Education News

Delhi: Belated red carpet rollout

Autar Nehru (Delhi) With the university grants Commission (UGC) — the apex-level body that regulates higher education countrywide — releasing its draft UGC (Setting up and Operation of Campuses of Foreign Higher Educational Institutions in India) Regulations, 2023 on January 5, India moved closer to permitting foreign higher education institutions (FHEIs) to establish campuses on Indian soil. Although finalisation of the regulations is pending, to all intent and purposes this historic liberalisation of Indian academia — a tightly closed shop until dawn of the new millennium — is done and dusted. Ironically, the ruling BJP government at the Centre, and particularly its ideological mentor organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) had all along vociferously opposed the entry of FHEIs into India since the proposal was initiated in the 1990s. First mooted shortly after the historic Union Budget of 1991 which dismantled Soviet-inspired licence-permit-quota raj in Indian industry, this initiative has had a chequered history. The first Bill to this effect was introduced in the Rajya Sabha in 1995 by the Narasimha Rao-led Congress government in its last year in office, and it lapsed when the government’s term ended. In 2007, a Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry, Operation, Maintenance of Quality and Prevention of Commercialisation) Bill, 2007 was approved by the Union cabinet of the Congress-led UPA government which swept to power at the Centre in General Election 2004. However, the Bill was strongly opposed by the CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist) whose 66 MPs were supporting the UPA coalition of that time and it wasn’t tabled in Parliament. Another Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations) Bill, 2010 was presented to Parliament in 2010, but was vehemently opposed by the BJP which made common cause with left-wing communists, and was referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee. Finally the Bill was introduced on January 13, 2013 by then Union HRD (education) minister Kapil Sibal, but prolonged disruption of Parliament by the opposition (especially BJP) killed it until the term of the Lok Sabha ended. Therefore this time round, instead of enacting legislation which could be torpedoed in Parliament, the BJP government has invoked s.12 and s.26 of the University Grants Commission Act, 1956, which confers wide powers on the commission to “advance the cause of higher education in India”, and maintain “minimum standards of instruction for the grant of any degree by any university”. According to BJP insiders in Delhi, the major factor which has prompted the BJP about-turn is that with reputed Western universities having established campuses in China, UAE, Singapore, Malaysia, and Qatar, these countries have emerged as international education hubs attracting students from several countries, including India. On the other hand, the inflow of foreign students into India has remained unimpressive at under 75,000 for the past two decades. Moreover, with the latest AISHE (All India Survey on Higher Education) Report indicating that against the target of 50 percent youth in the 18-24 age group in higher education by 2035, the current GER (gross enrolment ratio)…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Telangana: Dicey electoral strategy

Kingshuk Nag (Hyderabad) With the telangana legislative assembly election scheduled to be held by end December and General Election 2024 obliged to be called the following summer, all political parties led by the erstwhile Telangana Rashtra Samiti, renamed Bharatiya Rashtra Samiti (BRS) on December 14 by chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR), have gone into election frenzy. As a result, the state’s socio-economic development plans are on the backburner. This is a change in priorities because since 1995, the state’s politics has centred on the development of Hyderabad which has rapidly transformed from a mofussil town into a globally respected software, telecom and other hi-tech industries hub. According to most political pundits in Hyderabad — carved out of a united Andhra Pradesh and now the admin capital of Telangana (pop.35 million) — KCR’s national political ambitions will slow down Telangana’s impressive economic growth rate and development of social infrastructure. Over the past two decades, from a dusty laid back town, Hyderabad has metamorphosed into a shiny steel-and-glass ICT (information communication technologies) hub hosting a global Microsoft development centre. It also hosts the world-class Indian School of Business (ISB) and an international airport with excellent infrastructure. Among multinational corporations that have established large offices and research centres in the city are Apple, Cognizant, Amazon, and Capgemini. This has also spurred the growth of numerous education institutions. Among the new international schools that have set up shop in Hyderabad in recent years are Indus International, Sancta Maria, CHIREC International, Silver Oaks and Oakridge International — all highly ranked in the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings league tables. Moreover the city has also attracted the attention of global private school chains. In November 2019, the UK-based Cognita Group which owns/manages 90 primary-secondary schools in eight countries around the world, planted its first flag on Indian soil in Hyderabad by acquiring the CAIE (UK) and IB-affiliated CHIREC International School (estb.1989). Last January, the UK-based International Schools Partnership, which owns/manages over 50 schools in 13 countries with an aggregate 45,000 students, invested in Sancta Maria International School. But even as high-end private schools are mushrooming in Telangana and Hyderabad in particular, the state’s 30,023 government schools are suffering neglect and disarray. The BRS government is doing precious little to upgrade and improve government schools because a large percentage of the state’s budget expenditure is being spent on freebies and handouts to pander to the electorate. Despite the prolonged closure of schools countrywide for 82 weeks in 2020-21 because of the Covid-19 pandemic during which children — especially in government schools — suffered huge learning loss, the TRS/ BRS government’s allocation for education in 2022-23 at Rs.16,042 crore is a mere 6.24 percent of the total budget (Rs.2.57 lakh crore). Against this, most state governments allocate 10-15 percent of their budgets for education with the Delhi state government allocating 23 percent. In neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, the YS Reddy government has allocated Rs.27,706 crore (11.74 percent) of the budget (Rs.2.56 lakh crore) for education. “After formation of…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Tamil Nadu: PGI demotion shock

-Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai) Tamil pride suffered a huge blow in the closing months of last year when the Union ministry of education’s Performance Grading Index (PGI) 2020-21, released on November 3, 2022, demoted the state’s primary-secondary school system to Level III. According to the ministry’s department of school education and literacy website, PGI, introduced in 2017-18, “measures the performance of states/ UTs on a uniform scale to catalyse the (sic) transformational change in the field of school education”. However to “eliminate the phenomenon of one (state) improving only at the cost of others, thereby casting a stigma of under-performance on the latter,” the index clusters states/UTs (Union territories) into grades/levels I-X with states with best performing school systems grouped in Grade I and worst in Grade X. In PGI 2020-21, no state or UT school system has been awarded Level I status. Seven states/UTs — Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Chandigarh — have been awarded Level II Status (scores 901-950). Tamil Nadu, which was routinely featured in Level II for the past three years, is relegated to Level III (score: 851-900). The index assesses the schooling systems of states across 70 indicators (parameters) under two main heads: outcome, and governance and management. Under these main categories states’ school systems are evaluated for learning outcomes, access, infrastructure & facilities and governance processes. In Tamil Nadu (pop. 76.4 million), a state which prides itself on its intellectual tradition and prowess, the demotion of its school system from Level II to Level III where it is grouped together with the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh and Jammu & Kashmir, has come as a shock. Chennai-based educationist Dr. S. Somasundaram ascribes this demotion to children’s learning loss due to the closure of state schools for 82 weeks during the Covid-19 pandemic. “There was no classroom teaching for them for one-and-a-half years starting from March 2020. The great majority of children — especially in government schools — have been learning only from lessons telecast on Kalvi TV, the state-run education channel. Learning outcomes from such one-way lectures are bound to plunge to the lowest level,” says Somasundaram. Failure of the state government to promote listening, speaking, reading and writing (LSRW) pedagogy in primary education is also a contributory factor. “Government schools are still focused on rote learning rather than developing creative thinking capabilities. Pratham’s Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2021 survey indicates that a large percentage of class VIII students can’t do basic maths taught in class III. If students have a good foundational education, they will do well in high school and higher education,” adds Somasundaram. However, government spokespersons highlight that the state’s annual outlay for education has risen from Rs.29,000 crore in 2019-20 to Rs.37,000 crore in 2020-21 and blame government school leaders and teachers for Tamil Nadu’s demotion in PGI 2020-21. K.P.O. Suresh, former president of the Tamil Nadu Postgraduate Teachers Association (TNPGTA), admits that the outlay for education has been increased, but according to…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

West Bengal: Banerjee’s Achilles heel

-Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) Even as west Bengal’s monumental teachers’ recruitment scandal in which cash mountains of Rs.100 crore were discovered in the palatial home of actress Arpita Mukherjee, mistress of education minister Partha Chatterjee, is being investigated by the CBI and Enforcement Directorate (ED), the West Bengal Board of Primary Education (WBBPE) held a fresh Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) on December 11. In the new TET held after an interregnum of five years, 690,931 college and university graduates wrote the test to qualify for 11,000 primary teachers’ positions in West Bengal’s 92,000 government-owned and aided schools. TET 2022 of 150 minutes duration was held in 1,460 exam centres statewide amid heavy security and police presence. Although there are reports of exam paper leakages, cheating, impersonation etc — which have been a feature of previous TETs — at the time of writing, candidates are apprehensive about behind-the-scenes marking and paper substitution scams which have stymied teacher recruitment since 2014. That’s because the Calcutta high court has taken a dim view of teacher recruitment scandals in the state and has frequently cancelled flawed TETs and stayed recruitment. On December 6, Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay said he would, “cancel the appointment of 42,000 candidates who had passed TET 2014 if they are found to have been recruited illegally”. This comment was made after WBBPE published the detailed scores of TET 2014 qualified candidates following orders of the Calcutta high court. It was found that some candidates had scored 10.96 points out of the maximum 10 in a TET higher secondary paper. WBBPE explained this away as a technical error. Government school teachers’ jobs are highly prized in this state which suffered sustained capital flight and de-industrialisation during 34 years (1977-2011) of uninterrupted rule by the CPM (Communist Party of Marxist) where unemployment (7.6 million registered unemployed youth) is pervasive and small and medium scale industry salaries are rock-bottom. A government school teacher’s job with starting pay of Rs.33,000 per month after implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations in 2020, is so highly prized that families desperate for sons and daughters to be employed as teachers in government schools often sell property and/or take loans to pay upto Rs.20 lakh as bribes to government officials to land these jobs. Therefore since 2015, disgruntled TET failures and civil activists have filed a string of petitions, obtained ten recruitment and appointment stay orders, CBI investigation and more than 1,000 appointment orders have been revoked even as education minister Chatterjee and former WBBPE chairman Manik Bhattacharya have been arrested. With recruitment for government schools stymied since 2012 because of a series of scams in recruitment tests and pending court cases, thousands of youth who aspire to teach in government schools are suffering extreme frustration. And with no fresh SLST (state level standard testing) or TET exam held in the past five years, 1.2 million aspirant teachers statewide who acquired B.Ed degrees have now become age-ineligible (age upper limit: 40 years) to write TET/ SLST. With teacher recruitment…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Karnataka: Sorry education record

-Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) With state legislative assembly elections less than six months away, the auguries are not good for the state’s BJP government. The party’s strategy to arouse sub-nationalist Kannada pride by reviving a border dispute with Maharashtra has backfired with the BJP government at the Centre refusing to intervene in the dispute between two BJP-ruled states. Moreover, the powerful Lingayat community has launched an agitation demanding reservation in government jobs and education institutions, even as the opposition Congress party’s campaign against pervasive corruption in the administration is gathering momentum. The BJP government’s record in education — which unlike most north Indian states is an important electoral issue in Karnataka — is also attracting 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), saffronisation of textbooks controversies and is beset with corruption accusations against the education ministry. In November, a Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) 2022-23 report revealed alarming neglect of primary-secondary education in the state highlighting lack of functional toilets for girl children and huge deficit of computers and Internet connectivity in government schools. During the 82-weeks closure of education institutions because of the Covid pandemic, children’s stress and mental well-being emerged as a major issue. Despite this on December 14, the education ministry issued a circular mandating annual exams for class V and VIII students in all 69,310 government and private schools affiliated with the state examination board. According to the circular, these exams will be held in March with question papers set by the Karnataka School Examination and Assessment Board (KSEAB) and evaluation of answer papers conducted at the ‘taluk level’. However, the circular states that children who fail won’t be detained in their current classes. The purpose of the ‘assessment’ is to measure general learning outcomes of children in primary education, says the circular. “For this reason, they should be called assessments and not board exams,” says R. Vishal, commissioner, department of public instruction, who adds that the purpose of the exams is to identify children who need remedial education. Education officials insist that assessing children’s learning outcomes is in line with recommendations made in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. Moreover, the circular highlights 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 detention of students who fail twice. Private schools in Karnataka are divided over the introduction of exams in primary/elementary education. Comments D. Shashi Kumar, general secretary, Associated Managements of Private Schools in Karnataka, which has 3,900 member schools: “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…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

