SDG-3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages. SDG-4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. SDG-5 is to: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. SDG-11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. SDG-13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts by regulating emissions and promoting developments in renewable energy. “Education is a global, common good, a fundamental human right, and the basis for guaranteeing the realization of other rights. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) promotes the development of the knowledge, skills, understanding, values, and actions required to create a sustainable world, which ensures environmental protection and conservation, promotes social equity, and encourages economic sustainability.” The DN Wisdom Tree Global School is a state-of-art English medium, co- educational CBSE School in Bhubaneswar, Odisha that aims to provide quality education for children up to Grade 12. It is committed towards benchmarking education at the highest level by making available the best student development practices. The DN Wisdom Tree Global School nurtures a holistic and progressive curriculum wherein age-appropriate challenges and extra-curricular activities foster knowledge along with inculcation of values, thereby empowering children with all necessary life-skills. Our education system stimulates intellect, hones all-round abilities, ignites passion, and shapes character. The DN Wisdom Tree Global School rests on the foundation of Transformational Learning through global best practices. The vision is to create a world-class education space for children that enables learning through joyful experiences. While the infrastructure exudes the magnificence and expansiveness of the spirit of learning, the curriculum is a harmonious blend of scholastics and co- scholastics that fosters life skills and value systems along with academic knowledge. We believe that every child is born with unique and distinguishing qualities and as an institution that imparts learning, it is our duty to unravel these innate qualities, polish the potential and guide it towards excellence, while also motivating children to venture into unexplored zones, expanding horizons of the mind. This is keeping in line with our core philosophy of creating cohorts of well-rounded and multi-skilled global citizens. The CBSE curriculum is deployed through a child-centric methodology. It is mapped with an experiential learning approach, in order to move out of the rote learning process. Independent Learning is highly encouraged. Learning is imparted through mentoring instead of instructions, questioning and curiosity are encouraged and every child is enabled through the learning process without discrimination. Mentors are trained with latest global pedagogies and are also encouraged to bring in their own style of mentoring while imparting lessons. The Research & Development wing, led by an experienced, national level educator, is engaged in the process of continually upgrading and maintaining a well-balanced cycle of curriculum and pedagogy. Students are always encouraged to participate in a wide array of sporting activities like football, golf, tennis, horse-riding (with basics of horse polo), target-shooting, swimming, athletics, yoga, rock climbing, and martial arts, under the tutelage of professional coaches and…
The latest supreme court verdict in the Bilkis Bano gang-rape and multiple murder case which dates back to the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat, has somewhat redeemed the image of the apex court which has failed to mandate the root and branch judicial reforms which independent India patiently awaits. An estimated 4,000 citizens of India’s 200 million Muslim minority community were murdered, plundered and violated over a period of three days, without meaningful intervention by the police. In the final verdict which has re-incarcerated the 11 convicts who had been released after serving 14-year jail sentences — under law, life sentences are normatively commuted after convicts have served this time — the full-bench judgement delivered in 2019 and the latest (January 8) two-judge bench review judgement, the apex court has rightly held that the nature of the crimes committed against Bilkis Bano were so heinous — apart from Bilkis, her mother and cousin were gang-raped and murdered as also her three-year-old daughter, two minor brothers, two minor sisters and the cousin’s two-days-old child — that the normative commutation of life sentence for good behaviour after 14 years, cannot be applied in this case. Yet it’s a measure of the majestic indolence of the criminal justice system that although these unspeakable atrocities were suffered by Bilkis Bano and her kin in 2002, a special CBI court convicted the accused in 2008. After that, Bombay high court upheld the conviction in 2017 but not before ordering the transfer of the convicts to prison in Gujarat (“their state”) where they reportedly enjoyed long periods of parole. In 2021, a Gujarat Jail Advisory Committee recommended release of the convicts on completion of 14 years incarceration on grounds of “good behaviour” while serving their sentences. Accordingly on August 15, 2022 (Independence Day), these convicts were released from prison and greeted with garlands by ministers of Gujarat’s ruling BJP government. However while there is celebration that Bilkis has been granted justice, there’s little media and public comment that 22 years have elapsed since the commission of these atrocious offences before final closure. It’s also curious that the death sentence which the courts are obliged to impose in the rarest of rare cases, has been a blind-spot of several high apex courts, in this surely rarest of rare cases. Several Law Commissions have recommended radical reform of the clearly dysfunctional legal system which has a backlog of 55 million pending cases. But for mysterious reasons, these reforms have not been implemented. Meanwhile the seemingly helpless justices of the Supreme Court could set the ball rolling by mandating modest procedural reforms such as greater reliance on written submissions; limiting the time of loquacious lawyers to address courts to 60 minutes; permitting digital depositions; restricting the number of witnesses, and barring more than two adjournments. Curiously their lordships of the apex court seem to have forgotten the most basic maxim of law: justice delayed is justice denied.
