EducationWorld February 18 Archives

Cover Story

Fee Regulation Fever: End of the road for India’s top private schools?

A December 27 judgement of the Gujarat high court upholding the Gujarat Self-Financed Schools (Regulation of Fees) Act, 2017 which prescribes absurdly low fees ceilings for all primary, secondary and higher secondary schools, has come as a thunderclap for private independent schools countrywide – Dilip Thakore For the more clued-up among the managements of India’s 320,000 private schools struggling to bridge the widening gap in K-12 education between India and not only the developed industrial countries of the West, but also with neighbouring China and the emergent countries of South-east Asia, new year celebrations were surely clouded. On December 27, a two-judge bench of the Gujarat high court upheld the Gujarat Self-Financed Schools (Regulation of Fees) Act, 2017, passed by the state legislative assembly in March last year. The Act prescribes upper fees limits of Rs.15,000, Rs.25,000 and Rs.27,000 per year for private primary, secondary and higher secondary schools in the state. Rejecting around 40 petitions which challenged the constitutional validity of the Act, a division bench of the high court (Chief Justice R. Subhash Reddy and Justice V.M. Pancholi) ruled that the state legislature is entitled to regulate the tuition and other fees of not only schools affiliated with the state board, but also of schools affiliated with the pan-India Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations, both based in Delhi. For the past 70 years since independence, schools affiliated with these national exam boards — and the small number affiliated with offshore exam boards such as Cambridge Assessment International Education (formerly CIE), UK, International Baccalaureate, Geneva, and Edexcel, UK — have been accepted as being beyond the administrative purview of state governments. Essentially, counsel for the petitioners argued that to set common tuition fee ceilings for all primary, secondary and higher secondary schools, which have invested varying amounts in infrastructure, teacher training, teacher-pupil ratios, sports and games facilities, is violative of Article 14 of the Constitution which guarantees all citizens (i.e, promoters of private schools) equality before the law. Indeed legal eagle and former Union minister Kapil Sibal who argued the petitioners’ appeal in the Supreme Court which was admitted on January 15 and listed for February 1, contended that the per student expenditure incurred by the Central government in its 1,140 Kendriya Vidyalaya schools is Rs.98,000 per year and therefore the tuition fees of Rs.15,000 for primary, Rs.25,000 for secondary and Rs.27,000 for higher secondary schools in Gujarat were ex facie absurd and violative of Article 14. In the Gujarat high court petitioners’ counsel argued that in the landmark T.M.A. Pai Foundation Case (2002), the majority of a full bench (11 judges) of the apex court had held that unaided or self-financed institutes of professional education are entitled to charge reasonable tuition fees and earn a surplus for the expansion and maintenance of their institutions. And in the matter of tuition fees, a seven-judge bench in P.A. Inamdar vs. State of Maharashtra (2005) was unequivocal. “Fees to be charged by unaided…

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Special Report

Bring NECCE Policy out of deep freeze – Dr. Rekha Sharma Sen

In 2013 towards the end of its second term in office, the UPA-II government approved a National Early Childhood Care and Education (NECCE) Policy. This was widely welcomed as it reinstated early childhood care and education on the national agenda, especially in light of the exclusion of the 0-6 years period from the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act enacted in 2009. Though some significant efforts have been made by the Central and state governments to enhance the quality of services being provided to children during the critical early childhood years since the policy has been adopted, there are many challenges that remain to be addressed and there is urgent need for the NECCE Policy to be revived and implemented by the Union and state governments countrywide. Following approval of the NECCE Policy by the Union cabinet, in 2014 the Union ministry of women and child development (MWCD) adopted the National Curriculum Framework for ECCE which laid out the principles for planning and implementation of ECCE services, with a focus on preschool education. This gave impetus to reviving the transaction of four hours of preschool education in the countrys 1.34 million anganwadis functioning under the Central governments Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme. Consequently as a first step, most states have developed local contextualised ECE curricula with support from state ECCE experts, based on the National Curriculum Framework document. Anganwadi workers need to be trained to implement this newly developed locally contextualised curriculum and the government intends to do this through the cascade model under which master trainers are trained by the National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development, Delhi, who will train district-level trainers, who in turn will train anganwadi workers. While this training model has been initiated in many states, the long gap between imparting training down the layers of the cascade prompts drop in quality. Further, the duration of the training programme for the anganwadi workers is very short and inadequate to ensure understanding of concepts and skill building. Currently, an initiative is being planned to support the training of anganwadi workers through online modules but this programme is at a nascent stage. While the ICDS programme has enabled a large number of children to access ECCE services, there are certain vulnerable groups of children which havent been taken into consideration while planning, e.g, children living on the streets, children of prisoners, nomadic and migrant children and terminally ill children who spend extended amounts of time in hospitals. Similarly, while policy formulation includes children with disabilities in ICDS, theres little effort towards making services accessible to them. In 2014, ‘Quality Standards for ECCE’ was adopted by MWCD. These spell out minimum standards in eight key areas of service provision. However, not all standards are converted into measurable indicators across all the eight key areas. Further, assessment tools need to be standardised to be able to objectively assess the functioning of a centre, especially with regard to curriculum quality. While some national and…

