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EducationWorld November issue

Letter From the Editor

For the past 15 months after it was belatedly acknowledged that the novel Coronavirus, aka Covid-19, which originated in neighbouring China, was rife and spreading rapidly within India and taking a heavy daily toll of lives, national attention has been focused on ways and means to combat it. But even before a comprehensive unprecedented national lockdown of industry, business, trade and public transport was officially declared on March 25, 2020 — with four hours notice given to the public — all schools, colleges and education institutions countrywide had been shut down from mid-March. Since then, the country has made considerable progress in containing the worst ravages of the pandemic. The number of Covid infected citizens has reduced from a peak of 4.12 lakh on May 6 to 46,617 on July 1, and the count of officially recorded fatalities caused by this deadly, easily transmissible virus that attacks the lungs, has fallen from 3,980 to 853 per day during the same period. And, with a nationwide vaccination drive underway, all indications are that the worst of Covid-19 is over and infections and fatalities are plateauing. During this harrowing period in national history, the issue of livelihoods of the general populace has received insufficient attention. Although industry and business have been accorded expert attention and government relief, and are slowly limping back towards normalcy, schools and higher education institutions have remained tightly shut for the past 15 months with little prospect of campuses reopening in the near future. A small minority of children from well-off homes are learning best as they can in online classrooms offered by high-end private schools. But education of the great majority of the country’s 260 million children has been severely interrupted. It’s disturbing that India’s youngest citizens who were educationally shortchanged even before outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, have been out of school for longer than children of any country worldwide, except the US and Brazil. But children in these countries have superior Internet connectivity and greater access to digital learning devices. Against the backdrop of alarming reports that the future learning and livelihoods of an estimated 200 million children countrywide are in grave danger, in this issue we make a strong case for reopening schools — and all other education institutions — for on-campus teaching-learning. With adequate health and safety safeguards, of course. In addition, this issue features the EW Grand Jury India Higher Education Rankings 2021-22 that recognise and rank low-profile colleges and institutions excelling under unusual parameters. Very useful for school-leavers mulling higher education options. It is also rich with expert opinions, news from states, institution profiles. Let’s discuss and debate.

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EducationWorld November issue

Letter from the Editor

Cancellation of the class XII school-leaving exam by CBSE, CISCE and most state examination boards in early June for fear of the Covid-19 contagion spreading in crowded examination halls, has now confronted higher secondary students with the hurdle of getting admission into the most aptitudinally and aspirationally suitable undergrad study programme in the right college or university. Currently, according to University Grants Commission data, India hosts 39,931 junior and undergraduate colleges, 979 universities and 10,000 standalone education institutions. At this juncture the country’s 10.4 million higher secondary students are at a critical turning point and obliged to make perhaps the most important stream of study and college/university choice. The annual EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings (EWIHER) were introduced in 2013 to enable higher secondary school-leavers to make these important choices that will shape their careers and lives. Last month (May) we ranked the country’s most admired private and government autonomous and non-autonomous arts, science and commerce colleges, and engineering colleges. This month’s follow-up issue ranks India’s best private and government universities, Top 100 private B-schools and Top 10 institutes offering most popular degree courses. Over the past eight years since they were conceptualised, the annual EWIHER has evolved into arguably the world’s most detailed and information-rich evaluation survey of higher education institutions. Unlike esoteric jury-determined evaluations, all EW rankings are the outcome of extensive national field surveys. Field representatives of Centre for Forecasting & Research Pvt. Ltd (estb.2000), the well-reputed market research and opinion polls company, interviewed thousands of knowledgeable stakeholders in education —faculty, senior students and industry representatives — and persuaded them to rate higher education institutions under carefully selected parameters of education. Scores awarded by the sample respondents under the parameters were totalled to rank private and public universities and private B-schools in separate silos inter se. In short the EWIHER league tables enable students to significantly narrow the choice of higher education institutions to suit individual aptitudes and aspirations. Producing this issue of EW has been an arduous challenge because of the pandemic mandated lockdown in Bengaluru and Mumbai where our editorial and business offices are sited. For their safety and in the public interest, our staff worked from home around the clock because numerous information-packed league tables had to be repeatedly checked and re-checked for alignment with text matter. This required investment of great stamina and continuous digital communication between our personnel. Many thanks to all of them for their dedication and commitment. However if despite maximum care and diligence, minor typos and statistical errors have crept in, we crave your indulgence.

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EducationWorld November issue

Letter from the Editor

Since EducationWorld was launched as India’s pioneer sui generis education focused news magazine on November 1, 1999 with the mission to “build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda”, it’s a matter of pride and achievement that despite suffering fire, floods, riots, the pangs of disprized love, insolence of office, the proud man’s contumely, force majeure, acts of God and inevitable accidents, we have never failed to hit the newsstands on or near the scheduled date. The utter mismanagement of the Covid crisis which is devastating the economy and society makes it especially important for us to aid, enable and advise our core constituency — educators, parents and students — on ways and means being employed by the Republic’s most respected schools, colleges and universities to ensure that children and youth continue learning in spite of the ill-advised shut down of all education institutes since mid-March 2020. Although children of the urban middle class have switched to digitally enabled online learning with a fair measure of success, the vast majority from low-income and rural homes have been left in the lurch, to learn best as they can from an alphabet soup of one-way online and televised government programmes. It’s a matter of deep regret that mitigating the learning loss of 80 percent of India’s 500 million children and youth has received so little attention within mass media and the establishment. Nevertheless, for school-leavers making up for learning loss in the year past at the collegiate level is a matter of vital importance. Therefore they need to carefully choose colleges which are in sync with their aptitudes and aspirations. As usual our league tables ranking India’s most respected ASC (arts, science and commerce) and private engineering colleges are based on field surveys as against the more popular (and less expensive) jury rankings. Our trusted partner, the Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting & Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore, estb. 2000), arguably India’s most respected market research and opinion polls company (all its recent assembly election forecasts proved correct), interviewed a well-balanced mix of 6,479 educationists, faculty, students and industry representatives to constitute a database of knowledgeable sample respondents. These league tables provide parents and students invaluable information to enable them to choose colleges most suited to their aptitudes and aspirations. And they also provide college managements valuable SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats

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EducationWorld November issue

Letter from the Editor

The public, especially the great Indian middle class, has a curious love-hate relationship with private schools. On the one hand, almost every household in the country aspires to educate its children in private schools which are not only a status symbol, but provide passports for upward mobility and financial security. However once they have ensured the admission of their progeny into private schools of their choice (or second choice), not a few parents transform into hostile witnesses and often into persecutors of institutional managements. Instead of co-operating with the school’s administration and teachers to jointly educate their children, they transform into carping critics and fault-finders. And even though private school promoters and managements have made heroic efforts to switch to online classes to continue the education of their students during the Covid-19 pandemic, parents groups and associations demanding fees waiver and concessions have mushroomed countrywide. Despite parents being well-aware that schools have incurred substantial expenditure for installing digital connectivity and hardware, and training teachers to conduct online classes. And state governments, which are less than enamoured with private — especially affordable budget private — schools that are continuously attracting government school students, are happy to oblige. Almost all of them have issued notifications and directives slashing private school fees while simultaneously issuing stern warnings against laying off teachers and staff. Contrary to popular perception, India’s private schools don’t educate the children of a thin upper crust. According to a study conducted by the Central Square Foundation last year, 47.5 percent of the country’s 260 million in-school children are enrolled in 450,000 private schools across the country. Yet despite their critical role in the pre-primary to class XII education system, the Central government has denied private schools MSME (micro small medium enterprises) status which would have qualified them for interest payment moratoria, soft loans and other concessions to tide over the pandemic. Therefore the troubles and travails of private schools is the subject matter of our cover story in this issue. The plain truth is that if a large number of India’s private schools go under, the K-12 education system will self-destruct. Our second lead feature focuses on the recently concluded CENTA Teaching Professionals Olympiad (TPO) 2020, which attracted 25,000 entries from 8,000 schools in India and abroad. That so many in-service teachers are testing themselves in this annual competitive contest open to all teachers worldwide, is good news. It’s an indicator this community is beginning to appreciate the virtues of continuous improvement and skilling. Moreover, this EW spring issue also has several commentaries on the controversial resignation of widely respected public intellectual Pratap Bhanu Mehta from the faculty of the high-potential, new- genre liberal arts Ashoka University.

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EducationWorld November issue

Letter from the Editor

Writing an analysis of the Union Budget and its impact on Indian education every year for the past two decades has been an anguishing and frustrating — nevertheless necessary — obligation of your editor. For 20 years, we have been featuring post-Budget cover stories highlighting the low priority given by successive governments and finance ministers to developing the country’s abundant and high-potential human capital. Alas to no avail. When EducationWorld was launched 21 years ago, the Central government’s budgetary allocation for public education was equivalent to 0.5 percent of GDP. And despite continuous pressure exerted by this publication, several distinguished academics and economists and the high-powered T.S.R. Subramanian (2016) and Dr. K. Kasturirangan (2018) committees to increase it substantially so that the annual national (Centre plus states) expenditure on public education could rise to 6 percent of GDP — first recommended by the Kothari Commission way back in 1967 — in 2018-19 it aggregated to 0.43 percent of GDP, in the Covid pandemic disrupted year 2020-21 to 0.44 percent and is budgeted at 0.42 percent of GDP next year (2021-22). The hard reality is that Central government has to take the lead and increase its annual public education outlay 5x for the 6 percent threshold to be crossed. Unfortunately for independent India’s national development effort that began in 1947, no Union finance minister at the Centre has ever allocated more than 1 percent of GDP for public education. Nor has any state government taken up the slack. Therefore national expenditure for public education has averaged a mere 3.25-3.50 percent per year for over seven decades. In the Union budget 2021-22 presented to parliament and the nation last month, the Centre’s allocation for education is Rs.93,224 crore, 6.13 percent lower than the Rs.99,312 crore budgeted for the current year ending March 31, 2021. Admittedly with the economy ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic, the government’s tax revenue has plummeted and budget expenditure needed to be focused on capital expenditure for infrastructure projects to resuscitate business and industry. Yet as is contended in our cover story of this issue, human capital development also needs to be urgently developed. In the spring issue of EW, we highlight the continuous dog-in-the-manger policy-continuum of the Central and state governments that doesn’t provide adequately for public education and simultaneously discourage private educators from doing so to the detriment of the world’s most high-potential children. Yet despite this disabling environment, not a few well-intentioned educators driven by the spirit of enlightened self-interest are stepping forward to educate, enable and skill the country’s short-changed children. Check out our Eye Witness feature for proof.