Introduced in 2018, the EducationWorld Grand Jury India Preschool Rankings felicitate pre-primaries that have introduced contemporary pedagogies and practices in early childhood care and education (ECCE). To shortlist and select progressive preschools countrywide, we invited nominations from educationists, individuals and schools themselves, supported by evidence of best practices in ten categories — teacher-parent-student engagement, campus design, nature-friendly environment, innovative pedagogy, outstanding leadership, health-nutrition-safety, future-ready preschools, design thinking, learning assessment, best technology integration, social and emotional learning and most respected early childhood education brands. Moreover, we also invited nominations from pre-primaries of composite K-12 schools which have integrated and adopted best ECCE practices. The nominations were duly assessed by a jury comprising eminent educationists Fatema Agarkar, founder of Agarkar Centre for Excellence, Mumbai; Sumathi Ravichander, a Bangalore-based education consultant; and Dr. Maalathi K.R, founder and CEO, Aurro Educational Services, Chennai. The Top 10 EW Grand Jury India Preschool Rankings 2023-24 are presented in the pages following. India’s Most Respected Early Childhood Education Brand Institutions which have made exceptional contribution to expansion and upgradation of early childhood care and education. “We are elated with our ranking as India’s most respected early childhood education brand. It’s confirmation of our commitment to provide highest quality learning standards and development support to youngest children. Our age-appropriate curriculum ‘Kiducation’ is in total alignment with the National Curriculum Framework for the Foundational Stage 2022. Ditto our child-friendly assessments system. In Podar Schools, we regard parents as partners and they actively engage in their children’s development. We have recently launched our Immersive SPA — Sensory Processing Activities, to develop the eight intelligences of our children. I thank the EW grand jury for acknowledging Podar Prep team’s continuing quest to provide the highest quality early childhood care and education to our children” — Swati Popat Vats, president, Podar Education Network (490 preschools, 40,000 pupils, and 10,000 teachers) Teacher-Parent-Student Engagement Preschools which encourage and facilitate interaction and exchange of ideas between teachers, parents and children to enable holistic development of students. “We are honoured and blessed that the EW grand jury has conferred #1 rank under the important parameter of teacher-parent-student engagement on our pre-primary section. I believe that synergy between teachers, students and parents is vital for the holistic development of youngest children. Our parents trust and fully support the management and teachers to implement innovative pedagogies and activities, and our teachers ensure that parents are well-informed and involved in children’s school activities. Recently, we introduced a Mothers’ Club which organises monthly parent engagement programmes” — Amarjyotiba Gohil, Director, Amarjyoti Saraswati International School, Bhavnagar (500 students and 40 teachers) Future-Ready Preschools Pre-primaries that have demonstrated high potential to quickly adopt, upgrade and integrate 21st-century ECCE best practices. “Last year, Little Chipper was ranked among India’s Top 5 future-ready preschools. This year, we are ranked #1 — an exceptional honour not just for our team, but for the entire city of Agra! I attribute our rise in the EW league table to our dedicated focus on using experiential pedagogies to…
Dr Larry Arnn, President, Hillsdale College, USA As I wrote in my last despatch, at Hillsdale College, we are working to become involved with education in India. We are excited by this prospect because we love to teach, because India is important, and because there are profound commonalities between our countries. As I wrote last time, India and the United States have a kinship in at least two important respects: our practice of representative government, and the common roots of our languages. The importance of this second factor cannot be overestimated. Human capability to speak is the outcome of human reasoning capability, the unique capacity distinguishing us from all other earthly creatures. The western classics teach us that this gift is synonymous with speech. If you reflect for a minute, you will discern that you are thinking in words. And if you can think in words, you can utter and therefore share them. This draws us closer together than any other species. This is why education is important to humanity. We can do so much more with our minds than other