EducationWorld February 15

The Kill List by Frederick Forsyth; corgi books; Price: Rs.399; Pages 348 The reckless, cold-blooded murder and mayhem unleashed by jihadists ” fanatic soldiers of Islam ” upon innocent civilians in the US (9/11, 2001), the UK (7/7, 2005) and most recently in France (the Charlie Hebdo murders ” 1/7, 2015) which was preceded by the massacre of 132 school children in Pakistan  (December 16) are all self-driven, and perhaps final nails in the coffin that Islamic fundamentalists have built for themselves. These atrocities have aroused the red-hot fury of Western powers who are aggressively deploying their awesome technological prowess to directly target and decimate rabid Islamist preachers and hatemongers, regardless of borders and collateral damage. The US in particular has swiftly transformed its overwhelming economic and technological superiority to gather intelligence and unleash remote-controlled weapons of astonishing destructive power. During the past decade, American scientists and technologists have cut to size the overweening monarchy and potentates of Saudi Arabia and OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) who have been covertly funding Wahabi terrorism, by assiduously researching and developing fracking technology. As the foolish and greedy sheikhs of the Middle East raised the price of crude to $140 per barrel, it became viable for corporate America to invest heavily in fracking, which extracts natural gas and crude oil from abundantly available shale rock and sediments. Today a shale-fired US ” hitherto the world™s largest consumer of OPEC and Saudi crude ” is poised to become an oil exporting nation, and the international price of crude has fallen below $50 per barrel. With the profligate Saudi monarchy having failed to develop or invest in indigenous industry even as its youth population has multiplied dramatically, the end of the Ibn Saud monarchy is a prophecy foretold. Adulation of the awesome might and capability of Western ” particularly American ” technology is the subject matter of The Kill List, the latest oeuvre of best-selling British novelist Frederick Forsyth. According to Forsyth, in the œdark and secret heart of Washington D.C, the US president and six men meet every Tuesday morning to review a œkill list featuring the names of terrorists so dangerous to the US that they are to be taken out œwithout any attempt to be made at arrest, trial, or any due process. The exord (presidential executive order) is to be implemented by J-SOC, œthe world™s biggest and most dangerous private army. In turn, J-SOC uses TOSA, œa body so obscure that 98 percent of serving US officers haven™t heard of it. In spring 2014, TOSA™s director presents his senior manhunter Kit Carson, an enigmatic lieutenant colonel of the US Marine Corps, known only as the Tracker, an exord on which are written the words: œThe Preacher. Identify. Locate. Destroy. Thus begins a transnational hunt for the Preacher, a rabid pan-Islamist ideologue who broadcasts English language hate sermons on the internet based on selected passages of the Quran which are so venomously impactful, that even well-adjusted Muslim youth in the West…

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PANEL DISCUSSION Child safety: A neglected issue in pre-primary education Against the backdrop of several sexual molestation atrocities visited upon children as young as two and three across the country, the first panel discussion of the EW ECE Global Conference 2015 comprising Assistant Commissioner of Police, Mumbai M. Sanke (ACP); Jacinth Portess (JP), head of the Indus Early Learning Centre, Bangalore; Shalini Ahuja (SA), promoter-CEO of Safe Baby, a Mumbai-based company focused on child safety; Carrie Udeshi (CU), a child rights activist and advisor of the Billabong International School, Vadodara and chaired by Dilip Thakore (DT), Editor, EducationWorld, deliberated the subject ˜Child Safety ” A Neglected Issue in Pre-primary Education™. DT: All right-thinking people are alarmed and disgusted by the rising incidence of sexual abuse of infants countrywide, reported almost daily. According to me this emerging national malady is the outcome of the tidal wave of pornography streaming into India over the internet, and imbalancing the huge number of ill-educated people within the country. ACP Sanke, I™d like to know if the Central or state governments have made any attempt to technologically block the inflow of pornography easily available on the internet? ACP: It is not the function of the police to advise government on policy matters and it is technically very difficult to block objectionable material streamed into the country through the social media. Meanwhile, it is the duty of parents to monitor what children view on social media at home and teach them about safety and sexuality from a young age. In school, teachers need to teach male children to accord respect and dignity to girl children from their early years. JP: I agree. Parents and teachers need to be educated on the subject. In our school we invite experts and psychologists to talk to parents and teachers on how to respond to children who start asking questions about their physiology and reproduction, and advise children about good touch and bad touch. It™s wrong to shush young children and react as though these are dirty questions. PTA (Parent Teacher Association) meetings are a very good forum for parents and teachers to discuss this subject which can no longer be brushed under the carpet. CU: The crucial conversation about body parts and reproduction should happen between parents and their children. Parents are usually inhibited about initiating this vital conversation. Therefore they need to be advised by teachers and school authorities on how to deal with this subject. I agree with Jacinth that workshops and PTA meetings are good forums to encourage and advise parents to discuss sex and sexuality issues with their children as early as possible. If these issues are discussed frankly and freely, parents will be prepared to answer children™s questions and teach them about good and bad touch. Being upfront will also help children develop the confidence to report instances of abuse and molestation. SA: While it™s important for children to be educated about body parts, good and bad touch etc, it™s also important they should…

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KEYNOTE ADDRESS: RENU SINGH NECCE opportunities and challenges After decades of hesitation in September 2013, the Congress-led UPA II government approved a National Early Childhood Care and Education (NECCE) policy paper of the Union ministry of women and child development (WCD). By adopting the NECCE policy draft, the Central government accepted an important principle of latter day education enunciated by Nobel laureate Dr. James Heckman in the millennium year (2000) that œearly learning begets later learning and early success breeds later success, just as early failure breeds later failure, and the UNESCO EFA Global Monitoring Report which proclaimed ECCE as the bedrock of education for all and further initiatives. The NECCE policy is overdue acknowledgement that a large number of children in India are growing up in disadvantaged family contexts, and are therefore œat risk in terms of developing to their full potential. However it™s a credit to Indian educationists and policy formulators that India has the distinction of having launched the world™s largest integrated child development programme for infants and lactating mothers way back in 1975 ” Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) ” under which 1.3 million anganwadi centres have been established across most habitations countrywide. Available data indicates that 64.5 percent of three-year-olds and 76.3 percent of four-year-olds in rural India are attending anganwadis. The significance of NECCE is that for the first time, special emphasis has been given to developing and expanding the education component of ICDS with all state governments directed to develop their own ECCE curriculums. The recently restructured ICDS also makes a clear statement regarding conversion of all anganwadis into œvibrant ECCE centres ” a very positive development for the country™s hitherto neglected 158 million children in the 0-6 age group. Nevertheless, there™s much work to be done before the NECCE policy is translated into action. The first challenge is to ensure Article 21-A of the Constitution which legislated elementary education as a fundamental right of all children in the 6-14 age group, is amended to include all children upto 14 years of age, rather than restrict the fundamental right to education to 6-14-year-olds. This is critical since the constitutional amendment of 2002 ignores Article 45 which enjoined the state to provide free and compulsory education to all children below the age of 14 years. Another lacuna is that ICDS provides for ” the admittedly cursory ” education of three to six-year-olds while 23 of the 35 states/UTs have mandated five years as the official entry age for primary school, thus creating an overlap and possible double counting. A recent analysis indicates that 20 percent of children entering primary school in states that have six years as the entry age and a lesser percentage that have five years, are under-age. This needs urgent attention, because under-age children are unprepared to bear the pressures of primary schools where child-centric pedagogies are a rarity. In the circumstances it might be a good idea to encourage a year of pre-primary education to be added to every primary…

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KEYNOTE ADDRESS: ELLEN BOOTH CHURCH New dimensions of Early Childhood Education Those of us in the field of early childhood care and education (ECCE) have always known how important the early years are, but new brain research and studies indicate that the first 2,000 days of a child™s life are crucial for making important synaptic connections in the brain. These are the days covering the period from birth to the time most children enter kindergarten. The latest research shows that the work we do with infants has a significant effect on their success in school and life. Children learn through their interaction with caring adults, peers, interesting materials and the world around them. Their brains are developing but as Harvard professor Dr. Jack Shonkoff says, œbrains are built, not born. According to Dr. Shonkoff, œthe brain is one of the only organs not fully developed at birth. Most of the cells are there, but the connections ” the wiring that forms the architecture ” are not. Therefore the phrase œuse it or lose it, can be applied to children™s brains in early childhood. Brains not used may œfade away. Young children who come to our classrooms are embarking on a voyage of schooling that could last more than 14 years. Along the way, they will meet a variety of children, teachers, and people. How do we prepare them for this journey? We need to teach them the social and emotional skills which will support them as they grapple with content at each level of schooling. I recommend the ˜7Cs™ to prepare infants for their long journey through academia. Cooperation. The activities you plan and the games and songs you use teach children to work cooperatively with others. In many ways, any activity you present to your class is cooperative activity because children must share, take turns, and listen. Through the challenge of working in groups, children learn how to regulate their feelings, behaviour, and attention spans. Communication. For children to become members of cooperative groups, they have to be able to communicate with others. This is an important skill to develop in the early years because of the widely divergent language learning capabilities of children. Some children come to school with a vast vocabulary and are very self-expressive. Others might just look at you with big wide eyes and say little or nothing! When children feel comfortable with expressing ideas and opinions, they become more open to learning in all areas of the curriculum. Curiousity. Children are naturally curious. The smallest pebble on the sidewalk can open the doors of wonder and experimentation. Science, math, art and language learning begins simultaneously in that moment of wonder. But curiousity is also an important skill for social and emotional learning. How many times have you heard a child ask: œWhy does she look different? Why does he walk funny? and similar questions. These curious queries create the right moment for teachers and parents to discuss acceptance and understanding of people with similarities…