SATHEE: Education Ministry to launch self-paced learning platform for exams

Delhi: Ascendant higher ed czar

The glacial pace at which the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, formulated after an interregnum of 34 years — during which the world entered the digital age — is being implemented has belatedly galvanised the BJP/NDA government at the Centre into action, especially in higher education. And the man chosen by the BJP top brass to lead the roll out of NEP 2020 higher education reforms seems to be Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar, chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC) — the apex level regulatory body for all higher education institutions. An alum of IIT-Madras and former low-profile professor of electrical engineering at IIT-Delhi, Jagadesh Kumar shot into the national limelight when he was appointed vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in 2016 to quell left-liberal ‘anti-nationalism’ and ‘urban naxalism’ in JNU, a well-known fortress of Left ideology and politics. To all intents and purposes, Kumar has discharged that mandate successfully. JNU students — and faculty — who went into hyperactivity mode protesting BJP’s appointments in higher education institutions (including JNU), have been tamed. All is quiet these days in JNU. Perhaps as a reward, in February Jagadesh Kumar was promoted to chairmanship of UGC. Since then, Kumar has gone into over-drive introducing a spate of higher education reforms mandated by NEP 2020. Last March, to eliminate the stress that students experience in writing multiple entrance exams of colleges and universities, he introduced CUET (Common University Entrance Test) for 45 Central universities and affiliated colleges. Moreover, he has readied India’s first digital university announced in the Union budget 2022-23 to take off this year with Delhi U as the nodal varsity and establishment of a virtual Academic Bank of Credits (ABC) to enable multiple entry/exit options for students with flexibility in choice of courses and institutions. Other initiatives actioned by UGC are introduction of the position of ‘professor of practice’ – under which industry experts are invited into colleges/universities to provide practical industry-related education to students; abolition of the hitherto mandatory requirement of Ph D scholars to publish research articles in peer-reviewed publications or attend a prescribed number of academic conferences before writing their theses, and direct entry into doctorate programmes for bright students who complete a four-year undergraduate research programme. Moreover, Kumar has also liberalised rules relating to foreign universities setting up campuses in India and Indian universities establishing campuses abroad. UGC’s latest initiative is introduction of a new Curriculum and Credit Framework for Undergraduate Programmes (CCFUP), announced on December 12. Under the CCFUP — the expression of the Academic Bank of Credits — undergrad students are allowed the option of multiple entry and exit options at the end of two and three years as outlined in NEP 2020 and draft National Higher Education Qualifications Framework (NHEQF). As the announcement of CCFUP was expected by all stakeholders, it has come as no surprise. Now universities will have to adopt it in their respective statutory bodies for implementation from the 2023 academic year. “CCFUP is welcome especially for undergrad students of…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Tamil Nadu: Early learning caveat

What is the most appropriate age for infants to be inducted into the formal education system? A 13-member committee constituted to formulate a state education policy (SEP), chaired by Justice D. Murugesan, a former chief justice of Delhi high court, is reportedly ready to prescribe a common age for admission into pre-primary learning. Despite the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, prescribing the entry age for class I as six, the age for admission into class I of Tamil Nadu’s 39,300 government and government-aided schools affiliated with the Tamil Nadu Board of Secondary Education (TNBSE) and nearly 5,000 matriculation board schools statewide, is five years. With the ruling DMK government opposed to the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 for various reasons including the compulsory learning of Hindi under the three languages formula and common entrance exams such as NEET, Tamil Nadu’s SEP is likely to prescribe a lower entry level age than NEP which mandates early childhood care and education (ECCE) at three years under the revised 5+3+3+4 system. The Murugesan Committee is likely to recommend merger of the state’s 48,000 anganwadis — nutrition centres for newborns and lactating mothers established under the Central government’s Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme — with government and matriculation schools. This means that professionally administered ECCE could begin much earlier than three years as recommended by NEP 2020. Girija Devi, principal of Anna Gem Science Park Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Chennai, which has 1,400 students and 70 teachers on its muster rolls, welcomes the proposal to merge under-managed and under-resourced anganwadis with government schools because of the increase in nuclear families with both parents working. “Enrolling youngest children into formal schools is preferable to leaving them in unlicensed day care centres run by amateur housewives. If youngest children are inducted early into the formal education system where they receive professional care and informal education, they will be better prepared for primary education,” she says. However, early childhood educators warn that the big danger of merging anganwadis with government schools is that youngest children can be prematurely pushed into formal reading, writing and numeracy. “If anganwadis are merged with government schools, they could lose their ECCE personalities and premature teaching of the 3R’s (reading, writing and ’rithmetic) could inflict stress and make youngest children learning averse as they grow older. Therefore, great care should be taken that anganwadis — and private preschools — shouldn’t transform into formal schools,” advises Prince Gajendra Babu, general secretary of the State Platform for Common School System, Tamil Nadu. Fortunately, members of the Murugesan Committee are aware of the dangers of merging pre-primaries with the formal schooling system. “Optimal development of children necessitates youngest children learning joyfully at their own pace. One of the reasons for children’s poor learning outcomes in primary education is overburdening of infants. For a child’s cognitive development, play and learning through exploration and discovery is important. Therefore, the committee is likely to stress that youngest children should not be…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

West Bengal: Steep fall

Even as west bengal’s humongous teacher recruitment scam in which bribes aggravating Rs.400-500 crore changed hands is being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the West Bengal Board of Primary Education (WBBPE) has scheduled a new Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) on December 11. This year, 690,931 candidates will write the 150-minutes exam at 1,453 centres statewide following which WBBPE will conduct interviews in its central office in the third week of December. Earlier, the interviews were conducted at the district offices of the board. Given the magnitude of the scandal which has made national headlines and has severely dented the image of chief minister and Trinamool Congress Party (TMC) leader Mamata Banerjee, this time round WBBPE is determined to make the exam tamper-proof and transparent. According to Gautam Pal, president of WBBPE, the board is bringing in radical changes in the conduct of TET. The written examination, marking, interview, and subsequent counseling will be video-recorded. Moreover, to check impersonation and identify fake candidates, WBBPE will introduce a biometric system, and to strengthen invigilation, exam centres will be equipped with CCTV cameras and hand-held metal detectors. All these unprecedented precautions have become necessary because in the TET 2014 and 2016 exam scandals, state education minister Partha Chatterjee, WBBPE president Manik Bhattacharjee and several top officials of the West Bengal School Service Commission were involved in wrongdoing and malfeasance. Several cases of ineligible candidates submitting blank optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets and being awarded 50 percent plus in the commission’s server at a later stage were discovered. According to the Enforcement Directorate, the financial frauds investigation unit of the Central government, a total of 8,163 candidates, including 952 in secondary, 907 in higher secondary, 3,481 in Group-C and 2,823 in Group-D level were recruited despite submitting blank OMR sheets. Meanwhile even as a fresh crop of graduates are preparing to write TET 2022, over 200 aspirant government school teachers who had written and passed TET 2014 and 2016 have been staging a protest before Mahatma Gandhi’s statue in Esplanade in Kolkata’s central business district for over 600 days, demanding appointment letters. However, because of a slew of writ petitions filed by disgruntled candidates who wrote TET 2014 and 2016 alleging exam fraud and malpractice, the Calcutta high court has imposed a stay on recruitment. On November 9, Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay warned WBBPE that he will cancel the proposed December 11 exam if rules regarding recruitment of deserving candidates stipulated by the court are not followed. Yet even as battles are being fought in the Calcutta high court, the prolonged teacher recruitment impasse is severely exacerbating the learning loss of students enroled in West Bengal’s government schools. According to Unesco’s State of the Education Report for India: No Teacher, No Class published in October 2021, West Bengal has over 100,000 teacher vacancies in government schools. Moreover, during the prolonged Covid-19 lockdown, only 9 percent of government schools had internet connectivity. Therefore 23 million children enrolled in government schools have experienced massive…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Karnataka: Education neglect spanner

With the tempo for state legislative assembly elections scheduled for next May building up, Karnataka’s ruling BJP government is pulling out all stops to ensure that it is returned to power in this southern state which is critical for the BJP high command — now in its second term at the Centre — to make a breakthrough in peninsular India. Educationally and industrially more advanced and with good records of religious tolerance and harmony, the five states of southern India have proved to be less susceptible than the populous Hindi belt BIMARU (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) states to the anti-Muslim and Christian electoral rhetoric of the BJP/RSS sangh parivar leadership. Even though it’s been ruling in Karnataka (pop.63 million) since 2019, this incumbency was engineered by mass defections from the Congress party and Janata Dal (S) rather than victory in the assembly election of 2018. But even as the state government’s leadership is going all out to arouse sub-nationalist Kannada pride by resurrecting a border dispute with Maharashtra, insisting on Kannada as the medium of education across the education spectrum, and demonising the state’s Muslim and Christian communities by banning wearing of the hijab in education institutions and accusing Christian clergy of forced religious conversion to consolidate the majority Hindu vote, recently released data revealing alarming neglect of primary-secondary education in the state may throw a spanner in the BJP’s election strategy. According to the latest United District Information System for Education (UDISE) 2022-23, 2.6 percent of Karnataka’s 76,905 schools do not have functional toilets for girl children and 1,532 don’t have separate toilets for girls. Moreover, 5,047 schools (6.5 percent) don’t have functional toilets for boys. In 328 schools there are no toilets at all. Surprisingly even though Bengaluru, the state’s admin capital, is the hub of the ICT (information communication technologies) industry, only 49 percent of schools and (34 percent of government schools) are equipped with functional computers and 24.84 percent (and only 6 percent of government schools) are connected with the internet. And although Karnataka has a good record of high quality education, in the Performance Grading Index of the Union ministry of education (2022), its rank has slid to #14 countrywide. In terms of quality of infrastructure in government schools it is ranked #28 countrywide. Meanwhile despite the severe loss of learning experienced by 5 million children in the state’s 49,791 government schools, of whom a mere 6 percent have an internet connection, the budgetary allocation for public education (Rs.32,018 crore in 2022-23) has dropped to 1.69 percent of GSDP (gross state domestic product) from 1.72 percent in 2021-22. This despite the urgency to make good the learning loss of disconnected students of government schools which were locked down for almost two years during the Covid pandemic era. Unsurprisingly, there’s rising public anger against the low priority being accorded by the state’s BJP government to education and human resource development. “In 2012, the Supreme Court had directed that every school should be equipped…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Maharashtra: Unwarranted euphoria

Maharashtra — india’s most industrialised state which accounts for almost 25 percent of the country’s annual industrial production — has experienced huge political upheavals in recent times. On June 30, the Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party and Congress coalition government which had assumed office in 2019 was toppled in a coup engineered by the BJP which had ruled Maharashtra for a full term (2014-19) in alliance with the Shiv Sena. With leaders of all political parties engaged in horse-trading and plots and conspiracies, education of the state’s 22.5 million school-going children who had just emerged from the prolonged Covid lockdown of all education institutions has been on the backburner. Therefore news that under the Performance Grading Index (PGI) 2020-21, released on November 3 by the Union education ministry, Maharashtra together with Kerala and Punjab are the country’s top-ranked states for K-12 education countrywide has generated euphoria within the state government’s education ministry. Introduced in 2017-18, PGI measures the performance of states/Union territories on “a uniform scale to catalyse transformational change in the field of school education”. Data for compiling the index is drawn from the Unified District Information System for Education, 2021, National Achievement Survey 2017, MDM (midday meal) portal and data provided by states/UTs. Information gathered from these sources is analysed to construct PGI which grades states according to scores awarded under the parameters of learning outcomes, access, infrastructure and facility, equity and governance process. States are awarded grades 1-10 with states scoring over 950 points awarded Grade I status and those scoring less than 551 Level 10 status. In PGI 2020-21, none of India’s 29 states are awarded Level I grade. However six states — Kerala, Punjab, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, and the Union territory of Chandigarh — have been awarded Grade II (scores 901-950) with Kerala, Punjab, and Maharashtra awarded the highest score of 928. Although there is understandable euphoria in the education ministry in Maharashtra about the exalted status awarded to the state’s school education system, experienced academics are cynical. “While PGI provides a useful picture of the relative health of the school education system in various states, this annual exercise provides a macro perspective. To reform the school system, more time, resources and personnel need to be invested,” says Rishikesh B.S, professor of education at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. Other studies of children’s learning outcomes indicate that Maharashtra is less than an out-performer. According to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2021, published by the highly-respected Pratham Education Foundation, during the Covid-19 pandemic induced lockdown, only 50 percent of households in the state (pop.115 million) received learning materials for children at home. Moreover according to ASER 2019, which measured the early years learning of classes I-III children in the last year before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, 31 percent of class III children in rural primaries were unable to read and/or comprehend class I textbooks and 14 percent couldn’t recognise numerals 1-9. Following the closure of schools statewide for…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Delhi: Quota upon quotas