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Expert Comment

Oppressive language learning policies

The movement to mandate learning of the dominant official language of states as a compulsory subject has acquired momentum again. In 2017, West Bengal, Karnataka and Telangana took measures to make learning of their official vernacular language in all private schools compulsory irrespective of the boards with which schools are affiliated. Similarly, Punjab and Maharashtra also seem geared to ensure it is compulsorily taught in all schools in their respective states. This seems to be a growing trend. While some states want the medium of instruction to be the dominant/official state language, other relatively more progressive states want it to be taught as another subject. In either case, the states justify this as an attempt to preserve and promote their cultural heritage. While the pros and cons of these fiats including the political pulls and pushes behind them can be debated, the moot point is whether state governments can legally mandate all schools in their jurisdiction to introduce such compulsory learning. Under the Constitution, education falls within the concurrent list. This means both the Central and state governments have the power to legislate on the subject, i.e, state governments can enact legislation which it believes is in the states interest and does not conflict with any Central legislation. This specific question was examined by the Supreme Court in Usha Mehta vs. State of Maharashtra (2004). The issue before the court was whether Maharashtra could legislate teaching of Marathi as a compulsory subject in all schools from class V onward. The constitutional validity of this imposition was challenged by an English-medium school, run by promoters from the Gujarati linguistic community. The petitioners claimed that following this directive, they were obliged to teach four languages (Hindi, English, Marathi and Gujarati), as against the normative three language formula. Relying on several judgements of the apex court, including the landmark T.M.A. Pai Case (2002), the court concluded that the state can impose reasonable regulations on minority-run institutions in the larger interest of the state and nation. The court reasoned that since Marathi is the official language of Maharashtra state, and official and common business was conducted in Marathi, a proper understanding of the language was essential for ease of living within the state. Therefore, the court ruled that every state has the right to mandate compulsory learning of its official language. Thus the right “not to learn” sought by the petitioners was not accepted by the court, and the policy directive of the Maharashtra government was upheld. However, the judgement of Usha Mehta’s Case needs to be distinguished from the ruling of the apex court in State of Karnataka vs. Associated Managements of English Medium Primary and Secondary Schools (2014) in which the court considered the question of whether mother tongue or official state language can be imposed as a medium of instruction in primary education. In this case, the court held that such an imposition is violative of the fundamental rights of minority-run institutions. Going further, the court held that even private schools…

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Eduleader Bytes

Sandeep Goenka

Sandeep Goenka -Chairman, CP Goenka Group of Institutions Mumbai Where would you place education on your national list of priorities? It is my #1 priority. How best to upgrade government schools? The most important area that needs upgradation is professional development of teachers. Only when teachers are well-trained will they be able to transfer knowledge effectively to learners. Thinker/philosopher you admire the most. Aristotle who said: It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. Your favourite Nobel laureate Undoubtedly Malala Yousafzai. For a young girl from a small conservative town, to have such conviction and self-belief is monumental. Your leadership style. I am a hands-on leader who leads by example. Although I delegate and believe in giving everyone operational autonomy, I pay very close attention to the inner functioning of the institutes I run. Your favourite book on education. How Children Fail by John Holt, which has greatly influenced my understanding of education. For or against the RTE Acts 25 percent reservation for underprivileged children in private schools? In principle, the idea of including underprivileged children in mainstream schools is noble. However, the RTE Act requires a whole new method of implementation which hasnt been thought through in its entirety. Should the education outlay be doubled by cutting defence expenditure? We need to take all possible precautions to protect ourselves and maintain our territorial integrity, whatever the cost. Therefore we need to use our education outlay more judiciously. How satisfied are you with the growth and development of the CP Goenka Group of Institutions? We started our journey as a franchisee with only 19 students in 2000. Today, we have our own brand and have successfully promoted nine high schools with over 20,000 children mentored by 2,000 teachers. Pessimistic or optimistic about the future of education in India? The growth curve of Indian education and literacy is rising steeply. I am very optimistic.

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Books

Master spy extraordinaire

The Indian Spy,Mihir Bose, Aleph Book Company;Rs.599,Pages 350 This is a remarkable tale of a remarkable man who went by several names, was trained in espionage by the brother of the celebrated writer Ian Fleming and who undertook, among other things, the safekeeping and travels of Subhas Chandra Bose as a fugitive. The life of Bhagat Ram Talwar, alias Silver was formed and sculpted by extraordinary macro-political events that the second Great War and the new balance of power accompanying the rise of the Axis powers and of the Soviet Union came to embody. The Indian Spy: The True Story of the Most Remarkable Secret Agent of World War II is as much the wondrous tale of an unlikely master spy as it is of the turbulent events of the 1940s associated with wartime diplomacy, socialist and nationalist aspirations that made possible a convoluted network of espionage, gun running and information gathering. It is to the authors credit that he has mined a rich volume of archival material to tell a compelling story that isnt simply gripping, but presents aspects of the history of the war that have remained obscure. Its only drawback is that it is overwritten and dense, a quality that occasionally makes it impossible for the reader to quite tether Silver the spy in his/her impressions. It would be unfair to give away the results of Silvers espionage — how he double and triple crossed everyone who came his way, or how he was able to extract substantial sums of money from the Germans whose espionage seems to have been strangely incompetent and inefficient. What this review will do therefore is to highlight the extraordinary milieu that unfolded in the period when a phenomenon like Silver became possible, to reflect on the various points that connected Afghanistan with India and how wartime diplomacy of the European powers intersected with the aspirations of Indian socialist revolutionary groups, thus setting the stage for figures like Silver to offer a range of services. The exploits of Bhagat Ram Talwar, spy extraordinaire, are set in the backdrop of the 1940s, when European powers Italy, Germany, England and Russia competed to extract strategic information and relied on a network of spies and transport contractors in Afghanistan. Silver (aka Talwar) and Rahmat Khan arrived on the scene escorting Bose, the fugitive revolutionary whom he accompanied on a perilous march across Afghanistan wanting to make his way to Berlin. This book charts the early life of Talwar, his family background, the story of his siblings and his extraordinary skills and confidence that enabled him to excel in what was an unconventional career choice. What stands out in the early sections of the book is the story of Hindu Pathan landlords, the influence and appeal of organisations such as the Kirti party, the adroitness of Talwar in working as small-time informer and then as a confident spy, and his first major operation of escorting Bose after the latters clandestine exit from Calcutta. Thereafter, he became…