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The objective of the 5th consecutive annual EW ECE Global Conference was to impact the critical importance of early childhood care and education on the somnolent Central and state governments, and to provide a platform for international and indigenous experts to share best practices. Summiya Yasmeen Convened at Mumbais nexgen Grand Hyatt Hotel on January 23, the 5th EW Early Childhood Education Global Conference 2015, attracted enthusiastic response from over 265 promoters, principals and teachers of Indias top-ranked pre-primaries and K-12 schools, who crowded the hotels massive 11,612 sq. ft fully-wired conference hall. As in the previous four global conferences staged in Mumbai and Bangalore by EducationWorld, the objective of this years conference was also to impact the critical importance of early childhood care and education (ECCE) upon the somnolent Central and state governments, and to provide a platform for international and indigenous experts to share best practices to enable accelerated professionalisation of ECCE in India. Sponsored by Navneet Education (Mumbai), Popcorn Furniture (Delhi), Gait (Bangalore), Com-Sur (Mumbai), and Afairs Media & Exhibitions (Kolkata), the day-long conference featured two keynote addresses and panel discussions. The first keynote address ‘Getting to the Heart and Mind of Learning: New Discoveries and Developments in ECCE was delivered by Ellen Booth Church, former early childhood assistant professor at the State University of New York and currently an adjunct professor at Nova South-eastern University, USA. A prolific author on a diverse range of ECCE subjects, and education consultant to the Kinderpillar preschools in India and Nepal, Booth Church detailed a number of research studies highlighting the importance of not just cognitive, but also social and emotional learning in the early years for success in school and later life. With the newly elected BJP-led NDA government at the Centre reassessing the National ECCE policy of the Union ministry of women and child development (WCD) approved by its predecessor UPA government in September 2013, the second keynote address by Dr. Renu Singh, country director (India) of Young Lives, an international study programme (led by Oxford University) of childhood poverty in four countries, focused on the theme ‘NECCE Policy: Opportunities and Challenges. In her address, Dr. Singh highlighted the grey areas of NECCE, and suggested ways and means to fortify the policy to deliver ECCE to all 158 million children in the 0-5 age group countrywide. Against the backdrop of the many cases of sexual abuse and molestation of young children reported in schools over the past year, the first panel discussion deliberated ‘Child safety: a neglected issue in pre-primary education. Panelists included Jacinth Portess (Indus Early Learning Centre, Bangalore), Madhukar Sanke (Assistant Commissioner of Police, Mumbai), Carrie Udeshi (Kangaroo Kids parent), and Shalini Ahuja (Safe Baby, Mumbai), with Dilip Thakore (EducationWorld) moderating. The second panel comprised Swati Popat Vats (president of the Early Childhood Association (estb. 2010) which has a membership of 970 preschools); Prriety Gosalia (Leapbridge International preschools); Jeremy Williams (Griffith University, Australia); and Kumaraesen Subramaniam (Asian International College, Singapore) with Summiya Yasmeen (EducationWorld) as chair.…

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œTo raise new questions, new problems, to regard old problems from new angles requires creative imagination to make real advances ” Albert Einstein Wherever games and sports are played, there are the inevitable spoilers, people ” often well-intentioned ” who destroy the magic of the games children and youth play. Spoilers tend to be parents, coaches and even athletes themselves who through vulgar and contentious conduct, violate the spirit of sport. If we insist that the problem resides within the minds of pushy parents, zealous coaches, ambitious administrators, and spoilt-brat players and athletes, we ignore the root of the problem. To single out such offenders is like blaming the carriers of a disease, not the conditions that produced it. My lifelong friend, and co-author of two books, Dr. David Canning Epperson uses the metaphor œdrain the swamp to signal the need to eliminate the breeding grounds of the winning-at-all-costs attitude that is ruining American sports, and threatens nations worldwide. In most sports programmes for children, the unruly conduct of parents, coaches, spectators, and athletes tends to be glossed over or accepted as inevitable. For sports programme administrators to proclaim zero tolerance policies is like issuing pest repellant and requiring everyone to use it. But reducing damage done by pests does not address the source of the problem, the breeding ground of the infestation. The problem is in the ubiquitous failure to œdrain the swamp, i.e. to eliminate the breeding ground of the win-at-all-costs mentality. Given my experience of several decades as a coach, sports administrator, consultant and writer, I believe I understand the causes and effects of the win-at-all-costs culture which has pervaded sports in America and increasingly around the world. The prime causes are: Lack of family involvement in sports communities The failure of sports programme administrators to develop conduct guidelines for parents, coaches and athletes. Parents who have had little opportunity to achieve maturity as sports parents and hence are still living through their children. Parents who are neither inclined nor equipped to lead a parent-initiated movement designed to counter the winning-is-everything sports culture. Inadequate sports organisations Collegiate sports that hold out the promise of scholarships for top school and club athletes. Coaches and sports administrators whose career prospects are determined by their win-loss records. School and club programmes which serve only best-performing athletes. Deficient regulatory bodies They place heavy emphasis in Olympic and international sports on winning medals and ranking athletes. College/university sports federations which refuse to implement policies regulating the outrageous conduct of some coaches, athletes, and spectators. High school sports federations which fail to invest time and effort in promoting virtues like respect, civility, responsibility, and community. Federation leaders who tend to be overly focused on competitive meets, championships and mega events. Values dictated by the marketplace Easy accessibility to professional sports on television which highlight the in-your-face, winning is everything culture. Media which creates and celebrates contentiousness to build up drama and excitement to attract viewers in the highly competitive entertainment market. Cameras and…

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In 1979, when Ken Ross was eight, his family moved from Scotland to France with his father™s job in IBM. The computer firm paid the fees at the English School of Paris, where his classmates were mostly children of expats from Britain and elsewhere: managers, army officers, diplomats and the like. A couple were Saudi princes. For the most recent class reunion, old boys and girls flew in from as far afield as China and South Africa. Since then, there has been a boom in such ˜international schools™, which teach in English in non-Anglophone countries, mostly offering British A-levels, American APs and SATs, or the International Baccalaureate. During the past quarter-century, according to the International School Consultancy Group (ISC), based in Britain, their number has grown from under 1,000 to more than 7,300. In the 2013-14 academic year, they generated $41.6 billion (Rs.2.6 lakh crore) in revenue and taught 3.75 million pupils globally. Twenty-two countries have more than 100 international schools, headed by the UAE, with 478, and China, with 445. But nowadays international schools increasingly belie their name. Though their clientele varies from place to place, four-fifths of pupils they teach around the world are locals, calculates ISC. Thirty years ago, just a fifth were. The main reason is increased demand for schooling mostly or entirely in English, both in rich countries (Ross™ alma mater now has a large French contingent), and even more from rich parents in developing countries who want their children to be able to go to university in Britain or North America. œWhen people make money, they want their children to learn English, says Nicholas Brummitt of the ISC. œWhen they make more money, they want them to learn in English. Further growth is on the cards. In another decade, ISC predicts, there will be 14,400 international schools worldwide, teaching 8.9 million pupils. Many will be run by local or regional firms who spy an opportunity (two-thirds of international schools are now run for profit, up from almost none 30 years ago). But ISC™s market research suggests that quite a few British ˜public™ (i.e, private) schools plan to set up foreign outposts; some already have, including Harrow, Marlborough, Wellington College and Dulwich College, the last of which opened its seventh overseas arm in Singapore in August. For-profit global chains such as Nord Anglia Education, Cognita and GEMS are also planning new schools. The biggest growth is forecast in the Middle East and East Asia. But which countries prove the most rewarding for investors depends partly on governments. Some countries make it hard for those who have been schooled outside the national system to get into university, meaning international school customers risk closing off their children™s future options. Chinese pupils without a foreign passport are barred from international schools. Singaporean citizens require government permission to attend international schools, rarely granted unless they have lived abroad. In South Korea, a maximum of 30 percent of an international school™s pupils can be locals. China-watchers are always alert to…