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EducationWorld November issue

Letter from the Editor

According to all indications, the worst of the Coronavirus aka Covid-19 pandemic which prompted the complete shutdown of industry, business and trade nationwide for over three months — and closure of all education institutions from pre-primary to Ph D for over nine months and counting — is over. The infections curve has flattened across the country and the total number of fatalities has been contained at 155,000 (February 8). Schools and higher education institutions are cautiously re-opening, and following the presentation of a pro-production and business growth Union Budget 2021-22, the engines of the economy have started humming and its wheels are gathering momentum. Compared with the Spanish flu epidemic of 1915-19 which took a toll of 50 million lives worldwide and 12 million in India, this time humanity has got off lightly. For the nation bruised and battered by this deadly virus, it’s time to count the cost and repair damage. Although several million citizens have suffered grievous loss of lives, livelihood and employment, the country’s most vulnerable 500 million youngest citizens in the 0-24 age group — the world’s largest child and youth population — have been worst hit in terms of irreversible loss of learning and heavy psychological and emotional damage. But curiously, neither government nor the establishment seems to be aware of this. Despite 48 percent of the country’s children studying in private schools and 70 percent of youth in private higher education institutions, neither the prime minister’s Rs.20.97 lakh crore damp squib pandemic relief package announced last May, and Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s five mini-budgets of last year, nor the Union Budget 2021-22 presented to Parliament and the public on February 1, provided any relief, aid or incentives for private education institutions. Most are suffering acute distress because of loss of income for over 10 months since last March. In particular, reports that private pre-primaries aka preschools, are in deep distress with thousands shutting down operations, are especially disheartening for your editors in EducationWorld because we have been in the vanguard of a new millennium movement to impact the critical importance of professionally administered ECCE (early childhood care and education) for India’s youngest and neglected infants in the 0-5 age group. The extent of damage done to ECCE during the pandemic is reported in our cover story of this issue. In the special report feature, managing editor Summiya Yasmeen takes a broader view and assesses the damage done to the education system as a whole by the pandemic, and ways and means to repair it. Also check out my interview with Dr. Shashi Tharoor, MP and author, litterateur, wordsmith, darling of the educated middle class, who would arguably have been India’s best ever Union education minister. Don’t rule it out.

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EducationWorld November issue

Letter from the Editor

It’s an ill-wind that blows nobody good. This ancient adage comes to mind even as the malignant ill-winds bearing the deadly Coronavirus, sweeps the world raining disease and death. Although the Coronavirus, aka Covid-19 pandemic which forced the Central government to lock down industry and businesses for over five months beginning March 25, severely disrupted the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of citizens, its silver lining is that it has forced the induction of new digital ICT (information communication technologies) into the country’s hitherto tech resistant classrooms and lecture halls. As recounted in our first issue of 2021, informed monitors of India’s laggard education institutions are pleasantly surprised, even astonished, by the alacrity with which the teachers’ community countrywide has accepted the inevitability of wired classrooms and need to utilise sophisticated digital technologies to maintain the learning continuity of their students. This is especially true of 450,000 private schools which, contrary to popular perception, educate 47 percent, i.e, 120 million, of the country’s 260 million in-school children. Inevitably, children studying in the country’s 1.20 million government schools defined by crumbling buildings, chronic teacher absenteeism, poor sanitation and English language aversion, are not as fortunate. But the buzz about the substantial benefits of ICT-enabled teaching-learning is generating heavy pressure on the Central and state governments to induct new digital technologies into government schools. Be that as it may, blended learning — a combination of conventional classroom and remote from-home learning — is irreversible in the post-pandemic era. Compulsory classroom attendance, the non-negotiable requirement of the pre-pandemic era, is likely to become history. It’s quite likely that as in higher education, children will attend classes on alternate days, remaining connected with their teachers all the while. This will be a blessing inasmuch as it will cut down children’s harrowing daily commute to school in India’s increasingly crowded and traffic-choked cities and towns. These and other issues that are certain to transform education across the spectrum, are discussed in our cover story in this issue. With the police constantly in the news for egregious acts of omission and commission, experienced Delhi-based journalist Dilip Bobb was persuaded to investigate and report on the education antecedents and in-service training of police personnel. His report throws revealing light on why the police seldom gets good media coverage. In EducationWorld, we are always ready to acknowledge excellence in education to encourage institutional leaders and educators to continuously improve teaching-learning. Check out our Grand Jury awards for schools and preschools for excelling under several parameters. Best wishes for a Happier New Year!

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EducationWorld November issue

Letter from the Editor

Initiated in 2007, the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) survey which rates and ranks the country’s most reputed primary-secondary schools segregated into three main categories — day, boarding and international and ten sub-categories: Day (boys, girls, day-cum-boarding and co-ed); Boarding (boys, girls and co-ed), and International (day, day-cum-boarding and residential) — to ensure level playing fields, has since evolved into the world’s largest and most comprehensive schools ranking survey. Unlike league tables in Western countries which rank schools according to their students’ average scores in major school-leaving board exams, the annual perceptions-based EWISR rates schools under 14 diverse parameters of primary-secondary education, including academic reputation. The scores awarded by sample respondents (over 11,000 parents, educators, principals, teachers and senior students) under each parameter, are totalled to rank schools in each sub-category. Moreover, average scores in school-leaving examinations of national boards are included in the league tables, if provided. With the passage of time and rising popularity of the annual EWISR, we have been subjected to pressure to also rate and rank schools in other categories. Therefore in recent years, we have widened our coverage to rate and rank the country’s most reputed government day and boarding schools, schools for special needs children, and budget private schools in the annual EWISR. Moreover to acknowledge and felicitate pre-primaries aka preschools and higher education institutions, for the past decade we have been publishing dedicated surveys rating and ranking them separately. However with the number of primary-secondary schools in the annual EWISR 2020-21 survey (conducted ab initio by our trusted partner, the Delhi-based, highly-reputed market research and opinion polls company Centre for Forecasting Pvt. Ltd (C fore, estb.2000)) having increased exponentially to over 2,500, we have had to spread the EWISR 2020-21 league tables over our November and December issues. Moreover, because of the disruption caused to schools and our own schedules by the Covid-19 pandemic, we are obliged to include abridged versions of the hitherto independent Preschools and Budget Private Schools annual surveys in this issue. Last month (November 15), we published league tables and commentary of the country 2,000 Day, Government and Special Needs schools. In this issue, we present league tables rating and ranking the country’s best Boarding (girls, boys, co-ed), International (day, day-cum-boarding and residential), and Budget Private Schools. Also the most admired CBSE/CISCE-affiliated schools in the UAE, Oman and Bahrain and Top 10 schools in Bangladesh and Nepal. Like I said, the annual EWISR is the world’s largest and most comprehensive schools ranking survey. Your editors wish all educators and readers a Merry Xmas and a substantially happier post-pandemic New Year.

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EducationWorld November issue

Letter from the Editor

This issue of EducationWorld is historic for two reasons. First, it is the 21st-anniversary issue of this sui generis news magazine. Secondly, because by unplanned happenstance, it features our most famous and successful initiative, the EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) for the year 2020-21. Pioneered in 2007, over the years the annual EWISR has evolved into the world’s largest and most comprehensive schools assessment and evaluation project. Twenty-one years ago your editors launched this news publication with the mission “to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda”. In retrospect, this goal was perhaps too ambitious. For foolishly embracing socialism and povertarianism immediately after independence, 21st century India hosts the world’s largest number of illiterates, and more than half of class V children in the country’s gravely under-resourced 1.20 million government schools can’t read class II textbooks or manage simple division sums. This is the outcome of annual outlay (Centre plus states) for education never having exceeded 3.5 percent of GDP against the repeatedly recommended 6 percent. Nevertheless, it is some consolation that education has moved from the outer periphery to near centre of the national development agenda, and hitherto totally ignored education leaders including philanthropists, principals and teachers have been given voice and a platform for shaping education policy. We are confident that steadfast commitment to our mission will awaken the establishment and society to the vital importance of developing 21st century India’s abundant and high-potential human resource. Moreover, to enable parents in the country’s large and expanding middle class to choose the most suitable schools for their children, we present Part I of EWISR 2020-21 which rates the country’s best day (co-ed, girls, boys and day-cum-boarding), government (day and boarding), philanthropic (private free-of-charge) and dedicated special needs schools on 14 parameters of holistic school education. Boarding schools (co-ed, boys and girls) and international schools (day, day-cum-boarding, residential) as also the best budget private schools will be rated and ranked in the next (December) issue. Although some academics accord high importance to board exam results (see p.32) your editors believe that schools that provide balanced holistic education nurture human resources best. Therefore, ab initio the annual EWISR has been assessing schools under a dozen parameters, of which academic reputation in only one. Endorsed by Dr. Krishnamurthy Subramanian, chief economic adviser to the Central government (see interview p.256), EWISR 2020-21 is a valuable market-oriented response to the paucity of reliable information about schools and education institutions. A Happy Diwali and more prosperous New Year to our readers and advertisers! Also read: EW India School rankings 2020-21 (Part 1)

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EducationWorld November issue

Letter from the Editor

It’s the most unkindest cut of all. In the Prime Minister’s May 12 Rs.20.97 lakh crore pandemic aid package for small-scale industry, agriculture, public health and free foodgrain for migrant workers that stimulated 48-point headlines in the media, there was no provision for the country’s collapsing education system with 300 million children and youth on their muster rolls. This despite the demographic reality that 21st century India grudgingly hosts the world’s largest cohort of young citizens in the 0-21 age group. Given the massive size of contemporary India’s child and youth population, it’s unsurprising that there are 1.4 million anganwadis (government-run early childhood nutrition and pre-primary education centres), 60,000 private preschools, 1.2 million government and 450,000 private K-12 schools, 52,000 undergrad colleges and 1,000 universities across the country. All of them have been shuttered since mid-March following outbreak of the devastating Coronavirus pandemic which has infected 7.1 million and killed 109,000 citizens countrywide (October 12), and shows little sign of tapering off. This prolonged closure of education institutions has turned the lives and learning of the country’s already educationally under-served students’ community upside down. Children enrolled in 90 percent of private schools — especially India’s unique 400,000 budget private schools (BPS) — are particularly hard hit because their managements can’t afford end-use digital devices (PCs, laptops, smart phones) for online teaching-learning. Moreover, their already low incomes — only 9.4 percent of private schools charge tuition fees above Rs.2,000 per month — have been disrupted by foolishly reckless notifications and circulars issued by populist state governments, advising parents to stop paying tuition fees of the lockdown period. Therefore, BPS across the country are reeling under heavy financial loss and thousands of them are up for sale. These and other myriad problems of private schools obliged to continue paying teacher and staff salaries, are highlighted in our detailed cover story researched and written by managing editor Summiya Yasmeen, who makes a strong appeal to the prime minister to carve out an education aid and relief packet from his May 12 pandemic package. In our special report feature, against the backdrop of the huge ruckus in Parliament caused by passage of three Bills crafted to direct the winds of liberalisation and deregulation into much-neglected rural India, we highlight the sins of omission and commission of the country’s 71 ivory tower agriculture universities whose managements, ever ready to grovel before their political masters, are hell-bent on remaining unaccountable to the larger public. There’s much more in this information and insights-packed issue. This time, there are four insightful expert comment essays, an informative people section, interesting international news and engaging book reviews. All highly recommended. Stay well, stay safe. Also read: Letter from the Editor| September 2020

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EducationWorld November issue

