); governance and processes among Top 13 (77.87); teacher education among the Top 5. Its overall score aggregates 590.4 which places it in Level III. The state’s low Level III ranking has stunned academics — even if not politicians — in Tamil Nadu, especially its lowest score under learning outcomes. According to them, a major factor that has contributed to the state’s poor performance is the quality of teaching. A study conducted by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) last year found the quality of teaching in Tamil Nadu below average. The state, at 29 percent, fell behind most in numeracy skills and had the maximum number of students unable to complete basic grade-level tasks. The NCERT study also found that many teachers in Tamil Nadu are not adequately trained, and don’t have the resources to teach effectively. Another reason for Tamil Nadu’s slip in the PGI 2021-22 is shortage of teachers in government schools. “Inadequate number of teachers in government-run schools is a prime cause of the state’s abysmal learning outcomes rank. In 28,000 primary and upper primary government schools statewide, over 50,000 teaching posts are vacant. There is only one teacher in 3,800 primary schools (upto class V) and only 2.5 teachers (on average) in the remaining 25,618 primary and middle schools across the state,” says S. Gnanasekaran, general-secretary of the Tamil Nadu Higher Secondary School Headmasters Association. Under provisions of the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, there should be one teacher for every 30 students. Nor is this a problem peculiar to Tamil Nadu — 18 percent of…

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Himachal Pradesh: Good show in adversity

Autar Nehru (Delhi) Despite news of flash floods triggering landslides, washing away roads, bringing down buildings and flooding Delhi after 45 years because of 72 hours of incessant rainfall in northern India’s Himachal Pradesh and adjacent regions in July, the 6th edition of SNAMUN ’23 was successfully staged at The Lawrence School, Sanawar from July 27-29. Its sub-text is a story of resilience and rising popularity of boarding schools in India, at a time when in the UK — the mother country of boarding schools — they seem to be losing their shine (see educationworld.in/united-kingdom-boarding-schools-losing-shine). The Model United Nations (MUN) programme, a popular co-curricular activity in schools throughout the world, is a big draw for schools as students groups representing countries discuss international issues and learn the skills of debate, diplomacy, negotiation and draft resolutions. An annual fixture at The Lawrence School, Sanawar (TLSS, estb.1847), India’s top-ranked vintage co-ed boarding school in the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings 2022-23, the Sanawar MUN or SNAMUN ’23 now in its sixth year, was threatened by inclement weather. But the host school’s students-run secretariat pulled out all stops to ensure full-house participation. “We returned to school on July 20 after the break, and mailed videos of blocked roads opened for traffic and shared them with participating schools and delegates conveying the message that it was quite convenient to travel to Sanawar,” says Aditya Das, a class XII student and secretary-general of SNAMUN ’23. As a result, 100 student delegates and teacher coordinators from 11 boarding/day-cum boarding schools across the country including Army Public School, Dagshai (HP), KK Blossoms School, Solan, Mayo Boys College, Ajmer, Modern School, Barakhamba, Delhi, Pinegrove, Solan, St. Kabir Public School, Chandigarh, Rajkumar College, Rajkot, Yadavindra Public School, Patiala, and Mussoorie International School made their way to the host school in Sanawar to discuss ‘Peace, Justice and Sustainability’ at SNAMUN ’23. The three-day event also brought back bad memories of the Covid-19 pandemic, which had posed a threat to all boarding schools as parents preferred to keep children at home or in neighbouring day schools. However, after the end of the pandemic, boarding schools — especially upscale boarding schools in hill stations and Himalayan foothills, which offer clean air and healthy lifestyles at a time when India’s chaotic cities are setting world records for measurable environment pollution, 14 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in India according to WHO (World Health Organisation) — are making a comeback in middle class consciousness. SNAMUN ’23 was a success despite the rain gods having showered excessive bounty on TLSS. “Over the course of three days, we discovered exceptional talent from participating schools. Because of inclement weather, the number of participant schools was not on a par with previous years. But the consensus was that our best schools are shaping a next generation ready to drive progress and make our shared planet a better, more harmonious place for everyone,” says Himmat Singh Dhillon, the highly experienced headmaster of TLSS, who has served…

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West Bengal: Governor vs. government (contd.)

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) Within a month of the public standoff between West Bengal Governor, Dr. C.V. Ananda Bose, and the Mamata Banerjee government over the issue of the former’s appointment of 11 interim vice chancellors of state government universities without consulting the education ministry (as reported on these pages last month), these two arms of government are at each other again. On July 1, Raj Bhavan (governor’s office) issued a circular mandating appointment of “student vice chancellors” from among extraordinarily meritorious postgrad and doctorate students in state government universities. Protesting this mandate, state education minister Bratya Basu said: “UGC norms clearly state that anyone appointed as the vice chancellor of any state university will have to have minimum experience in the post of professor, which means a total teaching experience to the tune of 20 years.” Moreover in the latest episode of the continuing showdown between Writers Building and Raj Bhavan, on July 19, the state government inducted former North Bengal University VC Omprakash Mishra into the university’s Executive Council. Earlier on July 2, Governor Bose had ordered an enquiry against Mishra based on allegations of irregularities during his tenure as vice chancellor. Mishra’s appointment to the executive council is not undeserved. An alumnus of the top ranked Jawaharlal Nehru University, Mishra was former professor of international relations at Jadavpur University before he was appointed interim vice chancellor of North Bengal University (NBU) on September 29, 2022. A veteran Congress party leader, in 2019, he joined the TMC claiming it is the only party that could take on the rising BJP in the state. Mishra is also among former VCs, whose services were not extended by the governor, and who also issued a press statement against Governor Bose. Evidently, Mishra is being targeted for raising his voice against Raj Bhavan. Clashes between Raj Bhavan and the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) government have been recurring issues since former governor — and currently the Vice President of India — Jagdeep Dhankar was appointed Governor of Bengal in 2019. While in his mainly ceremonial position, Dhankar held regular meetings with VCs, enquiring about their activities, assigning work and reminding them of their accountability towards the chancellor, i.e, the governor. In December 2019, the TMC government issued a GO (government order) requiring university VCs to route all communications with the Governor through the education ministry. On June 13, 2022, it also passed a West Bengal University Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2022, appointing the chief minister as the chancellor of all state government universities in lieu of the governor. Unsurprisingly, the Bill is pending in the Governor’s office for the latter’s assent. Face-offs in academia have become frequent in several states over the past few years, prompting state governments to legislate laws curbing gubernatorial powers over state universities. In 2022, the Tamil Nadu assembly unanimously passed a Bill vesting the power to appoint vice chancellors in the state government. Several other states have also passed such bills in the recent past, including the Uddhav Thackeray-led…

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Karnataka: Rank pulling circular

Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) Karnataka’s newly elected congress government is cracking the whip on the state’s 24 private universities, many of them established during the rule (2019-2023) of its predecessor BJP government. On July 17, the Under Secretary, Higher Education Department, shot off letters to registrars of private universities lambasting them for not inviting government representatives to meetings of their boards of governors (BoGs). Under special legislation of the state’s legislative assembly, by which they have been established, all private universities are obliged to invite principal-secretary, higher ed department, or secretary of the state government to BoG meetings. Among the varsities served notice are top-ranked institutions such as St. Joseph’s, CMR, Jain, Reva, Azim Premji and Presidency universities. “The fact that Board of Governors is the statutory authority of private universities established in the State by the Acts enacted by the State Legislature and the Principal Secretary/Secretary to the Government, Higher Education Department, Government of Karnataka are ex-officio members of the Board of Governors as provided in relevant sections of every such Act… The Government has no tolerance towards discourtesy shown by not inviting the Principal Secretary/Secretary to the Government, Higher Education Department to meetings of Board of Governors and such Private Universities are hereby admonished for violation of statutory provisions of the Acts establishing them,” says a circular signed by Nandakumar B, under-secretary to the government, higher education department. Moreover, private universities have been asked to “scrupulously adhere to the hard and fast provisions of the Acts establishing them”, and warned of “zero tolerance” for non-compliance. BoGs are the highest decision-making authority conferred with the powers to decide the university’s financial, admissions, fees policies. During the past decade, private universities in Karnataka have multiplied at fast pace. During the first term in office of the BJP government (2008-2013), three private universities were approved. Subsequently when BJP strongman B.S. Yeddyurappa was chief minister (2019-2021), a record six private universities were approved by the state legislative assembly followed by another six during the 21-month chief ministership of Basavaraj Bommai. In sum, 15 of the 25 private universities operational statewide have been sanctioned by the BJP government. “State government legislation under which private universities are established mandates inclusion of representatives from the higher education department in BoGs. Whenever there is a BoG meeting, it’s an unsaid mandate that all members of the board are to be invited. The Acts clearly empower government representatives to monitor the functioning of private universities through representation on BoGs,” says Prof. B. Thimme Gowda, former chairman of the Karnataka State Higher Education Council. However, private university managements claim that government members of BoGs don’t respond to board meeting invitations despite being reminded several times. “We have no qualms about inviting representatives of government to our BoG meetings. For all previous meetings, we have a record of communications sent to the principal-secretary. But there’s seldom any response from the higher education department. One of the major challenges private universities face is that there is no response to communications sent…