creatures. It is true that we have bodies, like all animals, and it is true that these bodies have needs. We must feed them, rest them, grow them. We must reproduce them, which means we must care for the young. All of this is common across the animal kingdom. What is different is that homo sapiens have choices about how we do these things. This gives us a larger responsibility than other creatures. Our gift of reason is constantly interacting with our physical needs. This makes education of young humans much more important than other creatures. It takes much longer. It achieves much more. What then is education? The term comes from a Latin word meaning “to lead forth”. This raises the question, which way is forth? Aristotle writes that if one can identify a good horse, one ought to be able to tell who is a good human being. Horses are strong and fast. Racehorses in particular are beautiful when they perform. They are made to run. What are we made to do? We all have examples of excellent human beings whom we look up to. We admire people for their physical traits. When they are strong, fast, or physically beautiful, they are attractive to us. They represent a kind of perfection to which we all aspire. But in humans, physical traits never operate separately from our moral and mental traits. We can ruin our bodies by bad habits. We can build them by good habits, and we can choose what type of habits we will develop. The way “forth” for human beings is to grow towards excellence in body and soul. Good education cultivates this excellence through development of character and intellect. In the next letter, I will discuss how good schools develop character. In the following one, I will dwell on how they develop the intellect. These methods are the same in America and India, and…
2024 is promising in terms of work-life balance, greater workplace diversity, incremental adoption of artificial intelligence and climate change practices. This trend is likely to continue. In 2023, the world pushed aside the ghosts of the pandemic, and rebooted. However, remote-work habits acquired in the pandemic have survived. In addition, economies the world over have been confronted with geopolitical unrest and high inflation, even as artificial intelligence has made shattering advancements and headlines. What does the ‘Future of Work’ look like in the new year onward? Flexible and hybrid work. Thanks to the pandemic, work from home became the norm. However with restoration of normalcy, people are not eager to return to the pre-pandemic full-time work at office model. Hybrid seems to be the way of the future with options to work full-time from remote locations. Numerous research studies indicate two-three days in the office is the optimal hybrid working arrangement. A State of Remote Work Study 2023 by Buffer, a US-based online marketing software firm, says that 98 percent would like to work remotely, at least for some of the time, for the rest of their careers. Generative AI will get the nod for workplace adoption. Generative AI tools like Facebook’s Llama and OpenAI’s ChatGPT has made a big impact on knowledge work, increasing productivity multi-fold. Employees in education, marketing, law, technology, arts, architecture will increasingly be able to access AI tools in their workplaces. For example, Generative AI tools can be readily used for written copy, image, video, audio, and code generation. While companies were still learning and figuring out how to skilfully use the technology in 2023, it’s likely we’ll see an adoption leap in 2024, as workers and companies become more comfortable and confident about Generative AI, right from the CEO to newly recruited college graduates. Employee health costs will push preventive measures and outcomes. The current state of high inflation, labour shortages, and developments in the healthcare industry will sharpen focus on employee healthcare. For employers, this will mean offering higher-quality care options as well as greater emphasis on preventive care. Offering programs to better manage specific health conditions, reducing specialty prescription drugs and focusing on generic options, virtual care, and providing self-help and education tools, are on the cards. Workplace employee health extends beyond physical healthcare. The pandemic, recession, wars, and general social unrest have spiralled anxiety levels worldwide. Therefore, mental health and general well-being will also receive greater attention in the future. Climate change will continue to pressure companies to be part of the solution. Big business was responsible for 71 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions over the past three decades. Increasingly consumers, investors and government regulatory boards are demanding business and industry to reduce carbon emissions. In 2024, organisations will start to slow climate change and support health of the planet. EU corporates are already complying with mandatory environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure requirements and reporting their impact on nature under a Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. It is expected…