Letter from the Editor

A conspicuous flaw of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, presented to the country on July 29, is the cursory attention it has paid to India’s large and growing private education sector. Yet the grassroots reality is that almost half the country’s 256 million school-going children are attending private schools. In 1993 a mere 9.2 percent of in-school children were in private education. By 2017-18, the proportion had risen to 47.5 percent, and is most likely to be over 50 percent currently. According to State of the Sector Report: Private Schools in India (PSIR 2020) commissioned by the highly-respected Central Square Foundation and the Omidyar Network India (both based in Delhi), the number of private unaided (financially independent) schools countrywide is 350,000, and the number of private aided (recipients of government subsidy) is 84,000. To this aggregate one should add a large number of ‘unrecognised’ budget private schools and preschools (which don’t need government licence). Altogether, they are mentoring a massive cohort of 119 million children in the 3-16 age group across the country. The plain truth is that even bottom-of-the-pyramid households have become disenchanted with government schools distinguished by crumbling infrastructure, chronic teacher absenteeism, English language aversion and rock-bottom learning outcomes. Therefore despite government schools being free of charge and providing free mid-day meals, books, uniforms etc, they are exhibiting incremental preference for fees-levying private schools, in the hope of giving their children a better chance to rise to middle class status. The great service rendered by the diligently researched 153-page PSIR 2020 is that it demolishes carefully curated myths of Left-liberal intellectuals who dominate the academy and media, to the effect that India’s 460,000 private schools are elite education institutions defined by high pricing, snobbery and exclusion. It discloses for instance that 70 pecent of the country’s private schools levy monthly tuition fees of less than Rs.1,000, and 45 percent less than Rs.500. Only 9.4 percent charge more than Rs.2,000 per month. These and other startling facts about the valuable contribution of private school promoters, managements and principals — mainly public-spirited individuals driven by motives of enlightened self-interest rather than greedy pursuit of profit — are contained in PSIR 2020. Therefore this unprecedented and overdue report is a fit subject for our cover story in this mid-September issue of EducationWorld. One of the major subjects of discussion and debate in the immediate aftermath of NEP 2020 is on ways and means to implement this ambitious policy prescription. In our complementary cover story, we present the expert advice of experienced education leaders on seven domains of primary-secondary and higher education. Check out these and other stories and opinions in this information and insights packed issue. Read: NEP 2020: Teacher education and status of teachers

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EducationWorld November issue

Letter from the Editor

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 presented to the nation on July 29 after an interregnum of 34 years, expresses determined intent to revamp and universalise early childhood and primary-secondary education by 2030. In higher education, it has set the goal of doubling GER (gross enrolment ratio) from the current 25.7 to 50 percent of youth in the 18-24 years age group, and transforming India into an international hub of high-quality collegiate and university education. However, drawing up detailed roadmaps to transit to utopian destinations and translating noble rhetoric into actionable blueprints is an altogether different proposition. For a start, it requires forthright admission of past failures and wrong-turns. Reaffirming faith in the very same failed actors and engineers who ruined post-independence India’s education system to extricate the children and youth of the nation out of the mire of low learning outcomes and skills deficit in which they have been floundering for over seven decades, is to expect too much. Yet this is the major ‘reform’ that NEP 2020 has proposed. It mandates the establishment of an alphabet soup of new supervisory and regulatory institutions — HECI, NHERC, NAC, HEGC, GEC, NRF in higher education and Department of School Education, Directorate of School Education, and SSSA, SCERT in school education apart from NCIVE and NCVET in skills education. Evidently, the proposition that highly educated deans, vice chancellors and trustees of higher education institutions (HEIs) and experienced principals and educators mindful of their own and institutional reputations can effectively manage schools and HEIs without supervision, is beyond the imagination of the neta-babu brotherhood. Over the top bureaucratisation of Indian education apart, NEP 2020 makes no attempt to co-opt private schools and HEIs into attaining the grand vision of the policy. All it says about private schools and colleges which host over 50 percent of the student population, is that they need to be controlled to prevent commercialisation and exploitation, allegedly practiced by private education institutions. Likewise, unmindful of the national yearning for learning English, NEP 2020 has resurrected settled issues of medium of instruction and the threelanguage formula, and reiterated the familiar call of predecessor education policies for national (Centre plus states) expenditure for public education to be raised to 6 percent of GDP, without any enabling suggestions. These and other features — positive and negative — of NEP 2020 are debated in detail in our comprehensive cover story of this Independence Day edition. A good suggestion for the minister steeped in the insolence of office — over a dozen requests for brief responses to an emailed questionnaire remained unanswered — would be to read our Special Report feature in which 25 highly qualified and experienced principals and educationists recount how they are upgrading K-12 schools under their watch to globally benchmarked standards.

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EducationWorld November issue

Letter from the Editor

The capacity of the people of this country to endure suffering and official ineptitude is matched by a analytical skills deficit and chronic incapability to derive logical conclusions. How else can one explain India’s sustained love affair with Soviet-style socialism which has collapsed in its country of origin and around the world? Jawaharlal Nehru, post-independence India’s first well-intentioned but totally delusional prime minister, endowed the nation with a toxic legacy of neta-babu socialism perpetuated and consolidated by his daughter Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv, all prime ministers and leaders of the Congress party which has intermittently ruled at the Centre and in most states of the Indian Union for over 50 years. Despite overwhelming evidence indicating this inorganic development model wasn’t working, the people of India, including the academy and the intelligentsia, repeatedly elected the Congress party which rubbished free enterprise and the native spirit of entrepreneurship to power, ignoring the historical reality that for a millennium before conquest of the sub-continent by British imperialism in the mid-18th century, our merchants and traders had developed ancient India into the world’s wealthiest and most prosperous region. Although somewhat belatedly Congress prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao discerned the damage caused to the economy and substantially dismantled the country’s infamous licence-permit-quota (LPQ) regimen in 1991, over the past 70 years, the country’s 20 million-strong neta-babu brotherhood has acquired a vested interest in LPQ raj. Like marauding locust swarms, this unholy fraternity has ruined Indian industry, agriculture, law and order and public education. And now the bad news is that after devastating the public education system and provoking a continuous exodus of children from the country’s 1.20 million government schools into low-cost, affordable budget private schools, under cover of the Covid-19 pandemic, the brotherhood has focused its attention on regulating and micro-managing the country’s 375,000 private unaided (independent) and estimated 400,000 budget private schools which provide half-decent K-12 education to almost 50 percent of India’s in-school children. Consequently there’s clear and present danger of private schools being levelled down to the status of dysfunctional government schools. Our cover story in this issue is especially a warning to a rising number of middle class parents who welcome incremental government regulation of private education institutions. Although this July issue of EducationWorld is late because of Covid-19 pandemic problems, it is rich with content. In particular our Katha success story, national and international news reports relating how states around the country and nations around the world are coping with the global coronavirus pandemic, as also the expert comment columns, are highly recommended.

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EducationWorld November issue

Letter from the Editor

The prolonged closure of all education institutions following outbreak of the novel Coronavirus, aka Covid-19 which has infected over 7.6 million people and precipitated 428,000 fatalities worldwide, and 332,000 and 9,520 in India, has caused unprecedented disruption of Indian education across the spectrum from preprimaries, all the way up to universities. School leaving and college semester exams of the academic year 2019-20 have been postponed and classes of the academic year 2020-21 which should have begun in early June, are delayed indefinitely. There’s no doubt that learning outcomes at all levels in Indian education which were far from satisfactory even prior to the pandemic, will be hit hard. At this crucial time in the sorry education history of post-independence India which has criminally failed and neglected to develop the country’s abundant and high-potential human resource, there’s urgent and critical need for experienced education leaders with proven track records in school and higher education to venture forth from their islands of excellence and confront the bigger challenge of reviving the country’s pre-primary, K-12 and higher education systems rendered comatose by the 68-day nationwide lockdown decreed by prime minister Narendra Modi from March 25. This hope and confidence in the capabilities of the country’s best education leaders has prompted the unprecedented cover story in this second issue of EducationWorld produced during the Covid-19 national lockdown period. If all the cross spectrum reforms suggested by our selected 50 great education leaders — their number would have been greater if several others had responded in time — are collated, they would add up to an alternative to the draft National Education Policy 2019 submitted to the Union HRD ministry in May last year. Many thanks and encomiums to the 50 education leaders featured in this issue who whole-heartedly cooperated with your editors to make this monumental enterprise possible. If past experience is any guide, it’s unlikely the mandarins of the Union HRD ministry in New Delhi who seem to live in an entirely different universe, will study the constructive education reform, restructuring and development recommendations made by the stellar institutional leaders with enviable track records, featured in this unprecedented cover story. However, our hope is that committed academics, the intelligentsia and not least parents, who are aware of the vital importance of high-quality preschool to Ph D education for the survival and prosperity of the next generation in the uncertain, volatile and ambiguous world that is already upon us, will examine their recommendations and coalesce to form a strong and committed pressure group for durable structural, pedagogy and curriculum reforms in Indian education. Else all is lost.

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EducationWorld November issue

Letter from the Editor

As far back as I can remember, India’s higher education sector has been a big disappointment. The quality of human resource finished by the country’s institutions of higher education is woeful. This is especially true of liberal arts and humanities graduates certified by the great majority of India’s 935 universities. It would not be inaccurate to state that the overwhelming majority of them, even postgrads, are deficient in linear thinking, logical reasoning, basic research, and communication and presentation skills. I’m aware this sounds like intellectual snobbery, and I apologise for it. But as founding editor of three pioneer sui generis print magazines (Business India, Businessworld and EducationWorld) I have suffered frustration and deep anguish because of poor quality of human resources recklessly certified by even top-ranked Indian — and sometimes foreign — universities. Unfortunately the normative Bollywood portrayal of colleges and universities as great places to ridicule authority, bunk classes, and harass women students into romantic liaisons, rather than great places to study, is substantially true to life. Curiously, higher learning is widely regarded as an extension of school education rather than a transition into adulthood, self-discipline and self-governance. Such infantalisation of adults in higher education is also a contributory cause of inadequately developed graduates certified as work-ready by post-independence India’s higher education institutions. Therefore they seldom find mention in the league tables of the world’s Top 200-300 universities published annually by the London-based university ranking agencies QS and Times Higher Education. Against this dismal backdrop, the emergence in post-liberalisation India of new genre multidisciplinary private universities, some of them modelled on premier Ivy league institutions of America, has come as a stream of reviving oxygen for your editors, and India’s 200 million-strong aspirational middle class as well. They provide first-world education at prices that are a fraction of fees levied by tertiary institutions in the US, UK and Commonwealth countries. Therefore we have been rating and ranking them separately for the past few years. Last month (April) despite the constraints posed by the Corona 2.0 lockdown, we published detailed league tables of the country’s top private autonomous, government autonomous, Top 100 non-autonomous undergrad colleges, plus Top 100 private engineering colleges. If for disruption of postal and courier services your print copy of EW didn’t reach you, visit our upgraded website (www.educationworld.in) to read the detailed April issue. This issue ranking the country’s Top 300 private and government universities and Top 100 private B-schools, completes the EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings 2020-21 survey — the most comprehensive in the history of Indian education. Readers, particularly school-leavers are advised to study these league tables carefully. They could deeply influence your higher education and livelihood choices, and indeed life.