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They said it

“The world is looking at India as a nursery of new possibilities. Many countries are approaching us to open IIT campuses there. Two IIT campuses — one in Tanzania and one in Abu Dhabi — are already about to start operations…. Various global universities are also reaching out to us, expressing their interest in setting up campuses in India.” Prime minister Narendra Modi at the Akhil Bhartiya Shiksha Samagam in Delhi (July 29) “The National Education Policy is making its way to every part of the country. The NEP aims to make India the torchbearer of providing and receiving quality education in the world in the 21st century.”Dharmendra Pradhan, Union education minister, on the third anniversary of NEP 2020 (Hindustan Times, July 31) “The fall seems the steepest for Byju’s. It lost its ‘decacorn’ status after Prosus, one of its biggest investors, slashed the edtech firm’s valuation by three-fourths — from $22 billion to $5.1 billion – in less than one year.” Aroon Purie, editor-in-chief, on the great plunge in valuations of unicorns especially Byju’s (India Today, July 31) “We are dealing with something on unprecedented magnitude of violence against women in communal and sectarian violence. It cannot be gainsaid that crimes are happening against women and in Bengal also. But here the case is different. Tell me what is the suggestion from you in Manipur. We cannot justify what happened in Manipur by saying that this happened elsewhere.” D.Y. Chandrachud, Chief Justice of India, on violence in Manipur (Times of India, August 1) “…But capital is mobile and inherently risk-averse and could swiftly move elsewhere if it perceives a heightened law-and-order threat. This is the practical lesson that politicians of all ideological hues need to absorb rapidly.” Editorial on recent communal violence in Gurguram (Business Standard, August 4)

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They said it

“Education is the cornerstone of the bond between India and the United States. Students from both countries are learning and growing alongside each other, discovering the people that they want to become and building a better world together. Working side by side, our nations can create a safer, healthier, more prosperous future for everyone.” Jill Biden, First Lady of the US, at the Skilling for Future event attended by Indian prime minister Narendra Modi in Washington (June 22) “The third decade of the last century gave new momentum to the struggle for India’s independence. Now the third decade of the new century will give impetus to the development journey of India. The large number of upcoming universities, colleges, IITs, IIMs and AIIMS are becoming the building blocks of new India.” Prime minister Narendra Modi speaking at the centenary celebrations of Delhi University (The Hindu, June 30) “We’ve seen them – Snapchat, TikTok and several others – serve as places where violent gatherings have been organised, but there’s also a form of mimicry of the violence, which for some young people leads them to lose touch with reality. You get the impression that for some of them, they are experiencing on the street the video games that have intoxicated them.” Emmanuel Macron, President of France, on the role played by social media in fuelling the recent riots in France (Al Jazeera, June 30) “Byju’s and its investors assumed and pushed huge growth rates… Educational brands take a long time to build. Some of the world’s top institutions have been around for centuries. It takes at least a few decades, not a few quarters. Neither can you see education as a pre “maximise financial-returns’ product.” Chetan Bhagat, well-known author, on the steady downfall of India’s most valued edtech company Byju’s (Times of India, July 3)

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West bengal: Governor-government sparring

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) Under provisions of the Constitution of India and well-established conventions, just as the President of India, the ceremonial Head of State, is obliged to act on the advice of the council of ministers, i.e, the Central government, similarly the Governors (appointed by the Central government) of India’s 28 states and eight Union territories are obliged to act only on the advice of state governments. Essentially, state governors are the eyes and ears of the Central government appointed by the Centre to preserve the unity of the country. But while it’s the obligation of governors to act and issue orders solely on the advice of the duly elected state governments, in instances when they are formed by political parties opposed to government at the Centre, state governors are often encouraged to make life difficult for their governments. In West Bengal (pop.91 million) which has been ruled by the Trinamool Congress led by its fiery three-term chief minister Mamata Banerjee since 2011, the state government is less than enamoured with the BJP government at the Centre. This antagonism has been mutual and during the past few years, Jagdeep Dhankar, former governor of West Bengal (now Vice President of India), publicly criticised the TMC government on several issues including maintenance of law and order and conduct of assembly elections. Under well-established convention, state governors are also required ex-officio to serve as Chancellors of government universities in all states and Union territories. On June 1, the state’s new governor C.V. Ananda Bose, who assumed office last November, unilaterally appointed 11 interim vice chancellors including of the top-ranked University of Calcutta and Jadavpur University after completion of tenures of the previous incumbents, an initiative criticised by state education minister Bratya Basu as illegal as the state government had not been consulted. “Moreover as per University Grants Commission rules, ten years of academic experience at the professor level is mandatory and most of the appointees don’t have this qualification,” Basu told the media. However, with ten of the 11 appointees having accepted office, on June 12, the higher education department sent a notice asking the appointees “not to draw pay and allowances applicable to the vice-chancellor of a state-aided university and that any non-compliance will be viewed seriously”. In Bengal, the salary of a senior professor of a public university is Rs.2.10 lakh per month and of a vice chancellor Rs.2.40 lakh. This confrontation between Raj Bhavan (governor’s official residence) and the TMC has been building up for a while. In April, Bose had issued a circular asking all VCs to send weekly reports to Raj Bhavan. At that time, the education ministry had objected to the circular even though Raj Bhavan had stressed that the chancellor’s priority is to safeguard the best interests of students. According to Prof. Om Prakash Mishra, former interim VC of North Bengal University, “the governor by no means has a legal authority to directly communicate with the VCs or ask for reports”. Former VCs, whose services were…

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Karnataka: Textbooks ping pong

Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) The newly elected congress government of Karnataka (pop.69 million), sworn in on May 19, is wasting no time in implementing its pricey election promises. The government has gone into overdrive to implement the Congress party’s five pre-election “guarantees” — 200 units of free power, 10 kg of rice per person in Below Poverty Line (BPL) households, free-of-charge travel for women in government buses, Rs.2,000 per month for women heads of the family and Rs.3,000 for unemployed graduates. Moreover, it has moved with alacrity to fulfill its election manifesto promise of rewriting school textbooks to wipe out the alleged hindutva bias of the previous BJP government. On June 17, the education ministry issued a circular revoking 18 changes introduced by its predecessor BJP government in Kannada and English medium social sciences textbooks for children in classes VI- X, prescribed for 78,424 state board affiliated schools. The changes include removal of a chapter on RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) founder Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar and an essay authored by right-wing activist Chakravarti Sulibele. A letter written by former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to his daughter Indira Gandhi, and chapters on vedic culture, rise of new religions, human rights, women freedom fighters are among seven new introductions. However, with the new academic year having already commenced on May 31, and textbooks printed and dispatched (with the old content) to all government and aided schools statewide, Madhu Bangarappa, the newly inducted minister for school education, announced that the revised content will be printed and distributed as additional booklets. The backstory to the textbooks revision row is that in September 2021, BJP education minister S. Suresh Kumar constituted a 15-member Textbook Revision Committee (TRC) headed by Rohith Chakratirtha, a Kannada language novelist and staunch BJP and sangh parivar (RSS/BJP family) supporter. Seven months later, the TRC submitted its report and recommended changes in Kannada and English social science texts. Chapters on Mysuru’s heroic Muslim ruler Tipu Sultan, social reformer Basavanna, Dravidian movement pioneer Periyar and social reformer Narayana Guru, who opposed the caste system, written in previous textbooks, were excised, and new chapters eulogising RSS/hindutva ideology were introduced. Undeterred by criticism from opposition parties and academics, the BJP government (2019-2023) went ahead with its textbook revision exercise and new textbooks were printed and distributed to students for the academic year 2022-23. Now, the newly elected Congress government has revoked these changes. The revision/rewriting of textbooks by the new Congress government after commencement of the new school academic year in June, has not found favour with academics and private schools in the state. “We are one month into the new academic year. The first formative assessment is scheduled for July. We have no idea when these booklets will come. All this confusion is sure to disrupt teaching-learning,” says T. Lokesh, president, Registered Unaided Private Schools Association (RUPSA), which has a membership of 13,000 budget private schools statewide. With newly elected governments at the Centre and states decreeing revision of school texts to reflect their…

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Delhi: Packing apprehension

Prachi Bhardwaj (Delhi) Even as the national council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) — the country’s largest school textbook publisher — is struggling with writing textbooks to implement the 623-page National Curriculum Framework for School Education 2023 prescribed by a steering committee chaired by Dr. K. Kasturirangan, author of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, two highly respected academics — Suhas Palshikar and Yogendra Yadav — have written to NCERT to remove their names from all NCERT political science textbooks listing them as advisors. The two academics have resigned in protest against NCERT having excluded all references to the Mughal era (1526-1865), the Emergency (1975-77) imposed by the late prime minister Indira Gandhi, literary contribution of Dalit writers, Gujarat communal riots (2002) and Naxalite movement from revised sociology and political science textbooks for classes IX-XII. The academics say they were neither informed nor consulted about these revisions. “Textbooks cannot and should not be shaped in this blatantly partisan manner and should not quell the spirit of critique and questioning among students of social sciences. These textbooks as they stand now do not serve the purpose of training students of political science in both the principles of politics and the broad patterns of political dynamics that have occurred over time,” they wrote in the resignation letter. These resignations have created a stir in academia and the media because Palshikar and Yadav are highly respected academics. Palshikar is a former professor of political science at the high ranked Savitribai Phule University, Pune and chief editor of Studies in Indian Politics while Yadav is a former member of the National Advisory Council of the UPA-Congress government, a prominent television commentator and promoter-president of the Swaraj India Party. Following Palshikar and Yadav’s resignation, 33 academicians including Pratap Bhanu Mehta, the well-known public intellectual, Radhika Menon (Delhi University), Nivedita Menon (Jawaharlal Nehru University), Kanti Prasad Bajpai, Vice-Dean at the National University of Singapore, and former JNU professor Rajeev Bhargava have called out NCERT for “jeopardising the collective efforts” of the Textbook Development Committee (TDC) of the year 2006-07. In a letter to Dinesh Prasad Saklani, Director of NCERT, they have raised concerns about the potential negative impact of the recent rationalisation process on their collaborative and innovative work as part of the TDC. In response to Palshikar and Yadav’s resignation letter, NCERT has declined their request to remove their names. “Textbooks at the school level are developed based on the state of our knowledge and understanding on a given subject. Therefore, at no stage individual authorship is claimed, hence the withdrawal of association by any one is out of the question,” says a NCERT circular issued on June 9. Moreover, NCERT spokespersons say that children’s curriculum load had to be reduced because of the prolonged closure of schools — averaging 82 weeks nationwide — during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, these explanations have cut no ice with the two academics because of the similarity between the omissions in the revised textbooks and Hindu majoritarian philosophy…