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The Australian government has begun a second attempt to legislate its controversial university reforms, which would uncap student fees, less than 24 hours after its original Bill was defeated in the country™s upper house. The Bill was defeated in the Senate by 33 votes to 31 on December 2 after the government failed to win support from a sufficient number of crossbench senators. In addition to uncapping fees, the package of measures would have cut university funding by 20 percent, charged a real interest rate on student loans, and extended loan eligibility to students in private and non-university education providers. Student numbers are already uncapped in Australia, and the uncapping of fees was supported by most universities as a way to shore up the system™s sustainability amid falling per-student funding. However, many vice chancellors and politicians have expressed concerns about the impact of the measures on students. Universities in Australia welcome introduction of the new Bill and the government™s commitment to undertaking negotiations. But Universities Australia chief executive Belinda Robinson called for relaxation of the proposed level of funding cuts, saying it would put œsignificant upward pressure on student fees. Some senators have already said they will not support the Bill if it includes funding cuts and uncapping of fees, in the wake of predictions that full programme fees could exceed A$100,000 (Rs.50.7 lakh). However, Queensland Technical University revealed that its most expensive degree ” a five-year double degree in business and law ” would be set at just A$78,500 (Rs.39.7 lakh) representing a rise of A$17,300 (Rs.9 lakh) on the current fee. Some vice chancellors of the Group of Eight universities ” which previously expressed fears that the government would cut the research budget if the reforms are not passed ” reacted with dismay to the failure of the original Bill. Comments Warren Bebbington, vice chancellor and president of the University of Adelaide: œThose who oppose the reform fail to offer any real alternative, leaving in place a funding system unsustainable in the long term unless taxpayers are prepared to massively increase their contribution. In the price-regulated system, the only way universities can deal with rising costs is to enroll more and more students. Classes get bigger and bigger, and education more and more impersonal. However Christopher Pyne, the minister for education, is confident that œtime and persuasion will convince crossbenchers to support the revised Bill. œI™ve never been against debate, I™ve never been against a battle. I think this is important reform and I am committed to it, says Pyne.

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With roughly 55 million students, 3 million teachers and more than 236,000 schools in 500 districts, Indonesia has the world™s fourth-largest education system. But the system doesn™t work nearly as well as it should. The country™s new president Joko Widodo, generally known as Jokowi, hopes to change that with help from his new education secretary, Anies Baswedan, a former university president and creator of a programme which sends graduates to teach in remote areas. Since the 1970s, Indonesia (pop.250 million) has boosted primary and junior-secondary enrolment rates dramatically. In the past decade, it has narrowed the gap in school-completion rates between rich and poor students, and between children in rural and urban areas. Since 2009, it has allocated a fifth of its annual budget to education. Yet gains in education have a lot more scope. Whereas primary-enrolment rates in richer districts are close to 100 percent, in some poor districts they remain below 60 percent. Nor are teachers evenly distributed. Across the system, enrolment declines markedly with age. Baswedan says Indonesia has 170,000 primary schools, 40,000 junior-secondary schools and just 26,000 high schools. Boosting education quality, particularly relative to Indonesia™s neighbours, has been hard. Though average reading and maths scores on standardised PISA tests have improved since 2000, scores in science have declined ” and scores in maths and reading have recently been slipping again. In the tests, Indonesia markedly lags behind not just rich Singapore, but also Vietnam, whose GDP per capita is three-fifths its own. Baswedan wants to start by improving the teachers. He believes they should be evaluated not only on how many hours a week they teach, but on how well their students perform. Almost certainly, teachers need better training. Of more than 400 teacher-training institutes in Indonesia, Baswedan reckons that no more than a tenth are much good. The minister also wants to improve Indonesia™s vocational training institutes, particularly those in agriculture and fisheries, as a way both to boost the country™s skilled-manufacturing workforce and to help those in rural areas dependent on farming and the sea. In the presidential race last year, Jokowi campaigned heavily on education. He wasted no time on one of his campaign promises, launching the Indonesia Smart Card in November. It provides school fees and stipends to 24 million poor students across Indonesia, guaranteeing them 12 years of free education. But the scheme™s value will depend on how well Baswedan can make his longer-term reforms work. Just stuffing more students into bad schools will be of little help.

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Universities should consider reducing the salaries of academics who fail to impress experts in their discipline, according to a university president who has pioneered the practice. Abdullah Atalar, rector of Bilkent University in Turkey™s capital Ankara, says his institution has chosen to ignore research metrics when assessing whether an academic deserves a pay rise or a promotion. Instead, university leaders canvass opinion from experts in the academic™s discipline from outside Bilkent about how well an individual scholar had performed in recent years. œWe will ask leading universities in the US if they would hire this guy or promote him, Prof. Atalar said. œIf they say they would not promote him, we do not promote him. An electrical engineer, Atalar believes Bilkent™s pay structure is preferable to those at other universities, which link performance-related pay to research output or its impact. œMetrics might indicate that someone is doing very well in their field, but peer review might show the exact opposite, he told Times Higher Education. More universities should think about introducing Bilkent™s model of œpeer review for pay, he argues, although he says acknowledging that many institutions ” including most in Turkey ” would be prevented from doing so by government regulations. Bilkent, a private university founded in 1984, is œnot limited by the same government rules in place at state universities, explains Atalar. Bilkent™s freedom to set academic salaries according to its own criteria is one of the reasons for its success despite its relatively short history. It was ranked Turkey™s best university under 50 years old in the Times Higher Education 100 Under 50 rankings in 2014, and the country™s fifth best overall in the THE World University Rankings 2014-15, published in October.

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Has China™s higher education sector become a hotbed of corruption? The arrest of two professors highlights big issues for the nation around research funding and the commercialisation of research. In October, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China announced that several professors had been arrested over the alleged misappropriation of state research funds. Among them is Li Ning, an animal breeding specialist at the China Agricultural University and the country™s leading scientist in transgenic research, who cloned a rare cattle species in 2002. His arrest came after national audits found that seven professors from five universities obtained research funds of more than 25 million yuan (Rs.25.2 crore) through fraud, according to media reports. According to the Guangzhou-based Southern Weekend, money might have been transferred to Beijing Jipulin Biotech Ltd, a company in which Li is a shareholder. Chu Jian, vice president of the prestigious Zhejiang University was arrested in December 2013 on suspicion of embezzling state assets. He was also the co-founder and former chief executive officer of Supcon Group, a subsidiary company of the former Zhejiang University-owned Zhejiang Highne Science and Technology Co, which was listed in 1999 on the stock market, according to the Global Times. The newspaper reported that Chu allegedly transferred the better-performing Supcon assets to Highne, leaving bad assets behind, which is œillegal. The two cases connect into broader issues in Chinese academia. Cut-throat competition in applying for state research funds could lead to bribery. Fabrication of spending and invoices could be attributed to lack of supervision over expenditure. Citing Chu Jian™s case, noted financial writer Wu Xiaobo asked a more profound question: China boasts so many prestigious universities and talented scientists, but why can™t it make a Silicon Valley? Wu believes the difference lies in the fact that Silicon Valley™s conveyor-belt structure (talent, universities, companies) can rely on a mature legal system. Meanwhile, the Chu case is a case in point that œwithin China™s current university research system, if a scientist intends to industrialise his technological innovation¦ the more developed the business is, the more likely he commits a crime.

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Through the Erasmus scheme and other mechanisms, thousands of Germans study for a semester or more in the UK every year. In 2012-13,14,500 German students enrolled at UK universities, the largest number from any continental member state of the European Union. Some German students in the UK write about their learning adventures online. Many of their reports reveal extremely positive responses, not only to a sojourn in the UK but also to the broader experience of being a foreign student and expanding one™s horizons. The greatest barrier for such students, particularly those wishing to go to London, is the cost. But for those who can raise the funds or can subsist on the cheap, it certainly seems worthwhile. Jelena, who spent a semester at what is now the UCL Institute of Education, raves on a website that encourages school pupils to study at university, about her œvaluable six months outside Germany and urges others to follow her example. For less than ‚400 (Rs.29,475) per month in rent, she shared a house with students from Spain, Italy and France, all of whom had great fun communicating with each other and with the locals in their œfeeble English. Students also lavish praise on English universities, emphasising the genuine interest of academic staff in the learning-related and other activities of their foreign guests, generally good lectures, relaxed group discussions and great social outings and events, although whether this hospitality is normative for Afro-Asian students is a moot point. Various student, university and subject-specific websites contain countless œexperience reports of study semesters in the UK. The general sentiment is positive, the message being that any disadvantages, such as cost, language hurdles or cultural differences, are substantially outweighed by the many advantages. Moreover, one of the blessings of being a student, particularly a foreign and temporary one, is there™s less pressure to perform or compete (although this may depend to some extent on whether you are paying tuition fees and, if so, on how much you are paying). This combination of factors often makes for a relaxed but nonetheless productive time that rivals or even beats the best of holidays. It™s a unique opportunity that most likely will present itself only once in a lifetime.