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Letter from the Editor

This letter is being written from our editorial office in Bangalore on the tenth day after the March 25 national lockdown proclaimed by the Central government following the global outbreak of the novel Coronavirus aka, Covid-19 pandemic. During this period of disruption and enforced idleness, the EW team has been fully engaged in putting this issue together, despite unprecedented logistics and infrastructure problems. We have a proud record to maintain. EducationWorld has been published uninterruptedly every month since November 1999, and we are determined to maintain this record. In a timely Covid-19: Challenge and Response report, we present the initiatives of several education institutions and edtech companies that have speedily responded to the challenge of maintaining continuity of teaching learning in schools and higher ed institutions across the country. Moreover on a wider canvas, your editor with over four decades of experience in law, industry and business and education journalism suggests ways and means to mitigate the Covid-19 crisis pain of 150 million low-income households. Check out our editorials in this issue. Re our cover story, how many readers are aware that 747 of India’s 39,931 arts science and commerce (ASC) undergrad colleges are autonomous institutions conferred wide academic, administrative and financial freedom? Under India’s complex and complicated higher education regulatory system, an overwhelming majority of the country’s ASC colleges are nonautonomous. However, provisions of the University Grants Commission Act, 1956, empower the commission to award autonomous status to high performance colleges that are at least ten years old and have been awarded A grade certification by the Bangalore-based National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC). Clearly autonomous colleges — private and government — are a class apart and above. Therefore they need to be — and are — ranked separately in this issue of EducationWorld. Unsurprisingly, the waters of post-independence Soviet-inspired India’ higher education system are murky. Some of the country’s most respected undergrad colleges including St. Stephen’s, Shri Ram College of Commerce, Lady Shri Ram, Miranda House which should have been conferred autonomy decades ago, are not autonomous. They are still tied to the apron strings of their affiliating universities which in turn, are strictly controlled by UGC. Like I said, it’s complicated. Be that as it may, being made aware by Mumbai-based educationist Balkishan Sharma, director of the Nest Academy, that private autonomous and (totally unsung) government autonomous colleges are a class apart and above, we have ranked them separately in the EW India Higher Education Rankings 2020-21, Moreover we have also ranked the Top 100 nonautonomous ASC and Top 100 private engineering colleges separately to give the public and school-leaving students in particular, a clear picture of the status and standing of India’s Top 500 colleges. In the next (May) issue the country’s Top 100 private and government universities and B-schools will be rated and ranked.

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Letter from the Editor

No country worldwide makes as great a fuss about government budgets as much as we do in India. While state government budgets which should be given more thorough examination receive cursory attention, the Union budget of the Central government attracts banner headlines and invites reams of expert comment from academics, economists, businessmen and journalists in the audio-visual and print media. Unfortunately most of these analyses are reminiscent of the attempt of the legendary seven blind men of Hindoostan to picturise an elephant using their sense of touch. There’s insufficient awareness within the commentariat that the standard 800-word essay can’t summarise a 161-minute budget presentation address of 147 paragraphs and 18,000 words. That’s why despite the media overkill of Union Budget 2020-21, the public interest demands detailed long form examination of the compulsions and constraints of Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman who had the formidable task of raising resources at a time when the high-potential Indian economy is experiencing a severe downturn. The annual rate of GDP growth has dipped below 5 percent, unemployment is at its highest in decades, investor sentiment is depressed, stock market indices are plumbing new depths, exports growth is almost nil and maintenance of law and order is under severe strain countrywide. It’s against this grim backdrop that your editors have evaluated Budget 2020-21 from the perspective of developing the country’s human capital — the only factor endowment the Indian economy has in abundance — that offers a way out of the shallows and misery in which the economy has been floundering for the past seven decades after independence. The differentiating feature of our detailed cover story in this spring issue is that while we lament the grossly inadequate provision made in Budget 2020-21 for human capital development, i.e, public education and healthcare, we have analysed the budget holistically and suggest ways and means to slash unproductive revenue expenditure and mobilise resources for investment in developing the country’s high-potential human capital. In our opinion, there’s considerable room for reducing establishment, defence, subsidies expenditure and raising additional resources for investment in human capital development. Hard times call for belt-tightening and radical restructuring initiatives in the larger public interest. The era of business as usual is over. That’s the principal message of our cover story in this issue. On February 26, acknowledging the important contribution of the country’s estimated 400,000 routinely vilified budget private schools (BPS) schooling 60 million children countrywide, we awarded and celebrated the best among them as per their rankings in the inaugural EducationWorld India BPS Rankings 2020 published in early February. This celebratory event staged in Mumbai provoked unprecedented enthusiasm. Check out the pictorial essay of the awards event in this news and comments-packed issue of India’s indisputably #1 education publication.

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Letter from the Editor

An initio since the very first issue of EducationWorld was somewhat hesitantly launched in 1999 — we celebrated our 20th anniversary last November — your editors have always supported private initiatives in education. Although following the ill-advised grafting of Soviet-inspired Nehruvian socialism on the Indian economy soon after independence it became fashionable to rubbish private schools, colleges and the few private universities that battled ubiquitous red tape and struck roots, we have always encouraged private education in the national interest. That’s why in 2007, we introduced the country’s very first league tables ranking the country’s best private schools in categories of day, boarding, international and several sub-categories under them (to avoid apples and oranges-type comparisons). In recent years, we have also begun including a league table ranking India’s unique budget private schools (BPS) after the Centre for Civil Society, Delhi — a highly respected think-tank — estimated the number of BPS which provide rock-bottom priced primary-secondary education to children of low-income households, at 400,000 with a staggering aggregate enrolment of 60 million children. Although demonised by the neta-babu brotherhood and Left intellectuals who dominate the academy, BPS promoters driven by enlightened self-interest and philanthropy, are rendering valuable public service by providing aspirational lower, middle and organised working class households affordable alternative (to public schools) education at all price points. Unsurprisingly, the establishment’s response to the BPS — eulogised by Prof. James Tooley in his under-appreciated The Beautiful Tree (2009) — is to outlaw them. Section 19 of the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, prescribes strict infrastructure norms for BPS and punitive fines and forcible closure for non-compliance. Government schools are exempted from compliance. Be that as it may, responding to pressure from BPS promoters/managements and parents in SEC (socio-economic category) C, D and E, we commissioned our trusted partner Centre for Forecasting and Research Pvt. Ltd, Delhi (C fore) to conduct field surveys in major cities nationwide to unearth the country’s most-respected BPS. Over a period of three months, 50 C fore field personnel constituted a sample database of 2,458 respondents comprising parents with children in BPS, principals and teachers to rate affordable schools (shortlisted by NISA) in 143 cities/towns on 11 parameters of school excellence (teacher competence, academic reputation, co-curricular education, sports education, value for money etc). The scores awarded by respondents under the 11 parameters were totalled to rank 300 of the country’s sufficiently well-reputed BPS (schools rated by less than 25 respondents are not ranked) in 18 states. And in our second lead feature, we report on our landmark 10th National Early Childhood Education Conference 2020 convened in Mumbai on January 23, and felicitations for the country’s most admired pre-primary schools.

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Letter from the Editor

According to latest data published in the Open Doors report of the US-based Institute of International Education for year 2017-18, the number of students from India signing up with American universities declined by 8.8 percent in that year. Although the Indian cohort in American universities is still very large at 211,000, this could be the start of a declining trend influenced by several excellent privately promoted colleges and universities flowering across India. This is particularly a good time for school-leavers intent upon studying the liberal arts and humanities at the undergrad level. Although students keen on studying engineering and medicine have had access to a substantial number of excellent government and private colleges and universities in India, acceptable quality liberal arts and humanities education has always been hard to find. No indigenous university can credibly claim to provide liberal arts education remotely comparable with the well-rounded, holistic syllabuses and curriculums of the renowned Ivy league institutions of America and colleges of Oxford and Cambridge in the UK. Truth to tell, the liberal arts and science education offered by India’s vintage public universities suffers in comparison with the fare provided even by second rung universities in the US, UK, Australia and Canada. In EducationWorld, your editors are always excited by news of aspirationally world-class institutions of education — especially in higher learning — assuming shape and form anywhere in the country, not least because they provide valuable lessons in institution building. In 2015, we featured a detailed cover story on the greenfield, crowd funded, privately-promoted, liberal arts Ashoka University, Sonipat. Last January we featured the successful law and liberal arts O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU). And our first cover story of 2020 is a narrative detailing the smooth launch of Krea University, peninsular India’s first globally benchmarked, interwoven liberal arts and sciences varsity promoted under its “collective philanthropy model”. In this first issue of the second decade of the 21st century, we present a comprehensive story on the evolution and successful take-off of Krea University. I believe it could serve as a primer for public spirited citizens aspiring to establish new universities built to last over 500 years, the stated objective of Krea’s visionary founder vice chancellor Dr. Sunder Ramaswamy. Our second lead feature on the unlikely, but welcome emergence of the eastern seaboard state of Odisha (pop. 45 million) as an epicentre of skills, aka vocational, education and training (VET) is arguably as important an evolution as the smooth launch of Krea University in the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh. It provides a classic case study of how an enabling political leader (three-term chief minister Naveen Patnaik), and a visionary entrepreneur (Subroto Bagchi) co-operated to leapfrog the hitherto off-the-map, industrially backward Odisha into a leader VET state. Happy New Year!

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Letter from the Editor

Of the best decisions taken by your editor in the early years of EducationWorld which completed 20 years of uninterrupted publication last month, was to aggressively advocate universalisation of early childhood care and education (ECCE) for India’s most vulnerable children under age six. It’s strange but true that until very recently, ECCE was an area of darkness for government policy formulators and indeed, academia. The story of your editor’s Pauline conversion to the cause of professionally provided ECCE goes back to 2005 when out of the blue, I was invited to address the annual conference of National Governors Association (NGA), USA. At NGA 2005, by lucky happenstance I met with Lowell Milken, chairman of Knowledge Universe, a company which owned and managed over 2,000 pre-primaries, aka preschools, in several states of the US. Lowell magnanimously invested in this then struggling publication and also introduced me to the work of economics Nobel laureate (2000) Dr. James Heckman whose research studies prove that a dollar invested per child in ECCE saves $16 in school and higher education, because of the child’s early cognitive development. Dr. Heckman’s research also establishes that the more nations invest in ECCE, the less they need to invest in prisons. Since then, this publication has become a champion of professionally provided ECCE for all children in the 0-6 age group. In 2010, we published the first EW India Preschool Rankings (EWIPR) to highlight the country’s best preschools. The objective of the annual EWIPR survey is not just to felicitate the hitherto unsung heroes of ECCE, but to also spread awareness of the unique parameters of ECCE excellence under which the country’s best pre-primaries are rated and ranked. This is important because experts are unanimous that ECCE should be a joyful introduction to education for youngest children, rather than downward extension of formal primary education. Therefore, the annual EWIPR Awards function, a sequel to the rankings survey is also a seminar event addressed by ECCE experts to disseminate contemporary best practices in critically important early childhood education. In this Christmas issue of EducationWorld, we present the ninth consecutive EWIPR 2019-20. To rate the country’s best preschools in 16 cities — alas professionally administered ECCE is overwhelmingly an urban phenomenon — we commissioned our trusted partner the Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting & Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore, estb.2000) to interview 8,497 parents with children in preschools, and teachers and principals in major cities and persuaded them to rate reputed preschools in their cities on ten parameters of ECCE excellence. Scores awarded by sample respondents under each parameter were totalled to rank preschools in 16 cities countrywide. Against the backdrop of the imminent National Education Policy 2019 likely to give a great boost to ECCE, I strongly recommend that all young parents and ECCE practitioners carefully read this month’s unprecedented cover story. Dilip Thakore

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Letter from the Editor

Twenty years ago on the eve of the 21st century when this publication was launched in modest circumstances but with the vaulting ambition to “build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda,” it was an inflection point of euphoria and great expectations. Globally there was a surge of hope that in the new millennium all nations would unite, co-operate, collaborate to end the pervasive problems of deep poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition and lawlessness which were making the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world nasty, brutal and short. On September 8, 2,000, high-powered delegates of 191 countries of the world — representing four-fifths of humanity — met in New York and signed the historic United Nations Millennium Declaration which spelt out eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) — eradication of extreme poverty and hunger; achievement of universal primary education; promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women; reduction of child mortality, among others — to be attained by 2015. Two decades later, it’s plainly evident that the hopes and great expectations proclaimed at that shining moment in world history are nowhere near realisation. Although the leaders of the 191 nations who were signatories of the Millennium Declaration seem to have forgotten about the MDGs, these goals, especially MDG-2 — universal primary education — became a watchword for this then nine-months-old monthly struggling to impact our missionary message upon an indifferent public, including the academy. Nevertheless, we persisted, broadening MDG-2 to propagate deep reforms across the entire education continuum from pre-primary to Ph D, firm in our belief that human capital development is the essential prerequisite of the country’s socio-economic renaissance. Despite having failed to sufficiently arouse public opinion to realise our ambitious mission statement, your editors experience some satisfaction that from being a mere blip on the periphery of the national consciousness, public education has become a dot heading towards the centre. Certainly, the conversational buzz about education is louder and we derive some comfort from having highlighted hitherto unsung heroes of Indian education and providing them a credible medium and platform for the dissemination and articulation of their education reform ideas and proposals. Nevertheless readers may rest assured that our resolve to make education the #1 item on the national development agenda will not falter. We call upon all citizens to make common cause with us to reach high-quality education to all children and youth across the country. In our 20th anniversary issue which features half a dozen insightful essays specially written for the occasion by some of the country’s most respected education pundits and leaders, the cover story debates the chances of Indian education — which two millennia ago was the envy of the world — recovering its lost momentum during the next decade.