In a landmark 3-2 majority judgement delivered on November 7, the Supreme Court of India upheld the 103rd Constitutional Amendment, 2019, under which the BJP government at the Centre introduced additional 10 percent reservation in public higher education institutions (HEIs) and government jobs for economically weaker sections (EWS) from the general category. To appreciate the historic import of the apex court’s judgement in Janit Abhiyan vs. Union of India (Writ Petition (Civil) N.55 of 2019) aka the 103rd Amendment case, it’s important to note that under Article 14 of the Constitution of India, the State is prohibited from denying any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the law within the territory of India. Moreover, Article 15 prohibits the State from denying access to public spaces and education institutions on the grounds of race, gender, religion, caste etc. Similarly, Article 16 prohibits government from denying public employment to citizens on the basis of religion, caste, gender, race or place of birth. However after much debate the Constituent Assembly comprising eminent lawyers, including Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, widely revered as the prime author of the Constitution, carved out exceptions to Article 15 and 16 and authorised the State to practice positive discrimination in favour of lowest castes and tribes who had suffered centuries of humiliation, degradation and systemic denial of socio-economic upward mobility. Accordingly 15 percent of capacity in public higher education institutions and government employment was reserved for scheduled castes (SCs) and 7.5 percent for scheduled tribes (STs) oppressed under the immutable Hindu varna caste system. But to safeguard development of post-independence India into an egalitarian society in which merit would be the sole criterion for socio-economic advancement, all reservations were to be abolished after ten years of promulgation of the Constitution on January 26, 1950. However, for political and electoral reasons, reservations for SCs and STs have never been removed. On the contrary in 1992 after the Mandal Commission report (1980) determined that OBCs (other backward castes) constitute 52 percent of the national population and have also been historically oppressed and denied upward mobility by the impregnable caste system, they were awarded an additional 27 percent reservation in education and Central and government employment. However in 1992 in Indra Sawhney’s Case, in the cause of institutional efficiency and merit-based admissions and recruitment, the Supreme Court imposed a 50 percent ceiling on reservations. Despite this cap, responding to a demand from the EWS (economically weaker sections) within the general category, in 2019 the BJP government at the Centre further amended Articles 15 and 16 to reserve 10 percent quotas in education institutions and government employment for citizens excluded from SC, ST and OBC quotas. “With several studies indicating inequality between the richest and poorest sections of society is widening, reservations in education and well-paid government jobs for hitherto excluded EWS has become necessary. Hence the reservation policy for economically weaker sections is welcome,” says Jandhyala B.G. Tilak, former professor and vice chancellor of National Institute of Educational Planning…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

They said it

We aim to ensure that children of poor parents become doctors and engineers even if they are not educated in English (medium). We want to ensure that no one is left behind due to the lack of knowledge of the English language. The New Education Policy of the Centre will pull the country out from this slave mentality surrounding the English language. -Prime minister Narendra Modi at the launch of 5G telecom services in Ahmedabad (October 17) English has been the language of power, at the frontiers of knowledge and access to privilege. The vernacular had become increasingly confined to identity, culture, and a marker of second-class status… The challenge of Hindi is that inhabiting the world of Hindi is seen as closing off access to the frontiers of knowledge, not just in science but in civic knowledge, like higher echelons of law. It is also treated as a marker of parochialism and inferior status. -Pratap Bhanu Mehta, public intellectual on the status of Hindi and vernacular languages (Indian Express, October 22) Fear has dissipated in Iran and regimes like the Islamic Republic… survive based on fear. It is due to a relentless battle by Iranian women not to allow this regime to dictate their lives. People no longer believe that this regime is reformable. -Abbas Milani, Director, Hamid & Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies, Stanford University on the anti-hijab protests in Iran (CNN, November 1) If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me if Trump is coming back on this platform, Twitter would be minting money! Twitter will not allow anyone who was de-platformed for violating Twitter rules back on platform until we have a clear process for doing so, which will take at least a few more weeks. -Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner and CEO on whether former US president Donald Trump’s twitter account will be unblocked (November 2, Twitter)

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Karnataka: Deep-rooted rot

Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) India’s most well-administered state until the historic liberalisation and deregulation of the Indian economy in 1991 transformed its sleepy administrative capital of Bangalore (renamed Bengaluru in 2014) into the country’s Silicon Valley and a bustling commercial metro, Karnataka (pop.68 million) has experienced accelerated descent into pervasive corruption and misgovernance. Since last November, when the Karnataka State Road Contractors’ Association (KSRCA) wrote directly to prime minister Narendra Modi complaining that elected representatives of the BJP-ruled state government are routinely extorting commissions of 40 percent for award of civic maintenance and road construction contracts, a spate of corruption scandals have been outed. In February this year, a major police personnel recruitment scam was unearthed when it was discovered that 545 unqualified police sub-inspectors (PSIs) were appointed after having paid bribes of Rs.70-80 lakh to police top brass and government ministers. Subsequently in August, RUPSA (Registered Unaided Private Schools Association), which has 13,000 member schools, again wrote a letter directly to the prime minister alleging that the BJP government and education minister B.C. Nagesh in particular, are extorting massive bribes for renewal of school recognition licences, issuing no-objection certificates to new CBSE and CISCE schools, RTE fees reimbursement, and other routine administrative functions. The latest corruption scandal to hit media headlines in Karnataka is a teacher recruitment scam. On October 19, the state’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) arrested 37 government school teachers who were illegally appointed eight years ago, following a police complaint filed in August this year and a detailed inquiry report submitted by the education ministry. Earlier in September, the CID had arrested 22 people including top education department officials — Maade Gowda, managing director of the Karnataka Textbook Society, Geetha, director of Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan, and three joint directors of education for involvement in this scandal. These “illegal” appointments date back to 2014-15 when the Congress government was in power. With government school teachers accorded pay parity with government employees who are awarded massive salary rises by Central government Pay Commissions, remuneration packages of government school teachers are 8-10x of private school teachers. Consequently, millions of unemployed and unemployable graduates churned out by poor quality state universities are willing to pay huge amounts to land well-paid government school teacher jobs which also offer secure of tenure with no accountability for children’s learning outcomes. Prior to the enactment of the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, to be eligible for employment in government schools, an undergraduate college degree and a B.Ed were sufficient qualifications. However, with the country’s 17,503 teacher training colleges recklessly churning out poorly trained graduates, the RTE Act (s.23 (1)) mandated the Central and/or state governments to conduct an additional Teacher Eligibility Test (TET), clearance of which became a condition precedent of eligibility to teach in government schools. Consequently since 2010, all state governments have been conducting TETs in their jurisdiction. But unfortunately, in most states the TET exams have been mired in widespread allegations of test paper leakages, corruption,…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

West Bengal: Unwashable scandal

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) West Bengal’s mega Rs.400-500 crore teacher recruitment scandal, which has placed education minister Partha Chatterjee and his actress mistress Arpita Mukherjee in jail cells after nearly Rs.100 crore in cash and title deeds of 12 properties were seized from the latter’s four upscale apartments in Kolkata on July 23, is still making headlines in the state. On October 10, former West Bengal Board of Primary Education (WBBPE) chairman Manik Bhattacharya and MLA of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) party was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on charges of receiving bribes for appointing teachers in the state’s 75,141 government schools. Allegations against Bhattacharya also include selectively increasing marks of candidates in the TET (Teacher Eligibility Test). On October 20, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court declined to stay Bhattacharya’s arrest. Investigations into West Bengal’s teacher recruitment scandals which stretch back to 2014, indicate that a large number of unqualified teachers have been appointed in state government schools. According to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), 8,163 fraudulent teachers including 952 in secondary and 907 in higher secondary schools and 3,481 Group-C and 2,823 Group-D employees have landed jobs in government schools on payment of illegal consideration. Although the arrest of Chatterjee and Bhattacharya — hitherto heavyweights of the ruling TMC — has severely damaged her image, chief minister Mamata Banerjee is putting on a brave front. While refusing to comment on the arrests of her two lieutenants, she recently announced a new TET scheduled for December 11 to appoint 11,000 teachers and 1,500 para-teachers in 500 government schools to teach in the Alchiki language in tribal areas of the state. However, immediately after primary education board president Gautam Pal notified that aspiring teachers who have D.El.Ed (diploma in elementary education) and B.Ed (bachelor of education) certification are eligible to write the forthcoming TET scheduled for December 11, the Calcutta high court was flooded with 1,400 writ petitions filed on September 30 challenging the notification. According to the petitioners, if B.Ed qualified candidates are allowed to write the TET for primary schools, D.El.Ed diploma holders will be disadvantaged. They demand that primary school teaching positions are reserved for diploma holders and that the appointment of B.Ed degree holders should be restricted to upper primary (middle), secondary and higher secondary schools. “It is shocking that Banerjee, who made education her major election plank while coming to power in 2011, has not yet come up with a political or policy solution to address the betrayal Bengal’s youth are experiencing because of pervasive corruption in teacher recruitment. Thousands of West Bengal’s youth are unable to obtain jobs despite having the necessary qualifications,” says Srijan Bhattacharyya, secretary of the Students’ Federation of India. Aspirant teachers are especially bitter about the recruitment stalemate because after Sixth Pay Commission prescribed salaries became payable in January 2020, the basic monthly salary of primary teachers in Bengal has risen to Rs.28,900. Additionally, they are entitled to 12 percent house rent and medical allowance. Government employees (including…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

NCFFS 2022: Promising debut

Autar Nehru (Delhi) The national curriculum Framework (NCF) 2022 was formally launched on October 20 with the presentation of the National Curriculum Framework for Foundational Stage (NCFFS) for children in the three-eight age group. NCFFS is the first of four frameworks scheduled to be launched under NCF 2022. The other three, expected to be announced soon, are the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCFSE), National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education (NCFTE) and National Curriculum Framework for Adult Education (NCFAE). “Developing the foundational framework was one of the most important and challenging aspects under NEP 2020, as it has a huge bearing on shaping the future of our country,” said Dharmendra Pradhan, Union minister of education, skill development and entrepreneurship, speaking at the launch ceremony of NCFFS. NCF 2022 has been launched after a gap of 17 years with the previous NCF presented to the nation in 2005. Formal presentation of the entire NCF 2022 is expected to be completed by end year. The high importance being accorded to early childhood care and education (ECCE) by NEP 2020 is a welcome development. Numerous studies conducted decades ago by pioneer educationists such as Dr. Maria Montessori and Jean Piaget indicated that education of children by way of play pedagogies is critically important for orderly cognitive development. This was reiterated in the latter years of the 20th century by several research studies which highlighted that the human brain is 80 percent developed by the time a child attains eight years of age. Moreover in the new millennium, James Heckman, a Nobel Prize winning economist, posited that a dollar spent on professionally provided ECCE saves $16 in higher education. Yet despite this body of evidence, ECCE remained an area of darkness in Indian education. Early childhood care and education received a big boost in 2010 when EducationWorld convened the country’s first ever international ECCE conference and initiated the annual EW India Preschool Rankings (EWIPR), which rates and ranks the best pre-primaries in major cities on several parameters of ECCE excellence. Since then, the annual EWIPR and subsequent awards-cum-conference events have continued without interruption (except during the Covid pandemic year) forcing ECCE on to the national development agenda. With the critical importance of ECCE having been impacted on the national consciousness, the Dr. K. Kasturirangan Committee, which was constituted to make recommendations for the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, not only acknowledged the vital importance of foundational professionally administered ECCE for India’s youngest children, but recommended reconfiguration of the 10+2 primary-secondary schooling system into a new 5+3+3+4 continuum formally integrating ECCE into elementary education. Consequently whereas under the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, the State was obliged to provide education to all children in classes I-VIII (age 6-14), now this obligation is extended downwards to children aged three years. Child development professionals and educationists have welcomed the provisions of NCFFS 2022 because it unambiguously prescribes learning through play — conversation, stories, toys, music, art and crafts and prohibits…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