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Karnataka: Broken system

Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) The newly sworn-in congress government of Karnataka, which won an absolute majority (135 seats in the 224-seat legislative assembly) in a bitterly-fought electoral contest, has inherited a broken, ailing public school system from its predecessor BJP government. A mere nine days after Siddaramaiah (no initials) took oath as the 24th chief minister of Karnataka (pop.64 million) after a four-day long leadership tussle with D.K. Shiva Kumar, sworn-in as deputy chief minister, the Karnataka High Court reprimanded the state government for not providing basic facilities such as drinking water and toilets in public schools. The court cited the Central government’s Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) data to the effect that of 47,068 government schools statewide, 823 lack drinking water facilities and 464 don’t have toilets. “Is it not a shame that we are not even giving drinking water to our boys and girls merely because they are studying in government schools at a time when private schools are providing mineral water and have classes with smart boards?” queried the division bench headed by Justice Prasanna B. Varale, while hearing a public interest litigation writ on out-of-school children. That’s not all. According to UDISE data, Karnataka ranks #2 countrywide for the highest number of single teacher schools. Of the 47,068 government schools, 29 percent i.e, 13,649 are single teacher institutions, second after Jharkhand (30.9 percent). In the neighbouring state of Kerala, a mere 4 percent of government schools have only one teacher. But while independent agencies such as the high court and UDISE have exposed the pathetic condition of the state’s government schools, the education ministry’s own, internal survey paints a rosy picture. In May, the ministry released results of a survey on its ‘Kalika Chetarike’ supplementary learning programme – introduced in April 2022 to make up for children’s pandemic learning loss. According to the survey, Kalika Chetarike is a big success with 87 percent of government school teachers and 88 percent parents reporting improvement in children’s learning capabilities. B.S. Rishikesh, head, Hub for Education, Law and Policy, Azim Premji University, says there is an overall sense of satisfaction among teachers and parents about the Kalika Chetarike programme. “The purpose of this programme was to address the issue of foundational learning and numeracy loss during the pandemic induced closure of schools. Children had forgotten what they learnt and couldn’t cope with new lessons. Kalika Chetarike rightly asked school teachers to set aside teaching of the syllabus and focus first on developing children’s conceptual learning and fundamental literacy and numeracy. If not for Kalika Chetarike, children would not be able to recover the pandemic learning loss. In states that have not had a similar programme, the impact on children’s learning levels will be felt after a few years,” says Rishikesh. However Dr. A.S. Seetharamu, former professor of education, Institute of Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru questions the programme’s ‘success’. “Pre-Covid, the learning levels of children were already low. What the Kalika Chetarike programme has done is merely stem…

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Delhi: Rankings imbroglio

Autar Nehru (Delhi) College and university rankings have always been a controversial issue in India. There are several government rankings agencies notably the Bengaluru-based National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC, estb.1994) and latterly the Union education ministry’s National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF, estb.2015). Neither of these official HEIs (higher education institutions) ranking agencies inspire much confidence within the academic community or among school-going students and college graduates searching for higher education options. Since it was established 29 years ago, NAAC has accredited only 418 universities (out of 1,113 countrywide) and 9,062 undergrad colleges (42,000) under the voluntary HEIs accreditation system. Most new genre private liberal arts, law, science and engineering HEIs, which are transforming Indian education, don’t bother about NAAC accreditation which at best is an add-on. Neither do the multiplying tribe of education consultants or students looking for higher study options. Moreover for HEIs, acquiring NAAC accreditation is a tedious and expensive affair. In addition to paying a fee — Rs.6.5 lakh — inevitably, there’s a massive amount of paperwork involved. After much form-filling, NAAC deputes an inspection team mainly comprising retired academics to the applicant HEIs to audit — at the applicant college/university’s expense — and verify their excellence claims. And it’s well-known in academia and the knowledgeable public that in instances where visiting task forces are provided excellent on-campus hospitality and gifts, these institutions tend to receive high A and A++ ratings. Recently eyebrows were raised over NAAC awarding the Bhubaneswar-based Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA) private deemed university the highest score of 3.88 out of a maximum 5.00 — a rating higher than of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISc) and every other university countrywide. According to a Times of India report (October 2, 2022), “seven institutes, all in the private domain have a NAAC score that is higher than the best Indian university”. Ironically in NIRF 2022 published by the Union education ministry, IISc is ranked the country’s #1 university. Recently (March) Prof. Bhushan Patwardhan, who was appointed chairman of NAAC in February 2022, resigned from his post in protest against the opaque and questionable ratings awarded by NAAC, expressing apprehension about the “possibility of vested interests, malpractices, leading to the awarding of questionable grades to some HEIs”. Not that the NIRF rankings inspire much confidence either. In NIRF 2022 which is heavily skewed in favour of government HEIs, in its overall Top 100 league table (headed by IIT-Madras), Bharathiar University, Coimbatore (#24), Savitribai Phule University, Pune (#25) and Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan, Bhubaneswar (#30) are ranked higher than the highly regarded Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS-Pilani) ranked #32 and commonly accepted as the private sector equivalent of the top-ranked government-run IITs. In the EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings 2023-24 (which excludes IITs), BITS-Pilani is ranked India’s #1 private engineering and technology university. Moreover, Amity University, ranked India’s #1 multidisciplinary university in EWIHER 2023-24, is ranked #42 in NIRF 2022. In November 2022 an Overarching Committee was constituted after reports of compromised data security…

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Tamil Nadu: Runaway language chauvinism

Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai) Love for one’s native language is a commendable virtue. But forcing it down the throats of everyone residing within a country or state smacks of dictatorship. Especially in a country comprising 29 linguistic states in which English or more accurately ‘Inglish’ is the language of Parliament, judiciary and business. And in a country in which every citizen has a fundamental right to reside in any state or region and practice a business, trade or profession and one in which professionals and families are frequently transferred from one state to another for short duration, it becomes harassment. Yet so great is the love of mother-tongue for India’s politicians that decreeing Hindi — the lingua franca of North India’s half a dozen socio-economic backward but most populous states — the national language is high priority for them. Leaders of the ruling BJP at the Centre make no secret of officially or unofficially ‘imposing’ Hindi as the national language. Prime minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah traverse the country making thunderous speeches in Hindi without translators. This has sparked a reaction in several more socio-economically advanced states of peninsular India. The newly elected Congress government of Karnataka has promised to intensify the exclusive usage of Kannada in government and administration. And on May 22, the state’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) government issued an order to make Tamil as an additional compulsory subject in classes IX-X of all schools including 1,469 schools affiliated with the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), and 124 schools affiliated with the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) from the start of the academic year 2024-25. Hitherto, schools affiliated with these national exam boards were free to choose the medium of instruction and additional second languages. A circular from the Directorate of Private Schools states that the syllabus and exam pattern for students of these schools will be determined by the Director of Private Schools. The final written class X exam for all private school students in Tamil language will be conducted by the Director of Government Examinations, and a separate certificate will be issued to them. The state government’s resolve to make all school children statewide study Tamil, is not something new. It stretches all the way back to the 1960s when the Congress government at the Centre decreed Hindi as the national language countrywide. Riots broke out in Tamil Nadu and gave rise to the Tamil nationalist DMK party which (together with its breakaway offshoot the AIADMK) has been elected to power ever since. This new GO (government order) is under the Tamil Language Learning Act, 2006 which decreed learning Tamil would be compulsory for all students in classes I-X. Over a decade ago, this legislation was resisted by several education associations, academics and students and challenged in the high court which upheld it. However on appeal, the Supreme Court exempted students of schools promoted by linguistic minorities in the state and schools affiliated with the pan-India CBSE, CISCE…

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West Bengal: Downward spiral

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) A single judge bench of justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of Calcutta High Court currently hearing the multi-crore school jobs scam in West Bengal, which exposed dire irregularities in appointment of teachers in 82,748 government primary schools, and uncovered evidence of administrative malfeasance, on May 12, ordered cancellation of appointment of 32,000 candidates recruited as teachers on the basis of Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) 2014 results. According to the court, there was evidence of massive corruption in the interview process and in many cases, the mandatory aptitude test wasn’t conducted. While ordering cancellation of 32,000 appointments, Justice Gangopadhyay directed the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE) to immediately arrange for recruitment of eligible candidates — from TET 2014 panel as well as from the 150,000 fresh candidates who qualified in TET 2022, held on December 11 after a gap of five years — within three months. He also ruled that the 32,000 illegally appointed teachers can continue to work for the next four months, but will receive the salary of para teachers. Since May 18, 2022, after Justice Gangopadhyay ordered a CBI investigation into the TET scam, in which aspiring primary school teachers paid an estimated Rs.10-20 lakh to middlemen, began unfolding, threads of corruption started leading to top state government ministers. In the past one year, the Enforcement Directorate, a financial frauds investigation unit of the Central government, and CBI have arrested former education minister Partha Chatterjee; former president of WBBSE, Kalyanmoy Ganguly, Shanti Prasad Sinha, former adviser to West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) among others including Subiresh Bhattacharya, a youth wing leader of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC). Moreover, a web of companies through which the cash flow was managed came under the scanner of the Central investigative agencies following which ED sleuths provisionally attached properties of the accused valued at Rs.103.10 crore. It is pertinent to note that in West Bengal where overt and disguised unemployment is rife with 7.6 million registered unemployed youth, and small and medium-scale industry salaries are rock-bottom, teaching jobs in government schools which pay Rs.33,000 per month-plus are highly prized. Families desperate for sons and daughters to be employed as teachers in government-run schools often sell property and/or take loans to pay upto Rs.20 lakh as bribes to government officials to land these jobs. With appointees having lost their jobs after paying hefty amounts as bribes to ruling party leaders, the high court judgement is bad news for TMC and chief minister Mamata Banerjee, now serving her third term in office. According to informed academics, the declining learning standards of primary children has a direct link with the TMC government’s ill-advised utshoshree (‘origin’) teacher transfer policy launched by chief minister Mamata Banerjee on August 2, 2021. This populist policy entertains teachers’ request for return to cities where they were first recruited, emptying out rural schools. Because of this policy, many rural schools are unable to admit students in higher secondary (classes XI and XII), as there are no teachers…