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As pupils file into their classroom at Kipp Renaissance, a high school in a battered corner of north-east New Orleans, each one stops to shake the hand of a history teacher. Kipp Renaissance is one of New Orleans™ newer high schools. Since Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, only six traditional public schools, directly run by the city, remain. Instead 94 percent of pupils now attend charter schools, which are publicly funded but run by independent non-profit organisations such as Kipp (˜Knowledge is Power Programme™). Change began in 2003, when Louisiana created a Recovery School District (RSD) to take over and turn around failing schools statewide. Katrina dramatically accelerated the process: the RSD now controls most schools in New Orleans. Since 2008 alone, it has closed about 50 and presided over the opening of an equal number of charters. The district organises admissions and expulsions, and helps allocate school buildings. But staffing, teacher training, transport, catering and much else are left in the hands of schools and the charter chains which run them. A decade ago, teachers in New Orleans were demoralised. The city™s school district had eight different superintendents in the decade to 2005, none of whom managed to curb corruption or control waste. Affluent whites had fled the system: before Katrina New Orleans was roughly 67 percent black and 28 percent white. Today only 6 percent of public-school pupils are white. Under the new regime, schools have improved sharply. In 2004, just 16.5 percent of pupils in New Orleans™ schools beat Louisiana™s state average performance score. By the end of the most recent school year, 31.1 percent did, according to the Cowen Institute at Tulane University. High-school graduation rates have risen from 55 percent before Katrina to 73 percent now; drop-out rates have fallen by half. After Katrina, most of New Orleans™ 7,500 unionised teachers were, in effect, fired. Charter schools have hired some back ” but they have also hired plenty of new, young ambitious teachers, often straight out of college, who work the long days and extra hours without complaint. The challenge now is whether improvement can be sustained. One worry is money. Before Katrina, spending per pupil in New Orleans was $7,900 (Rs.5 lakh) per year, about the same as in Louisiana. Last year, the figure was $12,797 ” much more than the state average. Federal money, doled out to help rebuild after the hurricane, now pays for repairing almost all the city™s school buildings. But it will not last for ever. At some point, the city™s overworked teachers may begin to struggle. Some critics say reform has been imposed paternalistically by white reformers on black communities, and so has only limited support. Yet in a vote on December 6, a new tax for school maintenance was easily approved by the city™s voters. They and their children seem to like what they are getting. (Excerpted and adapted from )

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Fourteen years into the 21st century, the debate around the concept of 21st century learning and consequent responses in curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and skills continues to be unresolved. According to the Partnership of 21st Century Skills (P21), a Washington DC-based think-tank, œin addition to the core academic skills, students must also learn the essential skills for success in today™s world such as critical thinking, communication, problem-solving and collaboration. But to develop these skills in students, teachers need to learn these skills themselves. Self-evidently, 18th century pedagogies and classroom management practices won™t succeed in developing 21st century learning skills in the new generation of students. Hence the urgent need for developing new models of teacher-training and professional development. In a radically changed context, teachers are no longer the sole repositories of knowledge and wisdom as learners have become increasingly independent. Information is equally accessible to teachers as well as students. Therefore collaborative learning and cooperative problem-solving have emerged as the critical skills that teachers must learn to effectively transfer to students. However, creating a culture of collaborative learning is easier said than done. The inspiration has to emanate from the top leadership which must integrate collaborative learning into teacher development programmes. The Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), India™s premier school-leaving examinations board, introduced its continuous and comprehensive evaluation (CCE) scheme in 2010. This major exam reform was implemented in over 13,000 CBSE-affiliated schools countrywide. The rationale of CCE is that it provides continuous rather than year-end evaluation of academic progress and accords equal emphasis to students™ development in life skills, attitudes, beliefs, values, interests and co-curricular education. Under the CCE system, two sets of assessments are required to be made ” formative and summative. The objective of formative assessment is to continuously monitor students™ progress, whereas summative assessment is a measure of how much they have learned by the end of the academic year. There™s considerable confusion within the teachers™ community about formative assessment. Teachers, themselves products of the summative assessment format, have little or no insight into formative assessment design. If they are not conversant with the philosophy, objectives and tools designed to measure learning progression, the very purpose of introducing CCE is defeated. To address this pervasive lacuna, a collaborative problem-solving (CPS) workshop was initiated in Ahlcon School, Delhi, at the start of the academic year 2013-14. A group of six (math, science, English, social sciences, Hindi and arts education) teachers were introduced to ways and means of designing formative assessment tools. To start with, they had a very vague understanding of the objectives and purpose of formative assessment. This ignorance was compounded by their pre-service teacher training and classroom practice in a norms-referenced summative assessment environment. Inevitably, given their traditional  training, they had very limited exposure to CPS. Essentially, CPS is about collaborating to negotiate common challenges by sharing perspectives, defining issues, generating options, developing standards and finally reaching agreement. Teachers ” and later students and teachers ” work together and pool their information, sharing, collating,…

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I™m an engineering graduate with an MBA and two years™ work experience. Would an additional degree from a foreign university improve my career prospects? Navin Chatterjee, Kolkata An MBA from one of the Top 10 global business schools such as INSEAD, Wharton, Harvard, or Stanford will definitely boost your career prospects. Alternatively, you could sign up for a Masters in industrial engineering or supply chain management programme. These qualifications will improve your standing with multinational organisations. After completing my B.Tech degree next year, I want to sign up for a higher study programme. What are my options? Raju Chandran, Chennai You could enroll in M.Tech or MBA programmes. For M.Tech, you need to clear GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering) to qualify for admission into premier institutions such as the IITs, BITS-Pilani, IISc, etc. If you wish to go into management, you need to get high scores in CAT (Common Admission Test), XAT (Xavier Aptitude Test) or CMAT (Common Management Admission Test) to qualify for admission into the IIMs, XLRI and other top-ranked B-schools. I™m a computer engineering student with a passion for programming and graphics. What courses and competitive exams would you recommend to get a job abroad? Shailesh Kulkarni, Pune Among the competitive exams you could write are GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering), GRE (Graduate Record Exam), TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language), IELTS (International English Language Testing System) and GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test). Depending on your area of interest, you may prepare for the appropriate competitive exam. On completion of your engineering degree, you can also sign up for a diploma in advanced computing or diploma in advanced computing arts of the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing. These additional qualifications will improve your job prospects abroad. I™m a second year B.Com student interested in writing the CAT exam. What are the eligibility requirements? And what™s the difference between an MBA and MMS degree programme? Neerja Patel, Ahmedabad The notification for CAT, conducted by the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), is usually advertised in the month of July in all prominent newspaper dailies countrywide, with the exam held in November. The difference between an MBA and MMS (Master of management science) degree is merely of nomenclature. You should ideally apply for admission into institutions recognised by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) offering MBA/MMS programmes. The minimum qualification for admission into MBA/MMS/equivalent study programmes is completion of a bachelor™s degree (10+2+3). Some universities and institutions may require a minimum average of 45-50 percent in the qualifying exam. The final selection into MBA programmes is based on performance in the written test (such as CAT), group discussion and personal interview with weightage accorded to academic record, participation in extra-curricular activities, achievements, and work experience, if any. What jobs are available after I graduate with an MA (literature) degree? I™m not interested in teaching but love writing. Daisy Irani, Mumbai You™ll be eligible for jobs as an online content writer, translator, content developer,…

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Careers in big data analytics offer huge opportunities and rewards for qualified professionals who can quantify information and analyse selected data The exponential growth of the huge and constantly expanding library that is the internet has created an explosive information storage, recall and utility industry known as ˜big data™. According to Margaret Rouse, who writes and manages Whatls.com, TechTarget™s IT encyclopaedia, big data (aka Hadoop) is œan evolving term that describes any voluminous amount of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data that has the potential to be mined for information. The transnational IT hardware and software manufacturing giant IBM describes big data as an œall-encompassing term for any collection of data sets so large or complex that it becomes difficult to process them using traditional data processing applications. Therefore Hadoop is a distributive file system that stores and processes data œby dividing workloads across three, five or thousands of servers, and has created a new profession of big data analytics. Study programmes Unsurprisingly, careers in big data analytics offer huge opportunities and rewards for well-educated professionals with aptitude for quantifying information and critically and objectively analysing selected data from several perspectives. With all industries increasingly relying on data to innovate and improve the next generation of products and services, for individuals with the right mix of professional qualifications, analytical skills and hands-on experience of advanced technologies such as Hadoop, the future in big data is very promising. To make a career in Hadoop and big data technologies, individuals need to be graduates/postgraduates in computer science from the IITs or regional engineering colleges, with online training and some experience of Hadoop and big data technologies. To acquaint engineering graduates with Hadoop, several start-ups such as LearnSocial.com and Intellipat.com are offering online Hadoop developer and data analytics programs. Remuneration prospects LearnSocial.com, founded by Raju Vanapala in June 2014, is the country™s fastest growing portal for online big data Hadoop courses. The platform enables industry experts rather than academics to train learners online, and over the past seven months has emerged as India™s largest globally accessible platform for big data training programs. With big data/Hadoop-trained professionals urgently required by almost all industries, remuneration packages are good, starting at Rs.3.5-5 lakh per annum. Trained professionals with two-three years™ experience take home Rs.9-10 lakh per year. œThe Indian big data processing industry is predicted to grow five-fold with aggregate revenues of $1 billion (Rs.6,154 crore) by 2015, and acquire a 4 percent global market share. As the size of stored data rises, the use of Hadoop technologies will also increase commensurately. The demand for experts in this area is outpacing supply as this becomes the preferred platform for data management and analytics, says Vanapala, founder and CEO of LearnSocial.com. A computer applications postgraduate of Acharya Nagarjuna University, Guntur, Vanapala went solo immediately after graduation and promoted Way2Online Interactive Pvt. Ltd in 2004 which with over 40 million users countrywide, is India™s leading advertising-driven cell phones free SMS service provider. Professional profile Last June, Vanapala promoted Way…