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Special Report

Do we need a national ECCE curriculum framework? – Divya Punjabi

By 2030, India will host a massive population of 600 million youth below the age of 25 — the worlds youngest population. This can be an asset and valuable human capital, provided these young people are educated, trained and skilled. To attain these objectives, we need to start from the foundation level i.e, early childhood — conception to eight years of age. Following breakthroughs in neuroscience research in the early years of the new millennium, its now well-established that children’s brains are almost fully developed by the time they attain eight years of age. To enable delivery of professionally administered ECCE to Indias’ youngest children, a high-quality ECCE National Curriculum Framework is a necessary precondition. Global ECCE frameworks such as the NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children, USA), EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage, UK), Te Whariki (New Zealand) and ACECQA (Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority) have been adopted successfully not only in the countries where they were formulated, but also worldwide. Some auguries are good. The pioneer Early Childhood Association (ECA) of India, which has a membership of over 3,000 preschools countrywide, has formed a think-tank to propose a model ECCE curriculum framework. Some state governments including Maharashtra have also developed draft ECCE frameworks but they are inadequate and fail to address the development and learning needs of youngest children. Firstly, the word ‘education in early childhood education needs to be replaced by ‘development. The curriculum framework must focus on the developmental needs, not ‘education needs of young children and the approach needs to be individualised and contextualised across private preschools, balwadis, anganwadis and other ICDS programmes. Children across all economic strata, social and cultural settings have the same developmental and learning needs. We need a common pedagogy that will address diversity. The curriculum framework needs to provide broad teaching-learning approaches and experiences rather than detailed academic content. The ECA think-tank of which I am vice president, has proposed that the focus of preschools should not be on getting children ready for primary school. The focus in the formative years needs to be on development of concepts and cognitive skills rather than ‘readiness for primary school. The early years learning curriculum shouldn’t be a downward extension of the primary curriculum which prematurely burdens children with learning the 3 Rs — reading, writing and arithmetic. The curriculum framework should draw upon global ECCE frameworks such as NAEYC and EFYS to define best practices and enable the holistic development of youngest children. Its also very important that we involve experienced early childhood educators, leaders and teachers who have ground-level experience of interacting with young children when drafting the National ECCE Curriculum Framework. Unfortunately, all existing ECCE curriculum frameworks have been prepared by committees dominated by academics and bureaucrats of the Union/state women and child development ministries. ECA has been persistently demanding that the Union and state governments include all stakeholders from the private preschool sector as well as those involved with balwadis, anganwadis, ICDS to design an…

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Special Report

Mother tongue or English as medium of instruction? – Shailaja Menon

If the mother tongue (MT) versus English as medium of instruction argument was grossly oversimplified, it would have two competing sets of arguments. On the one hand are what can be broadly termed as the cognitive, socio-emotional and rights-based arguments concerning the learning and well-being of the child. On the other, are the socio-economic and logistical arguments, relating to opportunities available to the child and the practicality of offering MT-based education. If we were to decide solely on the basis of cognitive and socio-emotional considerations, it is clear what the decision would be. More than 150-200 studies conducted around the world during the past 40-50 years have shown that youngest children in bilingual programmes with MT as the medium of instruction, consistently performed better than their peers taught in other languages. Further, the longer they remain in MT education, the better their knowledge retention and performance in school. This is because children start preschool with a fairly developed and developing repertoire of oral language. But, often the language that young children encounter in school is alien and incomprehensible to them. This creates both cognitive and socio-emotional difficulties — adversely impacting their learning as well as sense of identity, self-esteem, and motivation to remain in school. This has profound consequences, especially for first generation learners, who may be pushed-out of school by an insensitive and unresponsive education system. It is estimated that one in four children across the country experiences moderate to severe learning difficulties because of this mismatch. In contrast, bilingual children who have received their primary instruction in their MT have a cognitive advantage over their monolingual peers. They have a deeper awareness of how languages work, display greater flexibility of thinking, and achieve better academic outcomes. Lets now evaluate the factors that have created the tremendous aspiration for English learning in our country. A major part of this aspiration is related to socio-economic advancement and opportunities that open up with English language learning from early age. People who dont have access to this language of global power suffer in terms of economic and educational opportunities. Dalit activists have highlighted the unfair education system of India with English for the classes and MT for the masses. All middle-class theories, discussions and debates about the right medium of instruction seem to be about how best to educate other peoples children. These other people whose childrens educational futures we decide on committees and at conferences, have firm opinions about what they would like for their own children i.e, to learn English from the youngest age. However there is a middle path available, implementation of which requires vision, commitment and patient effort to build up systemic and individual capacities. A multilingual society such as India needs to imagine and implement a strong and viable bilingual/multilingual programme in the early years of schooling because: • The human brain is wired for multilingualism. There are more multilingual people on this planet than monolinguals • Despite the Central governments official three language policy, multilingualism has…