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They said it

“Earlier, we used to give just kitabi gyan (book learning) to our students, but this will change with the introduction of the New Education Policy. The new NEP focuses on practical learning. Such an education system is at the centre of NEP and now it is the responsibility of the teachers to implement this system on the ground.” Prime minister Narendra Modi, addressing the 29th Biennial Educational Conference, organised by the All India Primary Teachers Federation (May 12) “Textbook revision will definitely happen as it was one of the poll promises. The revision will happen in the interest of students and without any flaws on the part of the government, education authorities and the administration.” Madhu Bangarappa, Karnataka’s minister for school education in the newly elected Congress government (June 1, New Indian Express) “One must admire the patience and diligence of the protesters faced with the wall of contempt and indifference, and then surviving it calmly. They realised that politics needs networking and solidarity as well as a community ready to listen to their demands. A claim to justice becomes the new ballet of solidarity. This was the message that should have been broadcast from the new Parliament building…” Shiv Visvanathan, professor, OP Jindal Global University, and social scientist on the ongoing protest by wrestlers (June 1, Deccan Herald) “But investments in education and health are long gestation projects that do not yield results in one electoral cycle or even over a generation. The improvements are gradual, success is a process and while the benefits are perceived, they are not tangible. All these attributes do not lend itself to a grand inauguration like the inauguration of an edifice.” Duvvuri Subbarao, former RBI governor, on the inauguration of the new Parliament building (Times of India, June 1)

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West Bengal: U-turn surprise

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) After procrastinating for several months over the issue of implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, West Bengal’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) government has signalled a rejig of its strategy. In what is being interpreted as a sudden softening of its opposition to NEP 2020, on March 17, the higher education department wrote to registrars of all state universities to introduce the “new curriculum and credit framework” in compliance with NEP 2020 recommendations for four-year undergraduate programmes in the forthcoming academic year starting July. The state government’s decision came after the secretary of the University Grants Commission (UGC) wrote to it on January 31, asking it to implement NEP guidelines. Currently, West Bengal’s 20 state-aided universities, 49 government-owned and 433 government-aided degree colleges and 11 private universities offer three-year undergraduate programmes. Soon after the announcement, on March 27, the state government set up a 10-member committee comprising Bankura University VC Deb Narayan Bandyopadhyay, North Bengal University VC Om Prakash Mishra, Rabindra Bharati University VC Nirmalya Narayan Chakraborty, under the chairmanship of Jadavpur University VC Suranjan Das, to get feedback about NEP and formulate a higher education policy tailored to the needs and interests of West Bengal. The committee will submit its report by May end. The sudden U-turn of the state government in accepting the BJP government at the Centre’s diktat has startled the stakeholders of education in West Bengal (pop.91 million), including teachers’ associations, educationists and students. They are miffed that the announcement was made without teachers and professors being taken into confidence, ambiguity in the directive over what will become of the two-year Master’s programme, and also that learning compulsory yoga has found place in the directive. Additionally, there is concern that the four-year undergrad programme could result in more dropouts, corporatisation of the education sector, and reduced role of state governments, enabling the Centre to acquire more power in education, contrary to the spirit of the Constitution of India. Academics of leading colleges of Kolkata are also voicing concern regarding implementing NEP from July as they feel that faculty shortages — according to them, nearly 2,000 assistant professors and 100 principals posts are vacant in government colleges, along with lack of adequate infrastructure including availability of classrooms to accommodate students for two extra semesters — will stymie introduction of the four-year undergrad degree programme. Academy dons express surprise that the same TMC government which was opposed to NEP 2020, and described it as an RSS agenda to impose Hindi and standardised curriculums on all states against the spirit of federalism, is suddenly in love with NEP 2020. “NEP 2020 will encourage corporatisation of the education system and destroy the state-funded education sector from school to university levels. In a vast country like India, which has diversified socio-economic conditions, a common yardstick cannot be applied to all states,” thundered former but now disgraced education minister Partha Chatterjee. Moreover last year, Bratya Basu, who replaced Partha Chatterjee as the education minister in 2021, had said that…

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Tamil Nadu: Tamil pride fallout

Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai) Tamil nadu’s education exceptionalism — the state’s DMK government wants to run its own NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test) for admission into the state’s medical colleges, aspires to teach engineering undergrad and postgrad study programmes in Tamil and wants to be exempted from the three languages formula in K-12 education — is generating disillusionment within the state’s higher secondary system, the springboard for higher education. In a report tabled in the state’s legislative assembly on April 21, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India commented that enrolment in Tamil Nadu’s government secondary and higher secondary schools declined by 14.76 percent and 11.84 percent respectively during the period 2016-21. The report attributed this to factors such as poor infrastructure and teacher shortage. The report said that although the state achieved a GER (gross enrolment ratio) of 94.20 percent and 78.60 percent at secondary and higher secondary levels in 2020-21 which compares favourably with the all-India average of 79.89 percent and 53.80 percent respectively, higher secondary level enrolments in aided and unaided private schools and other schools, increased by 3.97 percent during 2016-21. However, the CAG report’s attribution of poor infrastructure and teacher shortage for the sad plight of the state’s 3,685 secondary and 4,339 senior secondary schools, has drawn mixed response from academics and education activists. “There is undoubtedly a growing teacher shortage in government schools. But to get enough quality teachers, they need to be paid well. Presently, teachers in government-run schools take home a modest Rs.12,000 per month. With too few takers, contract teachers lacking adequate subject knowledge are signed up to teach children. This situation is getting worse and has adversely impacting enrolments in government schools,” says Prince Gajendra Babu, general secretary of the State Platform for Common School System, Tamil Nadu, adding that 18,862 teachers’ posts are vacant in government schools. To arrive at its conclusions about poor infrastructure, CAG personnel sampled 108 government schools and reported a 44 percent shortage of classrooms in 48 schools equivalent to 227 classrooms. Consequently, it’s not unusual for classes to be conducted in the open, under the shade of trees, under-construction buildings and makeshift classrooms. Statewide, the CAG report estimates the shortage of classrooms at 11,711. However, some educationists contest CAG’s conclusions that poor infrastructure and teacher shortage are the prime causes of declining standards in government schools. “It is not as if all private schools have good infrastructure. Small private schools in rural areas are run in small houses and yet attract a sizeable number of children. Infrastructure development is an ongoing process for all schools. However, the teacher shortage is real. In all, there are 45,000 vacancies across the state in primary, secondary and higher secondary schools and a large number of high schools function with one or two graduate teachers. For the enrollment decline, one also needs to look at long-term demographic data such as rural-urban migration,” says Aruna Rathnam, a former education and child protection specialist at Unicef, Chennai, and member…

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Karnataka: Politically correct promises

Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) Even if belatedly, primary-secondary education is becoming an important election issue — at least in state legislative assembly elections. Credit for this must primarily accrue to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which against all expectations swept the Delhi state assembly elections in 2015 and 2019 and also the Punjab state election last year. Reform of K-12 education — and especially bringing government schools on a par with private schools — is given high importance in AAP’s election campaigns. Moreover after being voted into office, the AAP government of Delhi has walked the talk by allocating 25 percent of its annual budget for school education — spruced up the infrastructure of government schools, provided smart uniforms to children, introduced computers and even sent principals and teachers of government schools for training to Finland and Singapore, unprecedented initiatives for public schools. And the outcomes of these initiatives have been equally unprecedented. Delhi government schools claim CBSE board exams results on a par with private schools. Moreover in the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings 2022-23 — the largest and most comprehensive worldwide — the Delhi government’s Rajkiya Pratibha Vikas Vidyalaya (RPVV) primary-secondary schools were ranked #1 and #2 among state government schools countrywide with four ranked in the Top 10. AAP’s sweeping victories in Delhi and Punjab attributed in large measure to its primary-secondary school reforms agenda, has not gone unnoticed in Karnataka which goes to the polls on May 10. All major political parties including the Congress, BJP, JD(S) and AAP, which released their election manifestos on May 1-2, have allotted substantial space to upgradation of the state’s 71,000 government primary-secondary schools — a hitherto neglected issue in Indian electoral politics. An estimated 50 million people in the state are eligible to vote for 224 assembly seats in Karnataka (pop.65 million) next week. The ruling BJP, which is pulling out all the stops — including road shows featuring prime minister Narendra Modi — to win a second term in office, has made big K-12 education reform promises in its manifesto. Among them: to increase the budget allocation for education to 6 percent of GSDP (gross state domestic product) to “ensure quality education for every student in the state, as per NEP guidelines”; to launch PRE-KSHANA Mission (pre-primary education) to ensure that all pre-primary and primary students achieve foundational literacy and numeracy by 2025; upgradation of 65,911 anganwadis and to establish IIT-like Karnataka Institute of Technology in every district statewide. Moreover if elected, it promises to introduce the Visvesvaraya Vidya Yojane under which “the state government will partner with eminent individuals and institutions for holistic upgradation of government schools to top class standards”. Likewise, the main opposition Congress party’s manifesto promises to restore “the true values of Bharat and Karnataka” and scientific temper by rewriting textbooks (a reference to the BJP rewriting history texts); fill teacher vacancies in government schools and colleges within a year; make the compulsory mid-day meal more nutritious, and regulate fees of private schools. More importantly,…