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An Ahmedabad-based programme which celebrates children who implement socio-economic development programmes in their school neighbourhoods, has ignited the imagination of 1.35 million children and positively impacted 22 million lives in over 30 countries Dilip Thakore & Summiya Yasmeen A NEW CHILD EMPOWERMENT and learning-by-doing movement in primary and secondary education centred in Ahmedabad, is capturing the imagination of children, parents and teachers not only in India but around the world. Conceptualised and launched in 2009 by Kiran Bir Sethi, an alumna of the top-ranked National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad and founder-director of the Riverside School (estb.2001), ranked the #2 international day school in the EducationWorld India School Rankings 2014, Design For Change (DFC) is a programme which encourages and celebrates children who implement socio-economic development programmes in the neighbourhood of their schools. Since 2009, this programme has ignited the imagination and attracted the participation of 1.35 million children in 200,000 schools spanning over 30 countries, to initiate social impact programmes — school infrastructure development, waste management, reafforestation, adult literacy, sanitation and health awareness — which have positively impacted the lives of 22 million people worldwide. Thus far the programme has recorded over 11,000 children-led stories of change which propagate DFC’s I Can inspirational credo. According to Sethi, she was inspired by her education in the blue-chip NID to ideate a design for the DFC programme — motivated by the can-do activism of Mahatma Gandhi — and to pilot it in Ahmedabad through Riverside students. After transforming this hub of textiles and commerce into “India’s most child-friendly city”, during the past five years she has rolled out the DFC programme nationally and internationally, a rare accomplishment in intellectually insular post-independence India. Unusually aware that great ideas need to be communicated through hype, hoopla and high-profile celebrations of achievement, Sethi and the Riverside/DFC management team stages  an annual Design For Change School Challenge in Ahmedabad — a celebratory event in which the 100 most impactful children-led initiatives from around the country are adjudicated by a high-powered jury, and are awarded cash and other prizes. The latest superbly choreographed and widely publicised DFC School Challenge and I CAN Awards event staged in the spacious premises of the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India, Ahmedabad on November 22, 2014 was witnessed by your editors. The day-long event showcased and feted the social impact initiatives of 425 enterprising students and their schools in the presence of a stellar cast of supportive guests of honour including recently-retired test cricket legend Rahul Dravid, nine-times World Billiards champion Geet Sethi (Kiran Bir Sethi’s supportive husband) and well-known actor Rahul Bose. Student-teacher teams of 100 shortlisted schools (from among 2,000 schools from 26 states across the country which submitted entries for the challenge) were presented cash prizes aggregating Rs.7 lakh, in addition to other awards. “The Design for Change initiative was founded on the powerful premise: ‘I CAN’.  More specifically, children can. By encouraging students to address the challenges that most affect their communities, the DFC programme empowers them to find…

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FOR AN IMPATIENTLY OPTIMISTIC COUNTRY banking on a change in government to improve its fortunes, news that the newly-inducted Narendra Modi-led NDA government has established a dedicated Union ministry for vocational education and training (VET) ” a first in the nation™s history ” is as overdue as it is welcome. Modeled on the lines of the UK™s Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, India™s Union ministry for skill development and entrepreneurship was hitherto a constituent of the jumbo ministry for skill development, entrepreneurship, youth affairs and sports. But since November 2014, it has become a full-fledged ministry in its own right. Carved out to realise Modi™s grand Skill India mission, the new ministry is expected to make good the national skills deficit, the outcome of the neglect of VET for over six decades since independence. The official expectation is this ministry will bring some order in the chaos that has prevailed in the skills space under successive governments at the Centre and in the states. However, six months after its formation and two ministers later, India™s skills ministry is still trying to find its bearings. It™s yet to form a distinct identity for itself and present a roadmap to address the ground-level challenges coming in the way of creating a viable and sustainable skills ecosystem countrywide. Despite the launch of a high decibel advertising campaign of the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and the STAR trainee-incentivising scheme (under which trainees who sign up for and complete approved VET programmes receive Rs.10,000 from the Union government), the pursuit of skills development continues to rank low on the aspiration quotient. That™s because for all their lamentations about lack of skilled labour, Indian employers are less than enthusiastic when it comes to introducing attractive salary differentials between skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled employees. Simultaneously, there haven™t been any visible initiatives in Central government ministries/departments to aggressively promote either legacy skills development or newly minted ones, even as a decision on the recommendations of a committee of secretaries on consolidation of various government skill development schemes hangs in the balance. Both the National Skill Development Agency (NSDA) and NSDC have been brought under the jurisdiction of the new ministry for skill development and entrepreneurship. But the terms of engagement between the NSDA and NSDC under the new dispensation are hazy, best exemplified by the status of sector skill councils (SSCs). SSCs are industry-led bodies tasked with the development of national occupational standards (NOS) for jobs in their respective domains under the national skills qualification framework (NSQF) guidelines, on the basis of which VET providers are required to design course material. Moreover, SSCs are also expected to play a role in the assessment and certification process of trainees. But SSCs are dependent on NSDC for funding. Hence, the NSDC is in a position to exercise control over them. Again, since NSDA is in charge of the NSQF roll-out, it™s closely involved with the functioning of sector skill councils. Yet, as things stand today, NSDA has very…

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AT THE END OF THIS MONTH, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley will present the first budget of the second BJP-led NDA government at the Centre following the rout of the Congress-led UPA government which (mis)ruled India for two consecutive five-year terms (2004-2014). Although Jaitley presented the Union budget 2014-15 last July shortly after the new government was sworn in, it had all the markings of a status quo interim budget. Now as he prepares to present the first fully-fledged Union budget of the BJP/NDA government, he has the opportunity to do justice to India™s beleaguered education sector and set it on the road to comprehensive reform. Although it™s fanciful to expect the finance minister to fulfill the BJP manifesto™s pledge to raise public spending on education to 6 percent of GDP which would require the Centre™s outlay of Rs.68,728 crore in 2014-15 ” equivalent to 0.24 percent of GDP ” to increase ten times to reach 2 percent of GDP (the rest to be contributed by state governments), Jaitley should at least mobilise and allocate an additional Rs.109,507 crore for education on the capital account to make all 1.45 million government primaries countrywide compliant with s.19 and Schedule of the Right to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009. Ever since the RTE Act was unanimously ” and belatedly ” passed by Parliament in 2009 following an enabling amendment of the Constitution (Article 21-A) to make it obligatory for the state to provide free and compulsory elementary (class I-VIII) education to all children in the 6-14 age group, political populism, judicial activism, NGO interest, bureaucratic manipulations, proclamations of government-friendly academia and aspirations of underserved populations and village communities have been aroused by RTE hype. But this hype has proved to be an over-sized bubble. Enabling legislation which promised to be a radical game-changer in Indian education in 2009 has remained a non-starter five years after the RTE Act became operational on April 1, 2010. However a positive feature of the RTE Act is that it defines a model school in s.19 and specifies norms and standards for quality schooling in the Schedule of the Act. These norms include teacher-pupil ratios, classroom strength, physical infrastructure and academic facilities required for meaningful teaching-learning transactions. Inevitably, the model school prescribed in the Schedule of the Act has cost implications. As reported in the latest ˜flash statistics™ of the District Information for School Education (DISE), a unit of the Delhi-based NUEPA, the great majority of government primary-upper primary/elementary  schools are way behind the specifications prescribed by the Schedule. Therefore, a substantial but not impossible one-time capital expenditure effort is required to satisfy RTE Act norms and standards as detailed in s.19 and the Schedule. A comprehensive calculus of the one-time capital expenditure required to make all government schools RTE Act compliant ” after taking into account already installed facilities ” is set out above. I don™t believe a one-time resource mobilisation effort of Rs.110,000 crore to place government elementaries back on track is a…