They said It

“Skill is the currency of the century. Economic actors have a more important role than imagined. An educated and skilled workforce attracts investment, enhances productivity and is critical for moving up in the value chain. Academia and industry must collaborate for better outcomes.” Vikas Singh, economist & columnist on reforming Indian higher education (Businessworld, September 24) “Education is the most potent mean for social transformation and universities will have to play the role of change agents… It should be the aim of every Indian educational institution to become a world-class centre of learning.” President Droupadi Murmu speaking at the inauguration of St. Joseph’s University, Bengaluru (September 28) “As per government data, from 2015 to 2021, more than 900,000 out of India’s total population of 1.3 billion have surrendered their passports. Although it is a small percentage, the worrying factor is that the number is rising year-on-year.” Vidya S, special correspondent, on the rising number of Indian HNIs migrating abroad (Business Today, October 2) “More than anything else, the Congress needs to tell and sell a story to Indian voters. Mr. Tharoor does that well… he knows enough about the Congress but is not caught in its intrigues; and he knows better than most others how to represent the Congress before the expanding Indian middle class. He’s what the Congress needs but, alas, won’t get.” Varghese K. George, journalist, on the impending contest between Shashi Tharoor and M. Kharge for the post of Congress party president (The Hindu, October 2) “But perhaps the Left’s fortunes are changing. Certainly, it’s holding its ground. With young blood coursing through its veins, another red eruption may well be brewing.” Romita Datta, journalist, on the resurgence of the Left parties in West Bengal (India Today, October 3)

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Uttar Pradesh: Fresh hope buds

Nishant Saxena (Lucknow) Academics and media pundits in lucknow, the administrative capital of Uttar Pradesh — India’s most populous (215 million) state — which is an also-ran on all socio-economic development indices, are pleasantly surprised by a spurt of positive activity in the education sector. With children having enthusiastically returned to classes after the prolonged lockdown of education institutions because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the state’s 1.3 lakh government schools recorded their highest enrolment of 19 million in the new academic year 2022- 23 which started in April. Moreover, 1,780 government schools in 890 blocks have been identified for upgradation under the Centrally-sponsored PM-SHRI (Prime Minister’s Schools for Rising India) programme. The state’s BJP government headed by saffron-clad monk Yogi Adityanath which swept the legislative assembly election of 2019, has also promoted 280 new higher-secondary aka junior colleges, “to spread the ray of education in every corner of the state”. Simultaneously a drive to introduce digitally-enabled learning has been initiated statewide. In higher education as well, there is some traction. Three new government universities and 78 new government degree colleges are being constructed statewide. The government is also readying 119 e-learning parks, where bottom-of-pyramid children will get access to reliable internet and digital course content. And recently, Lucknow University was awarded the A+ grade of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) — the first higher education institution in UP to be awarded NAAC’s highest grading. “There’s been a welcome spurt of activity in UP’s education sector. From new universities to e-learning parks, proposals to establish educational townships, sharp rise in primary school enrolments — there is a lot of action in this space,” confirms Dr. Dhirendra Kumar, former principal of Shia College of Law, Lucknow. Prof. S.K. Swain, who heads the faculty of education at the high ranked Banaras Hindu University, is also impressed. “Yes, the state government is taking human resource development and education seriously. If properly implemented, these initiatives will give a huge boost to socio-economic development in India’s most populous state,” says Swain. Although a rising number of hitherto skeptical academics in India’s most populous — and arguably backward state, ranked #17 among major states on Niti Aayog’s Education Index — are discerning fresh buds of hope in UP’s moribund education scene, some remain cautious. “A large number of these initiatives seem promising. However, education is not high a priority for any political party. Nevertheless, the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 is an excellent education development blueprint, if faithfully implemented. Let’s wait and watch,” says Dr. Mohammad Parvez, professor of education, Aligarh Muslim University. Close monitoring of the state government’s initiatives is necessary. Because given this Hindi heartland’s territorial size, massive population and huge representation in Parliament, if Uttar Pradesh succeeds, India succeeds. And vice versa.

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

West Bengal: Teacher deficit fallout

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) West Bengal’s unprecedented teacher recruitment and related scandals which have blocked the appointment of much-needed teachers in the state’s 92,000 government schools for over a decade, are in the process of being unblocked. On September 26, Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of the Calcutta high court issued a slew of orders directing the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) to appoint aspirants who have passed the state’s TET (Teacher Eligibility Test), and simultaneously cancelled appointments of illegally appointed teachers. As a result 250 candidates, whose appointment had been stayed by the high court because six “wrong questions” had been posed in a 2014 TET question paper, have been appointed. Moreover, Justice Gangopadhyay directed WBSSC to complete the recruitment process of 15,924 candidates for 4,150 upper primary schools and 3,929 candidates for 75,141 primary schools who have passed TET 2014 and TET 2017, but are yet to receive appointment letters. The back story of the huge backlog in recruiting teachers for government schools is that ever since the Trinamool Congress (TMC) led by fire-brand chief minister Mamata Banerjee routed the Left Front government in the assembly elections of 2011 and was returned to power in 2016 and again in 2021, graduates who had written TET have been flooding the courts with writ petitions alleging exam malpractices, favouritism and non-merit appointments, and obtained stay orders. For instance, 5 lakh graduates wrote TET 2014, of whom 2.4 lakh were declared passed in 2016 and 29,000 candidates short-listed for interview. But 12,000 complaints were submitted to WBSSC alleging fraud and payment of bribes to examiners and board members. Consequently, the recruitment and appointment of teachers who passed TET 2014 was stayed by several high court orders. Although 10,000 teachers were appointed in 2016 after they cleared a special state-level selection test administered by WBSSC, it has subsequently become clear that the appointments were made fraudulently. According to Shankar Samanta, convener of the West Bengal SLST Candidates Association, since recruitment of teachers has been stalled for the past six years, 1.2 million aspirant teachers statewide with B.Ed degrees have become age-ineligible (age upper limit: 40 years) to write SLST or TET. Following a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe ordered by the Calcutta high court on April 7, it has become manifest that bribes of Rs.10 lakh for Group C and D jobs; Rs.10-12 lakh for primary teachers’ appointments, Rs.15-18 lakh for secondary and Rs.18-20 lakh for higher secondary teachers’ posts were demanded and paid to former education minister Partha Chatterjee. This was confirmed on July 23 when Rs.100 crore in cash and title deeds of 12 properties were unearthed from four upscale apartments of Chatterjee’s girl-friend, cinema actress Arpita Mukherjee. Earlier on May 21, CBI arrested president of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE) Kalyanmoy Ganguly and former WBSSC chairman Soumitra Sarkar. With the number of teacher vacancies in West Bengal’s 92,000 government schools having risen to 85,000, the average teacher-pupil ratio in government schools has risen to 1:59 against the…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Karnataka: Anaemic education initiative

Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) Reeling under attacks from the opposition Congress party which has launched a highly effective ‘Pay CM — 40 percent accepted here’ poster campaign across the state to highlight rampant corruption in the state (last November the Karnataka State Contractors’ Association wrote directly to prime minister Narendra Modi complaining that government officials routinely extort 40 percent ‘commission’ on all government contracts and bills payable) and also accused by several private schools associations of pervasive corruption, Karnataka’s BJP government has sought to recover lost ground by announcing a slew of education initiatives. On September 20, the state government tabled the State Universities (Amendment) Bill 2022, which proposes promotion of eight state government universities in Bidar, Haveri, Kodagu, Chamarajanagar, Hassan, Koppal, Mandya and Bagalkot districts. The estimated expenditure: Rs.112 crore over the next two years. Moreover the BJP government’s populist statements of intent to reserve 75 percent of employment in government and private sector industry for natives of the state and making Kannada the sole language of administration are also being interpreted as desperate measures of the besieged BJP government readying for legislative assembly elections early next year. Opposition Congress party leaders and academics have been quick to highlight that Karnataka already hosts 33 state universities beset with massive faculty shortages, rampant corruption in appointment of vice chancellors and faculty, obsolete curriculums and pedagogies and poor infrastructure. Consequently, admissions in government undergrad degree colleges affiliated with state-run universities are plummeting. According to a report in The Hindu (September 30) 171 government degree colleges affiliated with state universities received less than 100 admission applications for the new academic year 2022-23, with three colleges reporting single digit admissions against 740 vacancies. Moreover, with the state’s BJP government being first off the blocks to implement the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 in higher education institutions, university managements are confused and apprehensive about online admissions, teaching engineering programmes in Kannada etc. Simultaneously, Krishna Byre Gowda, a Congress party leader, has alleged “several irregularities and scams” in the appointment of vice chancellors and faculty at state universities, and rampant corruption that has resulted in “deterioration of higher education standards”. Moreover Congress state president Eshwar Khandre has accused the BJP government of auctioning posts of vice chancellors for Rs.5-20 crore. Confronted with a barrage of criticism, higher education minister Dr. C.N. Ashwath Narayan admitted that 2,300 faculty positions are vacant in the state’s government colleges and varsities. Vice chancellors posts are also vacant in three varsities for over a year — in Gulbarga (Kalaburagi), Karnataka Folklore (Haveri) and Karnatak universities. With Karnataka’s extant 33 universities and hundreds of affiliated colleges in a shambles and beset with funding, faculty and certification credibility problems, respected academics question the advisability of augmenting the number of new under-resourced universities dispensing poor quality education. “The government should distribute available resources to strengthen existing state universities instead of promoting anaemic new higher education institutions. It should use the finances allocated to raise education standards, recruit qualified faculty and focus on research and…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Maharashtra: Collateral damage

Dipta Joshi (Mumbai) Primary school teachers in Maharashtra’s 65,734 government-run zilla parishad (ZP) rural schools are simmering with anger. The state government’s education ministry has directed all teachers to display A4 size photographs of themselves in their classrooms. Additionally, Prashant Bamb, a member of the legislative assembly (MLA) of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has demanded that the house rent allowance (HRA) of zilla parishad teachers who fail to provide proof of residence in the same village as their school, be withheld. On Teachers Day (September 5) ZP teachers wore black arm bands to protest this government directive and on September 11, a large contingent of ZP teachers from across the state staged a protest at Aurangabad. Moreover several teachers, who were issued notices to submit proof of residence or forgo their HRA, have reportedly briefed lawyers to contest this government directive. The prime cause of the impugned directives is widespread belief that highly paid government school teachers — their Pay Commission stipulated remuneration is often 20-30 multiples of teachers in private, especially private budget schools — practice mass truancy. Way back in 1998, a PROBE (People’s Report on Basic Education) survey shocked the nation by stating that 25 percent of government school teachers nationwide are absent from school every day. This widely cited report was supported in 2005 by the US-based Ithaka think tank’s JUSTOR Report whose authors included Nazmul Chaudhury, a World Bank economist and Kartik Murlidharan, a doctorate scholar at Harvard University and currently professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). “Twenty-five percent of teachers were absent from school, and only about half were teaching during unannounced visits to a nationally representative sample of government primary schools in India. Absence rates varied from 15 percent in Maharashtra to 42 percent in Jharkhand, with higher rates concentrated in the poorer states,” wrote the authors of the report published in the Journal of the European Economic Association (April-May, 2005). Teachers attribute declining learning outcomes of children in government schools to teachers being assigned a spate of ‘official’ duties outside the classroom which takes away much of their teaching time. According to government school teachers’ spokespersons, they are obliged to discharge 150 non-teaching administrative duties within schools and beyond school gates. These assignments include preparing children’s mid-day meals, maintaining accounts of foodgrains distributed by government to schools, collecting funds for locally sponsored school development projects, submitting reports and updating data required by several administrative departments. Moreover, since July the state’s teachers have been assigned the additional duty of registering children for their Aadhar unique identification cards on the education ministry’s online platform. In addition, teachers are routinely given assignments to conduct health, animal husbandry, population control drives, door-to-door anti-tobacco awareness campaigns, administer polio vaccine doses, survey the number of public toilets, check open defecation behaviour in villages and even regulate queues outside liquor shops. During the Covid pandemic lockdown, over 300 teachers statewide who were assigned pandemic-related duties lost their lives. Moreover during general and…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Delhi: National footprint gambit