Seems like billionaire infrastructure to consumer products tycoon Gautam Adani heeded repeated EW advice to mount a counter-offensive to the Hindenburg Research report of January 24, 2023 which plunged the market cap of Adani Group companies listed on the National Stock Exchange from Rs.192 lakh crore on January 24 to Rs.68 lakh crore on February 7 last year. With the result that from being the richest man in Asia, Adani’s rank in the Forbes list of Asia’s HNI (high net worth individuals) slipped from #1 to #19. For several months during which Adani Group equity shares were hitting new lows in the stock market, Adani cowered in his Ahmedabad den, prompting your editor to wonder what’s the point of being Asia’s richest man without having the resources to defend one’s reputation (see https://www.educationworld.in/simpleton-leader/). We contended that far from being heavily in debt as alleged by Hindenburg Research, Adani Group has solid, on-the ground, tangible assets — ports, airports, power plants, edible oils refining capacity and agri-produce warehouses — generating substantial profits to easily pay off the allegedly huge bank debts of group companies. Perhaps our advice to Adani to strike back was accepted and on October 23, 2023 the group mounted a highly effective front page ad campaign in major dailies countrywide detailing how Adani Ports and SEZ Ltd had transformed a mud flat in the seaside town of Mundra (Gujarat) into India’s sole deep water port which facilitates 11 percent of India’s foreign trade and supports a thriving hinterland economy. Evidently, the Supreme Court agrees. On January 3, 2024, it rejected a writ petition calling for a SIT (special investigation tribunal) to investigate the Hindenburg charges. As a result the market cap of Adani Group companies rose to Rs.143 lakh crore on January 24, 2024 and is well on its way to crossing the Rs.192 lakh crore high point. Inevitably, media pundits are likely to scoff at our claim of Adani having read this under-appreciated, education-focused publication. However in the vain hope that Adani, who has promoted several education institutions, may put some business our way, the billionaire has been on your editor’s complimentary list for a while and may well have availed our free-of-charge advice.
Although the media has adopted a neutral position on the issue of the widely reported divorce drama between Gautam Singhania, big boss of the Mumbai-based Raymond Ltd — billed as the world’s largest men’s suiting manufacturer — and his wife of 32 years Nawaz Mody, there’s undoubtedly a nasty streak in this textiles tycoon who is being taken to the cleaners by Mody who is demanding 75 percent of his shareholding in the company valued at Rs.8,701 crore. For past few months, Mumbai’s cocktail circuit has been abuzz with tales of the Raymond Man who reportedly has serious anger management issues, berating and beating up his wife, and often their two daughters. The scales of opinion within the Maximum City’s glitterati seem to tilt towards Mody, a beauteous former fashion model who tied the knot with the Raymonds heir despite the latter being afflicted with a rare dermatological problem — vitiligo, aka leucoderma. However, he must have possessed a modicum of charm because in 2016 he persuaded his father Vijaypat Singhania, the founder-chairman and MD of Raymond, to transfer his 37 percent equity in the publicly listed Raymond Ltd (sales: Rs.8,300 crore in 2023-24) when the octogenarian pere decided to hang up his customised suits and step down as chairman of the company. Again, instead of genuflecting with gratitude, the perfidious Gautam turfed him out of the company flat in Mumbai’s tony Breach Candy. And mind you Vijaypat is a man of no mean achievements. After dutifully developing Raymond into a multi-million dollar enterprise with his father Lala Kailashpat, in 1988 Vijaypat piloted a single seater airplane all the way from the UK to India, a feat which attracted banner headlines in the media. Unsurprisingly, the elder Singhania is squarely on the side of his daughter-in-law and grand-daughters. The latest news is that the fractious couple is about to reach a “more reasonable” settlement. That would be a disappointment to many waiting to see this bad advertisement for the Raymond Man getting his comeuppance.