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THE PINEGROVE SCHOOL, DHARAMPUR (district Solan, Himachal Pradesh), hosted the 75th IPSC Principals™ Conclave to mark the platinum jubilee celebrations of the Indian Public Schools™ Conference (IPSC) in early December. The three-day conclave was inaugurated by Shomie Das, former principal of Mayo College, Ajmer, Lawrence School, Sanawar and Doon School, Dehradun, and Sachin Pilot, president of the Rajasthan Pradesh Congress Committee and former Union minister of corporate affairs. Sixty principals, seven former chairpersons, 25 other special guests and six observer principals from across the country attended the conclave. The conclave also featured a workshop (˜Nurtured Heart Approach™) conducted by educationist Howard Glasser and Dr. JoAnne Woodard, executive director of Sallie B. Howard School, North Carolina, USA, on modern methodologies for the management of education institutions. Moreover, at the conference™s annual general meeting, six selected schools were invited to become members of IPSC which now has an aggregate membership of 81 residential schools. Kidzee™s new curriculum KIDZEE, THE LARGEST PRESCHOOL chain in Asia with over 1,350 early childhood education centres in India, launched its interactive iLLUME curriculum in Mumbai on January 27. In the first phase, 20 percent of Kidzee centres countrywide will introduce the new curriculum which will be gradually introduced in all Kidzee centres nationwide. Developed by Kidzee after two years of intensive research and content development, the new curriculum is age-appropriate and contextual for preparing infants for formal learning. Speaking on the occasion, K.V.S. Seshasai, CEO, Zee Learn, said: œGlobal trends and the needs of parents and children in various social, economic, and demographic groups have influenced early childhood care and education in India. Having touched the lives of more than 400,000 children countrywide during the past decade, we are focused on nurturing the unique potential of every child. Interactive iLLUME is a specially designed curriculum and pedagogy which includes English Readiness and School Readiness programmes to enable children to acquire language, mathematical, cognitive, social and emotional skills. FICCI schools conference THE TAMIL NADU STATE COUNCIL of the Delhi-based Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) organised a school education conference to deliberate on the theme ˜Enriching & Empowering School Education ” Tamil Nadu Vision 2023™ at Hotel Le Royal Meridien, Guindy, Chennai, on January 31. More than 500 delegates including teachers, correspondents, school administrators, and principals from schools statewide attended the day-long conference. œFICCI has a mandate to create employable professionals for industry. This awareness prompted us to organise this first-of-its-kind school education conference to bridge the widening gap between school education and industry expectations, said M. Rafeeque Ahmed, chairman of the FICCI Tamil Nadu State Council, speaking on the occasion. Inaugural HUII conference THE HARVARD US INDIA INITIATIVE (HUII), an organisation of students of Harvard University, Boston, hosted its inaugural Harvard India Initiative Conference 2015 in New Delhi on January 11-12. The conference attracted more than 50 thought leaders from around the world to discuss and critique India™s future. Among the speakers were Jairam Ramesh, MP; Piyush Goyal, Union minister of state for power,…

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Gujarat Abysmal TET results ONLY 20.15 PERCENT OF SCHOOL principals in Gujarat who wrote the Teachers™ Eligibility Test conducted on December 20, passed the exam, confirmed a Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Board (GSHSEB) official addressing media personnel in Ahmedabad on January 1. Of the 11,121 principals who registered for the examination, 7,770 wrote the test and a mere 1,566 ” 1,351 men and 215 women ” passed the exam. The proportion of successful male candidates was 21.4 percent and 14.76 percent among women. In a state where English language learning has been neglected for several decades, only one principal who opted to write the test in English passed, and none of the 31 who wrote it in Hindi cleared it. The official said that of the 7,770 principals who wrote the exam, 4,845 were from the unreserved category, of whom 1,078 passed. Haryana Government primary school tests AFTER ABOLITION OF TESTS FOR students of classes I-VIII for five years, the Haryana state government is set to re-introduce monthly tests this month to monitor the learning outcomes of children in government schools, according to a circular dated January 1 issued by T.C. Gupta, principal secretary, school education ministry.District elementary education officers attributed poor learning outcomes to the no-detention until class VIII provision of the Right to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009. Under the proposed monthly tests schema, question papers of the main semester examinations, conducted in October and March, will be prepared by the education ministry for the sake of uniformity, while in the other months tests will be conducted by teachers themselves under the supervision of the headmaster/principal of government primaries. The circular urges teachers to evaluate answer-sheets with œutmost integrity, since there™s a œsubstantial mismatch with the results of papers marked by state board examiners. Odisha VET education initiative THE ODISHA STATE GOVERNMENT is all set to introduce vocational education and training (VET) in public secondary schools in the new academic year starting June. The VET courses will be launched under the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan secondary schools development programme, education minister Debi Prasad Mishra announced in the legislative assembly. To begin with, VET courses will be introduced in 30 schools statewide on an experimental basis and the programme will gradually be expanded to cover all secondary and higher secondary schools in the state, the minister said on January 8. œStudents will be assessed and counselled in class IX to identify those keen on vocational education courses rather than conventional higher secondary education, the minister said. Initially, VET will be offered in two subjects ” information technology and automobile technology ” and successful students will be awarded nationally acceptable certification, he added. Jammu & Kashmir Embezzlement scandal A CRIMINAL CASE HAS BEEN registered against seven education ministry officials by the Jammu and Kashmir State Vigilance Organisation (JKSVO) for embezzlement and misappropriation of government funds estimated at several lakhs in the Kunzar zone of Baramulla district during the period 2007-12. Charge sheets have been filed against…

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œMy parents came in search of the American Dream, and they caught it. To them, America was not so much a place, it was an idea. My dad and mom told my brother and me that we came to America to be Americans. Not Indian-Americans, simply Americans. Bobby Jindal, Indian-origin governor of the US state of Louisiana in a prepared remark released by his office (January 16) œWe have just been hit at the heart of our liberty. Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, after the Charlie Hebdo attacks that shook France (Time, January 19) œBJP has got the world™s most beautiful face with it, i.e, Narendra Modi and his leadership. After that we are just stars who are revolving around him. Kiran Bedi, Delhi chief ministerial aspirant, after joining the BJP on prime minister Narendra Modi, previously a target of her criticism (January 19) œIf we don™t fix the problem, we will have hundreds and millions of job seeking, hungry youth with little qualification and no educated worldview in the next decade or two. If we don™t want this time bomb of human mediocrity to explode on us, let us work on reforming rural education now. Chetan Bhagat, well-known author, on ASER 2014  which reveals that learning outcomes of primary school children in rural India are abysmal (Times of India, January 26) œIndia will succeed so long as it is not splintered along the lines of religious faith, as long as it is not splintered along any lines, and it is unified as one nation. Barack Obama, US President, in a town hall address to young Indians in Delhi (January 27) œSave the girl child is not a new battle cry… Every government pays homage to it. India has laws and projects galore to deal with the problem, yet the crisis of dwindling number of girls continues. Patralekha Chatterjee, journalist and columnist, on the BJP government™s Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao campaign (Deccan Chronicle, January 29)

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STUDENTS OF KOLKATA™S SHOWPIECE Jadavpur University (JU, estb. 1955) have won a major and improbable victory with the resignation of vice chancellor Abhijit Chakraborty in early January. With the West Bengal assembly elections scheduled for next year and the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) party, which ended 34 years of rule in West Bengal of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) and its allies in a spectacular electoral victory in 2011, now embroiled in the Saradha chit fund scam and experiencing the desertion of prominent members to a resurgent BJP in the state, fiery chief minister Mamata Banerjee visited the JU campus on January 12 to announce Chakraborty™s œvoluntary resignation. A majority of JU students backed by a section of teachers had been continuously agitating for Chakraborty™s removal, following a brutal September 17, 2014 police assault on students demanding an independent investigation into the molestation of a woman student on the JU campus on August 28. Ironically, the TMC government had confirmed Chakraborty™s appointment as vice chancellor ” he was interim/acting vice chancellor at the time of the police crackdown on students ” on October 6 for a five-year term. Chakraborty™s resignation is a big climb-down for chief minister Mamata Banerjee because informed opinion is unanimous that he had been hand-picked by the TMC to counter the CPM-affiliated faculty and students™ unions which are still powerful in JU. In 2012, Chakraborty was the TMC government™s first director of the Indian Institute of Engineering Science, Shibpur, and was recommended for the post of vice chancellor of JU. But an independent search panel appointed Dr. Souvik Bhattacharyya as JU™s vice chancellor in July 2012. However, when Bhattacharyya resigned in October, 2013 after a mere six months in the VC™s office ” the fifth vice chancellor to resign after the TMC government was sworn-in in 2011 ” Chakraborty was appointed interim VC of JU. But a year later, incidents of molestation of the woman student and police crackdown on protesting students shattered the peace on the JU campus. Despite this, Chakraborty was appointed vice chancellor last October for a five-year term. Although Banerjee has acceded to the JU students™ demand for Chakraborty™s resignation, it™s unlikely an independent academic will succeed him. Banerjee and the TMC top brass are determined to appoint another loyalist as JU™s next vice chancellor, and it™s unlikely that any of the academics shortlisted by the search panel prior to Chakraborty™s appointment ” Dr. Anupam Basu of IIT-Kharagpur, Sujoy Saha of BESU, and Dr. Rajat Acharya, dean of JU™s arts faculty ” will be considered. Academic opinion is unanimous that following the example of the opposition CPM which thoroughly infiltrated ” and ruined ” West Bengal™s higher education institutions, the TMC is intent on establishing œpartycracy in educational institutions with vice chancellors serving as servants of the party. œThere is no movement, no activity inside the JU campus that does not have a political agenda ” either overt or covert. The faculty and student unions are politicised and there is continuous…