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Letter from the Editor: 150th birth anniversary of Gandhi

It is appropriate that from October 2 — the sesquicentennial (150th) birth anniversary of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) — onward, the nation will commence year-long celebrations to commemorate undoubtedly the greatest Indian of all time. Master political strategist, an individual who constantly sought self-purification in thought, word and deed, social reformer, lover of humanity and educationist, Gandhi was all of these and more. The elements were so mixed in him that in his time, he strode the world like a colossus and indeed — as historian Ramachandra Guha in his latest biography of Gandhi boldly posits — not only wrested political independence for India, but “changed the world”. Great men with deep insights into the human condition eulogised him during his lifetime. Poet, writer and public intellectual Rabindranath Tagore — India’s first Nobel laureate for literature — bestowed the appellation of Mahatma (great soul) upon Gandhi. Renowned scientist Albert Einstein in a famous tribute said that succeeding generations would “scarcely believe that such a man in flesh and blood walked upon this earth”. Indeed all citizens of sovereign India should experience a swelling of legitimate pride that our patch of earth produced this great leader of men, creative thinker, dedicated social reformer and apostle of peace. But unfortunately, Einstein’s prophesy is coming true. By design, calculated neglect or accident, the memory of the Mahatma is fading in the public consciousness. Although he is remembered on ceremonial occasions, his core message of eradicating caste consciousness, particularly the degrading practice of untouchability; ensuring Hindu-Muslim harmony; promoting economic self-reliance and moral regeneration of all Indians, has fallen by the wayside. Not so well-known is the fact that Gandhi had a deep and abiding interest — and developed a robust prescription for — K-12 education. After he returned to India in 1914, he formulated his nai talim education philosophy which propounds that the heads, hearts and hands of children need to be educated simultaneously. To this end, he prescribed curriculums mixing academics, handicrafts and moral and ethical character building. In particular, Gandhi “attached highest importance” to universal primary education incorporating his heads, hearts and hands life-long learning education philosophy. Our Gandhi sesquicentennial celebration issue details the Mahatma’s nai talim education prescription whose essential features if officially adopted, could resuscitate India’s moribund education system. And in our second lead feature, we present a pictorial essay of the EducationWorld India School Rankings 2019-20 Awards festival staged in Gurgaon, Delhi NCR on September 28-29. During this two-day event — the largest school rankings celebratory event worldwide — over 700 of the country’s Top 1,000 primary-secondary school leaders were felicitated and celebrated. Rare education excellence also warrants celebration. Recommended: Mahatma Gandhi’s prescription can revive Indian education

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Letter from the Editor

Introduced in 2007, i.e, eight years after EducationWorld was launched on the eve of the new millennium, the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) which rank the country’s Top 1,000 primary-secondary schools divided into three main (day, boarding and international) and ten sub-categories (co-ed day, day-cum-boarding, all-boys and girls, wholly residential etc) to avoid apples and oranges type comparisons, has evolved into the world’s most comprehensive and detailed school rankings survey. The country’s Top 1,000 schools are not only ranked nationally, but also in the states, and most important for day schools, in their host cities. That’s not all. Unlike league tables published in several Western countries which rank schools on the sole criterion of academic achievement, the annual EWISR ab initio has ranked India’s Top 1,000 schools on several parameters of school excellence including teacher welfare and development, academic reputation, teacher competence (given double weightage), leadership, infrastructure, life skills, co-curricular and sports education etc. The message implicit in the annual EWISR is that there’s more to schooling than academic excellence, and the best institutions develop the multiple intelligences of their students. Moreover, unlike other media publications which constitute esoteric juries to evaluate and rank schools, the annual EWISR is the outcome of extensive field interviews with over 12,000 knowledgeable sample respondents (educationists, principals, teachers, fees-paying parents and latterly senior students) countrywide. Sample respondents in their regions (north, east, west, south) rate schools with which they are familiar on the several parameters of K-12 education excellence stated above. And the second message inherent in the annual EWISR is that principals, teachers, parents and students — all stakeholders — need to cooperate to ensure that their schools continuously advance on all parameters of school education excellence. In EducationWorld, we genuinely appreciate the valuable service that progressive school managements provide to their students to nurture and develop them into future leaders in public life, industry and the professions. Therefore, we not only proclaim their national, state and civic rankings, but also award and felicitate top-ranked schools — including government, budget private and special needs schools — at our annual EWISR Awards Nite function which over the years has evolved into arguably the world’s largest celebratory event for educationists, promoters, principals and teachers. Your editors are in full agreement with the late Nelson Mandela, that “education is the most powerful weapon for changing the world”. Therefore this year, the annual EWISR is going global. For the first time, we have commissioned special juries to rank the Top 10 schools of neighbour nations — the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. The leaders of these schools will also be awarded and celebrated at our forthcoming EWISR Awards Nite (September 28-29) and provided opportunities to network with leaders of India’s top-ranked schools. We believe education can unite the world.

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Letter from the Editor

Since the dawn of independence when under the leadership of prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, the country ill-advisedly adopted the Soviet-inspired socialist model of economic development, private enterprise and initiatives have not been officially or socially appreciated in business, and particularly in education. Yet the plain truth is that unlike in most democracies, India’s 300 million-strong middle class, which keeps the engines of industry and the economy running — albeit sub-optimally — has almost entirely been enabled by privately provided K-12 education. In sharp contrast to the situation in developed OECD countries, over 40 percent of the nation’s 250 million school-going children are enrolled in private schools, and if one adds the number of children from low-income households enrolled in India’s sui generis private budget schools (many of them ‘unrecognised’ officially), the majority of children are in private education. This is because of the undeniable reality that the overwhelming majority of the country’s 1.20 million government, especially state government schools, are in a shambles. Defined by crumbling buildings, multigrade teaching, poor sanitation, chronic teacher absenteeism and corporal punishment, government schools are experiencing a steady and continuous exodus across the country with even the poorest households voting with their feet and savings for private budget schools. Typically, instead of making serious efforts to improve teaching-learning standards of government schools, the country’s powerful neta-babu brotherhood, which controls and commands Indian industry, business, agriculture, education and healthcare, has clamped down on private schools. Against this backdrop of sustained harassment of private edupreneurs by ungrateful government and parent communities across the country, we present a cover story appreciative of the valuable service rendered to the nation by brave and determined private school promoters who despite official discouragement and carping parents, have stuck to their calling and transformed their initial standalone schools into branded chains. With their common curriculums, shared overheads and resources, chain schools are providing standardised, good quality (usually) English-medium K-12 education which has enabled India’s middle class. I have to sign off this letter to readers with a heavy heart. Our London correspondent Dr. Peter Greenhalgh who has been writing for the international news section passed away on July 31. A distinguished classics scholar at Cambridge, former investment banker and member of our Board of Advisors, Peter was a pillar of support. Nobody in India has given us as much praise and encouragement as Peter did when EducationWorld was struggling and facing closure. As he states in his valedictory letter (p.92), writing his monthly column for EW was one of the greatest joys of his life of the past two years. Moreover, he gave us the full rights to publish his three-volume video-enabled English Speech & Pronunciation which is a runaway bestseller in China. A true friend of EW and India. We will miss him dearly.

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Letter from the Editor

Two years in the making, the 477-page draft National Education Policy 2019 report produced by a committee of nine academics chaired by Dr. K. Kasturirangan, an accomplished space scientist and former chairman of the Bangalore-based Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) — one of the few public sector enterprises to give a good account of its activities — is like the proverbial curate’s egg, good in parts. Certainly it is elaborate and comprehensive inasmuch as it examines every segment of the country’s collapsing education system from pre-primary to Ph D and adult education. Even if they are unaware of it, one of the greatest crimes committed against innocent children and youth of post-independence India by politicians, bureaucrats, the academy and establishment, is the neglect of education and development of the country’s high-potential human capital. Since independence, several high-powered academic committees including the Kothari Commission (1966), the National Education Policy (1986/92), and the T.S.R. Subramanian Committee (2016) have recommended far-reaching reform of India’s education system, evidently to little avail. In particular, all of them — and indeed the election manifestos of almost all major political parties — have recommended that national expenditure (Centre plus states) on public education should be urgently raised to 6 percent of GDP. But that ideal has never been attained, mainly because of consistently rising establishment expenses of the Central and state governments, a blindspot of learned pundits monitoring the Indian economy. Against this backdrop of Indian education caught in a tailspin, the KR Committee has made some constructive suggestions stressing the critical importance of early childhood care and education, bunching of government primary-secondaries into school complexes to enable resources sharing, curriculum and teacher development, integration of skills education at all levels, separation of the regulatory, operations, accreditation and assessment functions in schools and higher education institutions. But the consultation process adopted by the KR Committee, its poor market intelligence, naive faith in the reform capabilities of government, and archaic prejudice against private initiatives in education, are deep flaws of its comprehensive education reforms blueprint as discussed in our detailed cover story. There’s a lot more in this bumper issue of EducationWorld. Check out our pictorial essay special report in which we celebrate private universities, engineering institutes, multi-disciplinary arts, science and commerce undergrad colleges and private B-schools which topped the recent EW India Private Higher Education Rankings league tables (EW May). High-potential private higher ed institutions tend to be sidelined, if not ignored, by mainstream media and the HRD ministry’s NIRF rankings. Also check out our EW Analytics feature in which we highlight the arguably more important state and city rankings of primary-secondaries in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Telangana which were somewhat overshadowed by national rankings in the annual EW India School Rankings league tables 2018-19 published last September.