Undoubtedly after consecration of the resplendent new Ram Temple in Ayodhya preceded by inauguration of the new Parliament building in Delhi and several high-profile infrastructure projects all over the country, 21st century India is experiencing a long overdue renaissance. Prime Minister Narendra Modi believes that with the Ram Temple constructed in Ayodhya the nation has been liberated from “500 years of mental slavery” which began when invaders from Central Asia and later Britain ruled over India, i.e, Bharat. Yet there seems to be a conspiracy of silence within government and the establishment about the rising tide of Indians rich and poor, desperate to flee the promising new Ram Rajya of newly liberated India. During 2021-23, a record 3.61 lakh HNWI (high net worth individuals) emigrated to countries eager to welcome can-do entrepreneurs and professionals. This emigration stampede is not restricted to HNWIs. According to US Customs and Border Protection authority data, between October 2022 and September 2023, a record number of 96,917 Indians were arrested while attempting to enter the US unlawfully mainly along the Canada-Mexico borders — a five-fold increase over the 19,883 apprehended in 2019-20. Curiously the majority of these illegal immigrants are from Gujarat, the bailiwick of PM Modi, who served there as chief minister from 2002-2014 before he was elected prime minister of the country. Moreover on January 29, over 10,000 construction workers flocked to a government-run ITI in Lucknow to be tested for employment in Israel, dangers of the Israel-Hamas war and political considerations be damned. Seems like the public, rich and poor, is not buying official propaganda that a new Ram Rajya age based on justice, equity and inclusivity is set to dawn nationwide. Also read: From mosque to temple: An Indian tragedy
ONE WAY TO LOVE ; LOVING YOU TWICE; THREE TIMES LUCKY (Jasmine Villa Series) Andaleeb Wajid westland publications Rs.399 Pages 276; 296 & 290 Romance stories written by Muslim women published in women’s magazines enjoy phenomenal popularity among Urdu readers Andaleeb Wajid, a young Bangalore-based, hijab-wearing woman, who has written over 40 novels in genres ranging from young adult and romance to horror, often raises eyebrows because her overtly Muslim identity is seen to be in contradiction with her choice of the genre derisively termed ‘chick lit’. Is a hijab-clad Muslim woman reading and writing romances an anomaly? Actually, not! And those familiar with the tradition of women writing in Urdu, for instance, novels by Hijab Imtiyaz Ali and Sughra Humayun Mirza, or short stories published in women’s magazines and periodicals, know the phenomenal popularity of romances among Urdu readers. In fact, romance was one of the most popular genres in the late 19th and early 20th century in Urdu women’s magazines and periodicals whose Muslim women readers eagerly consumed it. The three books under review, which together constitute the Jasmine Villa series, broadly fall within this category. All novels are dedicated to one sister in a family of three sisters, their romantic encounters and trysts with the issues of romance and marriage. Jasmine Villa is the home of Tehzeeb, Ana, and Athiya who live with their father Yusuf Hasan. A man of faith, Yusuf has raised his three daughters after the death of their mother, given them good education and freedom. Though temperamentally different, all three sisters share a strong bond and exude confidence, pride, and self-respect. Within this context, the three novels move in different directions as they follow the diverse romantic trajectories of the three sisters. Each sister experiences love in her own way and on finding her prince charming, encounters the complex social contexts in which their love stories unfold. Faced with the challenge of breaking the norms set by their father, they exhibit resolute spirit. The first book in the series follows the story of the eldest, Tehzeeb Hasan. Tehzeeb’s life in her family home she dearly loves is fairly settled. Marriage is not on her mind as she keeps dodging neighbourhood aunties who send her marriage proposals until one day when after Friday prayers, her father meets his old friend Bakhtiyar Ahmed in a mosque and the friend asks for her hand in marriage to his only son. Tehzeeb’s father agrees and asks her to meet the boy. Young and handsome Ayub Ahmed, too, has no desire for matrimony and is taken aback by his father’s decision. However, when the two meet, it’s love at first sight and smitten by each other, they decide to marry. With this begins Tehzeeb’s struggle with a new life, new role in a new family, rituals, societal expectations and class asymmetries. Called upon to discharge the role of the perfect bahu, the free-spirited Tehzeeb feels stifled and trapped in an endless round of inane parties and senseless dressing.…