Autar Nehru (Delhi) India’s political class is arguably the most obtuse of any country worldwide. Whereas politicians world over are well aware that education of children is the highest priority of parents, for post-independence India’s politicians and political parties, education of generation next is a peripheral low priority issue. Party manifestos pay mere lip service to the subject and education seldom figures in political debates and discourse. The leadership of the new genre Aam Aadmi (‘common man’) Party (AAP) is an exception to this rule. Quite clearly, this political party born out of social activist Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption national movement (2012), believes that children’s education is an electoral issue. In 2015, after the BJP spectacularly won General Election 2014, it called a legislative assembly election in Delhi state. Against all expectations, the newly registered AAP won 67 seats in the 70-strong assembly. In 2020, after the BJP won an even larger majority in General Election 2019, campaigning on the platform of improving education and health services and corruption-free government, AAP won 62 seats in the Delhi state assembly. Arvind Kejriwal, a former civil servant and Manish Sisodia, chief minister and deputy CM respectively of the AAP government of Delhi state, evidently believe that education — especially primary-secondary education — is an elections winning issue. Delhi’s AAP government loudly proclaims that it allocates 20-25 percent of its annual budget expenditure for education, a larger proportion than of any state government countrywide. It has impressively spruced up and modernised state government schools and children’s learning outcomes have improved significantly. The AAP leadership claims that students are leaving upscale private schools to enroll in state government schools. There’s some evidence to back this claim. The AAP government’s 22 show-piece Rajkiya Pratibha Vikas Vidyalaya (RPVV) schools are highly respected. Five of them are ranked among the country’s Top 10 state government schools in the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings 2022-23 (see. p.160). The AAP leadership’s electoral promises of upgrading and modernising primary-secondary education combined with improved public health services and anti-corruption drives have impacted electorates beyond Delhi. Last March, AAP won a spectacular victory in the Punjab legislative assembly election winning 92 seats in the 117-strong assembly, and the party’s first government beyond Delhi state was sworn in on March 16. Now with assembly elections due to be held in Gujarat and Karnataka early next year, the AAP leadership has developed national ambitions. In August, it launched ‘Make India No.1’ campaign. Shortly later, it launched an ambitious Delhi Model Virtual School (DMVS) on August 31. This national online classes IX-XII schooling programme is open to any student countrywide. Admissions began on August 31 and a clear challenge has been thrown to the 43-year-old NIOS (National Institute of Open Schooling, estb.1979). According to political pundits in Delhi, the DMVS open schooling programme is designed to give AAP a national image in the run-up to General Election 2024. The outcome of the AAP government’s success in delivering online education during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, DMVS has…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Karnataka: Another mega corruption charge

Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) The once well-governed southern state of Karnataka (pop.68 million) is rapidly transforming into ‘broken windows’ society. In 1982, American academics James Q. Wilson and George Kelling ideated their Broken Windows theory. They posited that if civic neglect and official corruption in any society or neighbourhood remains unpunished, an outbreak of serious crimes and criminality becomes inevitable. Continuous tolerance of everyday petty crimes — road traffic offences, shoddy public works execution, bribery in government offices, arbitrary garbage dumping — has precipitated a major crime wave in Karnataka. Last November, the Karnataka State Road Contractors’ Association (KSRCA) wrote directly to prime minister Narendra Modi complaining that elected representatives of the BJP-ruled state government are routinely extorting commissions of 40 percent for award of civic maintenance and road construction contracts. Even as resolution of the KSRCA complaint is still pending, in a letter dated August 26, RUPSA (Registered Unaided Private Schools Association), which has 13,000 member schools, also wrote a letter directly to the prime minister accusing Karnataka’s BJP government and education minister B.C. Nagesh in particular, of extorting massive bribes for renewal of school recognition, issuing no-objection certificates to new CBSE and CISCE schools, RTE fees reimbursement, and other routine administrative functions. “Due to irresponsible behaviour and greediness of our education minister, private unaided schools are facing unbearable hazards. We have brought our plight to the notice of our honourable chief minister on several occasions, but in vain. But the education minister is clever enough to manipulate in connivance with department officials. They give scant respect to the chief minister’s instructions and throw our appeals into the dustbin. Because of this, thousands of private schools, especially in educationally backward districts like Bidar are left with no option but closure,” says the letter to the PM signed by RUPSA president Lokesh Talikatte. RUPSA claims that last August (2021) renewal of registration/recognition certificates, which was mandated every 10 years, was reduced to annual renewal. This change has cost private school managements “lakhs of rupees”. In addition, schools have to pay bribes of up to 30-40 percent of the amount owed to private schools as reimbursement for admitting poor neighbourhood children under s. 12 (1) (c) of the RTE Act. Unsurprisingly, education minister Nagesh indignantly denies these charges. “RUPSA has made baseless allegations against me and the department. If they have any proof and documents, why didn’t they lodge a complaint until now? We will take necessary action if there is proof,” he says. However, such denials cut little ice in the academy and among private school promoters in Bengaluru which hosts 3,500 private schools including top-ranked globally benchmarked schools such as Indus International, Inventure Academy, Vidyashilp which educate the progeny of the garden city’s upscale IT professionals and businessmen. It’s a matter of common knowledge that corruption is deeply entrenched in the education ministry regardless of the government in office, and that education ministry officials have made large illegal fortunes by extracting huge bribes from private school promoters represented by shady…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

West Bengal: Thrown away pearl

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) Although there’s no denying that Christian missionaries have made a great contribution to the growth and dissemination of English-medium school and higher education, there’s rising awareness within the country’s influential middle class that priest-educators, i.e, men and women of the cloth also discharging academic roles and duties, are becoming obsolete.Bound by strict laws of celibacy, Jesuit (and Church of Rome) academics plagued by a rash of paedophilia scandals worldwide, are out of step with 21st century zeitgeist. This rising sentiment was dramatically confirmed by official harassment and hounding of a highly qualified woman professor of English literature of St. Xavier’s University, Kolkata (SXU, formerly St. Xavier’s College, conferred university status by the University Grants Commission in 2017) which prompted her resignation. Her offence: prior to signing up with SXU in 2021, she had posted swimsuit photographs of herself on a social media platform (Instagram). This photograph was chanced upon by a first-year student of the university in October last year whose outraged parent complained to SXU’s founding vice chancellor Fr. (Dr.) Felix Raj, an alum of Loyola College, Chennai, St. Joseph’s College, Trichy, awarded an economics in Ph D by Rabindra Bharati University, Santiniketan and formerly principal of St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata (2009-17). According to this woman professor awarded Ph Ds by two European universities, Dr. Raj and registrar Asish Mitra intimidated, bullied and made “sexually-coloured remarks” during a kangaroo court trial held on October 7 last year. “I was told that my failure to voluntarily resign would be punished by the lodging of a criminal case against me for putting up objectionable photographs, and I was also forced to submit a letter of apology for inappropriate conduct, hurting the image of the institution,” wrote the professor in a detailed account of her persecution by the SXU management published by Indian Express (August 20). Subsequently, on second thought after tendering her resignation on October 25, in February, 2022 the professor wrote a letter to the SXU management seeking reinstatement and a formal apology. In response, the university sent her a legal notice demanding Rs.99 crore for “causing irreparable damage” to the university. On receiving the notice, the former professor filed a FIR (first information report) at a local police station against the SXU management under sections 354 (c) (voyeurism) and 509 (outraging modesty of a woman) of the Indian Penal Code 1860. Unsurprisingly, there was a massive public uproar in Kolkata immediately after the news was published in the online portal Wire (August 10). SXU students staged campus protests on August 10 followed by several student-run and women organisations holding protests before SXU gates. Support for the persecuted professor has also poured in from St. Xavier’s College alumni, gender activists and leading lights of Kolkata including mental health activist Ratnaboli Ray, psychologist Payoshni Mitra, former president and one-time SFI leader Anisha Pal. In a post, Ray wrote “that the SXU management needs to extend its periphery.” Since then, an online petition addressed to West Bengal education minister…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Maharashtra: Suffer little children

Dipta Joshi (Mumbai) Eight months after large-scale tampering and malpractices were reported in the Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) 2019-2020 written by 3.43 lakh aspirant school teachers, the Maharashtra State Council of Examinations (MSCE) disqualified 7,880 candidates who wrote the exam and banned them from writing any future TETs. In the list of proscribed aspirant primary school teachers made public on August 4, are the names of three daughters and son of Abdul Sattar, Maharashtra’s agriculture minister. A mandatory exam under the Right to Education Act, 2009 for graduates aspiring to teach in government schools, TET was introduced in Maharashtra in 2013 when the RTE Act was belatedly implemented statewide. Candidates aspiring to teach in Maharashtra’s 71,426 government-administered and government-aided primaries/elementaries (classes I-VIII), are required to pass TET with a minimum 60 percent average score. In the large and rapidly expanding upwardly mobile urban and periurban middle class of Maharashtra (pop.125 million) — and indeed countrywide — landing a government school teacher’s job is a big deal. Starting salaries of government school teachers prescribed by official Pay Commissions which determine the remuneration of Central government employees (including school teachers) serve as benchmarks for state governments, and are handsome. Especially when compared with teachers’ remuneration in the country’s estimated 400,000 budget private schools (BPS). According to Prof. Geeta Kingdon, chair of education economics and international development at University College, London, in rural hamlets of hinterland India, government school teachers are numbered among wealthiest citizens and enjoy high social status as their monthly salaries could be 30 multiples of BPS teachers remuneration. Moreover, within the country’s six million government school teachers’ community there is little accountability for children’s learning outcomes or their own classroom attendance. The authoritative Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) published by the Pratham Education Foundation reports that learning outcomes of government school children countrywide are declining year-by-year. Moreover, several studies have documented that 25 percent of all government school teachers are absent from classes every day. Little wonder the number of graduates from obscure undergrad colleges signing up for TET is rising every year. In 2018, 1.73 lakh candidates wrote TET, while in 2020, the number of candidates — most of whom are employed in BPS, writing TET — more than doubled to 3.43 lakh. However, given the weak school and undergrad education of the great majority of TET candidates, the exam has always recorded poor pass percentages. In 2018, of the 1.73 lakh candidates in Maharashtra who wrote TET, only 1,679 passed. In TET 2020, of the 3.43 lakh who wrote the exam a mere 16,705 passed. Unsurprisingly, with the mad scramble for government school employment, the education sector has become the happy hunting ground of corrupt officials, agents and coaching school professionals. Moreover with TET going online, officials of software companies have also become embroiled in TET scams and scandals. In November 2020, the Pune police during a raid on the city-based GA Software Technologies Pvt. Ltd, an external contractor which conducts recruitment exams on behalf of…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Delhi: Intervention imbroglio

Autar Nehru (Delhi) A 2017 decision of the AAP (Aam Aadmi Party) Delhi state government to conduct online admissions of pre-primary and class I children from economically weaker sections (EWS) admitted free-of-charge into private schools under s.12 (1) (c) of the RTE Act, 2009, has generated conflict between the state government’s Directorate of Education (DoE) and private schools. The decision to mandate online registration through the state government’s education ministry was taken following reports that some private schools are making fraudulent admission entries of EWS children and claiming reimbursement for educating ‘ghost’ children. Since 2017, although pre-primary and class I admissions have been made online under government supervision, private schools continued to admit EWS children directly under s.12 (1) (c), allegedly inflating their number and claiming reimbursement from the state government. Under s.12 (1) (c) of the historic Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, private unaided (financially independent) schools are obliged to reserve 25 percent of capacity in class I (or nursery in composite schools with pre-primary sections) for children from EWS homes in their neighbourhood, admit and retain them free-ofcharge until completion of elementary education (class VIII). Under s.12 (2) the state/local government is obliged to reimburse private schools the cost of educating EWS children on the basis of the average per child expenditure incurred by government in its own schools, or the independent school’s prescribed tuition fee, whichever is lower. Therefore an August 5 circular of, DoE directing private school managements to segregate online pre-primary and class I and offline (direct) admissions from 2018 onwards, which added that tuition fees of EWS children admitted directly by private school managements will not be reimbursed, has come as a shock to private schools. Especially low-fees budget private schools (BPS) which have been admitting duly certified EWS children in their neighbourhoods into classes II-VIII delhi Education News for the past five years. They have requested DoE to maintain the status quo until the academic year 2021-22 as more than 100,000 EWS children have been directly admitted under s.12 (1) (c) by independent schools since 2018. The issue of private independent schools admitting children under s.12 (1) (c) has been complicated by antecedent Delhi School Education Rules 1973. Under these rules framed under the Delhi School Education Act, 1973, 394 private independent schools given land at concessional prices by government are obliged to reserve 20 percent of capacity and provide free-of-charge education to EWS children for the entire K-12 education span. Since 2010 when the RTE Act, 2009 became operational, the practice of concessional land grant schools has been to admit an additional 5 percent EWS children and claim reimbursement for their education until class VIII. In 2018, the Delhi government standardised reimbursements to private schools admitting s.12 (1) (c) children at Rs.26,908 per annum for classes I-V and Rs.26,707 for class VI-VIII plus Rs.1,100 and Rs.1,400 respectively towards books, stationery and uniforms. Therefore, with private schools claiming to have admitted 100,000 EWS children since, the aggregate…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