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Delhi: Micro-management apprehensions

Autar Nehru (Delhi) India is headed for a sweeping reorganisation of its school system in the next few years. The 628-page draft National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF-SE) made public on April 6, based on the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, offers ample evidence of the impending overhaul. The NCF-SE draft has been placed in the public domain for feedback and suggestions from all stakeholders without a deadline and also circulated to state governments for their views. The expectation within the Union education ministry is that NCF-SE will move closer to finality within the next three-four months and new textbooks will be written for the academic year 2024-25. The latter process has already begun with history textbooks authorised by NCERT — a subsidiary of the Union education ministry — which have omitted the entire Mughal period (1526-1857), having already generated massive controversy. Undoubtedly there are several positive features in NEP 2020 including the formalisation of early childhood education, inclusion of vocational education and promotion of critical thinking in lieu of rote learning, in school education. The Steering Committee for implementing NEP 2020, chaired by the indefatigable Dr. K. Kasturirangan, has already completed the NCF-FS (foundational stage) made public last October to universal acclamation. Now it is working on NCF-SE which will be followed by detailed implementation manuals for NCF-TE (teacher education) and NCF-AE (adult education). The recently completed draft NCF-SE is an exhaustive and detailed document of 628 pages which provides a road-map for seamless integration of 13 curricular goals for transforming school education in all its stages. This draft will be supplemented by manuals written by 25 focus groups and a consultative process. In a statement accompanying release of the draft NCF-SE for public scrutiny, the ministry of education says: “Given the diverse needs of students, multiple pedagogic approaches, learning-teaching material at the different stages of school education, it is felt important to take feedback from students, parents, teachers, teacher educators, experts, scholars and professionals on the various sections and recommendations of this NCF-School Education. While giving your feedback, it needs to be kept in view that this is a pre-draft of the NCF-SE which still requires several rounds of discussion within the National Steering Committee (NSC). Feedback from diverse stakeholders will further help NSC to look critically into different modalities and approaches that this framework is proposing.” Although the voluminous reports and deeply detailed NEP 2020 implementation manuals produced after the Kasturirangan Committee’s 484-page report was translated in the 60-page NEP 2020 and the production of the 360-page NCF-FS (foundational stage) report followed by the 628-page NCF-SE report to be followed by 10 implementation volumes reflect well on Dr. Kasturirangan’s enthusiasm and attention to detail, it raises questions of over-centralisation and prolixity. Not a few educationists wonder about implementation time lines and who will read these detailed reports and volumes. “NCF 2005 was also finalised by 10 focus groups which produced excellent implementation reports. But the point is very few principals and teachers bothered to read them,…

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They said it

“Viewed through the prism of brutality, thus, history has few heroes. If the Mughals were violent, it was not because they were Mughals; it was because they were royal.” Manu S. Pillai, historian and author, on many justifying the NCERT’s deletion of chapters on Mughals in school textbooks by pointing to their brutality (Times of India, April 14) “India’s primary advantage in embracing the China-plus-one challenge is the country’s demographic profile. We must devote more attention to our children, youth and women to realise our demographic dividend fully.” Viral Acharya, professor of finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business, on why India needs an action plan to cash its demographic advantage (Mint, April 20) “Time for all of us to hang our heads in shame: India slips in World Press Freedom Index, ranks 161 out of 180 countries.” Shashi Tharoor, Congress MP (Twitter, May 3) “IIT should not be merely an educational institute but become laboratory of public welfare ‘Lok-Kalyan’. IIT must be hub of entrepreneurship. The students must aspire to be job creators not just job seekers. IITians must become the face of new India with no discrimination.” Dharmendra Pradhan, Union education minister, addressing the convocation ceremony of IIT-Bombay (May 3) “Seeing the tears in the eyes of sportspersons who won laurels for the country by their dedication and hard work is very painful. Their grievances should be heard, and justice be given.” Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, secretary of the All-India Congress Committee on the protest by Olympic wrestlers against alleged sexual harassment (May 5, Telegraph) “Wake up and smell the coffee. (Article 370) is history. The sooner people realise it, the better it is.” S. Jaishankar, Union external affairs minister at the meet of SCO foreign ministers (May 5)

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They said it

“The country is filled with self-confidence, foreign countries as well as foreign experts are optimistic about India. In the middle of all this, talk of pessimism, attempts to degrade India, lower the willpower of the people is taking place. It’s like the tradition of putting a kala tika to ward off evil.” Prime minister Narendra Modi speaking at the India Today Conclave (March 18) “India’s political system is veering towards a full-blown tyranny. The targeting of Opposition leaders leading to the farcical disqualification of Rahul Gandhi, the hounding of civil society and research organisations, censorship of information, the suppression of protest, are harbingers of a full-blown system of rule where all the interlocking parts add up to the one objective of tyrannical rule: To create pervasive fear.” Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, public intellectual, on the BJP government’s targeting of opposition leaders (Indian Express, March 29) “The National Education Policy (NEP) has been made streamless and classless, with multiple entry and multiple exit being a special part of this education policy.” Amit Shah, Union home minister, speaking at the 113th convocation of Gurukul Kangri University in Haridwar (March 31) “Why is this particular emphasis on Ivy League universities? If they come, it is alright, but there are several(other) excellent universities around the world.” Jagadesh Kumar M, Chairman, UGC on foreign universities setting up campuses in India (Indian Express, April 2) “A bloody war has killed fewer people than the pressure on India’s youth to succeed… In such a scenario the idea of scrapping JEE and similar entrance tests isn’t as drastic as it sounds.” Robin David comparing the number of student suicides (13,000) in India to the number of people (8,000) killed in the Ukraine war (Times of India, April 2)

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Delhi: No let up on education reform

Autar Nehru (Delhi) The resignation of manish Sisodia, deputy chief minister and education minister of the Delhi state government, on February 28 following his arrest by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the Delhi Excise Policy (2021-22) liquor licensing ‘scam’, is unlikely to prove a set-back to the Delhi school education model that has played a major role in transforming the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) into a force to reckon with in Indian politics. The first political party in the history of post-independence India to make education a major plank in its election campaign, AAP, founded by Arvind Kejriwal, a former bureaucrat and RTI activist, and Sisodia in 2013, is the only political formation to have trounced the high-riding BJP in the Delhi state legislative election of 2015 and 2020, and in the Punjab state election of 2022. Sisodia is succeeded by Atishi Marlena — an alumna of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi and Oxford University, UK — his former advisor from July 2015 to April 2018, with a reputation for spearheading AAP’s education policy and upgrading the profile of Delhi’s government schools. Therefore, there isn’t any likelihood of a let up in the AAP government’s emphasis on K-12 education. Ads on television highlight government schools with excellent labs, libraries and neat classrooms with children in smart uniforms — unprecedented in Indian history. The AAP government accords high importance to consistently upgrading its 1,047 state schools. In the government’s budget presented to the legislative assembly on March 22, the allocation for education is Rs.16,575 crore (21 percent of the total budget of Rs.78,800 crore) with a marginal increase of Rs.200 crore over the previous year. This percentage is the highest of any state government countrywide, claim AAP spokespersons. The highlight of this year’s education budget is that new digital tablets will be provided to all teachers — regular, guest and contractual, vice principals and principals. Moreover, the government will provide at least 20 new computers to every school in a phased manner. In 2023-24, these devices will be made available in 350 of the state’s 1,047 schools. Under the Constitution, the Delhi state government has a complex relationship with the Union government which also has jurisdiction over Delhi. For instance, maintenance of law and order in Delhi is a Central government subject. Therefore, trounced in two consecutive state elections, the BJP leadership is making life difficult for the AAP state government on several fronts. In the confrontation between state and Centre, principal and teacher recruitments have been stalled and risen to 24,000 in government schools. The response of AAP has been to recruit contract teachers whose number rose to 24,003 last year. However, the Government School Teachers’ Association (GSTA), Delhi, is not impressed. “I can tell you that no more than 125 out of the 1,047 government schools offer STEM/science after class X. In other words, government schools where the children are from poor families, don’t provide the education the public wants,” says Ajay Veer Yadav, general secretary, GSTA. Nevertheless,…

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West Bengal: Chaos & confusion

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) At a time when kolkata’s dailies were headlining the Hamburg-based Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) — one of UNESCO’s key education-related institutes and the only organisational unit in the UN family that holds a global mandate for lifelong learning — expressing interest in West Bengal’s education system, smaller news items disclosed that the state government has decided to shut down 6,845 primary and 1,362 higher primary schools. Government and government-aided schools located in the backward districts of Purulia, Bankura, Birbhum, Jhargram, Murshidabad and West Midnapore are downing shutters after an education ministry report revealed that they have less than 30 students on their muster rolls. On average, these schools have 17-20 students, while the total number of full-time teachers in these schools is 19,083, plus 1,181 ad hoc teachers. Student enrolments in these schools have plunged after the 99-week pandemic lockdown of education institutions in the state which was way above the national average of 82 weeks. According to the education ministry report, during the pandemic, 28 percent of pupils in government-run primary schools in West Bengal became “totally disconnected from academic activities” as many low-income families could not afford smartphones. The one-time grant of Rs.25,000 (for class C qualifiers) and Rs.30,000 (for class XII qualifiers) awarded to BPL (below poverty line) households was largely used to get daughters married. Although government spokespersons attribute this sharp fall in enrolment to the Covid pandemic disruption, according to a report published by the state education ministry in 2022, the decline in primary school enrolments in Bengal started long before the pandemic. In the past ten years, 7,018 primary schools mostly located in economically distressed areas have been closed down. This corresponds with a decline in enrolment as well — from 7.8 million children in 2012 to 7.19 million in 2022 despite rising population. The total number of primary, junior and high schools also declined from 97,428 in 2019 to 95,755 in 2020, and 94,744 in 2022. The consensus of academia and middle-class opinion is that enrolment of children in government and aided schools has continued to fall even after the pandemic because of their pathetic infrastructure and scant attention to remedial education. This situation has been exacerbated by the ruling TMC government’s ill-advised Utshoshree (‘origin’) teacher transfer policy launched by chief minister Mamata Banerjee on August 2, 2021, during the height of the pandemic. Under this policy, teachers can request transfers to serve in their home towns. With a large number of teachers having opted for their urban home towns, the average teacher-pupil ratio in rural government schools has risen to 1:59 against the 1:35 prescribed by the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009. If the government goes ahead with its plan to close under-populated schools — with 25 students enrolled in each school on average — about 2 lakh students will have to suffer the inconvenience of transferring to the nearest government school. Also, teaching and non-teaching staff will be transferred to nearby…