The Indian village: Rural lives in the 21st century Surinder S. Jodhka Aleph Book Company Rs.799 Pages 279 This book details the relationship between land reforms, green revolution, rising agricultural production and the emergence of marginalised people India’s 600,000 villages represent a vast terrain, full of diversity in natural settings, social structure, cultural life, economic conditions, and many other aspects of life. On the one hand, there are villages that have all types of modern equipment for agricultural work and connectivity with the rest of the world. On the other there are villages in tribal areas, where peasants still follow old patterns of agriculture, and are unable to produce sufficient food to fulfill the needs of their families. Apart from an introduction and conclusion, the book contains nine chapters, which cover diverse issues such as the village as a site of deficit; its imagination as a basic and static unit of the nation, and ethnographic descriptions of village life. It also presents analyses of the changing nature of state policies, agriculture and non-farm economy, class, caste and gender, and new democratic spaces and voices emerging in rural India. The author accepts that “rural realities are not singular processes, they have been historically diverse and their trajectories of change are different across regions.” And, one of the key running themes of the book is that the popular view of social life in ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ settings as binaries of each other is completely flawed. It is “not only empirically unsustainable, it also produces a hierarchy among the two: the rural as being traditional and backward, and the urban as modern and evolved.” The Indian Village critically evaluates the colonial construction of rural India as a land of village republics. It is a radical claim made by the author that not only Karl Marx but icons like Gandhi, Tagore, and Nehru were also influenced by this construction of Indian villages. Gandhi based his idea of swaraj on the concept of ideal Indian villages, while Nehru and Ambedkar strongly criticised socio-economic conditions in village India. While Nehru considered the Indian village a space of class inequalities and exploitation, Ambedkar vehemently criticised it for caste-based inequalities, oppression, exclusion, and exploitation. The author underlines that these thinkers were unhappy with the existing conditions of villages and presented their solutions to overcome the deficiencies of rural life. Indeed the changes in the political life of the country can be best understood through the changes in the socio-economic life of rural India. The book details the relationship between the impact of land reform, Green Revolution, enhancement of agricultural production, and emergence of marginalised people in India’s political landscape. Choubey underscores that out-migration increased in several rural areas, resulting in the dependence of many rural families on the non-farm economy. New technologies also created new opportunities for people living in rural India who established connection with people in urban areas. It also improved the lifestyle of many families, who were earlier marginalised in the village due to their…
McGill University, one of Canada’s top-ranked higher education institutions, is warning that a provincial policy to discourage English-language instruction through sharp tuition fee hikes is threatening its existence. The move by Quebec premier François Legault “puts the university’s very future in question”, McGill said in issuing an estimate that the plan could cost the institution close to C$100 million (Rs.620 crore) a year and cause it grave reputational damage. Legault is a founder of the conservative-nationalist Coalition Avenir Quebec party, which has put a priority on reviving the use of the French language in his province, the nation’s largest by area and second-biggest by population. In recent weeks and months, Legault’s government — first elected in 2018 — has pushed a plan that imposes his French-language agenda on higher education through steps that include substantial tuition increases for Canadian students from outside Quebec and new French-proficiency graduation requirements for most of them. That planned tuition increase for non-Quebec Canadians — to C$12,000 (Rs.7.44 lakh) per year, or 33 percent beyond current levels — is down from the Legault government’s initial suggestion in October for a rate of C$17,000. Yet it still would make McGill far more expensive for such students than top-tier competitors such as the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia. The Legault plan, due to take effect this coming autumn, would also require that English-language institutions in Quebec give an overwhelming share of the fees they receive from international students — already running at about C$20,000 per year — to French-language universities. McGill estimates that the plan would cost it an annual budgetary loss of C$42-C$94 million (Rs.260-582 crore). Concordia University estimates a C$15.5 million initial-year loss. The government’s goal for the use of the French language “is academically and technically unfeasible and will deter students from coming here,” McGill’s president, Deep Saini, said in issuing his institution’s cost estimate. The president of Concordia, Graham Carr, said that the mere threat of the policy is already costing Quebec higher education harm to its global reputation that “cannot be undone”. Quebec’s French-speaking institutions have showed limited sympathy. The University of Quebec said the Legault government is taking steps aimed at “ensuring a better balance of income generated by international students between universities”. And leaders of several other French-speaking institutions — including the University of Montreal and Laval University — say they don’t necessarily oppose the idea of taking resources from their more popular English-language counterparts, as long as the plan isn’t so extreme that it causes them great harm. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)