They said it

The BJP is a well-organised electoral juggernaut, it is ruthless in using state power to intimidate opponents… But a formidable opponent and repression often galvanize an Opposition, not make them comatose. But the Opposition is not held back by the power of the BJP. Its besetting sin is its own excruciating littleness. -Pratap Bhanu Mehta, public intellectual, on raids by the Enforcement Directorate on opposition party leaders (Indian Express, July 23) Be it technical education, medical education or law education, when we do not teach all these in Indian languages, then we limit the capabilities and potential of our country. But when teaching all this in Indian languages, we will be able to utilise the 100% potential of the country. -Union home minister Amit Shah on second anniversary of the National Education Policy 2020 (Hindustan Times, July 30) Too many kids fight for too few seats in hallowed academic institutions. They are forced to sacrifice everything that gives them some pleasure and fun in life to mug up answers to questions that they would most probably never encounter in their life after the examinations. -Anand Neelakantan, author of Bahubali trilogy, on the rising incidence of suicide among students (The New Indian Express, July 31) Indian industry has to become more competitive and productive. In 2021 the estimated output per worker was worth only $6,413 as compared to China’s $16,697. -Aroon Purie, editor-in-chief, on the sinking rupee and its fallout (India Today, August 1) India is open to capital for education from everywhere. We must ensure that market forces don’t overpower institutions and there is no commercialisation. Anyone is welcome to our system with one expectation — it should not be exploited. -Dharmendra Pradhan, Union education minister (The Economic Times, August 3)

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

West Bengal: Shame & scandal

-Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) West Bengal’s stop-go government school teacher recruitment process stretching back to 2015 ,which has been subject to continuous street demonstrations, court injunctions and sporadic appointments — as regularly reported by your correspondent — came to a head on July 22-23 when the Enforcement Directorate, a financial frauds investigation unit of the BJP-controlled Central government, raided the residences of Partha Chatterjee and his close aide cinema actress Arpita Mukherjee and discovered a cash mountain of Rs.21 crore. Subsequent raids on 15 properties including three houses owned by Chatterjee and four upscale apartments owned by Mukherjee unearthed another Rs.50 crore in cash and title deeds of 12 properties. A heavyweight of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) government and close confidant of three-term chief minister Mamata Banerjee, Partha Chatterjee was industries minister of the TMC government which trounced the BJP in the state legislative election of 2020. More significantly, Chatterjee (now suspended from party membership) was West Bengal’s education minister for seven years (2014-21) when 50,000 primary teachers — from 2.8 million applicants who wrote the TET (teacher eligibility test) in 2015 and 2016 — were belatedly recruited and appointed in government schools earlier this year. Teaching jobs in government schools (and higher education institutions) which are high wage islands paying salaries benchmarked with pay scales decreed by Pay Commissions appointed by the Central government to ring-fence government employees against inflation, are highly prized countrywide as they offer life-long security with minimal accountability, relatively high salaries (compared to private schools), healthcare coverage and three vacations per year. Government school jobs are especially prized in West Bengal (pop.91 million) which following 34 years (1977-2011) of uninterrupted rule by a CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist) Left Front coalition, experienced continuous flight of capital and investment famine which have burdened the state with mass unemployment. According to ED sources, money and other valuables recovered from Chatterjee and Arpita’s properties were accumulated bribes collected from families desperate for sons and daughters to be employed as teachers and clerks in state government-run schools. Chatterjee reportedly demanded — and bagged — bribes of Rs.10 lakh for Group C and D jobs; Rs.10-12 lakh for primary teachers’ jobs; Rs.15-18 lakh for secondary and Rs.18-20 lakh for higher secondary teachers’ posts. The total amount extracted from desperate job-seekers is estimated at Rs.400-500 crore. As the probe into the mega scam unfolds, the jobs of 43,000 teachers recruited by the education ministry in 2016 for having cleared TET 2014 are at stake. In fact, the appointment of 269 teachers has already been cancelled because of tainted recruitment. The CBI is reportedly examining documents related to these appointments. Meanwhile with teacher recruitment having stagnated since the TMC government was elected for the first time in 2011, thousands of educated unemployed youth statewide who have written TET but whose results have been stayed by the courts, have lost hope and have accepted low-paid jobs in the private sector or are working as private tutors. Moreover, because of rising teacher vacancies, the…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Uttar Pradesh: No great shakes

-Nishant Saxena (Lucknow) On july 24, residents of Lucknow (pop.3.8 million), the administrative capital of the Hindi heartland, BJP-ruled state of Uttar Pradesh, woke up to bold face newspaper headlines and screaming television news anchors proclaiming that seven out of 18 students who attained the top score of 99.75 percent in the recently-completed class XII ISC exam of the Delhi-based Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) board, are from schools in the state. Informed academics in Lucknow University, the state’s premier varsity (estb.1920) which was awarded the highest A++ grading (cumulative grade point average of 3.55 out of a maximum 4) of the Bengaluru-based National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) on July 26 to become the first university in UP to be awarded this status, are less impressed. According to them, given the huge population of UP (215 million) — “if Uttar Pradesh was a nation instead of a state, it would be fifth most populous country in the world” — seven students topping a national exam is nothing to write home about. Secondly, of UP’s total number of 243,000 primary-secondary schools, a mere 436 are affiliated with the upscale CISCE examination board which prescribes stringent infrastructure, teacher-pupil ratio and other qualitative norms as preconditions of affiliation. All told, UP’s CISCE-affiliated schools — headed by the Lucknow-based City Montessori School with 17 campuses in the city and certified by Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest single-city primary-secondary (aggregate enrolment: 58,000) and routinely ranked UP’s #1 co-ed day school — have a modest 500,000 children on their muster rolls. Nor are other monitors of the neglected education system of the country’s most populous state impressed. Niti Aayog, the Union government’s think tank which replaced the Nehruvian Soviet-inspired Planning Commission in 2015, ranks Uttar Pradesh #19 among India’s 28 states on its SDG Index of Quality Education with a score of 21 cf. the national average of 29. Worse, the Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation ranks it #19 among major states in its PIE (performance infrastructure & equity) Index 2020-21, just ahead of last-ranked Bihar. The low-ranking routinely awarded to UP in all national surveys is the outcome of the state’s dismal data on several parameters of public education management. For instance, in the state’s 169,000 government and aided schools, the teacher-pupil ratio is 1:39 as against the 1:25 recommended by the RTE Act, 2009; UP hosts the largest number of single teacher schools (22,223) and an estimated 25 percent of the state’s 670,000 government school teachers are absent from work every day. Although Uttar Pradesh has a long history of education neglect — especially of foundational primary education under Congress governments which ruled the state for over half a century after independence — educationists in Lucknow believe that the situation has worsened since the incumbent BJP government led by saffron clad monk Yogi Adityanath was swept to power in Lucknow in the legislative election of 2017. The consensus is that BJP governments at the Centre and states are…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Karnataka: Position papers row

-Reshma Ravishanker The Karnataka BJP government’s 26 position papers on National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which is being rolled out nationally after being kept on hold during the Covid-19 pandemic disruption, submitted in early July to the National Council for Educational Research & Training (NCERT), have sparked outrage within the academy. Submitted in response to the Union education ministry’s invitation to state governments for suggestions to finalise the new K-12 National Curriculum Framework (NCF) being finalised by NCERT, the position papers have provoked a hail of criticism for promoting Hindutva ideology, language chauvinism, passing of myth as history, and undermining scientific temper. Drafted by a committee of experts chaired by H.V. Ranganath, former chief secretary of Karnataka, the 26 papers offer suggestions relating to language education, knowledge of India, curriculum and pedagogy, science and gender education among other issues. Yet it has sparked academic outrage because a ‘Knowledge of India’ paper proposes introduction of indigenous (bharatiya) pedagogies and rejection of “Western science”. In particular, this paper posits that the Pythagoras theorem and Newton’s law of gravity are “fake news”, and should be excised from all school syllabuses. Another position paper on health and wellness recommends discontinuation of eggs in school children’s mid-day meals as “they cause lifestyle disorders”. In a statement dated July 21, several medical practitioners and educationists including Dr. Yogananda Reddy, former president of Indian Medical Association, Karnataka and Niranjanaradhya V.P, fellow and programme head — Universalisation of Education at NLSUI, Bengaluru, severely criticised the state government’s position papers. “An elaborate study conducted by the Karnataka Rural Development and Panchayat Raj University, Gadag has very clearly shown that children in Yadgir district where mid-day meals were supplemented with egg protein recorded significant gains in weight and body mass index… Therefore, the recommendation of the position paper completely goes against the decision of the Karnataka government,” says the statement. Yet the Ranganath Committee’s NEP 2020 recommendation paper that has angered educationists most, is on language education. It recommends that in foundational classes (nursery-class V) the compulsory medium of instruction should be mother tongue and/or Kannada. Private schools are shocked that the expert committee has raked up this issue settled by the Supreme Court in 2014 after a 33-year battle in the courts. In State of Karnataka & Anr. vs. Associated Management of (Government Recognised Unaided English medium) Primary and Secondary Schools & Ors. (AIR 2014 SC 2094), the apex court ruled that parents have a fundamental right to choose the medium of instruction of their children. “The Ranganath Committee’s position paper on language education is in contempt of the Supreme Court of India. We demand immediate withdrawal of this position paper. The state government should refrain from imposing a new medium of instruction policy under the guise of implementing NEP 2020,” says D. Shashi Kumar, general secretary, Associated Managements of Private Schools in Karnataka (KAMS). Meanwhile, responding to the volley of criticism against the state’s NEP position papers, education minister B.C. Nagesh says they are “only recommendations; a final…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Maharashtra: Spreading tentacles

More than 60 marathi-medium private aided school managements have filed writ petitions before the Nagpur bench of the Bombay high court demanding complete autonomy to appoint teachers. Currently, there are a total 66,750 primary-secondary schools statewide with an aggregate enrolment of 5.25 million children mentored by 450,000 teachers. Private-aided Marathi-medium schools number 20,120 (30 percent). Private aided schools are a uniquely Indian phenomenon. Although promoted by private trusts and societies, salaries of their teachers and non-teaching staff are paid by the state government. The quid pro quo is that the tuition fees of private aided schools are calibrated by government to enable the children of lower middle and working class households to access them. Until 2012, the tradition was that recruitment and appointment of teachers was the prerogative of private aided school managements. However in that year, the then Congress government of Maharashtra banned teacher appointments in private aided schools until ‘excess’ teachers in government and private aided schools were appropriately deployed. Subsequently in 2017, the then Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena led government (2014-19) accused private aided school managements of indulging in widespread corrupt practices in recruiting teachers whose salaries are paid by government. In June 2017, a government resolution mandated registration of teacher vacancies on its Pavitra portal to ensure transparency and accountability in the teacher recruitment process. Read:Maharashtra: TET scandals Aspiring teachers who had written and passed the teacher eligibility test (TET) and/or the Maharashtra Teacher Aptitude and Intelligence Test (TAIT) were allocated to registered schools by the education ministry. In sum, teacher recruitment of private aided schools passed from their managements to government. Unsurprisingly, the recruitment process through the Pavitra portal is riddled with technical glitches with no teachers recruited since the first batch of 8,000 teachers appointed in 2017. The Maharashtra Rajya Shikshan Sanstha Mahamandal (MRSSM), a representative body of 20,000 private aided schools and junior colleges, has always opposed teacher recruitment and appointments through the Pavitra portal on the ground that it dilutes the autonomy of privately promoted schools. MRSSM leaders contend that a full bench Supreme Court judgement in the landmark T.M.A. Pai vs. Union of India (2002) upheld the right of privately promoted professional education institutions to establish and ‘administer’ institutions of their choice. The right to administer includes right to recruit and appoint teachers of their choice. “Many of our schools are operating with less than half the required number of teachers which has severely compromised the quality of education provided to children. It’s well-known that there is a steady exodus of children from government schools because quality of education they dispense is very poor. When the education ministry is unable to do a good job of its own schools, why should it continue interfering with our work? The government is also incapable of conducting a scam-free teacher eligibility test as evident from recent TET scams in Maharashtra. So, why should we hire TET cleared candidates with questionable qualifications?” argues Ashokrao Thorat, vice president, MRSSM, with reference to the arrest last December…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Delhi: Newly emergent election issue