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Maharashtra: Caste shadow over IIT-Bombay

Nitish Kashyap (Mumbai) The suicide of darshan solanki, a first year B.Tech student at the top-ranked Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B, estb.1958) on February 12, has cast a spotlight on the issue of student suicides, especially students admitted under the Central government’s reservations policy. Under this affirmative action policy, 22.5 percent of seats in all 23 IITs countrywide are reserved for school-leavers from the scheduled castes (SCs) and scheduled tribes (STs) and another 27 percent for students of OBCs (other backward classes/castes). All aspirants for admission are obliged to write the IIT-JEE (joint entrance examination) and IIT-Mains — reportedly the toughest entrance exams worldwide — but affirmative action quota students have lower cut-offs. Darshan Solanki was admitted under the affirmative action policy. Following reports of on-campus discrimination, an internal IIT-B committee investigating Darshan’s death concluded that there was no specific evidence of caste-based discrimination against the deceased student. The committee’s report attributed his suicide to “poor academic performance” and “aloofness” and dismissed allegations of on-campus caste discrimination. It rejected a statement of IIT-B’s SC/ST cell to the committee that Darshan had suffered caste-based discrimination from general (merit) category students. With admission into the country’s IITs highly prized – 1.2 million school-leavers write the annual IIT-JEE, of whom 2 percent are admitted — the generous reserved quota has always been resented by general (‘merit’) quota students who argue that merit, i.e, topping the entrance exams should be the sole criterion for admission into the much prized IITs. On the other hand, liberals contend that SCs, STs and OBCs have suffered caste-based alienation and denial of education from the upper castes for several millennia. Therefore, they deserve favoured admission. This subject has often provoked nationwide agitations and numerous court-room battles until in the interests of balancing merit with social justice, in Indira Sawhney vs. Union of India & Ors (1992), the Supreme Court capped the reserved quota at 50 percent. And although IIT authorities are strictly prohibited from disclosing the caste identities and quota details of students on campus, merit students have devised ways and means to discover the caste backgrounds of quota students during the infamous ‘ragging’ of freshers (now tempered down), to label the latter and disparage them with snide hurtful remarks (see www.educationworld.in/pernicious-casteism.in-academia). In this particular case, the haste with which the IIT-B internal investigation ruled out the caste angle has aroused suspicion against the management. Last year (2022), the Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle (APPSC), a student body at IIT-B, had complained to the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) that the head counsellor of the institute’s Student Wellness Center (SWC) had signed a public petition to end caste-based reservation i.e, affirmative action, and posted it on social media. APPSC had highlighted in its complaint that this incident discouraged quota students from seeking SWC advice. It was also highlighted that none of the student counsellors were from SC or ST backgrounds and that for many backward class students, meeting them was causing more harm than good. Taking…

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Tamil nadu: Cluster debate

Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai) In its third budget presented to the legislative assembly and the public on March 20, the state’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) government has increased the outlay for education in 2023-24 to Rs.40,299 crore, 9 percent higher than the previous year and 1.62 percent of GSDP (gross state domestic product). This higher outlay for education by the DMK government, which is at odds with the Central government on most issues (NEET, CUET, three-languages learning formula), at a time when the Pratham Education Foundation’s ASER (Annual Status of Education Report) is reporting severely deflated learning outcomes in rural primaries countrywide, has been welcomed by educationists statewide. However, the highlight of the budget session of the legislative assembly was the government’s announcement that all schools hitherto functioning under various departments such as Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare, Backward Class, Most Backward Class and Denotified Communities, the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments and the forest department will be brought under the supervision of the education ministry’s Department of School Education & Literacy. “The objective is to achieve the goal of social justice in the field of education, to improve the quality of schools functioning under various departments, and to ensure that all students are provided with quality education,” said finance minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan in his budget speech. Moreover, the minister added that the service conditions and benefits of teachers and staff, presently working in these schools will be protected. According to government insiders, this clustering of all schools hitherto operated by various bodies is the outcome of requests to the government to operate and maintain Adi Dravidar Welfare Schools (which serve children of 8 million tribals across the state) under the school education department. Although this initiative will result in tighter management and egalitarian education for tribal children, some educationists believe it will be detrimental to students as well as teachers of such schools. Currently, 1.2 lakh students are enrolled in 1,466 Adi Dravidar schools across the state. In addition, nearly 30,000 students are enrolled in 300 Kallar Reclamation Schools run by Backward Classes, Most Backward Classes and Denotified Communities Welfare departments. “All these special schools are established near the dwelling places of these communities. If the schools are closed and merged with other schools, will children get easy access? And since most of these children are first generation learners, will they benefit from equal treatment? Moreover, government schools themselves don’t have sufficient number of teachers. In July last year, 39,000 government schools had vacancies for 13,000 teachers. All this will adversely impact the teaching-learning process for tribal children,” says Prince Gajendra Babu, general secretary of the State Platform for Common School System, Tamil Nadu. Adds M. Nagarajan, general secretary, Madurai Kamaraj, Manonmaniam Sundaranar, Mother Teresa, and Alagappa University Teachers’ Association: “By bringing schools run by various departments under one umbrella, the purpose of establishing those schools to provide appropriate differentiated learning will be defeated. Even the recruitment process of teachers will be adversely affected. The Kallar Reclamation Schools established…

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Karnataka: Assessment & exams confusion

Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) After a three-month legal drama which went right up to the Supreme Court, the Karnataka Secondary Examination and Assessment Board (KSEAB) commenced ‘annual assessments’ on March 27 for 1.9 million class V and VIII students in 56,157 KSEAB-affiliated schools statewide. Since December 13 last year, when the state’s education ministry issued a circular announcing “annual assessments” in March for all class V and VIII students of state board schools, there’s been controversy and uncertainty over this proposal. Despite the circular declaring the purpose of the ‘assessment’ is to “derive measurable learning outcomes” of children and emphasising that no child will be failed/detained, parents and schools associations have equated it with exams and opposed it, citing inadequate time for students to prepare and therefore causing stress to young children. On the other hand, education officials insist that assessing children’s learning outcomes periodically is in line with recommendations made in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. Moreover, the circular highlighted that s.16 of the landmark Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act 2009, which initially prohibited examinations and mandated compulsory yearly promotion of classes I-VIII children, was amended by the BJP government at the Centre in 2019 to allow exams and detention of students who fail twice. However they stress that no student will be detained following assessment. In January, the Registered Unaided Private Schools Association (RUPSA), which has 13,000 member schools, filed a petition in the Karnataka high court challenging the December 13 circular. On March 10, a single judge bench accepted RUPSA’s arguments and ordered cancellation of the assessment. However, the state government appealed the verdict and a special bench of the Karnataka high court headed by Justice G. Narender upheld the appeal and gave the government the go-ahead to schedule the assessment for March 27. Subsequently, RUPSA filed an appeal in the Supreme Court, which dismissed the petition on March 27 stating that “Let’s not interfere with the high court order. The high court knows what is best in that state”. D. Shashi Kumar, general secretary, Associated Managements of Private Schools in Karnataka (KAMS), which has 4,000 member schools statewide, and is a rival organisation of RUPSA, welcomes the apex court’s decision. “As per the amended RTE Act, we are in favour of annual exams for class V and VIII children because learning outcomes dropped drastically during the Covid pandemic when children were out of school. There’s a need to rigorously assess children’s learning outcomes to provide appropriate remedial education. The whole controversy around the exams is unnecessary,” says Shashi Kumar. However Lokesh Talikatte, president of RUPSA, which challenged the state government’s circular, insists that the government has made a huge mistake in going ahead with exams. “BJP governments at the Centre and Karnataka have ignored s.30 of the RTE Act. While the Act encourages schools to conduct continuous and comprehensive evaluation to assess children’s learning outcomes, it specifically disallows board exams in elementary education. The state government’s class V and VIII ‘annual…

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They said it

“What does the scientific community expect to see in a Union Budget? The current level of expenditure in S&T is hopelessly inadequate if India is to compete at the international level in knowledge generation. So, the scientific community expects to see a significant increase in the outlay for research.” Dhrubajyoti Mukherjee, president, The Breakthrough Science Society (The New Indian Express, February 3) “Universities are not just spaces for learning but also for discussion, debate & dissent. The cowardly attack on Tamil students by ABVP and vandalising portraits of leaders like Periyar, Karl Marx at JNU, is highly condemnable…” M.K. Stalin, Tamil Nadu chief minister (Twitter, February 20) “Our education system should be practical, industry oriented… the Budget has laid the foundation for it. Over the years, our education sector has been a victim of rigidity. We have tried to change this. We reoriented education and skilling according to the aptitude of youth and the demands of coming times.” Prime minister Narendra Modi addressing a post-budget webinar ‘Harnessing Youth Power — Skilling and Education’ (The Hindu, February 25) “We were not a considerable force either economically or militarily throughout the 1950s and early 60s but people listened to us. We were involved in a whole lot of issues, mediating crises far far away from us because we had that kind of moral stature, the reputation for sticking to principles, Today’s India is sadly a very, very far cry from that. Not only are we not punching above our weight, we are actually punching far below the weights that we like to boast about having acquired in the last decade or two.’’ Shashi Tharoor, Congress MP, criticizing the BJP government’s refusal to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (Telegraph, February 28)