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Special Report

Encourage independent ECCE affiliation/accreditation boards: Swati Popat Vats

– Dr. Swati Popat Vats is founder-president of the Early Childhood Association and president of the Podar Education Network All class I-XII schools in India boast state, national and/or international exam/education board affiliation. However, preschools countrywide are not required to affiliate themselves with any board or accreditation authority which can certify their curriculums, child safety and other standards. This lacuna in early childhood care and education (ECCE) needs to be filled through creation of preschool affiliation boards. The Early Childhood Association of India (ECA), which has a membership of over 3,000 preschools countrywide, recently conducted an intensive quality audit of preschools in association with the Podar Institute of Education. The survey, which covered 1,920 preschool heads and 1,921 parents in Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi and Pune, found that not only are parents unaware of what should be taught at every stage to youngest children in the 0-6 age group, even principals trusted by parents and trained in education are clueless about ECCE laws, policies and curriculums. The great majority of them are shackled by redundant practices and unwilling to change. Whats worse is that state governments are jumping in to enact policies to ‘regulate preschools without first defining the benchmarks and curriculum of a quality ECCE programme. In 2013, the previous government at the Centre prepared a National Early Childhood Care and Education (NECCE) policy which is an excellent document. But instead of adopting this policy in toto, state governments want to reinvent the wheel and waste public money on customising and adopting it to suit undefined local cultural conditions. Moreover, since ECCE falls within the jurisdictional ambit of the Union ministry of women and child development, there is confusion about state-level implementation of the NECCE policy. This leaves no choice but for private preschools to prepare their own curriculums. While some have prepared excellent child-friendly curriculums, the large majority follow age-inappropriate curriculums focusing on drilling children for primary school. Toddlers as young as two years are made to hold pencils and write over dotted lines in worksheets. Three-year-olds are made to recite nursery rhymes and then graded and marked on their ‘performance. This is the confused state of preschool education in the country today. The solution to the chaos in the country’s ECCE sector is creation of affiliation boards which will benefit all stakeholders — children, parents and preschool teachers. State governments could licence preschools (as some of them are clamouring to do — mainly to earn licensing fees) but the philosophy, curriculum, teacher training and other important aspects of ECCE should be prescribed and monitored by one or more affiliation/accreditation boards comprising ECCE professionals. The worlds largest ECCE association which affiliates most preschools in the US is an NGO — the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). When I founded Podar Jumbo Kids 17 years ago, I was (and continue to remain) a member of NAEYC and have ensured that our preschools followed its ten standards prescribed for member preschools. The NAEYC process of affiliation/accreditation comprises…

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Special Report

Should ECCE become a Fundamental Right? – Dr. Niranjanaradhya V.P

Neurological research studies from around the world show that provision of age-appropriate education in the early years, plays a critical role in childrens brain development. In fact, infants begin to learn about the world around them during the prenatal, perinatal and postnatal period. According to Unesco, Early childhood, defined as the period from birth to eight years old, is a time of remarkable growth with brain development at its peak. During this stage, children are highly influenced by the environment and the people that surround them. Therefore, professionally administered early childhood care and education (ECCE) is much more than preparation for primary school, it enables childrens social, emotional, cognitive and physical growth to build a solid and broad foundation for lifelong learning. Consequently, ECCE is the best investment a country can make to promote human resource development, gender equality and social cohesion, and to reduce the costs of subsequent remedial programmes. India is a signatory and party to several international conventions that promote early childhood care and education. Among them is the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989, which recognises all persons below the age of 18 years as children and provides for the basic rights of children which are fundamental to their development. India ratified the convention in 1992. India has also signed Education For All (EFA) declaration (1990) which acknowledges education as a tool for development and emphasises the need for broadening the means and scope of basic education. Article V of the EFA declaration acknowledges that learning begins at birth and calls for early childhood care and initial education for all children. Finally Goal 4.2 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (2015) mandates that by 2030 all girls and boys should have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education. Even way back in 1950, the Constitution of India recognised the significance of early child-care and development to attain the goal of national progress. To this effect, several provisions were made in the Constitution regarding the welfare and development of children including Articles 39 (e) and (f) and 45 of the Constitution which should be interpreted to include ECCE within their ambit. More directly, Article 45 of the Constitution promised to provide, within a period of ten years from the commencement of the Constitution, free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of 14 years. Subsequently, the 86th Constitution Amendment Act, 2002, made a provision for early childhood care and education to children below the age of six years by amending the original Article 45. Thus the modified Article 45 reads as The State shall endeavour to provide early childhood care and education for all children until they complete the age of six years. In continuation, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE), 2009, was enacted to enforce the fundamental right to education of children but restricted it to children in the age group…

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Institution Profile

University of California, Irvine

One of the ten campuses of the University of California’s public education system, University of California, Irvine is ranked among Americas Top 10 public universities by the US News & World Report. Founded in 1965, University of California, Irvine (UCI) is consistently ranked among the Top 50 universities of the US. One of the ten campuses of the University of Californias public education system, UCI is ranked #9 among American public universities and #42 overall by the U.S. News & World Report and among the Top 100 universities worldwide in the QS World University Rankings 2018. The youngest member of the prestigious Association of American Universities, UCI has produced many distinguished alumni including three Nobel laureates and several Pulitzer Prize winners. Sprawled across a 1,000-acre campus named the San Joaquin foothills — sold by the Irvine Company to the University of California in 1960 for $1 — UCI offers a wide range of undergraduate and postgrad programmes in 16 academic verticals — arts, biological sciences, business, education, engineering, humanities, information and computer sciences, inter-disciplinary sciences, law, physical sciences, social ecology, social sciences, medicine, nursing, pharmaceutical sciences, public health — to 35,958 students mentored by 3,158 faculty. UCI ranks among the Top 10 US universities — public and private — in the number of undergraduate admission applications received. For instance, for the fall term beginning in September 2018, UCI received a record number of 116,192 admission applications of which 32,000 freshmen have been accepted. Irvine. Sited in Orange County, Southern California, Irvine (pop. 260,000) is widely acknowledged as one of the safest cities in the US with the lowest rate of violent crime per capita. It was also ranked the second best city to live in America by Money Magazine in 2016 for its welcoming neighbourhoods, educated citizenry, fine schools, world-class dining, shopping and recreation experiences. A hub of Southern Californias burgeoning tech sector, Irvine hosts one-third of Fortune 500 companies. Ranked among Americas greenest cities, Irvine boasts 16,000 acres of preserved natural habitat and 60 parks. Located near the famed sailing and surfing beaches of Newport, Laguna, and Huntington and the cities of Los Angeles, San Diego, and Palm Springs, there are innumerable opportunities for recreation, sports and outdoor activities. Moreover Irvine enjoys 292 sunny days per year, with average temperatures ranging from 13°C in January to 22°C in August. Campus facilities. UCIs 1,000-acre campus offers state-of-the-art academic, sports, recreational and residential facilities. At the heart of the campus is Aldrich Park, a tranquil botanical garden, encircled by the Ring Road. Almost every undergraduate school is sited on the Ring Road, creating a circular design allowing students free movement and fostering a collaborative learning culture. The UCI library system comprises the Jack Langson Library, Ayala Science Library, Grunigen Medical Library and Libraries Gateway Study Center which together offer 3.7 million volumes, 151,000 journals, 110,000 government documents, 113,000 audio/visual materials, multimedia, maps, photographs, and other graphic materials. The Libraries Special Collections boasts 640 archival materials that include over 1 million original…