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THE LATEST ANNUAL STATUS of Education Report (ASER) 2014, published by the highly respected Mumbai-based NGO Pratham and released last month ” the largest voluntary data collection and assessment of primary education learning outcomes year-on-year countrywide exercise, conducted by over 30,000 field researchers who covered 577 of India™s 673 districts to test 569,229 children in 341,070 households in reading and numeracy capabilities ” presents a depressing picture of primary/elementary education in rural India. However, even as reading skills and mathematical ability have stagnated or deteriorated throughout the country, in Tamil Nadu™s 37,000 rural primaries, the reading, comprehension, and math capabilities of children have shown marked improvement. According to ASER 2014, the percentage of class V children in Tamil Nadu (pop. 72 million) who can read and understand class II textbooks has risen from 31.9 percent in 2013 to 46.9 percent in 2014. Although the reading skills of class V children measured by this metric in Himachal Pradesh (75.2 percent) and Haryana (68.1 percent) are much better, they don™t significantly differ from the year 2013, whereas reading skills in Tamil Nadu have risen by 15 percentage points over 2013. In maths too, the proportion of class V children who can divide a three-digit number by a one-digit number has risen from 14 percent in 2013 to 25.8 percent last year. These improved learning outcomes in the state™s rural primaries have silenced critics and educationists who had cast aspersions on the effectiveness of the activity-based learning (ABL) pedagogy launched by the Tamil Nadu government in 2007 in all its 51,000 government schools. According to state education ministry officials stung by the poor showing of children in previous ASER surveys, educationists of the ministry™s elementary education department and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) programme made a concerted and coordinated effort to improve reading and math skills of primary school children. According to K. Devarajan, director of school education, 40,000 additional teachers were recruited during the period 2012-2014 to focus on students with poor reading and math skills. œWe conducted statewide assessment surveys to identify academically weak students, and started monitoring implementation of ABL and advanced learning pedagogies. Moreover, we encouraged children to use maths kits and made teachers and education officers accountable by reviewing their performance, said special project director (SSA) Pooja Kulkarni in an interview with The Hindu (January 14). Although informed academics acknowledge that the effort invested in improving learning outcomes of children in the state™s rural primaries is commendable, they warn against complacency. ASER 2014 indicates that although a higher 32.8 percent of class III students can read words of a class I text, they can™t read entire passages, and that although a higher 56 percent of class III students can recognise numbers up to 99, they cannot do subtraction. ASER 2014 also indicates a steady increase in private school enrolment in rural Tamil Nadu to 31.9 percent as against 29 percent in 2013. Educationists ascribe this to poor teaching-learning standards in government schools which despite the free mid-day meal…

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DESPITE A 28 PERCENT HIGHER budgetary outlay for education (Rs.24,715.19 crore) in 2014-15 and the state government™s commitment to re-building the much-awaited Nalanda University, higher education in Bihar (pop. 99 million) is in the doldrums. All 254 undergrad colleges affiliated with eight state universities are experiencing a severe faculty crunch with most of them making do with less than half the sanctioned number. However with state assembly elections due to be called this year, in a bid to placate the influential educated middle class, the ruling JD (U) government has initiated a recruitment drive to fill all faculty vacancies in higher education. In a recruitment ad of September 2014, the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) invited applications from qualified candidates to fill 3,364 vacancies of assistant professors (lecturers) in all eight state universities of Bihar. An extended deadline of January 5, 2015 granted by Patna high court to apply for the vacant positions, passed off without any new problems. If all goes well and the appointments are made, the ruling JD (U) will claim credit for this in the forthcoming assembly elections scheduled for November. Yet the fact that during its decade in power in Bihar, the JD (U) has presided over continuous degradation of higher education institutions in the state, cannot be glossed over. œIn reality few classes have been held in a majority of colleges/universities with only admissions and examinations being conducted. Gone are the days when you walked into a college and saw a packed classroom and academic activity. Institutions of higher education in the state bear a ghostly look amid collapsing walls, decaying furniture and missing teachers, says Dr. S.P. Singh, acting dean of SLK College, affiliated with BSBS University (Muzaffarpur), in the district town of Sitamarhi. The pathetic condition of state government universities in Bihar where academic standards have been slipping continuously for several decades to the extent that their certificates carry little weight, is unsurprising. Faculty positions were last filled in 2003 when nearly 1,000 teachers were appointed but inevitably, the recruitment was marred by allegations of caste bias and corruption with patently unsuitable professors and lecturers appointed. According to a 2013 report, Patna University has a sanctioned strength of 925 teachers against which the actual number is only 395. Likewise Lalit Narayan Mishra University has only 1,043 faculty against the sanctioned 2,062, Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University 764 (1,529), Jaiprakash University 469 (699), Baba Saheb Ambedkar Bihar University 1,047 (1,862), Magadh University 1,725 (3,101), B.N. Mandal University 795 (1,440), and Veer Kunwar Singh University 548 (916). Comments Dr. Vinay Kantha, associate professor of mathematics in Patna University: œWhen I joined the university as a lecturer in 1973, there were nearly 1,000 teachers in Patna University. Now the number is less than 400 while the student count has gone up many times. During the past decade under the JD (U) government, Bihar has accorded impressive 10 percent-plus annual rates of GDP growth. Despite this the education sector has been neglected and the failure to recruit…

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THE POPULAR REACTION IN indian academia and industry to the tenth consecutive Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2014, published by the globally respected Mumbai-based NGO Pratham (estb.1994) and formally released in Delhi on January 13, is that the BIMARU (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) northern states of the Hindi belt are depressing national averages and obscuring improved learning outcomes in other academically and industrially advanced states of the Indian Union. Undoubtedly, the declining trend in learning outcomes of rural India primaries as reported by Pratham, which mobilised 30,000 youth (mainly undergrad students) to survey 341,070 households and test 569,229 students in 577 rural districts countrywide, is alarming. For instance, only 25 percent of children in class III can read a class II text fluently. This number improves to under half in class V. Even in class VIII just before children enter high school, 25 percent of them cannot read and comprehend class II texts adequately. Maths learning outcomes ” which hindutva zealots and academics claim originated in ancient India ” are even worse. In 2012, a mere 26.3 percent of class III children could do a two-digit subtraction sum. Two years later, only 25.3 percent can. These devastating conclusions of ASER 2014, indicative of reckless promotion of ill-prepared children into higher classes, have provoked nationwide ” albeit fleeting ” outrage. œWhile government concentrates on revving up the economy, the poor state of Indian education is a ticking demographic time bomb. In a country with the largest proportion of young people, economists have long talked about the demographic dividend, but if large sections of these Indians remain functionally uneducated and unskilled, this demographic dividend can soon turn into a demographic disaster, thundered a lead editorial in the Times of India (January 15). ASER 2014 also blasts the myth that learning outcomes in the rural hinterlands of industrially advanced states are much better than national averages. In Maharashtra, where 27,953 children in 33 districts and 975 villages were tested, only 53.5 percent of class V children can read class II textbooks ” a decline from 59.5 percent in 2013. Moreover, the percentage of class V children who can do elementary two-digit division sums is a paltry 18.9 in India™s most industrially advanced state, which reportedly accounts for 25 percent of the country™s industrial output. Unsurprisingly, children™s learning outcomes in private primaries in rural Maharashtra are significantly better than in government schools. The percentage of children in class III in private primaries who can read words at 78.4 percent is higher than 70.9 percent in government school primaries. Moreover, 76.6 percent of private school children in class III can recognise numbers (from 1-10) compared to 61.6 percent in government schools. Little wonder that over 20 percent of class I-V and over 55 percent of class VI-VIII children in rural Maharashtra have fled to fee-levying private primaries notwithstanding the fact that government schools are free-of-charge and provide a free mid-day meal as well. œA 100 million children have gone through school…