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Tamil Nadu: RTE reimbursement revolt

Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai) In end-february, tamil nadu’s Federation of Private School Associations (FePSA) issued a statement warning that its member schools will not admit free-of-charge children as mandated by the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009, for the academic year 2023-24, unless the DMK-run state government clears its dues of the previous two years. Under the RTE Act, 2009 (s.12 (1) (c)), poor children residing in the neighbourhood of private schools have to be admitted with government obliged to partially pay for these children’s superior private school education. “Private schools are struggling to run due to the backlog of government not having paid its dues for two years. The state government has increased electricity charges, property tax, deposit and inspection fee for schools. But our dues remain unpaid. Therefore, the government should give time for schools to pay taxes and electricity bills,” says M. Arumugam, director of FePSA. Tamil Nadu’s nearly 35,000 private independent and budget private schools have enrolled over 74,000 s.12 (1)(c) children from economically underprivileged sections in the academic year 2022-23. Moreover in the past year, the School Education Department had lowered the RTE reimbursement fees pushing private schools into a deeper financial crisis. The annual per-child reimbursement for RTE students for LKG-class V has been revised to Rs.12,076 (from Rs.12,458). For classes VI, VII and VIII, the revised amount is Rs.15,711 (from Rs.17,077, Rs.17,106 and Rs.17,027 respectively). “Economically poor and underprivileged parents are eager to get their wards admitted into private schools under the RTE Act. Private schools cannot deny admission to them. If students don’t get admission in private schools, they will naturally go to government schools. That seems to be the government’s intent,” says S. Arumainathan, president of the Tamil Nadu Parents Welfare Association. Chennai-based educationist Dr. Somasundaram concurs: “The government should reimburse the dues without delay. Also, it should monitor if any private school is pressuring parents to pay fees for students admitted under s.12 (1) (c). With reimbursement delayed, there are instances where parents have been asked to settle government dues,” says Somasundaram. Although better than most government schools, the financial condition of some of the state’s private schools is bad and worsening because the state government hasn’t reimbursed fees of RTE children for two years. This despite the RTE Act Rules framed by the state government clearly stating that 50 percent of poor children’s fees amount is payable to private schools as soon as a child is admitted under s.12 (1) (c). The remainder 50 percent is to be paid during the academic year, generally by end-September. The ruling DMK government which is busy stitching alliances for General Election 2024, seems unaware of this obligation.

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West Bengal: Belated awareness

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) The west bengal board of Primary Education recently declared results of the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET), held on December 11, 2022 at 1,460 exam centres across the state. Teachers are being hired for 11,000 vacant posts in 67,699 state government and aided primary schools. TET 2022 was held under tight police vigilance. That’s because teacher recruitment has been hit by several scandals since 2012. A total of 619,000 candidates — 69,408 female and 81,077 male — wrote the exam. Of the 619,000 who wrote the exam, 150,000 (24.31 percent) including 69,408 women qualified. To ensure transparency, this time around the education ministry uploaded the OMR sheets so all who wrote TET 2022 could see their total marks in detail. While there is a general sense of jubilation among youth, many of those who wrote the test and qualified are apprehensive about actual recruitment. Many candidates who passed TET 2014 and TET 2017 haven’t been appointed because of high court stay orders. According to a Calcutta high court order, appointment of duly qualified teachers will begin only after all teachers who passed TET 2014 and TET 2017 are appointed. With TETs not having been held for five years (2018-2022), West Bengal’s unemployment problem has ballooned. Some TET qualified teachers are worried they won’t be appointed because they have crossed the age limit of 40 years. With teacher appointments continuously disrupted over the past ten years, the condition of government school children is extremely dismal, especially after the 99-weeks lockdown of schools statewide — longest duration countrywide (India average 82 weeks). According to a survey by the West Bengal Samagra Shiksha Mission, despite the state government’s remedial education programme, 25,646 students have dropped out from primary schools statewide after the pandemic. Meanwhile within West Bengal’s bhadralok (refined middle class), anger is swelling against chief minister Mamata Banerjee for “totally neglecting” government schools during the prolonged Covid shutdown. The poor condition of public school education in Bengal is confirmed by the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022 of the independent Pratham Education Foundation. Alarmingly, younger children have been worst hit with only 33 percent of class III children able to read class II-level texts while the percentage of class V students who can read class II-level texts has decreased to 47.1 from 50.5 percent in 2018. Debasish Dutta, president of the All Bengal Teachers’ Association, says that standards of public school education in Bengal started declining from the very first term of the Mamata Banerjee government which came to power in 2011. Citing IANS (Indo-Asian News Service), Dutta says: “In March 2011, there were 74,717 state-run primary schools in West Bengal. This number declined to 67,699 in March, 2022. The number of children enrolled in state-run primary schools has dwindled from 7.8 million to 7.1 million.” Somewhat belatedly, the TMC government seems to have taken cognizance of the dismal condition of government schools. In the state Budget 2023-24 the government allocated Rs.45,812 crore for public education — a 10…

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Karnataka: Online system smokescreen

Summiya Yasmeen (Bengaluru) With state legislative Assembly elections scheduled for May-June, the ruling BJP government is pulling out all the stops to mend its damaged reputation vis-a-vis education. The BJP government’s record in education — which unlike most north Indian states is an important electoral issue in Karnataka — has drawn widespread adverse comment. For instance, in the year past, the government has been focused on politicising education rather than upgrading academic standards. It has stoked the hijab (headscarf) controversy, allegedly rewritten school textbooks from the hindutva perspective and worsened institutionalised corruption in the education ministry. For the past several months, several private schools associations have openly accused education ministry officials of extorting massive bribes for renewal of school recognition licences, issuing no-objection certificates to greenfield CBSE and CISCE schools, making timely RTE Act, 2009 fees reimbursements, and other routine administrative functions. On March 3, state education minister B.C. Nagesh held a press conference during which he announced several initiatives to ease and streamline the voluminous paperwork required for promotion of greenfield schools, issuance of NOCs to new CBSE/CISCE schools, and renewal of recognition licences. Nagesh said the education department has introduced a new online process for all school application/renewal services. Under this process, the timeline for school promoters to get an NOC for starting new CBSE/CISCE schools has been reduced from 90 to 15 days with all “relevant documents” uploaded online. Moreover henceforth, the district Deputy Director of Public Instruction is the final authority to sanction approvals, unlike the earlier system where all applications were initiated at the office of the Block Education Officer and travelled up the bureaucratic chain. Also on February 15, the government released a list of 1,316 private “unauthorised” schools, for violations such as “having additional sections without permission” and operating as CBSE/CISCE-affiliated schools when the permission was granted for implementing the state board syllabus. Private schools in the state under the banner of the Associated Managements of Primary and Secondary Schools in Karnataka (KAMS) led by edupreneur D. Shashi Kumar, and RUPSA, an association of budget private schools, lashed out at the government stating that the issuance of the list will create another opportunity to extort bribes. “How and why have these schools suddenly become illegal? This is nothing but an opportunity created by education ministry officials to extract bribes from school managements to make unauthorised into authorised,” says D. Shashi Kumar, general secretary, KAMS. However Shashi Kumar welcomes the ministry’s March 3 announcement of switching to an online system for recognition/renewal services. “We welcome the switch to the entire online application, recognition, inspection process. Previously, bribes would be demanded at every stage of the application process at the time of physical submission. I hope it will help reduce corruption in the education ministry,” he says. Shashi Kumar’s hopes may be doused if not dashed. According to Dr. Dhirendra Mishra, founder-director of Life Educare, a Bengaluru-based K-12 education consultancy, the application process has merely become “paperless not simplified”. “Several states such as Gujarat, Madhya…

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Delhi: FLN Report 2022

Autar Nehru (Delhi) The second edition of the State of Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) Report 2022, released on February 24, indicates that India’s journey towards universalisation of FLN is likely to be arduous, but possible. While the impact of pandemic school closures and resultant learning loss of two years for children has contributed to the disappointing conclusions of the report, its overall tone is positive and it provides a roadmap for FLN implementation. Published independently by the Gurugram-based Institute for Competitiveness India (ICI), the Indian unit of the global network of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness of Harvard Business School, the FLN Report 2022 has been greenlighted by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM). Expressing optimism about the FLN mission, the report says: “The goal of universal FLN by 2026-27 is achievable, considering the rigorous and constant efforts of the government. Additionally, the recent Budget allocation towards the Samagra Shiksha Mission increased by almost 20 percent, from Rs.31,050 crore in 2022-23 to Rs.37,383 crore. Post-pandemic, after the humanitarian and health crisis, the Central government merged various schemes like Scheme for Adolescent Girls and Poshan Abhiyaan and re-aligned them as Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0 for increasing outcomes.” The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which for the first time acknowledged the criticality of ECCE (early childhood care & education), provides a firm foundation for urgent implementation of FLN. The Central government launched NIPUN (National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy) Bharat Mission on July 5, 2021 to attain universal FLN by 2026. In addition, to build FLN infrastructure in all states of the Indian Union and identify implementation bottlenecks, EAC-PM mandated publication of the State of Foundational Literacy and Numeracy in India Report based on the government’s Foundational Learning Study (FLS). The FLS study is conducted by the education ministry, National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), and supported by Unicef. It measures learning outcomes of class III students based on National Achievement Survey (NAS) data. ICI uses the FLS data to prepare and publish an annual FLN Report and FLN index. The FLN index is based on five pillars — educational infrastructure, access to education, basic health, leaning outcomes and governance, subdivided into 36 indicators. These pillars align with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030. The first edition of the State of FLN was published in December 2021. The second FLN Report 2022 is based on an FLS 2022 study which assessed learning outcomes in 20 languages of 86,000 class III children in 10,000 schools countrywide. It awards Punjab #1 rank with the state awarded a top score of 96.36 on learning outcomes. The state’s #1 position in FLN Report 2022 is the outcome of its excellent performance in all subjects in NAS 2021. At the same time, the ICI Report highlights poor FLN progress in other states. Countrywide, only 42 percent of class III children attained global minimum proficiency levels in numeracy and 37 percent in mathematics. For foundational…