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Letter from the Editor

The cover story for this issue of EducationWorld was written in mid-May before the verdict of the electorate of General Election 2019 was declared. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which against all expectation was swept to power in 2015 in the Delhi legislative assembly election with a massive 67/3 mandate — the BJP had won General Election 2014 with an overwhelming majority — was adjudged to be a fit choice for our cover story because unlike all other political parties, it has made education reform a major plank of its election campaign. Since it was grudgingly sworn-in as the government of Delhi state four years ago, the AAP administration has made good many of the promises it had made to rejuvenate Delhi’s languishing public K-12 education system. Its annual allocation for education as a percentage of the budget (26) is perhaps greater than of any of the country’s 29 state governments. Consequently, the AAP government has succeeded in radically improving the infrastructure and facilities provided to students. Moreover, it has introduced teacher training and development initiatives which are unprecedented in the history of public (government) education by sending over 800 government school principals and teachers for training to educationally advanced countries, including the UK, US, Singapore and Finland. AAP and its education reforms record was chosen as the subject matter of our cover story as a test case to gauge the importance the public accords to education. The reasoning was, if AAP wins all seven or a majority of the seven Lok Sabha seats of Delhi, it would confirm that education reform is an election winning issue. In the event, AAP didn’t win a single seat suggesting that education is low down on the priority list not only of politicians but of voters as well. But perhaps the Delhi state assembly election due next year will provide conclusive proof. Our Delhi correspondent Autar Nehru met with AAP leaders to write the cover feature on the AAP leadership’s education reforms and initiatives, somewhat blighted by its populist interference with Delhi state’s private schools. Our second lead feature on runaway grades inflation in school board exams is of equal — if not greater — import. Learning outcomes of India’s school-leavers in international cognitive skills and impromptu field tests are unimpressive. But in board exams, there’s no shortage of prodigies. According to managing editor Summiya Yasmeen, India’s school-leaving geniuses are exam writing experts rather than creative thinkers and problem-solvers. Last but not least, in this issue we introduce our new EW Analytics feature. This is an outcome of our annual EW India School Rankings — the world’s largest school rankings survey — published every September. In this annual survey, the spotlight is on national rankings of schools divided into 14 categories (to avoid apple-oranges comparisons). But state and city rankings — particularly in the case of day schools — are equally important. Ergo, EW Analytics which highlight state and city rankings. We’re sure they will prove useful to all stakeholders in primary-secondary education.

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Letter from the Editor

Although the demand for education — especially good quality education — at all levels from pre-primary to Ph D is almost limitless, there’s been a long-standing, overt official prejudice against private initiatives in education. Right from the dawn of independence, public education has been priced so low that all privately provided education seems outrageously expensive. However the plain truth is that private education in India is — and always has been — cheaper than anywhere else in the world and available at all price points. Yet this fact has been suppressed by post-independence India’s neta-babu brotherhood, which under the cover of socialism has barged into every sector of the economy spreading corruption, confusion and chaos, and though I hate to admit it, suppressed by the media as well. Even the higher judiciary which in the 1970s was packed with ‘committed’ left-wing judges has continuously deplored the “commercialisation of education”. I have never subscribed to mumbo-jumbo inorganic communist/socialist ideology and economics which has devastated high-potential independent India and transformed it into the most illiterate and poorest country worldwide. After World War II under successful business and industry leaders such as G.D. Birla, JRD Tata, Walchand Hirachand, Lala Shri Ram, Kasturbhai Lalbhai among others, India Inc was poised to dominate Asia until massive white elephant public sector enterprises and licence-permit-control raj devastated the Indian economy. This is true of the education sector as well. Fortunately, private K-12 schools while not actively encouraged, have been permitted to educate the middle class. Ditto private colleges and higher education institutions. Therefore since 2007, when we introduced the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings dominated by private schools, we have not only been rating and ranking India’s best primaries, but pre-primaries and higher education institutions as well. In this issue, we present the EW India Private Higher Education Rankings (EWIPHER) 2019-20 in which private universities, engineering institutes, B-schools and multi-disciplinary ASC (arts, science and commerce) colleges are ranked in discrete categories and ranked inter se. EWIPHER 2019-20 is not a desk-job institutional assessment and evaluation exercise. Over 9,000 educationists, faculty, industry leaders, and final year students were interviewed and asked to rate and rank India’s Top 100 private universities, engineering institutes, ASC colleges and B-schools on 10-12 parameters of higher education excellence. Therefore, please note that in this issue our cover story is not the outcome of a run-of-the-mill exercise of a clutch of educationists sitting around a table and awarding arbitrary scores and ranks to favoured institutions. It required serious field work by over 100 representatives of the Delhi-based market research and opinion polls company Centre for Forecasting and Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore) spread over a period of four months — an expensive labour of love.

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Letter from the Editor

Within 40 days of your reading these words, a new government will have assumed office in New Delhi. At the time of writing, the situation is fluid and although the incumbent BJP/NDA coalition is the frontrunner of General Election 2019, it is impossible to forecast the outcome of the world’s largest democratic election. The tea leaves indicate that the BJP-led NDA coalition will be returned to power, but with a reduced majority. Yet whatever the outcome of General Election 2019 in the run-up to which invective, rather than illuminating debates on grave issues — terrorism, religious extremism, rural distress and rampant unemployment among others — are the rule, the most urgent problems that the new government will have to address are farmers’ distress and rising unemployment. These problems won’t go away unless there is massive and sustained investment in meaningful education and human capital development. Yet despite ready availability of a wealth of evidence from around the world testifying to the proven linkage between investment in public education and national development, it’s curious that India’s garrulous politicians and pontificating pundits haven’t been able to connect the dots. Investment in public education (Centre plus states) continues to languish in the 3-3.5 percent of GDP rut (cf. the global average of 5 percent and 6-10 percent allocated for education in the developed OECD countries), a sin compounded by the uninterrupted corruption and administrative ineptitude across the education spectrum. Against the backdrop of open, continuous and uninterrupted neglect of public education for over seven decades in independent India and its devastating consequences including widespread rural unrest (because of illiteracy, ignorance, low productivity, massive unemployment/unemployabilty of ill-educated school-leavers), the first priority of the new government which will assume office in New Delhi in end May, should be to pull out all stops to reform the country’s education system from preschool to Ph D. The condition of the public education system is so precarious that education reform needs to become a non-partisan subject. In this issue of EducationWorld with the advantage of 19 years of single-minded focus and study of the ills that afflict 21st century India’s collapsing education system, we present a diagnosis and prescription for placing it back on track to ensure that the nation’s much-proclaimed demographic dividend doesn’t transform into a massive liability. And with the six-eight weeks summer holiday of academia having begun, managing editor Summiya Yasmeen persuaded a selection of expert educationists to prescribe summer reading lists for teachers and educators, including parents. These reading lists are presented in the special report feature of this issue which also contains a very interesting People section.

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Letter from the Editor

Decades of under-funding and neglect of public K-12 education has sparked a private schools revolution across the country. With public/government schools anathema to the country’s fast-expanding middle class, a multiplying number of education entrepreneurs, aka eduprenuers are running the gauntlet of incorrigibly corrupt government bureaucrats to promote well-equipped, new genre private preschools to primary-secondaries offering relatively sky-high quality English medium education to the world’s largest (480 million) and most short-changed child population. In the lexicon of left intellectuals who dominate the academy, and even in the eyes of post-independence India’s subsidies-addicted middle class, edupreneurs are exploitative businessmen extracting high tuition and other fees from hapless middle class and poor households struggling to make ends meet. In reality, they are risk-bearing nation builders driven by the spirit of enlightened self-interest and compassion for the country’s neglected children and youth, cruelly denied their fundamental right to good quality, globally comparable early childhood and K-12 education by India’s myopic and amoral neta-babu brotherhood and uncaring academy. The plain truth that private school education in contemporary India is priced lower than in any country worldwide has been suppressed, as has the reality that children from a substantial number of foreign countries travel long ways to avail primary-secondary education in India’s private schools. In 2007, your editors initiated the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR), an unprecedented and unreplicated field interviews- based survey to rate India’s Top 1,000 schools on 14 parameters of education excellence and rank them in ten separate categories to avoid apples with oranges type comparisons. Since then the annual EWISR survey has blossomed into the world’s largest and most comprehensive schools ranking initiative. Although over the years the annual EWISR survey has expanded its ambit to cover tier II-IV cities and towns, the league tables — and the annual EWISR Awards — tend to be dominated by metropolitan and legacy institutions. In this path-breaking issue of EW managing editor Summiya Yasmeen has turned the spotlight on top-ranked schools of provincial and small town India. The outcome is inspiring stories of altruism and idealism, combined with enlightened self interest. And in this month’s special report feature, as usual we examine the last Union budget of the incumbent BJP/NDA government before the forthcoming General Election 2019. Once again it’s a sad story of failure to accord sufficient importance to developing India’s abundant and high-potential human capital. Yet the unique differentiation is that we provide a road map for the next Union finance minister to raise Rs.6.37 lakh crore to augment and contemporise India’s education eco-system. Similar schema have been presented annually for the past several years with no response from government or the intelligentsia. Nevertheless, undaunted, once more unto the breach.

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Letter from the Editor

As a former editor of two business magazines who switched tracks to focus on the country’s failing education system by co-promoting EducationWorld on the eve of the new millennium — a year of great hope and expectations — I was struck (and remain struck) by the near total disconnect between industry and academia. In particular I’m surprised by the depth of ignorance within the overwhelming majority of the country’s schools, colleges and universities about elementary business organisation and management practices. I suspect this vast chasm which separates industry and the academy is the outcome of the bankrupt socialist economic development model ill-advisedly adopted by the neta-babu establishment immediately after India wrested political independence from exploitative foreign rule in 1947. Archaic clerical business management mantras of the country’s ab initio loss-making public sector enterprises run by business-illiterate clerks and bureaucrats, became the officially favoured model for education institutions to follow. The pathetic chaos and confusion which defines India’s government schools and public institutions of higher education are a natural consequence. Somewhat miraculously, India’s private unaided (financially independent) schools — some of them of over 150 years vintage — survived the socialism tsunami, perhaps because leaders of the new establishment knew better than to send their own children to government schools. Nevertheless because of the bad odour created about private enterprise by the influential neta-babu brotherhood (and the Supreme Court which castigated “commercialisation of education”), the organisation management practices of the majority of even vintage private schools, became enmeshed in a time warp. Regrettably, most of the country’s private schools are ignorant of modern institution and human resource development, marketing, branding, public relations and fund raising practices. In this issue’s cover feature we examine the institution development and management mantras of a few exceptional schools which routinely top the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings, the largest school rankings survey worldwide. Our special report feature in this budget month issue of EW is equally important. Over a decade ago, EducationWorld took up the cause of crucial but neglected early childhood care and education (ECCE). Since then we have convened nine annual National Early Childhood Education Conferences to advocate greater investment in ECCE, and build a platform for early childhood pioneers and experts to discuss best ECCE practices to provide a good start in life to the country’s 164 million neglected children in the 0-5 age group. EW’s 9th Early Childhood Education National Conference, which also celebrated the country’s best preschools top-ranked in the EW India Preschool Rankings 2018-19 (EW December), featured lectures by several outstanding early childhood educators. Abridged versions of their lectures are presented in this information-rich issue of EducationWorld.