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Special Report

EducationWorld Early Childhood Education National Conference 2018

The eighth consecutive EW ECE National Conference attracted over 300 delegates including principals, promoters, and educators from India’s top-ranked preschools who discussed ways and means of extending professionally administered ECCE to cover all of Indias 164 million children in the 0-6 age group – Summiya Yasmeen The eighth annual EducationWorld Early Childhood Education National Conference 2018, convened on January 20 at Bangalores Shangri-La Hotel, was a resounding success. Indias pioneer early childhood care and education (ECCE) conference, first staged in Mumbai in 2010, has evolved into the countrys most prestigious and important national forum for discussing and debating challenges confronting the ECCE sector. The 2018 conference attracted over 300 delegates including principals, promoters, and educators from Indias top-ranked preschools who discussed ways and means of extending professionally administered ECCE to cover all of Indias 164 million children in the 0-6 age group. Welcoming the speakers and delegates who filled the massive conference hall of Shangri-La to full capacity, Dilip Thakore, publisher-editor of EducationWorld (estb.1999), acknowledged the extraordinary work being done by early childhood educators countrywide. According to Nobel laureate economist Dr. James Heckman, a dollar invested in ECCE is a much better investment than several dollars invested later in the education continuum in terms of social and economic returns to society. But unfortunately in India, ECCE is severely neglected. Of the countrys 164 million children in the age group 0-6, only an estimated 10 million enrolled in private preschools receive professionally administered ECCE, 84 million receive rudimentary early childhood education in the countrys 1.3 million government anganwadis, while the remaining 70 million children are left to fend for themselves — a waste of high-potential human resources of colossal scale. The public interest demands that all 164 million children are urgently provided high-quality ECCE, said Thakore. The day-long conference, sponsored by schoolshop.in, Fitterfly India Pvt. Ltd and Afairs Media & Exhibitions, featured an interactive workshop and five EducationWorld Exchange keynote addresses followed by an interactive session. The two-hour interactive workshop — ‘Transforming Early Years Educators into Leaders — which was first on the days busy agenda, was conducted by Amrita Randhawa, an education postgrad of Harvard University and head of faculty at The Educator Development Academy (TEDA), Bangalore (estb. 2017), an affiliate of EducationWorld. TEDA offers professionally designed training and development programmes to early childhood and primary educators including principals, teachers and support staff. Randhawa was assisted by TEDA faculty members Agata Rutkowska-Mandava (an alumna of Newcastle University, UK and Teacher Education College, Warsaw) and Basanti C.S. (Algappa University). The afternoon session featured five short duration keynote addresses on issues critical for delivery of quality ECCE to the nations neglected 164 million children in the 0-5 age group. They included: ‘NECCE Policy — Time to bring it out of deep freeze by Dr. Rekha Sharma Sen, professor in the Faculty of Child Development, School of Continuing Education, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), New Delhi; ‘Should ECCE become a fundamental right? by Dr. Niranjanardhya V.P, fellow and programme head for Universalisation…

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People

Lewitt Somarajan: Science for all champion

Science education evangelist and Ashoka Fellow Lewitt Somarajan is the Pune-based founder and CEO of Life-Lab (estb.2013), an initiative of the Keonjhar (Odisha)-based non-profit WOSCA (Women’s Organisation for Socio-Cultural Awareness), promoted by Dharitri Raut. Life-Lab provides underprivileged schools activity-based, low-cost innovations to develop scientific curiosity and critical reasoning skills in young children. Through its flagship two-year programme which includes installing a low-cost science lab, providing DIY (do-it yourself) kits for students, conducting training programmes for science teachers and establishing science clubs, Life-Lab creates high quality learning environments to drive progress in schools. Since 2013, Life-Lab has been commissioned by 24 corporates to deliver their CSR (corporate social responsibility) initiatives in 500-plus government and government-aided schools impacting 200,000 children in 11 states countrywide. Newspeg. Last November, Life-Lab launched India’s first-of-its-type 100-page science graphic novel (with 15 DIY activities), using comic book characters Gappu and Bobo to explain scientific concepts. This graphic novel project, initiated in 2016, was funded by the Eaton India Foundation, Pune, and the Tata Acumen Trust. History. As a final year chemical engineering student of Nagpur University, Somarajan was among 400 youth selected in 2008 to undertake the Tata Jagriti Yatra, an 18-day nationwide train expedition during which he met several social entrepreneurs doing excellent work in rural India. Bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, after graduating in 2009, Somarajan interned with social development organisations followed by a two-year Teach for India Fellowship. With some financial support from Unltd India, a social incubator, Somarajan started pilot projects in 2012. In 2013, Life-Lab was born months after winning the Hewlett Packard Educational Innovation Fund for India Award (Rs.15 lakh). Direct talk. “I have always believed that science connects with everyday life and should be used for life learning experiences in classrooms. Life-lab was conceived with the objective of developing a scientific mindset and making real learning in low-income classrooms a reality,” says this innovative social entrepreneur. Future plans. Life-Lab has ambitious outreach plans. “Over the next five years, we intend to impact 1 million children by providing consultancy services to state governments to enhance the quality of science education in government schools, especially in rural India. Our goal is to reach 1,000 schools by next year by collaborating with state governments, social organisations and entrepreneurs. Moreover, we are currently focusing on a musical animation video project to make science lessons more engaging,” says Somarajan. Wind in your sails! Paromita Sengupta (Bangalore)