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They Said It

“Like in cricket, a batter focuses on the ball thrown to him ignoring shouts for fours and sixes from the crowd, students should also concentrate on their work. Do not be suppressed by pressures. Stay focused.” Prime minister Narendra Modi’s advice to students at his annual ‘thoughts on examination’ interactive session (January 27) “The President doesn’t contest elections, but it looks like the BJP government is conducting its next election campaign through her. The entire speech was an election speech trying to praise the government for everything it has done and skipping all those bits it has not done so well.” Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on President Draupadi Murmu’s speech to Parliament on the inauguration of the Budget session (The Tribune, January 31) “The issue is not just about protecting some ‘doles’ for the poor but on what our vision for Amrit Kaal is — it surely can’t be one where half the population has to struggle with access to education, health, nutrition and social security.” Dipa Sinha, professor of economics, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University, Delhi on the Union Budget 2023-24 short-changing the social sector again (The Hindu, February 2) “Only a slavish, colonial mentality can suggest that we turn our Indian institutions into second class ‘citizens’ by promising all kinds of autonomy — operational and academic — only to foreign universities. This is not the way to establish ‘Make in India’ institutions.” Anurag Mehra, professor of chemical engineering, IIT-Bombay on new UGC norms allowing foreign universities to set up campuses in India (NDTV, February 3) “Asked to assess his performance as prime minister, as many as 72 percent of the respondents rated it as outstanding to good…” Raj Chengappa, group editorial director, on the results of a recent poll assessing PM Narendra Modi’s popularity (India Today, February 6)

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Tamil Nadu: Escalating conflict

The war between Tamil Nadu’s DMK government and the BJP government at the Centre on education issues is intensifying. On several issues including NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test), a central exam for admission into medical colleges; CUET (Common University Entrance Test) for admission into all Central government universities; three-languages learning in K-12 education and several provisions of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 tabled in Parliament on July 29, 2020, the Central and state governments are at loggerheads. However, addressing the 34th convocation of the Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women in Coimbatore on January 21, Dharmendra Pradhan, Union education minister, expressed hope that the DMK government will cooperate with the Centre in implementing NEP 2020. “Though education is in the concurrent list of the Constitution and the state has the right to enact legislation, the Centre expects Tamil Nadu to accept NEP 2020,” he said. But this expectation is unlikely to be met. Last year on April 5, 2022, almost two years after NEP 2020 was approved by Parliament, the DMK government constituted a 13-member committee chaired by D. Murugesan, a former chief justice of the Delhi high court, to formulate a State Education Policy (SEP) exclusively for Tamil Nadu. The Seventh Schedule of the Constitution of India lists 52 subjects on which both the Central and state governments can enact legislation. Education is one of them. Therefore, the DMK government, now in the third year in office, believes it is entitled to enact its own SEP. According to academics and political pundits in Chennai, although DMK supremo and chief minister M.K. Stalin has cited several differences with the Centre which prompted the state government to constitute the Murugesan Committee, the roots of the latest Centre-state stand-off can be traced to the old issue of adamant opposition to Hindi being declared the national language of India. Tamil Nadu’s opposition to the three-language policy which obliges all school children to learn Hindi, English and the state language, goes all the way back to the pre-independence era. In 1937, the first regional Congress government elected under the government of India Act, 1935 and headed by stalwart C.R. Rajagopalachari, (aka Rajaji), issued a government order making Hindi language learning compulsory in state government schools. This prompted the rise of the Self Respect Movement founded by Periyar E.V. Ramasamy Naicker and the Justice Party which apprehended “Hindi imperialism”. In 1965, when Hindi was approved by Parliament as the national language, violent riots broke out in Tamil Nadu. Shortly thereafter, the Congress government in Delhi declared English as the associate national language and language of the upper judiciary and Centre-state and inter-state communication. But with NEP 2020 reiterating the three language formula — which makes Hindi learning compulsory for all school children — old antagonism has been revived. “After having several rounds of meetings with stakeholders including teachers and experts in the field of education, and holding public hearings we are almost ready with the SEP draft. It will…

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Karnataka: Heavy pandemic cost

For Karnataka’s beleaguered ruling BJP government fighting a spate of corruption scandals ahead of looming legislative assembly elections to be held in May, the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022, released in the national capital on January 18 and authored by the highly-respected Pratham Education Foundation, contains bad news. The first household child-testing report since the Covid-19 pandemic shut down schools countrywide for 82 weeks in 2020-21, ASER 2022 confirms that the ill-advised prolonged lockdown of schools has inflicted massive learning loss among children statewide. Worse, the learning loss of Karnataka’s 10.8 million children is greater than the national average. According to ASER 2022 (which assesses elementary reading and numeracy skills of rural children), class V children who can read class II textbooks in government and private schools in Karnataka has dropped to a rock-bottom 30.2 percent from 46 percent in 2018, against the national average of 42.8 percent. Likewise in numeracy skills, Karnataka children are way behind the national average. Only 13.3 percent of class V children can do simple division sums against the national average of 25.6 percent. Shockingly, only 16.8 percent of class III children statewide can recognise numbers up to 99. “Clearly, the pandemic has resulted in learning loss. However, what the ASER 2022 figures seem to suggest is that the loss is much greater in some states,” says Dr. Wilima Wadhwa, director of ASER Centre. Karnataka is one of five states nationwide where children have suffered over 10 percentage drop in the reading capability of class V children. “Drops of more than 10 percentage points are visible in Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Haryana, Karnataka, and Maharashtra,” says the report which attributes the decline in learning levels of children to the 82-week lockdown of schools during the pandemic, and unavailability of digital devices and internet connectivity for online learning. ASER 2022, which surveyed 19,060 villages in 616 districts of rural India, tested the reading and arithmetic capabilities of 7 lakh children of 374,544 households nationwide. In Karnataka, 31,854 children in the age group three to 16 years were tested. The survey makes other disturbing revelations about the condition of rural schools in Karnataka. It says that 14.1 percent of them don’t have useable girls’ toilets and 22.9 percent don’t provide drinking water facility. Shocking data for a state which is a hub of the 21st century ICT (information communication technologies) industry and enjoys a per capita income of Rs.165,371, 10 percent higher than the national per capita income of Rs.150,326 per year. According to media reports, education ministry officials derive a measure of pride from ASER 2022 data which indicates that enrolment in government schools has increased from 69.9 percent in 2018 to 72.6 percent in 2022, reversing the trend of children migrating from government to private budget schools. However, the authors of ASER 2022 attribute this phenomenon to a substantial number of parents who suffered job loss and financial distress during the Covid pandemic, being obliged to send their children to free-of-charge government primaries where children…

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West Bengal: Indignation groundswell

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) According to the recently released Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022 of the highly respected Pratham Education Foundation, which assessed the learning outcomes of 11,994 children in rural primaries in 18 districts of West Bengal, although classroom attendance has risen to 92.2 percent from a low of 72.9 percent in 2021, learning outcomes plunged precipitously during the prolonged Covid-19 pandemic lockdown of schools statewide. Alarmingly, younger children have been worst hit with only 33 percent of class III children — down from 40 percent pre-pandemic — able to read class II-level texts. Among class V students who can read class II-level texts, the percentage is down to 47.1 from 50.5 percent in 2018. ASER 2022 paints a dismal picture of the pitiable condition of youngest children in West Bengal, a state that prides itself on its intellectual prowess. Only 7.8 percent of rural primaries in the state have a separate teacher for pre-primary classes; a mere 13.6 percent of schools have received notification to implement Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) activities for classes I-III, and only 9 percent have trained FLN teachers, the lowest percentage countrywide. Unsurprisingly, the report ranks West Bengal high for primary children availing private tuition — 74.2 percent cf. the national average of 30.5 percent. Moreover, ASER 2022 says that only 15 percent of children received learning materials during the pandemic and a mere 33 percent had access to smartphones to learn online. It’s pertinent to note that India’s pandemic lockdown of the education sector averaging 82 weeks, was the most prolonged worldwide. But the lockdown of education institutions in the state was above the national average at 99 weeks. According to a local study — Learning Together, conducted in September 2021 and written after testing a representative sample of 7,204 primary school (classes I-V) students statewide — 28 percent of pupils in government-run primary schools in West Bengal have become “totally disconnected from academic activities” and balanced nutrition has become “a distant dream” for a significant proportion of children because of diminished household incomes. The lackadaisical attitude, bordering on indifference, of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) government — now in its third consecutive five-year term in office — has provoked a groundswell of indignation within West Bengal’s bhadralok (refined middle class) which is the standard bearer of the state’s once highly respected culture and academic tradition. “Children now in primary school have learnt nothing in the past two years and have forgotten what they had learnt. This is why learning deficit is more acute in relatively younger children who have not had the chance to strengthen the foundations of their learning. Children enrolled in class I in 2020 have learnt nothing during the past two years. In effect, they started school in 2022 but have been promoted to class III while still illiterate. This will trouble them throughout their lives,” warned Dr. Sukanta Chaudhuri, emeritus professor at Jadavpur University, at a January 19 panel discussion on ASER 2022 convened by the…

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