-Autar Nehru Perhaps the sole political party in India whose leadership believes that provision, upgradation and universalisation of school education is an election-winning issue is the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which was born out of social reformer Anna Hazare’s futile anti-corruption crusade of 2012. In 2015, AAP led by former government bureaucrat Arvind Kejriwal, stunned the country by winning the Delhi state legislative assembly election bagging 67 of the 70 seats of the house, an astonishing electoral coup given that the BJP which had swept to a landslide victory in General Election 2014 held a few months earlier, was expected to sweep Delhi as well. Five years later, AAP won Delhi again with an even larger majority. Its promise to wipe out petty corruption which is endemic in the state and local governments of the national capital (which was conferred special statehood in 1991) apart, upgrading and contemporisation of Delhi’s 1,028 state government schools with an aggregate enrolment of 1.8 million children has been a major plank of its successful election campaigns. But the party’s commendable initiatives to expand capacity in state government schools by adding 8,000 classrooms has resulted in the Delhi Lokayukta ordering the chief secretary of the Lt. Governor’s office (i.e, the Central government) to conduct an enquiry into corruption charges levelled against Manish Sisodia, deputy chief and education minister of the AAP government. According to Manoj Tiwari, former president of the Delhi state BJP and incumbent member of Parliament, although the estimated construction cost per classroom was Rs.5 lakh, the AAP government paid out Rs.25-28 lakh per classroom. Tiwari says this is prima facie proof of defalcation aggregating Rs.2,000 crore. When this issue was first raised publicly in 2019 Sisodia reacted sharply by filing defamation suits against Tiwari. Unlike all other parties, the AAP leadership makes education a big issue. It prides itself for allocating 22 percent (Rs.16,278 crore) of its total budgeted expenditure for 2022-23 towards education, the highest proportion of any state countrywide. Moreover, in addition to adding 8,000 classrooms to its 1,028 schools in its second term from 2020, the AAP government has established five specialised universities including skills, sports and teacher education varsities which have an aggregate enrolment of 25,000 youth. However, not a few academics and educationists are sceptical about the AAP government’s claims of great advances in education. According to R.C. Jain, president of the Delhi State Public Schools Management Association, of all children in class IX in state government schools only 50 percent make it to class XII, because under an unwritten policy of the government those who don’t perform well in class IX are asked to leave and enrol in NIOS as independent students to write the NIOS (National Institute of Open Schooling) board exam. “This is done to ensure that CBSE class XII board results of state government schools are 90 percent-plus,” says Jain. Moreover, he alleges that over 800 state government schools are functioning without headmasters. BJP spokespersons and the rising number of the party’s sympathisers…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

They said it

“The RSS has done this at their shakhas for years now, catching hold of children at a very young age, implanting in them the story of a narrow ‘Akhand Bharat’, killing their scientific temperament and replacing it with extreme edicts — an action plan entirely based on the idea that young brains are more malleable…” Priyank Kharge, Karnataka Congress legislator, on the textbooks revision controversy in the state (The News Minute, June 11) “Today the Republican-controlled Supreme Court has achieved their dark, extreme goal of ripping away a woman’s right to make her own reproductive health decisions.” Nancy Patricia Pelosi, speaker of the US House of Representatives on the Supreme Court overturning women’s abortion rights (Times of India, June 25) “In any place around the world, it is very important that people be allowed to express themselves freely, journalists be allowed to express themselves freely and without the threat of any harassment.” Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, on the arrest of Alt-News co-founder and journalist Mohammed Zubair in India (Scroll.in, June 29) “The savage execution of Kanhaiya Lal in Udaipur will deepen the darkest forebodings about India’s future. It is important to name this gruesome act for what it is, without aestheticizing it. It was an execution and not a murder.” Pratap Bhanu Mehta, public intellectual, on the beheading of Lal by Islamic radicals (Indian Express, June 30) “A major failure of the government’s energy policy is the decline in India’s domestic crude oil production. In 2021-22, the production of crude oil from domestic wells fell to 28.4 million tonnes. Shockingly that’s even lower than the production of crude oil in 1994-95 (32.2 million tonnes).” Minhaz Merchant, journalist, columnist and biographer (BusinessWorld, July 2)

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Telangana: Silent education revolution

-M. Somasekhar (Hyderabad) In sharp contrast with BJP governments at the Centre and in several states which are acquiring a reputation for neglecting and even dumbing down early childhood and primary-secondary education, Telangana’s state government headed by high-profile chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and his son and heir-apparent the US educated K.T. Rama Rao, is winning laurels from the middle class for according priority to high quality K-12 education. In particular, establishment of international schools affiliated with offshore examination boards such as International Baccalaureate (IB), Geneva/The Hague and Cambridge Assessment International Education (CAIE), UK, in Hyderabad (pop.10 million), the admin capital of Telangana (pop.38.5 million). During the past ten years, over 20 greenfield international schools with globally benchmarked infrastructure, expat headmasters and highly-qualified teachers have become operational in this city of nawabs and pearls. Among the new international schools that have set up shop in Hyderabad in recent years are Indus International, Sancta Maria, Jain International, Silver Oaks and Oakridge International, all highly ranked in the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings league tables. Moreover the city, which has transformed into a bustling hub of the 21st century ICT (information communication technologies) industry, has also attracted the attention of global private school chains. In November 2019, the UK-based Cognita Group which owns/manages 90 primary-secondary schools in eight countries around the world, planted its first flag on Indian soil in Hyderabad by acquiring the CAIE and IB-affiliated Chirec International School (estb.1989). Last January, the UK-based International Schools Partnership, which owns/manages over 50 schools in 13 countries with an aggregate 45,000 students, invested in Sancta Maria International School, Hyderabad. Academics in Hyderabad attribute the spurt in number of high-end international schools mushrooming in the city of pearls to a combination of factors. Among them: Hyderabad’s swift rise as a ICT industry and related businesses hub with several transnational and domestic majors including Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and TCS, Infosys and Wipro having established large offices, and the conducive climate created by the TRS government for foreign investors who include Ikea, Accenture and Walmart. In turn, these corporates have recruited thousands of highly-qualified and well-paid IT and business professionals from abroad and across the country who want the best education for their children, and are ready to pay for it. “International schools are increasingly being preferred over family-managed private schools because they offer globally respected syllabuses and curriculums, proven administrative systems, highly-qualified teachers and excellent infrastructure. For instance, the syllabus/curriculum offered by IB schools is holistic, rigorous and practical and makes learning an enjoyable experience for children as it provides opportunity to learn through flexible subject combinations. All this makes students ready for employment anywhere in the world,” says Ratna Reddy, founder of CHIREC International School, the first international school in the city and now a Cognita Group school. Yet perhaps the major motivation factor behind Hyderabad emerging as the most preferred location for high-end international schools is the stable governance provided by the TRS government led by the father-son duo of CM Chandrasekhar…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Karnataka: Emerging election issue

Karnataka’s school textbooks revision row shows no sign of dying down and could become a major issue in the state legislative assembly elections scheduled for next summer. Despite the state’s BJP government having consented to make addenda to new textbooks already distributed to class VI-X students for the academic year 2022-23 which began on May 16, several Kannada litterateurs, religious seers, social activists and opposition parties have continued to press their demand for the complete withdrawal of the new textbooks. According to critics, the new textbooks have been rewritten from a hindutva, Aryan perspective and contain anti-Dravidian, caste and anti-Muslim prejudices of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mentor organisation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ruling at the Centre and in Karnataka. Protestors have highlighted that chapters on Mysore’s Muslim ruler Tipu Sultan, social reformer Basavanna, Dravidian movement pioneer Periyar and social reformer Narayana Guru who opposed the caste system, featured in previous textbooks, have been omitted in new textbooks. The genesis of the textbooks row can be traced to last September when the BJP state government constituted a 15-member Textbook Revision Committee (TRC) headed by Rohit Chakratirtha, an RSS ideologue and Kannada language writer. In March when the committee completed its assignment, it became evident that class VI-X social science textbooks have been rewritten to propagate BJP propaganda. Since then opposition to the content included in new social science textbooks in particular, has escalated. With the textbooks row snowballing into a major controversy, the state’s BJP government issued a statement on June 27 that it will make “eight corrections” in the revised textbooks “keeping in mind sentiments of the society”. The changes include re-introduction of ‘Samvidhana Shilpi’ (architect of the Constitution), a biography of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar (class IX social studies textbook); inclusion of a lesson on the Bhakti sect and Sufi saints (class VII) and a chapter detailing the contributions of Siddaganga and Adichunchanagiri Mutts (class VI) to socio-economic development. Moreover in the class IX social science text, portions about social reformer Basavanna will be re-written and photographs of poet laureate Kuvempu and Huilgol Narayana Rao will be included in the class VII textbook. Given that the distribution of new textbooks to students in the 74,000 state board schools is underway, the state’s Karnataka Textbook Society (KTS) will print these changes/additions as addenda and distribute them again. However, according to KTS sources, only one addenda booklet will be given per school. Yet, these “cosmetic changes” have failed to placate the protestors and the opposition Congress party which is demanding complete withdrawal of the texts and continuing classes with previous year texts. Comments Harshakumar Kugwe, a researcher at the Bengaluru-based Kuvempu Horata Samithi, one of the organisations in the frontline of protests: “We demand total withdrawal of the new textbooks. They are written from the hindutva perspective and don’t reflect Karnataka’s plurality and diversity. The TRC headed by Rohit Chakratirtha didn’t invite any suggestions or feedback from the public, unlike the previous TRC headed by Baraguru Ramachandrappa…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

West Bengal: Irreparable damage

-Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) A teacher recruitment scandal dating back to 2016 continues to haunt the state’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) government, now in its third term in office. On May 18, a single-judge bench of the Calcutta high court ordered a CBI probe into the process of the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) for recruiting teachers for the state’s 92,000 government schools. Justice Gangopadhyay also ordered a CBI investigation into the TET (Teacher Eligibility Test) 2014 conducted by the West Bengal Board of Primary Education (WBBPE) on October 11, 2015. Aggrieved by these orders, the TMC government appealed to a division bench which peremptorily rejected the government’s appeal on June 16. Significantly, a list of 42,949 selected teachers was a revised merit list published in 2017 for TET 2014. Justice Gangopadhyay observed that even in the revised merit list, 269 of the selected candidates were awarded an additional mark each. WBBPE’s explanation that this additional mark awarded to 269 candidates was because of an error in the question paper, didn’t cut ice with the judge who enquired why the other 2.3 million candidates who wrote the very same exam were not also awarded the additional mark. Therefore, Justice Gangopadhyay rejected the entire revised merit list of 2017 and ordered “immediate cancellation of the appointment of 269 candidates, stop payment of their salaries, and ensure they are barred from entering the respective schools to which they were appointed henceforth”. In his order, the judge also ordered immediate removal of WBBPE president Manik Bhattacharya and assigned his official responsibilities to the board’s secretary Ratna Chakraborty Bagchi. On June 20, Chakraborty cancelled the appointment of all teachers recruited and appointed under TET 2014. Academics and teachers’ unions in West Bengal (pop. 91 million) are aghast that the future of aspiring teachers who wrote TET 2014 is uncertain eight years later because of irregularities in recruitment tests and pending court cases, even as there is an aggregate vacancy of 60,000 teachers in government schools which are also woefully deficient in blackboards, classrooms, libraries, laboratories and lavatories. With teacher recruitment at a standstill, the average teacher-pupil ratio in government schools has risen to 1:59 against the 1:35 prescribed by the RTE Act, 2009. As a result, learning outcomes are plunging. Unsurprisingly, the TMC government’s pathetic inability to sort out the state’s teacher recruitment mess and involvement of party cadres in this scandal have made public protests a daily affair. On June 22, hundreds of TET 2014 candidates who are yet to receive appointment letters, staged a protest by blocking an important crossroad of South Kolkata, demanding immediate recruitment. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s lame reply (June 20): “We have given jobs to nearly 100,000 people in government schools. Mistakes have occurred in 50-100 cases,” has fanned the flames of the 42,949 aspirant teachers who cleared TET 2014 and are awaiting appointment letters. Meanwhile widespread awareness that teachers are urgently required in the state’s 92,000 government schools with an aggregate enrolment of 23 million children to make…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Maharashtra: Double jeopardy