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People

Michael O’Sullivan: Innovative educationist

Michael O’Sullivan is chief executive of the Cambridge (UK)-based Cambridge Assessment International Education (CAIE) — formerly known as Cambridge International Examinations (estb.1858) — which has 10,000 schools in 160 countries including 436 primary-secondaries in India affiliated with it. The 160-year-old exams board bills itself as the world’s largest provider of international education programmes and qualifications for 5-19-year-olds, and offers several associated services including teacher training and curriculum development for affiliated schools. Newspeg. O’Sullivan was in India last November, his first visit after the rebranding exercise conducted earlier in September. Well-known for its IGCSE (class X) and A level (class XII) study programmes, CAIE is all set to introduce its Cambridge primary programme in India to enable students’ smooth transition into its secondary and higher secondary education. Moreover, its redesigned Cambridge Global Perspectives — an enquiry-based learning course (hitherto offered in upper primary classes) — will be introduced in all Cambridge-affiliated primary schools from the new academic year beginning June 2018. History. A graduate in French and German of Oxford University’s Brasenose College, and linguistics postgrad of Wolfson College, Cambridge University, O’Sullivan is an accomplished linguist (fluent in Mandarin, French, German and Spanish) and a vastly experienced international educator. A former director of the British Council in China (2000-2007), secretary-general of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China (2007-08) and director of the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust and Cambridge Overseas Trust (2008-2013), he was appointed chief executive of CAIE in 2013. Direct talk. “Cambridge International provides the world’s best syllabuses, curriculums and a range of associated services to primary, secondary and higher secondary schools in the UK and abroad. We are constantly researching how children learn and design our programmes to bring out the best in every child. Secondly, we offer huge flexibility to our affiliated schools. That’s why Cambridge International offers a wide choice of subjects — over 70 for the IGCSE and 55 for the AS and A levels. The third and perhaps more practical advantage compared to other exam boards is affordability,” says O’Sullivan. Currently, the Geneva-based International Baccalaureate (IB) with 140 schools countrywide is CAIE’s only international competitor in India. But, with three times as many affiliated schools than the IB, CAIE is far ahead of all competition. Future plans. According to O’Sullivan, CAIE is all set to introduce a new digital media and design course for AS students in 2019 and A levellers in 2020. “While we can’t provide people with learning programmes for particular jobs, our objective at Cambridge International is to create lifelong learners with the intellectual agility and capability to analyse and change their perspectives to cope with uncertainty. The new digital age has impacted our syllabuses and curriculum design and also professional development programmes to enable teachers to integrate technology into their classrooms,” says O’Sullivan. Dipta Joshi (Mumbai)

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People

Chitra Ravi: Unstoppable educator

Chitra Ravi is founder-CEO of the Chennai-based Chrysalis Pvt. Ltd (formerly EZ Vidya, estb.2001), a company focused on improving teaching-learning practices in schools across the country. Over the past 16 years, Chrysalis has grown into a multi-service, multi-product company offering ICT curriculums, teacher empowerment and learning programmes under which 450 schools have already transformed their classrooms into ThinkRooms. Chrysalis also supports the CSR (corporate social responsibility) initiatives in education of several top-ranked corporates including IBM, Microsoft and Dell. In 2013, Ravi was conferred the Game Changer Award of the Economic Times. Newspeg. On November 16, Chrysalis launched a new education framework focussed on awakening the human potential of every child, which, the company claims, is a marked departure from the current education system’s focus on educating for job readiness. Backed by 16 years of academic and field research, the new integrated educational framework developed in-house by Chrysalis, nurtures the cognitive, social, emotional, and metacognitive (thinking with the whole mind) faculties of every child during her formative years. Direct talk. “Over the past 16 years, we have successfully incorporated proven education innovations into the mainstream curriculums of almost 800 schools which have signed up for our learning solutions. Our academic programme, study materials and pedagogy are based on developing the thinking and questioning skills of students so they learn through enquiry and become independent learners. Several schools have already adopted the Chrysalis ThinkRoom programme and teachers have been provided with learning outcomes targets. From 2014-16, we conducted research on authentic assessment in partnership with the WIPRO Applying Thought in Schools programme and have developed an authentic assessment tool for teachers to conduct formative assessment of students,” says Ravi. History. An English postgrad of the University of Madras, Ravi worked with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank for over a year after graduation followed by a stint in the family real estate business before she became aware that education was her true calling. She promoted EZ Vidya in 2001 and began developing multimedia content for the computer science programmes of schools. This was followed by the Chrysalis teacher development framework in 2003. Future plans. Ravi and her team have developed a multichannel approach to ensure the company’s new education framework reaches as many schools across the country as possible. “We plan to involve policymakers of the Union government, work closely with state governments to persuade government schools to adopt our new academic programme, partner with private schools across the country, and empower parents to follow our methods. Also on the drawing board are plans to launch an open source education framework later this year which can be integrated into mainstream curriculums of all schools that require it,” says this unstoppable educator. Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)