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Letter from the Editor

A positive development in higher education which has brightened the new millennium for millions of the country’s neglected but eager-to-learn, upwardly mobile youth is the establishment of several private liberal arts and humanities universities across the country. The promotion of the O.P. Jindal Global, Ashoka, Bennett, Shiv Nadar among other universities inspired by America’s blue-chip Ivy League universities to provide high quality, multi-disciplinary liberal arts and humanities education and combinations of these subjects with economics, law, business management, architecture, is overdue and welcome. Regrettably in the quest for developing science and technology institutions and a scientific temper within the populace, liberal arts education fell out of fashion in post-independence India and became the default option of youth who couldn’t make the cut for admission into the country’s IITs, and premier science and engineering higher education institutions. Since then, the country has paid a dear price for the neglect of liberal arts and humanities. Narrowly educated engineers and technicians have risen to positions of power and authority within the bureaucracy and public services resulting in formulation and/or adoption of inorganic imported socio-economic development policies and frameworks which have failed to strike strong roots in sub-continental soil. Nurturance of strong roots requires development policies and processes designed by individuals with deep knowledge and comprehension of the history, culture, politics and character of nation states provided by well-grounded liberal arts education — “the table manners, customs and frames of justice of a democratic society”. Acquisition of new insights into the value and importance of liberal arts education, and examination of the processes of institution and capacity building in the era of irrevocable globalisation, were benefits derived from writing the new year’s first cover story on the O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU), Sonipat (Delhi NCR). Within a decade since it admitted its first batch of 100 students into the Jindal Global Law School, it has flowered into a full-fledged, wholly residential liberal arts and humanities university comprising eight schools with an aggregate enrolment of 4,320 students mentored by 432 faculty. Moreover within this short span of time, JGU has received a rain of excellent notices and encomiums in India and abroad. Our new year cover feature recounts an inspiring story of institution and capacity building which one hopes will enthuse others from among post-liberalisation India’s multiplying tribe of billionaire business tycoons to endow and establish globally competitive education institutions in their own, and the national interest. And as per our usual custom, in the special report feature of this information and ideas packed first issue of 2019, we present a review of the major events of an uneventful 2018 for Indian education. Happy new year!

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Letter from the Managing Editor

Letter from Managing Editor

Far from being an enabler as it was heralded to become, digital technology has made parenting an incrementally complex duty. Although digital wonder apps enable working mothers to keep an eye on infants at home and supervise their care throughout office hours, digital technology also has its dark side replete with lurking dangers for children, particularly teenagers. Moreover, the ubiquitous mobile phone, laptop, desktop computer, Alexa, Google Home and gaming consoles, among other tech gadgets have rapidly transformed from enabling and empowering communication devices to not-so-magnificent obsessions. A new 21st century lifestyle affliction: technology/digital addiction, defined as “an impulse control disorder that involves the obsessive use of mobile devices, the Internet or video games, despite negative consequences to the user of the technology,” now threatens the world’s children, including infants. Millennial children — born in the 21st century and raised according to hi-tech prescriptions — have become vulnerable victims of digital addiction. According to the Unicef Child Online Protection in India Report 2016, 134 million children in India have access to the Internet and mobile phones. And a rain of research studies has begun highlighting the disastrous effects of indiscriminate and obsessive use of tech gadgets and Internet by young children and adolescents. According to these survey studies excessive on-screen time adversely impacts the attention spans and creativity, social interaction, and neural growth and development of children. In our year-end cover story, we beam a spotlight on the disturbing phenomenon of digital addiction which is belatedly setting off alarm bells within the teacher-parent community. This feature provides useful information on the warning signs of digital dependence and expert advice on how parents can prevent it from transforming into addiction. The onus is on parents, many of whom are unwittingly encouraging and pushing children to find solace in technology and the online world, to take the lead in counseling and educating children to maintain a healthy online and offline life balance. Their physical, social and emotional well-being depends on it. In this issue of ParentsWorld, we also present the results of the ninth annual EducationWorld India Preschool Rankings 2018-19. EducationWorld (an affiliate of ParentsWorld) conducted the survey in association with the highly-reputed Delhi-based market research and opinion polls company Centre for Forecasting and Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore) to rate and rank the most respected pre-primaries/preschools in 16 large and smaller cities countrywide. We believe these league tables will enable young parents to choose the most suitable pre-primaries for their children to give them a good start in life. Also check out our Health & Nutrition essay on protecting children from passive smoking and Activity Zone feature on the new fitness sport of trampolining. Merry Christmas & Happy New Year! — Summiya Yasmeen

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Letter from the Editor

Perhaps the most heartbreaking injustice that has been visited upon the citizens of free India is the open, continuous and uninterrupted neglect of its youngest children. The statistics are grim and pitiful. Of the country’s 164 million children under age five, 48 percent suffer severe malnutrition and are in danger of stunting and brain damage. Only an estimated 10 million of this huge population of infants lucky to be born into middle class homes, enjoy the right to professionally administered early childhood care and education (ECCE). Half of the remaining 154 million youngest children receive perfunctory ECCE in 1.4 million anganwadis — essentially nutrition centres for newborns and lactating mothers which also provide a modicum of ECCE. The remaining 75 million are left to the mercies of their poor undernourished mothers suffering the insolence of office, on a daily basis. Against this backdrop of cruel official neglect of our youngest and most vulnerable children, for the past decade since your editor experienced an epiphany and discovered the great socio-economic value of professionally administered early childhood care and education, this publication has been publishing annual league tables rating and ranking the best pre-primaries, aka preschools, in major cities across India. The purpose of this exercise is not only to enable urban middle class households to identify and choose suitable preschools for their infants and give them a good start in life, but also to underscore the critical importance of ECCE for developing the country’s abundant human capital resource. And unlike other pretender education-focused publications which have followed in our wake, we never fail to reiterate our continuous demand for greater allocations from the Central and state governments for the ICDS (Integrated Child Development Services) programme which administers the country’s 1. 4 million anganwadis. Be that as it may, to compile the EducationWorld India Preschool Rankings 2018-19 league tables which rate and rank over 500 preschools in 16 cities countrywide — in two separate categories, proprietary and franchised, to avoid apples and oranges-type comparisons — 100-plus field personnel of Centre for Forecasting and Research (estb. 2000) interviewed 8,425 sample respondents comprising a mix of parents with children in preschool, and pre-primary teachers and principals over a period of four months. These league tables and accompanying commentaries — unprecedented and unique worldwide — dominate this year-end issue, compelling us to drop several of our usual sections. Moreover top-ranked preschools and anganwadis in major cities will be felicitated and awarded at the EducationWorld Early Childhood Education National Conference 2019 scheduled for January 19 in Bangalore. Like I said, we accord high importance to professionally administered ECCE. NB: Since the exercise of rating and ranking the country’s best pre-primaries was spread over four months (July-October), though great care has been taken by C fore, some pre-primaries which have shut down/changed names/disaffiliated from franchisors, may be ranked under their previous names.

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Letter from the Editor

Letter from the Editor

An assessment of the education development track record of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government which completed four years in office at the Centre in May and is now readying for General Election 2019, seemed the apposite choice for the cover story of this anniversary issue of EducationWorld (estb.1999) which completes 19 years of uninterrupted publication this month. At the hustings and run-up to General Election 2014, the BJP led by its charismatic three-term Gujarat chief minister and prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi aroused great hope and expectations within the electorate fed up with ten years of the 17-party Congress-led United Progressive Alliance whose rule was defined by several huge corruption scandals — 2G telecom spectrum allotment, coal blocks mining awards, the Commonwealth Games construction scam, Air India jets purchases among others — followed by a year of drift, indecision and masterly inactivity. The UPA government’s record in education and human capital development was specially disappointing. During its first term in office (2004-2009), the focus of the government and Union HRD minister Arjun Singh was expansion of the affirmative action quota in higher education. Although this initiative driven by Singh’s abortive prime ministerial ambitions was successful, the outcome is that except for the degrees and awards of a few top-ranked institutions of higher education, the certification of the overwhelming majority of the country’s HEIs is highly devalued and unrespected by organised sector industry and business. The main achievement of Kapil Sibal, Arjun Singh’s successor in Shastri Bhavan, Delhi was to push the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 through Parliament. However s. 12 (1) (c) shifts part of the constitutional obligation of the State to provide free and compulsory education to all children in the 0-14 age group, upon private schools. Unsurprisingly, several provisions of the Act are still mired in litigation. Against this backdrop, the track record of the BJP/NDA government over the past four years has been a patchwork of small successes and large failures. Fiery BJP spokesperson Smriti Irani, the coalition government’s first choice for the office of Union HRD minister, proved a disaster. After Irani was shunted out of Shastri Bhavan in 2016 and former environment minister of state Prakash Javadekar was appointed her successor, some overdue education reforms have been initiated, particularly in higher education. But considerable time to reform K-12 education was lost after the HRD ministry rejected the report of the T.S.R. Subramanian Committee on the New Education Policy, 2016. The detailed cover story in our 19th Anniversary issue explains why the education development report card of the BJP/NDA government deserves a C grade at best. There’s much else in this anniversary issue of EW. Check out the unseemly drama being played out on the campuses of Allahabad University (estb. 1887) which is struggling to recover its past glory, as also our special anniversary essays, including one from Beijing.

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Letter from the Editor

Letter from the Editor

In the bad old days, boarding school education was hard grind. Born in British-ruled East Africa where my sire was a plantations tycoon, I was despatched to boarding school in India at young age and spent almost a decade enduring cold showers, authoritarianism and arbitrary caning, not to mention gating, face-offs behind the chapel and pummelling by school bullies. Therefore I wasn’t surprised that given the hard traditions of legacy boarding schools, they lost some of their shine in the 1970-90 years. The great majority of households in post-independence India preferred to retain children in their formative years at home and educate them in neighbouring day schools. But with the ubiquitous neta-babu brotherhood hijacking the State and the Indian economy under the alluring cover of socialist ideology in the 1970s, high-potential free India was plunged into the rut of the “Hindu rate of growth” of 3.5 percent per year for two decades until liberalisation and deregulation of the economy in 1991-92. Unsurprisingly, with economic refugees from the continuously neglected rural hinterland pouring into the country’s 8,000 haphazardly planned cities, the latter have gone to the dogs. According to the World Health Organisation, of the world’s Top 20 most polluted and hazardous-to-health cities, 14 are in India. Therefore, legacy boarding and new genre international residential schools normatively established in India’s famous, cool, green hill stations and/or in carefully selected environments which offer children all-important unpolluted air, clean water and generous playing spaces, apart from excellent academic syllabuses and curriculums, are becoming popular again with the country’s fast-expanding middle class. Moreover — despite the catcalls and jeers of self-styled socialists and jholawallahs — a new generation of edupreneurs driven by the spirit of enlightened self-interest, philanthropy and/or urgent need to develop the country’s abundant human resource, are establishing new-style, liberal and environmentally-friendly boarding schools to enable children to realise their full potential. Our cover story in this issue traces this evolutionary socio-economic development. And our special report in this issue is a pictorial essay of the two-day event at which schools top-ranked nationally, in the states and cities/towns in the EducationWorld India School Rankings 2018-19 — the world’s largest and most comprehensive school rankings survey (see EW September) — were awarded, rewarded and celebrated at the lavishly-endowed Leela Ambience Hotel in Delhi NCR. The awards jamboree attracted over 1,200 promoters, principals and senior faculty of the country’s Top 1,000 day, boarding and international schools which were rated and ranked by 12,214 stakeholders in primary-secondary education countrywide. This celebratory event was fitting tribute to K-12 education leaders who are somewhat belatedly, addressing the huge problem of preparing the world’s largest child and youth population for the formidable challenges of the 21st century.