-Dipta Joshi (Mumbai) Dramatic events on the political stage in end-June which culminated in the resignation of chief minister Uddhav Thackeray and end of the tripartite Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Congress party coalition government after 31 months in office, has clouded the future of 2,088 aspirants for the coveted position of assistant professors in private aided degree colleges. Last September (2021), the MVA government’s technical and higher education minister Uday Samant had promised to fill all vacant assistant professor posts in the state’s 1,171 private aided colleges by July. Now aspirants fear that the abrupt fall of the MVA government will stymie the appointment process that began on June 20. In India’s complex higher education system, there are three types of undergrad colleges — government, private aided and private unaided (financially independent). Private aided colleges are privately promoted but levy government prescribed tuition fees. In consideration of this, the salaries of their faculty and staff are paid by the Central or state governments. Currently, an estimated 70,000 well-qualified postgrads and Ph Ds who have cleared the Central national eligibility test (NET) and/or state eligibility test (SET) are employed on clock-hour-basis (CHB) in government and aided colleges. Paid a measly Rs.521 per hour, these aspiring teachers had extracted a promise from Samant that 18,000 vacant assistant professorship posts in Maharashtra’s aided colleges would be filled before the start of the new academic year. Under Seventh Pay Commission scales, an assistant professor is paid between Rs.57,700-182,000 per month. With students’ fees in aided colleges contributing a mere 5-10 percent of their annual revenue, private aided colleges are heavily dependent on salary grants from cash-strapped state governments. A government resolution of November 12, 2021 allowed only 2,088 assistant professors to be recruited for the academic year 2022-23. However, the snail’s pace at which the appointments are being made — the technical and higher education department is still issuing NOCs (no objection certificates) to allow college managements to advertise assistant professors’ posts — means not even one appointment has been made for the academic year 2022-23, which has commenced this month (July). But with the state government’s wages and salaries bill for government and private aided colleges already a sizeable Rs.105.9 crore and the overall budget indicating a fiscal deficit of Rs.24,353 crore in 2022-23, faculty recruitments are on the back-burner. The alternative of raising students’ over-subsidised tuition fees which would enable aided colleges to raise faculty pay, is a political hot potato which none of the state’s political parties is willing to touch. Unsurprisingly, the Aurangabad-based Maharashtra Navpradhyapak Sanghatana (Maharashtra New Professors’ Association), which claims it has 10,000 members, is on the warpath. Since 2017, the association has staged 15 protest rallies including threats of fasts-unto-death. These protests compelled Samant to parley with them last September. At that time, the minister assured the association that all posts would be filled within the next year with a GR issued in November 2021 to appoint 2,088 assistant professors. But with the MVA…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Delhi: Policy pilot project

-Autar Nehru (Delhi) Despite widespread criticism of the BJP government at the Centre and the Union education ministry for lethargic implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which was presented to Parliament and the nation on July 29, 2020, early childhood care and education (ECCE) professionals are deriving some comfort from the roll-out of the National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN) Bharat mission. A pilot project of the mission was launched early this month (July) in 72 schools countrywide under the Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) mandate of NEP 2020. After totally ignoring ECCE for over half a century, thanks largely to the efforts of EducationWorld which began stressing its vital importance in 2007, and on the recommendation of the Dr. K. Kasturirangan Committee, NEP 2020 accords highest importance to ECCE and FLN. The NIPUN Bharat Mission was officially launched in August 2021 to attain the target of universal foundational literacy and numeracy in primary schools by 2026-27. “Government as well as non-governmental surveys indicate that we are currently in severe learning crisis; a large proportion of students currently in elementary school estimated to be over 50 million have not attained foundational literacy and numeracy, i.e, the ability to read and comprehend basic texts and the ability to carry out basic addition and subtraction with Indian numerals. If action is not taken soon, over the next few years, then we could lose 100 million or more students from the learning system to illiteracy,” warn the authors of NEP 2020. To track the progress of children in ECCE, the education ministry has designed a Holistic Progress Card (HPC) to indicate 360 degree multidimensional progress of every child’s cognitive, affective, socio-emotional and psychomotor development. Learning outcomes of all children are to be recorded on parameters of prosocial behaviour, health and hygiene, motor skills, first and second language skills, sensory development, environmental awareness, sequence and concept formation, numeracy, financial literacy and technology skills. Children also have to fill up a feedback sheet on activity and their difficulty perception. “This is a radical reform in which children are at the centre of teaching-learning. HPC is a pedagogical tool which will enable teachers to tap the highest potential of children by mapping competencies and learning outcomes to attain the goals of health, well-being and effective communication,” says Dr. Sudha Acharya, principal of ITL Public School, Dwarka (Delhi) and president, National Progressive Schools Conference which has 195 member schools. ITL Public is one of 72 schools in which the pilot programme was launched on July 1. A positive outcome of the high priority accorded to early childhood education and FLN by NEP 2020 is that now, there’s universal acknowledgement of the vital importance of structured, professionally administered ECCE. Hitherto, awareness of the critical importance of children starting to learn enjoyably through play and peer bonding was restricted to the upper middle elite classes. Now all educators are aware of its importance. “I hope FLN is not just limited to elite…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

UGC to provide over 23,000 higher education courses for free

They Said It

So, is Covid-19 over? No, it’s most certainly not over. I know that’s not the message you want to hear, and it’s definitely not the message I want to deliver. This virus has surprised us at every turn – a storm that has torn through communities… and we still can’t predict its path, or its intensity. -Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of World Health Organisation addressing the World Health Assembly (United Nations News, May 22) Online education is the new reality. Teaching fraternity must build new academic dynamics and come forward for developing quality e-learning content, developing SOPs to ensure online learning is not limited to exploitative market forces, and protecting against data imperialism. -Dharmendra Pradhan, Union education minister (Twitter, May 28) Let us assume that indeed the mosque was built on the site of a destroyed temple; does that mean we should open a gaping wound now, provoking civil strife today to avenge the past? Is there no case for letting old wounds that have long healed stay undisturbed? To destroy the mosque and replace it with a temple would not right an old wrong but perpetrate a new one. -Shashi Tharoor, member of Parliament, on the Gyanvapi mosque dispute (The Week, May 29) There is a need for a new legal framework for NEP to align it with the forward looking provisions of the NEP 2020. Otherwise, the policy will not be able to cross the hurdles created by existing legal provisions and age-old practices. -Manish Sisodia, education minister, Delhi state, on the National Education Policy 2020 (Financial Express, June 3) The problem in India is that often when you think an issue is resolved, it isn’t. It crops up in one form or other. -Aroon Purie, editor, on the Gyanvapi mosque controversy (India Today, June 13)

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

Odisha: Concurrent list confusion

-R. Kasturi (Bhubaneswar) A confrontation between the odisha government and Delhi-based University Grants Commission (UGC) has prompted the Supreme Court to issue a stay order against the state government and Odisha Public Service Commission from proceeding with recruitment of professors and lecturers for the state’s 11 universities and affiliated colleges. This confrontation dates back to last year when under the Odisha Universities (Amendment) Act, 2020, the state’s BJD government vested the power to select and appoint faculty for state universities in the Odisha Public Service Commission (OPSC). However, according to UGC — the apex level organisation (estb.1956) that governs all higher education institutions countrywide — the directive is in violation of its regulations which stipulate that appointment of all vice chancellors and faculty in the country’s 1,043 universities and affiliated colleges must be made after UGC approval. Taking exception to the BJD government short-circuiting this well-established recruitment process, Ajit Kumar Mohanty, a former JNU professor, filed a writ petition challenging the constitutional validity of the Odisha Universities (Amendment) Act, 2020 and prayed for annulment of all appointments made under it. Meanwhile, OPSC had selected and issued appointment letters to 639 lecturers. In addition, on May 24, another 186 candidates selected for assistant professor posts were directed to get their documents verified. However, admitting Prof. Mohanty’s petition on May 20, the Supreme Court issued a stay order on the recruitment process for three months and directed the state government to respond to the writ petition. But on the ground that education is a concurrent subject under the Constitution, the state government continued with the recruitment process. This prompted UGC secretary Rajnish Jain to write to OPSC warning that “continuation of the recruitment process will be in the teeth of the stay order dated May 20, 2022 granted by the Hon’ble Supreme Court”. Although initially OPSC spokespersons stated that the apex court’s stay order would not impact the appointment of 908 professors and lecturers, on May 26, the state government put the recruitment process on hold. The document verification of 186 candidates and interviews for assistant professors scheduled for June have also been put on hold. The ill-advised disregard of the apex court’s stay order — until better counsel prevailed — has not gone down well in Odisha’s academic circles. Dominant opinion in the academy is that UGC’s regulations for recruitment of faculty in higher education institutions are well-established and safeguard against favouritism and nepotism. “Most members of OPSC are political appointees and supporters of the ruling party. OPSC’s role is to test and select candidates for administrative positions in government. Their members are not competent to test, interview and appoint university VCs, professors and faculty. This is a prescription for inducting party favourites and under-qualified candidates as university faculty. At a time when the new National Education Policy 2020 mandates thorough reform and upgradation of higher education, the BJD government’s initiative to delegate the task of selection and appointment of higher education intellectuals to OPSC is totally regressive,” says the vice…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

West Bengal: Rising disenchantment

-Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) Fifteen long-pending writ petitions dating back to 2016 challenging the process of recruiting 10,000 teachers for West Bengal’s 92,000 government schools are experiencing some traction. On April 7, Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of the Calcutta high court ordered a CBI enquiry into the allegedly fraudulent teacher recruitment process. This order was challenged by the state’s Trinamool Congress government before a division bench. In light of the serious allegations of irregularities and fraud in the recruitment process, the division bench appointed a four-member committee chaired by Justice (Retd.) R.K. Bag to report if a CBI investigation is warranted. On May 13, the Bag Committee submitted its report confirming lack of transparency in the conduct of TET (Teacher Eligibility Test) 2016. According to advocate Arunava Bandyopadhyay, a member of the Bag Committee, “Among the 381 teachers recruited, the names of 221 had never figured in the list of those who passed TET”. Among those recruited was Ankita, daughter of school education minister Paresh Chandra Adhikari, whose name had been substituted for Babita Sarkar, who had cleared the test and was ranked #20. Incidentally, Paresh Adhikari joined the ruling TMC in 2018 following which Ankita was appointed political science teacher at Indira Girls School, Coochbehar on November 24, 2018. On May 18, seven orders were passed by the division bench of the high court directing the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to continue its enquiry into the alleged irregularities in TET 2016 and appointment of teachers. On May 21, CBI filed an FIR (first information report) against five members of an advisory panel of the School Service Commission (SSC) under s.120-B (criminal conspiracy), s.465 (forgery), s.417 (cheating) and s.468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. Recruitment of teachers for government schools is an emotive issue in West Bengal because teachers are relatively well-remunerated in a state where unemployment is pervasive, and small and medium scale industry salary scales are low. During 34 years of uninterrupted rule of the CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist)-led Left Front government (1977-2011) when labour militancy and violence was officially encouraged, there was a continuous flight of capital and industry from the state. As a result, overt and disguised unemployment is rife and government — including teaching jobs are highly prized. In support of unemployed teachers, members of the All India Democratic Youth Organisation (AIDYO) and All India Democratic Students’ Organisation (AIDSO) have been staging continuous protests in College Street, a prime location in central Kolkata. Opposition parties have also seized the opportunity to excoriate the TMC government. “The recruitment process has been tainted and sullied by gross nepotism, favouritism and corruption with massive involvement of TMC government ministers. It has opened a can of worms and needs thorough probe,” says Subhendu Adhikary, leader of the BJP in the legislative assembly. Unsurprisingly, academics in Bengal are becoming increasingly disenchanted with the TMC government and chief minister Mamata Banerjee, serving her third successive term in office. There is deep disappointment within academia that…

Already a subscriber

Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now

Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda