Surely everybody, including the country’s purblind and inept politicians across all political parties, is aware that India’s public education system is slowly and inexorably sinking. But no one seems to be willing or able to prevent its steady descent into mediocrity and irrelevance. Myopically, the educated middle class — perhaps because it has emerged out […]
The condition of the great majority of infant citizens of the democratic, socialist and secular Republic of India whose uncaring 200 million-strong middle class harbours super-power ambitions and a seat at the high table for the nation, is so wretched that even those who are obliged to witness it in detail are likely to be […]
Indian education is poised uncertainly at a historic crossroads. On the one hand, there are great expectations of the 60 days old BJP-led coalition government at the Centre swept into office on a tidal wave of aspirations for economic development, after ten years of disappointing rule by the Congress-led UPA coalition which failed to fulfill […]
One of the great conundrums of post-independence India’s national development effort is why for over six decades and counting, successive governments at the Centre and in the states have grossly neglected early childhood, primary, secondary and higher education right across the spectrum. Surely it’s always been self-evident that unless we have a well-educated population, the […]
Conventional wisdom of the newspapers and magazines industry is that publications should get a design and layout makeover every decade. Regrettably, because we spent considerable time (and money) rejecting several designs before selecting a design team which understood the philosophical moorings and education reform objectives of EducationWorld, while simultaneously appreciating the importance of continuity with […]
Although universal primary education is received wisdom in all countries worldwide including India which passed its Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 four years ago, over the past two decades a new awareness has dawned upon nations and communities across the world that pre-primary early childhood care and education (ECCE) which prepares […]
For the Central and state governments, and the judiciary which abhors the “commercialisation of educationâ€, they are hate figures. Even the middle class which can’t do without their services and prefers to entrust the future — indeed the lives — of their precious children to them, has been brainwashed by the country’s confused socialist intelligentsia […]
Although two of the four vital factors of production and national prosperity — labour and enterprise — are intimately connected with human resource development, there is an idée fixe in Indian society that land and capital (the other two vital factors of production) are the only measures of wealth. Development and nurturance of intellectual capital, […]
One of the many curiosities of life in this benighted republic transformed into a society of open, continuous and uninterrupted injustice by the self-serving socialism of the Congress party and the political class as a whole, is the high anxiety parents suffer for many months starting from as early as November every year. Thats the […]
Although it seems axiomatic that the bottom-rank status of India on every metric of national development — early childhood nutrition, infant mortality, primary school dropouts percentage, learning attainments of 15-year-olds, literacy, enrolment in tertiary education, employability of graduates, poor productivity and low per capita income — is rooted in the country’s neglected, and dysfunctional education […]
According to feedback received from our marketing personnel, the general perception is that EducationWorld is a K-12 education focused publication. This perception is inaccurate because over the past 13 years since this monthly sailed into the stagnant waters of Indian education, we have been providing comprehensive coverage of India’s rapidly obsolescing education system from KG-Ph D.
Government provision of foundational elementary (primary and upper primary) and usually even secondary education, is normative in almost all nation states around the world. Curiously the founding fathers — who wrote the elaborate Constitution of India which became the supreme charter for the governance of free and independent India on January 26, 1950 — included education […]
Although the Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill, 2013 (aka the anti-rape Bill) based on the recommendations of the Justice Verma Committee, became law on March 22 after getting the President’s assent, in the streets of India’s chaotic cities and isolated hamlets of rural India where the rule of law is at best nominal, nothing seems to […]
This worst of times with the economy in the doldrums, political scandals involving mind-boggling defalcations unfolding every other day, and atrocities against the most vulnerable sections of society — women and children — multiplying almost unchecked among the thousand unnatural shocks that citizens of this beleaguered republic are heir to, could also be the best […]
By any yardstick the 3rd EducationWorld Early Childhood Education Global Conference 2013 held in Bangalore on January 19, was a resounding success. Perhaps more so than its predecessor global conferences (2010 and 2011) staged in Mumbai. Although the Mumbai conferences attracted greater participation from abroad — these are global conferences on a subject in which […]
The Manipal (Karnataka) and Bangalore-based Manipal Education and Medical Group (MEMG) represents an excellent example of the theory of enlightened self-interest (“businesses do well by doing good”). Seventy years ago in 1942, doctor, educationist, banker and philanthropist Dr. T.M.A. Pai (1898-1979) established the Academy of General Education, to train youth in the South Canara district […]
This copy of EducationWorld in your hands, is the 156th issue of this pioneer and as yet India’s sole education news and analysis magazine. It represents 13 years of back-bending, and largely unsung effort to attain the mission statement articulated in the very first issue, viz, “to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the […]
The general consensus in Indian society is that “commercialisation of education” is one of the seven deadly sins. Politicians condemn it even as using insiders’ knowledge of the byzantine education licencing and regulatory system, they promote private education institutions and profit from them. The learned justices of the Supreme Court condemn it, unmindful of the […]
The admirably and painstakingly crafted Constitution of India is unambiguous that the obligation of providing free and compulsory education to all children is of the State (i.e Central and state governments). It is also unambiguous that all citizens have the fundamental right to practice any profession, or carry on any occupation, trade or business (Article […]
In intelligent, rational societies when an academic institution is successful in attaining the aims and objectives for which it was promoted, the powers that be in the education (aka human resource development) ministry and other organisations involved with education quality and development, study the successful institution, distill its culture and essence and replicate it to […]
For the Indian polity and economy, these are the worst times. Industrial and agriculture growth percentages are rock bottom; inflation is relentless with food, fuel and transport prices 15-20 percent higher than a year ago; the Sensex is below the plimsoll line of 16,000; the rupee which was 45 to the US dollar months ago is currently […]
The signing of the United Nations Millennium Declaration which inter alia bound 189 signatory nations to universalise primary education by the year 2015; enactment by Parliament of the 86th Amendment (2002) which inserted Article 21A into the Constitution making elementary (primary and upper primary) education a fundamental right on a par with the right to life and […]
One of the perquisites of this demanding job — and demanding it is given the hostility of education bureaucrats, paucity of reliable data, disinterest of industry, indifference of the teachers’ community and shortage of trained writers — is that one often gets to meet with great visionaries, thinkers and doers who, unsung and unappreciated by […]
Ever since I transformed overnight from a manager in Indian industry into the editor of India’s first business magazine several decades ago, I have entertained the notion that the true entrepreneur is one who can deliver maximum quality at minimum price. The example of the world’s first discount store tycoon F.W. Woolworth (1852-1919), who established […]
It’s pre-eminently arguable that the administrative and management responsibilities of school principals and headmasters are more onerous than of managing directors and chief executives of business enterprises. Unlike corporate chiefs who lead teams of adults trained to do their jobs, school heads are obliged to deal with sensitive children of all ages venturing forth into […]
Curiously, although the Azim Premji Foundation (APF) registered by the eponymous IT (information technology) tycoon in 1998 and EducationWorld (estb.1999) share several commonalities — both organisations are Bangalore-based, education-centred and have similar objectives — except for a brief period circa 2003 when Wipro Ltd, Premji’s flagship company advertised in this publication — they have remained strangers to […]
So much has transpired on the national and international stages since the presentation of the Union Budget 2011-12 to Parliament on February 28, that the Central government’s latest annual statement of revenue mobilisation and deployment seems history. Yet the truth is that Budget 2011-12 was rolled out just over a month ago with much unwarranted […]
That teaching-learning standards — and consequently learning outcomes — in public, i.e. government-run, K-12 schools (and most government-run colleges) are abysmal, is known to everybody except Central and state government bureaucrats who dominate seminars, workshops and the lectures circuit outlining lofty projects to enable this overpopulated nation to harvest its accidental demographic dividend. Proof of […]
As a former business journalist, it’s natural for me to be interested in the progress and development of the US-based Microsoft Corporation — the world’s most valuable (market cap: $240 billion or Rs.1080,000 crore) corporate enterprise — since for innovation, project implementation and getting products and services to market, there are few companies in the […]
Although it’s a hugely labour-intensive task, putting the annual EducationWorld survey of India’s most respected primary-secondary schools issue together every September, has its own rewards. For one, the annual survey enables us to measure the progress of the country’s 400-plus best schools — all of them national treasures to be carefully preserved and nurtured — utilising the […]
Are state governments which insist upon imposing vernacular languages as the medium of instruction on school children under their jurisdiction acting in the public or private interest? The latter I believe because every parent countrywide wants her child to become English fluent. Ironically the peoples’ representatives, i.e politicians, seem unaware of this grassroots reality.
After the high of the August issue of EducationWorld in which for the first time a league table of India’s most respected schools was featured and received considerable press and television coverage, it’s time to go cold turkey. The inconvenient truth is that enthusiasm for reform and upgradation of teaching-learning norms to global standards is confined to […]
After the high of the August issue of EducationWorld in which for the first time a league table of India’s most respected schools was featured and received considerable press and television coverage, it’s time to go cold turkey. The inconvenient truth is that enthusiasm for reform and upgradation of teaching-learning norms to global standards is confined to […]
EducationWorld in collaboration with the Boarding Schools Association of India (BSAI) hosted the second edition of Education Leadership Retreat 2024 at Sunbeam School, Varuna, Varanasi .....Read More
IIT Delhi organised its 11th Alumni Day on Sunday under the theme ‘Engage, Enrich, Empower: Celebration of an Emotion’ that brought together alumni, students, and .....Read More