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Letter from the Editor

Letter from the Editor

The annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) 2018-19 survey of the country’s Top 1,000 primary-secondary schools presents the most comprehensive, in-depth and extensive league tables of any schools evaluation survey worldwide. This is confirmed by Prof. Geeta Kingdon, chair of education economics and international development at the Institute of Education at University College, London and an internationally respected monitor of global education, who concedes that she has never encountered a survey which evaluates schools on nearly as many parameters of education excellence. By any yardstick, EWISR 2018-19 is extensive. All schools, sufficiently well-known to at least 25 of our sample respondents comprising educators, principals, teachers, fees-paying parents and in-school senior students in each region (north, south, east, west) are included. In addition, schools which submit institution details in the prescribed format as per the permanent invitation on our website (www.educationworld.in) are on the master list of preselected 1,000-plus schools countrywide, divided into three major categories — day, boarding and international. Within these broad categories, they are further divided into ten sub-categories to eliminate apples with oranges-type comparisons. Next, over 120 field personnel of our trusted partners in the annual EWISR survey, the Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting & Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore, estb.2000) fan out across the country and interview 12,000-plus sample respondents and persuade them to rate sufficiently well-known schools in their region on 14 parameters of school education excellence — teacher welfare and development, faculty competence, infrastructure, leadership, co-curricular and sports education, life skills, internationalism, value for money etc. The scores awarded to every school by the informed sample respondents are totalled and schools in each sub-category are ranked inter se. This elaborate explanation of the robust EWISR methodology is to eliminate the frequent complaint of principals and teachers: “Nobody visited our school for inspection!” The point to note is that inspecting every school is mission impossible. It would take years and cost billions. That’s why neither QS, Times Higher Education nor Shanghai Jiao Tong University which publish their globally-respected annual World University Rankings, use it. All of them quiz sample respondents. Therefore, principals, teachers, countrymen! Please cease and desist from voicing this tiresome complaint. That said and done, I recommend the thorough and exhaustive EWISR 2018-19 league tables to you. Top 1,000 primary-secondary schools are ranked nationally, in their states, cities and according to all 14 parameters of K-12 education excellence. There’s a huge wealth of data in the EWISR 2018-19 for all stakeholders to analyse, slice and dice to improve learning outcomes and make the school years a memorable and enriching experience for their students.

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Letter from the Editor

Letter from the Editor

In a departure from past practice, this months cover story is written by an academic with some help from our editorial team. Although in the past lead features have been written by individuals whose names dont figure on our tombstone, those writers have always been journalists, or individuals who describe themselves as such. However when Anustup Nayak, vice president of the Gurgaon/Singapore-based XSeed Education Pvt. Ltd (estb.2008) — a well-known and respected name in primary education — enthusiastically proposed to write a long form feature on ways and means to quickly introduce whole school reform in K-12 institutions drawing upon experienced and erudite educators abroad, his enthusiasm proved infectious. Certainly Anustup, an alumnus of the top-ranked Georgia Institute of Technology and renowned Harvard Graduate School of Education, has the qualifications and hands-on experience (XSeed Educations innovative syllabus/curriculum is being taught in 3,000 primary schools countrywide) to write this months cover story which details three initial steps that schools need to take to improve learning outcomes and governance. Although there is no particular stimulus (‘newspeg) to feature this story at this time, theres no shortage of data which indicates that K-12 education in India needs urgent reform. The latest ASER (Annual Status of Education Report) of the highly respected Pratham Education Foundation, which measures learning outcomes of students in rural primaries countrywide, indicates that over 50 percent of adolescents in the 14-18 age group cant calculate simple discounts or read analogue watches, apart from struggling to grasp class II-III textbooks. The quality of urban private school leavers is not much better either. Its widely acknowledged that they tend to lack analytical skills, and are way behind their counterparts in developed OECD countries in terms of capability to apply knowledge to solve real-life and/or workplace problems. Alas, this infirmity is pervasive across the education continuum stretching into postgrad learning. Therefore Anustups suggestions for initiating the process of whole school improvement are timely and offer school promoters, principal, teachers and parents a roadmap to focus on this long-neglected, overdue priority. In some ways, the special report feature painstakingly written by our Mumbai correspondent Dipta Joshi for this issue is also connected with the cover story. Greater interaction between town and gown is a subject that I have been writing about for over three decades since my days as editor of Business India and Businessworld. Evidently without much success. However, Dipta reports that theres some — even if inching — progress in this much needed rapprochement.

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Letter from the Editor

Letter from the Editor

Licence-permit-quota raj, which was the dominant development blueprint of post-independence India and devastated the country’s economy reducing the average annual rate of GDP growth to 3.5 percent (cf. the Asian average of 7-10 percent) for over four decades until liberalisation and deregulation in 1991, is alive and flourishing in Indian education. Although the ease of doing business has marginally improved in the post-liberalisation era, reaching education to the masses and classes has become more difficult than ever before. Curiously, the Central and state governments which have made a mess of managing the country’s 1.2 million public primary/elementary schools and the great majority of government colleges and universities, see nothing amiss in neta-babu interference with the administration, syllabuses, curriculums, and finances of the country’s 319,000 private primary-secondary schools, estimated 20,000 private colleges and 154 private universities. They are subject to a bewildering plethora of laws, rules, regulations and administrative fiats, which have not only made the promotion of private greenfield institutions a great obstacles clearance race, but have also endangered their financial viability. This despite it being plain as a pikestaff that privately-promoted schools in particular, are far superior on the parameters of infrastructure, learning outcomes, leadership quality, faculty competence etc. Proof of this assertion is the reality that the overwhelming majority of the country’s 60 million middle class households prefer to enroll their children in fees-levying private schools rather than in free-of-charge government primary-secondaries. Indeed, even the poorest households entertain this aspiration which explains the mushrooming of an estimated 300,000 ‘unrecognised’ private budget schools with a staggering reported enrolment of 60 million children across the country. But the country’s rampaging neta-babu nexus, driven by political populism and rent-seeking opportunities, is crushing India’s private schools, which host over 40 percent of in-school children through myriad levelling-down rules which are drying up the flow of investment into private education. Our cover story written by managing editor Summiya Yasmeen blows the whistle on the neta-babu conspiracy to dumb down India’s beleaguered private schools, islands of excellence in a sea of mediocrity. And in what’s become an annual ritual, we lament another myopic Union budget in which the finance minister has yet again missed the opportunity to make adequate provision for developing the country’s abundant human capital. According top priority to feathering its own nest and self-aggrandisement, the very same neta-babu nexus wastes taxpayers money on a grand scale, leaving little more than crumbs for investment in public education and human capital development, while the apathetic middle class, intelligentsia, academia and media are silent — perhaps collusive — spectators.

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Letter from the Editor

Letter from the Editor

To impact the importance of ECCE upon the ignorant establishment and the public consciousness, EducationWorld has commissioned six annual surveys to rate, rank and celebrate the best pre-primaries in cities countrywide where there is a modicum of awareness of the vital importance of early childhood, pre-primary education. Moreover at considerable expense and effort, we have organised five annual EducationWorld Early Childhood Education Global Conferences at which internationally acclaimed early childhood educators have acquainted nursery and kindergarten teachers and principals with new developments and research studies in ECCE. The sixth EW Early Childhood Education Global Conference is scheduled to be held in Bangalore’s ITC Gardenia Hotel on January 23, 2016. So if you are interested in the subject, block that date.  This is not to say that we have ignored publicly provided ECCE by the Central and state governments. Way back in 1976, in a moment of rare enlightenment, the Union government (during the Emergency) rolled out its Integrated Child Development Services under which anganwadis were established countrywide to provide nutrition to lactating mothers and newborns, as well as minimal education. Their number has since grown to 1.6 million which cover only half the 158 million children in the 0-5 age group. Your editors have been consistently advocating much greater provision than the pathetic allocations made in Union budgets (Rs.8,355 crore in Union budget 2015-16, i.e, Rs.52,218 per centre).  Our efforts have borne some fruit. Just before it was swept out of office in New Delhi, the scandals-tainted Congress-led UPA-II government approved a draft National Early Childhood Care and Education Policy in November 2013. But the fate of the NECCE Policy is uncertain under its successor BJP-led NDA government at the Centre, for whom development of human capital seems a low priority.  Be that as it may, in this Christmas issue, we present detailed league tables rating and ranking over 400 of the country’s most-admired preschools in ten cities. A total of 6,283 sample respondents comprising parents with children in preschool, principals and teachers were interviewed by field researchers of the well-reputed Delhi-based market research and opinion polls company Centre for Forecasting & Research (C fore), to rate each city’s most well-known preschools across 10 parameters (competence of teachers, parental involvement, safety and hygiene, infrastructure, leadership quality etc). The ratings awarded by the respondents were aggregated to arrive at a total score and ranking for preschools in each city. Moreover, following complaints of apples-and-oranges type of comparisons, this year we have adopted a new taxonomy (classification system) dividing pre-primaries into three categories – owned/proprietary, franchised and pre-primaries of K-10/12 schools – and have ranked them separately inter se.

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Letter from the Editor

Letter from the Editor

There’s a traditional, deplorable control-and-command culture within post-independence India’s higher bureaucracy, particularly the estimated 6,375-strong twice-born IAS (Indian Administrative Service) fraternity which essentially runs the Central and state governments. Apart from transforming high-potential India into a time-agnostic and hostile-to-business, subsidies-addicted and perhaps irremediably corrupt economy, the control-and-command culture of bureaucrats at the Centre and in the states has also prevented the flowering of independent institutions which define great and prosperous democracies. It’s self-evident that for nations and societies to flourish, their industry, judiciary, universities and other institutions of products, services, research and knowledge creation must enjoy a high degree of independence and autonomy. Government micromanagement is a recipe for disaster. This is the argument advanced by our cover story on the seemingly innocuous Indian Institutes of Management Bill 2015, which in its draft form severely threatens to abridge the autonomy of the 13 Central government-promoted IIMs — especially of the three premier ABC (Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta) IIMs — which despite their controlling parent, have succeeded in establishing global reputations for delivering high-quality postgraduate business management education. Disturbingly, the excessively controlling IIM Bill 2015 is the second attempt of a BJP government at the Centre to cut the institutes down to size — a historical reality ignored by mainstream media. This suggests a long-term strategic intent to control the IIMs. Our eve-of-Independence Day cover feature explains why India’s premier B-schools deserve greater autonomy to promote the spirit of innovation and creativity, rather than a hostile takeover by business-illiterate bureaucrats. This month’s special report feature also addresses an issue of great import for the future of  Indian education. Shortly after it was swept to power in Delhi in General Election 2014, the BJP/NDA government to its credit announced an intent to formulate a New Education Policy (NEP) suited to the needs and demands of the 21st century. Moreover, in a departure from past practice, it called for mass public participation in the policy formulation process. But curiously, none of the country’s most respected education NGOs were invited to partake of the exercise, and public suggestions on the Union HRD ministry’s website were restricted to a mere 500 characters. Therefore in this issue, we present our brief, but not cursory, recommendations in response to the government’s invitation for public participation. These seminal lead features apart, there’s much else in this eve of Independence Day issue of EducationWorld, designed to awaken and stimulate the academy and public. Indian education is at a historic crossroads. Get involved!

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