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ON INDIA™S 66th REPUBLIC day (January 26), the Union government invited public participation on the website http://www.mygov.in to help prepare the long-awaited New Education Policy (NEP). A set of 33 ˜themes™ have been identified ” 20 in higher education and 13 in school education ” for public participation and debate. According to a note of the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry, œthe objective of the consultation process is to ensure that an inclusive, participatory and holistic approach is undertaken, which takes into consideration expert opinions, field experiences, empirical research, stakeholder feedback, as well as lessons learnt from best practices. The slogan of the new NEP initiative is œeducate, encourage, enlighten. Closure date: March 31. Among the 13 themes of school education on which public comments and suggestions are invited  are improving learning outcomes, extending the outreach of secondary and senior secondary education, strengthening vocational education, reforming school exam systems, revamping teacher education, etc. Likewise, the 20 themes on higher education opened up for public debate include governance reforms, ranking and accreditation, regulation, role of Central institutions, improving state universities, integrating skill development programmes in higher education, promoting online courses and technology enabled learning, among others. The invitation to the public to participate in the process of formulation of the New Education Policy 2015, to revise and update the NEP of 1986 modified in 1992, is in consonance with the BJP™s 2014 election manifesto which had promised a new education policy. To her credit, shortly after her surprise appointment as Union HRD minister, former TV star Smriti Irani said the new NEP would involve public participation and exhaustive public consultations starting from children and parents from the village to block level in a process that could stretch over a year. Unsurprisingly, this break away from the traditional process is causing disquiet within academia and educationists. œThere™s a lot of confusion within academia about the new NEP Policy formulation which is professional work requiring an orderly process. It involves identifying issues followed by choice analysis done by education experts. Processing a huge volume of suggestions from the lay public will be an impossible task, says Dr. Veera Gupta, professor of educational policy at the National University of Educational Planning and Administration, Delhi, speaking œnot in any official capacity but as a citizen. Although there™s some substance in Gupta™s argument, the plain truth is that for the past 67 years since independence, education policy and syllabus formulation has been restricted to education bureaucrats and selected experts with disastrous results. In early childhood, primary, secondary and higher education, post-independence India, which still hosts the world™s largest population of illiterates, lags way behind Western and even parvenu South-east Asian countries. œA new inclusive process is needed to formulate education policies and syllabuses. Contemporary parents and even children are well-informed about latest trends and developments in advanced countries which they learn from gadgets, games, e-books, social media and the web. The involvement of consumers of education with policy formulation is a welcome development, says Dr.…

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THANK YOU FOR the brilliant cover story ˜India™s liberal arts renaissance™ (EW January). You have perceptively linked the failure of India™s socio-economic development effort to the continuous neglect of liberal arts education. Over the past six decades since independence, government and private initiatives have focused disproportionately on science, technology and career-oriented education, ignoring the study of the humanities and liberal arts. The current climate of religious intolerance and crude public discourse are outcomes of neglecting the study of history, sociology and the social sciences. Congratulations to the founders of Ashoka University for breaking away from the mainstream and giving India its first liberal arts-focused university. I hope their initiative will inspire many more education entrepreneurs to do the same. Aarti Roy Bangalore Commendable criticism THE 2014 EDUCATION retrospective is well-written (Special report ˜2014: Return of Hindutva fear in academia™, EW January). After ten years of a corrupt and ineffective Congress-led UPA government, most citizens welcomed the victory of the BJP which promised development for all and doubling of education expenditure to 6 percent of GDP. But to the misfortune of India™s children and youth, the new BJP government is preoccupied with forwarding the RSS™ hindutva agenda in Indian education. Instead of drawing up a roadmap to upgrade infrastructure in government schools, improving learning outcomes, recruiting trained teachers and reforming curriculums, the Union HRD ministry is busy issuing diktats to celebrate Sanskrit Week and Good Governance Day in schools and colleges. Thumbs up to EducationWorld for taking the lead in exposing the BJP government for losing sight of the real issues of Indian education. Consistent media and public scrutiny is needed to force the HRD ministry to do a mid-course correction. Vinay Sharma Mumbai Worst crimes RE YOUR EDITORIAL ˜Checking child sexual abuse pandemic™ (EW December), the worst crime against children is to exploit them sexually. Another glaring violation of children™s rights is child labour. Even though it™s banned in India, children are routinely employed as domestic help in many Indian households. Children who should be in school and learning, are made to work in homes, shops and industrial establishments. It™s unfortunate and shameful that Indian society and its citizens don™t care for the welfare of children ” the country™s future. Mahesh Kapasi Delhi Great honour IT™S A MATTER OF honour and pride for The Jain International School (TJIS), Kanpur, to be ranked #1 in Uttar Pradesh and Kanpur in the category of day-cum-boarding schools in the EW India School Rankings 2014 (EW September). On behalf of the entire TJIS family, I extend my heartiest appreciation for acknowledging and acclaiming our achievements and potential. I assure you we will continuously endeavour to serve society and improve ourselves. Ira Bhat Principal, The Jain International School, Kanpur Ranking confusion THANK YOU FOR publishing a very detailed analysis of the CISCE and CBSE class X/XII results together with the EW India School Rankings 2014 (EW September). We are very proud that New Horizon School, Bangalore is ranked #1 all-India in the class X ICSE…

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THE MASSACRE OF 132 SCHOOL children in Peshawar, the daylight murder of 12 Charlie Hebdo satirical journalists in Paris and the open, uninterrupted and continuous atrocities inflicted upon women and children by Boko Haram in Nigeria and in Iraq by ISIS militants claiming to be warriors of Islam, has brought this ancient theology ” once renowned for its egalitarianism and promotion of the arts, sciences and refined civil discourse ” into global disrepute. A great disservice is being done to the estimated billion law-abiding Muslims by rabid preachers promoting militant Islam. With a clutch of despotic princes and quasi-literate prelates hell-bent on preventing modern, liberal interpretations of Islam and the Quran, the silence of the Muslim intelligentsia and educated middle class around the world is widely being interpreted as tacit approval. This is particularly true of educated Muslims in India who have permitted clerics and vote-bank-driven politicians to speak for the country™s 150 million-strong Muslim community, which has arguably the most prolonged experience of democratic adult franchise and governance than of any Muslim community worldwide. In this context it™s pertinent to note that leaders of the community who led India and Pakistan to independence ” Jinnah, Maulana Azad, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, among others ” were highly educated individuals with an enlightened nation-building outlook and genuine interest in the progress and development of their community, beggared by the divide-and-rule politics of the British colonial administration. Therefore, it™s a mystery why in post-independence India the educated Muslim middle class has allowed leadership of this community with a long history of culture, learning and entrepreneurship, to pass into the hands of orthodox imams and self-serving politicians who have little interest in negotiating a mutually beneficial modus vivendi with fellow citizens of all communities and religious persuasions. Quite clearly, religious intolerance is absurd and at odds with new global realities in which cooperation across sectarian, political and ideological fault-lines is the only alternative to perpetual low-intensity civil strife. As India™s shameful periodic communal riots have proven, religious minorities cutting across all classes suffer disproportionate loss of lives, property and business at the hands of majoritarian fundamentalists and bigots. In the circumstances, India™s substantial Muslim intelligentsia and refined middle class have no option but to assume responsibility and provide intelligent leadership to the Muslim masses to avail the protection of the Constitution and the law and enable them to enjoy the full benefits of the officially secular and socio-economically egalitarian Indian state. Admittedly, given that Wahabi radicals have a stranglehold on the community, this is a dangerous undertaking. But the well-being of the community and survival of its educated middle class depends on it. Indian scientists need to look ahead RISIBLE ASSERTIONS ABOUT THE fantastic achievements of unheralded scientists of ancient India overshadowed the deliberations of the 102nd Indian Science Congress held in Mumbai on January 3-7. Unsubstantiated claims about airplanes and inter-planetary travel in the Vedic (1,750 BCE-500 BCE) period, and proof of plastic surgery being practiced in the…

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If instead of the cover story in this issue of EducationWorld you first read the special report feature, you™ll appreciate that even the youngest children are endowed with natural intelligence from birth and their brains are almost completely developed by the time they attain the age of eight. But, children™s brains don™t develop automatically; they need to be built through encouragement, age-appropriate stimulation and learning-by-doing play activities. Hence the critical importance of early childhood care and education (ECCE), whose cause your editors have championed ” EducationWorld has convened five unprecedented Early Childhood Education Global Conferences during the past quinquennium. This sustained endeavour has borne some fruit. In September 2013, in its last few months in office, the Congress-led UPA II government at the Centre approved a National Early Childhood Care and Education policy draft of the Union ministry of women and child development, which is now awaiting implementation under the BJP-led NDA government which was voted to power in New Delhi last May (2014). By a happy, not wholly intended coincidence, our cover story provides considerable evidence of the latent capabilities of children to innovate valuable socio-economic reform ideas, and in the process improve their academic knowledge and develop life skills. After graduating from the highly and rightly acclaimed National Institute of Design in 1989 and promoting the Riverside School, Ahmedabad in 2001, educationist Kiran Bir Sethi ideated and launched Design for Change in 2009. DFC is a unique programme which encourages, rewards and celebrates primary-secondary schools, which prompt their students to undertake beneficial, even if small socio-economic projects in their neighbourhood. Since then, the annual DFC I CAN School Challenge, under which students plan and execute reform projects through DFC™s feel-imagine-do-share (FIDS) framework and learn by doing, has enthused over 32,000 schools and 100,000 students countrywide, and has spread to over 30 countries. Every year, a growing number of class I-X children in India and abroad, with the support of their school managements and teachers, are addressing local social issues such as environment despoliation, garbage management, child marriages, gender discrimination etc, and are cooperatively ideating and implementing schemes/campaigns to ameliorate, if not abolish, them. The story of the evolution of the DFC I CAN School Challenge programme and its positive impact upon students and local communities in India and a growing number of countries worldwide, is the subject matter of our cover story in this issue of EducationWorld. It™s an inspiring story of how children who are usually obliged to be passive recipients of knowledge and wisdom under traditional chalk-n-talk pedagogies, can transform into change-agents in their local communities, and in the process discover the joy and purpose of learning.

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