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People

Vickaash Agarwal: Kids Campus driver

Mumbai-based Vickaash Agarwal is chairman of Kids Campus Education Pvt. Ltd (KCEPL, estb.2008) which operates 120 owned and franchised Kids Campus preschools in 57 cities and towns including Bangalore, Mumbai, Jammu, Patna, Bhubaneswar, and Kolkata with an aggregate enrolment of 4,000 children. These preschools offer ISO 9001-2008 certified curriculums, cheerful classrooms, well-equipped libraries and sensorial outdoor play areas. Newspeg. KCEPL recently announced promotion of a full-fledged CBSE-affiliated Oceano High School in Bangalore. Construction of the 87,120 sq. ft school campus will commence in September this year, and admissions into primary school (class I-V) will start in the academic year 2019-20. “We have been planning expansion of our operations for a while so the progression from preschools to offering children an expansive educational experience in primary-secondary schooling is a natural process. Our objective is to build on our experience of enriching young minds and instill in them a lifetime of love for knowledge and learning,” says Agarwal. History. An alum of Ravenshaw University, Cuttack, Agarwal exited the family’s steel business in 2006 to pursue his passion for education. After extensive research and consultations with international early childhood care and education (ECCE) experts worldwide, Agarwal prepared a model preschool curriculum designed to “cultivate children’s natural inquisitiveness and creative intelligences” from earliest years. In 2008, KCEPL launched its first preschool in Bangalore and by the end of the year, signed up eight franchisees in Ahmedabad, Jammu and Hyderabad. “When we started a decade ago, high quality preschool education was available only to a niche segment of parents in the metros. The large majority of middle class parents couldn’t afford these hi-end preschools. The objective of Kids Campus was to bridge this gap by offering internationally benchmarked ECCE curriculums at affordable price and promote preschools in tier-II cities and towns,” he recalls. Direct talk. “Early childhood education is critical to development of children’s cognitive, social and motor skills. The distinguishing feature of Kids Campus institutions is that we blend advanced child psychology with thematic daily activities to stimulate the creative and explorative intelligences of children. We specially focus on vocabulary and word recognition pedagogies to enable our children to develop enhanced linguistic skills at youngest age. I believe our unique selling point is our experiential teaching-learning pedagogy delivered by well-qualified teachers, and the continuous support and training we provide our franchisee preschools to ensure that high teaching-learning standards are maintained,” says Agarwal. Future plans. Next on this can-do edupreneur’s list is promoting Kids Campus preschools in rural India. “We have already established model preschools in three villages in Maharashtra and Bihar to expand our franchisee network. But right now, my priority is on getting our new high school up and running by next year,” says Agarwal, who has set a target of signing up 300 Kids Campus franchised preschools by 2020. Wind beneath your wings! Dipta Joshi (Mumbai)

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Teacher-to-Teacher

Edtech trends 2018

Indian education is poised at an interesting juncture. On the one hand, there is a growing focus on learning outcomes, while on the other, technology is being adopted quickly and content is being rewritten and redesigned to adapt to a variety of emerging media. But among all latter-day developments, ‘technology’ has clearly emerged as the single biggest factor to impact education. This augurs well for present-day learners, educators, and other stakeholders in the teaching-learning process. The advent of digitally enabled classrooms, cloud-based content, ebooks and online assessments among other developments, has enabled our education system to reach inflection point. Let us look at new edtech trends that have the potential to definitively change the education landscape. Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR and AR). This was probably the most talked about pedagogy of 2017. Virtual Reality (VR) places the user in virtual or immersive environments which are being used to provide learners life-like experience in subjects as diverse as history and chemistry. Augmented Reality (AR) on the other hand is a technology used to present an enhanced version of reality where elements of physical real-world environments are augmented with digital learning experiences. AR/VR technologies help learners experience and interact with digital learning objects to support their learning. Educators, who earlier had print or digital images/animations for teaching support, can now leverage these high-fidelity educational experiences to achieve better learning results. Adaptive learning through Artificial Intelligence. Adaptive learning has the potential to solve a crucial challenge in classroom learning — how to engage with learners of varying abilities in the same classroom. Adaptive systems use machine learning to personalise the presentation of learning material based on the learning speed, interest and problem areas of each student. In the hands of teachers, this can become an important tool to ensure better learning outcomes. Machine learning together with natural processing and speech recognition technologies are also facilitating the development of conversational programmes, called chatbots. The bots can be programmed to provide a wide variety of services including private tutoring. Learning Analytics. It is often said “what gets measured is what gets done”. The focus is shifting from big data to ‘little’ data. Little data is personal activity information which when analysed by intelligent systems, is able to provide key insights into the way students learn. It may well become an important source of information and insights for decision-making for educators. It may also unlock new potential for personalisation of tools and content. By adding the right information capture mechanisms and real-time insight capabilities, traditional Learning Management Systems (LMS) can now vastly enhance the teaching-learning experience. The implications of a data-driven approach will be far-reaching and will permeate not just teaching and learning but other areas including guidance on career choices. An integrated learning solution, launched last year by OUP (Oxford University Press), provides detailed learning analytics for students, teachers as also parents. Online Assessments. New forms of technology mediated assessment have enabled a big shift from fixed-in-point summative assessments — which today are at the core of the…

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Postscript

Make the connection!

Its not every day that one finds cause and effect answers on the same page of a daily newspaper. Its as rare an event as sighting a UFO or a comet, and therefore worthy of comment. Yet two coincidental headlines in the Times of India (Bangalore edition) of January 7 (page 3) revealed the sorry condition of the nation. The lead story on the page recounted that even 70 years after India attained political freedom, 67 percent of households in the southern state of Karnataka (pop. 63 million) — proclaimed one of the country’s most industrialised states and #1 in terms of information technology (IT) software exports — are yet to receive the basic facility of piped water supply into their homes. Shameful as this statistic is, Karnataka is #1 among major states with 33 percent of rural households served with piped water against the pathetic national average of 16.85 percent. Hows that for the socialist model of development? A reason for this abject condition of Karnataka’s citizenry is provided by a report in three columns on the same page. A surprise raid conducted by 12 officers of the anti-corruption bureau (ACB) on a handful of government bureaucrats in Bangalore on January 5-6, revealed that they have accumulated wealth and assets valued at Rs.40 crore — a sum vastly disproportionate to their incomes. The ACB raid on the government officials revealed that B.S. Prahalad, a superintendent engineer (technical vigilance) of the Bangalore municipal corporation, owns two houses, one land plot, three commercial complexes, and land lots in Chikballapura and Tumkur townships, two motor cars, 731 gm of gold and 865 gm of silver. Not any less enterprising, R.V. Kantaraju, deputy director of urban planning, owns five homes in Bangalore, 10 acres of agricultural land in neighbouring Ramanagara, 154 gm of gold and 4.5 kg of silver, a car etc. These rolling-in-wealth babus are just two examples of several officials with aggregate assets valued at Rs.40 crore unearthed by the ACB. Its impossible to believe there’s no connection between their wealth accumulation and the 67 percent piped water supply deficit of the states citizenry. Racist propaganda blasted There was a piquant irony in the comprehensive defeat of the India cricket team currently touring South Africa in the second test (after losing the first test as well) which went unnoticed except for individuals with long memories and awareness of Africas racial politics. All wickets in Indias second innings were taken by black Africans — Lungisani Ngidi (6/39) and Kagiso Rabada (3/47) with one batsman run out (Chheteswar Pujara for the second time in the match). The irony is that during South Africa’s cruel and dehumanising apartheid era which lasted over a century until Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, white racist propaganda had spread the belief worldwide that black Africans were congenitally unsuited to play the complex and sophisticated game that is cricket. Even black Africans themselves were brainwashed into believing that they were racially unsuited for cricket, and that…

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Letter from the Editor

In EducationWorld, our mission statement formulated on the eve of the new millennium, a time of universal euphoria and great expectations, was — and remains — to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the # 1 item on the national agenda. We believe that developing human capital is the most important priority for lifting the majority of the country’s population steeped in backwardness and despair, out of poverty. Although a no-brainer, shockingly this self-evident proposition is not universally accepted, even to this day. Ab initio after India became an independent nation 70 years ago, education was placed way down on the list of national priorities. Annual expenditure (Centre plus states) on public education which should have been 10 percent of GDP, has never exceeded 4 percent. The neglect of education — especially rural primary-secondary education — has exacted a terrible price from the citizens of free India. The population has tripled and industry and agriculture productivity is among the lowest worldwide. And to this day, illiterate and quasi-literate farmers burdened with illiteracy, penury and despair are killing themselves by the thousands. Last year, 56,000 committed suicide — one every 40 minutes. Against this dismal backdrop, one would expect the Central and state governments to focus their attention on repairing the country’s 1.40 million government primary-secondary schools defined by crumbling buildings, teacher absenteeism, poor curriculums and lack of toilets, drinking water and often, electricity. Instead, official — and judicial — attention is focused on ‘regulating (reducing) the tuition and other fees of the country’s independent private schools, the too-few islands of excellence in a sea of government-controlled education institutions. Egged on by the subsidies-addicted middle class which aspires to first world education at third world prices, governments are interfering with the self-administration of all private schools by imposing tuition fees ceilings and other restrictions. In protest against this development, we have written our second cover story of the past six months warning of the dangers of government interference which could well be the beginning of the end of K-12 private independent schools which routinely top the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings, and attract students from around the world. Post-independence India’s record on preserving and maintaining its great institutions is abysmal. All right-thinking members of society need to cooperate to ensure our great independent schools aren’t added to the list. One of the great achievements of this publication is that we have impacted the vital importance of professionally delivered early childhood care and education (ECCE) on the national mindset. In this issue, we report on the eighth successive EducationWorld National Early Childhood Education Conference 2018, which attracted over 300 of the country’s top ECCE professionals. During this star-studded national conference, we also celebrated the country’s best pre-primaries top-ranked in our EducationWorld nationwide poll, the results of which were published in December (see Pictorial Essay).

If despite a mountain of evidence proving the contrary, there is a persistent belief that post-independence India’s judiciary is an institution to be proud of, its because of the upper judiciary, particularly the Supreme Court of India. In several brave and well-reasoned judgements and interpretations of the Constitution its judges have safeguarded the fundamental rights and civil liberties of the citizenry against legislation, orders and directives of often powerful Central and state governments. Indeed over the past 70 years since independence, India’s Supreme Court has built up an impressive body of case law which has protected and expanded the fundamental rights of citizens. But now, even this venerable institution of the higher judiciary is under a cloud. On January 12, four of the most senior justices of the Supreme Court called and addressed an unprecedented press conference in Delhi to complain about Chief Justice Dipak Misra, alleging that he was assigning cases of national importance to benches of relatively junior judges, excluding senior judges. In this press conference, the four senior justices — J. Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Kurian Joseph and M.B. Lokur — informed the country that all efforts to persuade Chief Justice Misra to constitute benches which include the courts senior-most judges to hear cases of national and constitutional importance had failed because the CJI insists that he is the ‘master of the roster and that in any event, all justices of the Supreme Court are of equal status. The latter argument became untenable after the apex court invalidated the Central governments National Judicial Appointments Commission Act, 2015, which proposed a more broad-based system (including members of civil society described as eminent persons) for selecting Supreme Court and high court judges. The apex court favoured continuation of the collegium system under which five senior-most judges of the court — including the chief justice — appoint all upper judiciary judges. Through this judgement, the Supreme Court in effect made a division between the senior collegium and other 20 judges of the apex court. Implicitly, it also established parity between the five-member judges of the collegium. Consequently, the actions of Chief Justice Dipak Misra in constituting and reconstituting benches of the apex court suo motu without any reference or consultation of the four other member-judges of the collegium, were highly improper and dictatorial. Therefore, the action of the collegium’s other senior judges to bring this to the attention of the public — after all efforts to persuade the chief justice of the error of his ways failed — was necessary to protect the integrity and well-being of the Supreme Court. The four senior collegium member judges quite rightly resolved that considerations of protocol and propriety should not be allowed to permit the Supreme Court — perhaps the sole institution which retains the respect of the public — to become the fiefdom of the chief justice.

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