Foreigners are among the more than 4,000 who make up Yonsei University’s 39,000-strong student body, their presence attesting to the fact that Yonsei’s name, hallowed in Korea, carries weight far outside the country, too. Known as one of the troika of the nation’s top “SKY universities” (alongside Seoul National and Korea universities), Yonsei is both highly funded and heavily oversubscribed — an administrator’s dream come true. But elsewhere in Korean higher education, things are not so peachy. Last spring, news headlines warned of “zombie universities”, near-empty campuses that continue to operate despite inevitability of ultimate closure. Official figures don’t offer much cheer either, with Korea’s Ministry of Education identifying 84 financially insolvent institutions that need to shut down. And there are even greater challenges in the pipeline. By 2040, the number of Korean students eligible to enter university will drop to 280,000 — 39 percent down from 460,000 in 2020, according to the Korean Council for University Education (KCUE), the representative association of four-year universities. Like neighbouring Japan, Korea suffers from a low birth rate and ageing population. But here, the demographic cliff is much steeper. Indeed, demographic decline has already put scores of universities out of business and there are calls for the government to help others shut down gracefully, perhaps by buying their land so that they can afford to offer severance pay to faculty and staff. If they are to avoid that fate, many others will have to grapple with a rapidly shifting enrolment landscape, on top of adapting to highly disruptive new technologies and the 180-degree policy pivots typical of the country’s change-loving political leaders. With nearly 74 percent of Koreans enrolling in higher education, it’s unlikely that more domestic learners can be lured into the sector. The focus, then, must be on admitting more foreigners, academics and policymakers broadly agree. But while this seems an obvious — if not a complete — remedy, the path to internationalisation is far from straightforward. Last summer, the government published a plan to recruit thousands more international students by 2027. The Study Korea 300,000 initiative plans to make Korean universities more globally competitive and to increase overseas enrolment by more than a third, from the current estimated 180,000. But some scholars feel this is an arbitrary and unrealistic goal. Jun Hyun Hong, a professor in the School of Public Service at Seoul’s Chung-Ang University (CAU) and adviser to the government on the initiative, believes the aspiration is “unsustainable” because it puts production-like emphasis on output without fully understanding the complex human interactions behind them. “I always say that education now is considered part of industry,” he previously told Times Higher Education. “This is an industrial view; this is not an education view.” Hong is worried that without ensuring quality of education, a push to significantly increase the number of international students in Korea could ultimately backfire. Others argue that without institutional targets, it will be very hard to get all universities on board. But even critics of the scheme,…
Rapid expansion of postgraduate enrolment is forcing Chinese universities to abandon their “boarding school” model of providing on-campus accommodation for all students. Institutions have long provided subsidised dormitories, which cost significantly less than private off-campus options. At Fudan University, for example, on-campus accommodation costs Master’s students between 800 yuan (Rs.9,600) and 1,600 yuan annually, while a single room off campus could cost more than 4,000 yuan. But the topic has become the subject of significant debate after institutions including Peking University announced that students on professional postgraduate degrees — programmes focused on particular professions, such as MBAs and Master’s in engineering, medicine and public administration — would not be eligible for on-campus accommodation. At least ten other universities have stated that students on professional postgraduate degrees will have nil or limited access to on-campus accommodation, including Fudan and Beijing Normal, Nanjing, Nankai and Xiamen universities. “It will become normal that higher education institutions will no longer provide graduate student dormitories,” writes Bao Wanqing, a research fellow at Qinghai Normal University in an opinion article. According to an annual report on postgraduate enrolment, the number of Chinese students on professional postgraduate degrees more than tripled from 197,000 in 2012 to 649,000 in 2021, representing nearly 62 percent of all Master’s admissions. China’s Ministry of Education has set a target of increasing that proportion to two-thirds by the end of 2025. “I do know that many universities’ professional Master’s students have exceeded the number of academic Master’s students, with the former often being full-time employees,” says Yingyi Ma, director of Asian studies at Syracuse University. “Universities prefer these kinds of professional programmes — they are cash cows.” The number of students taking any type of postgraduate degree in China has exploded in recent years in the face of a challenging job market. The number writing the national postgraduate entrance exam hit 4.74 million in 2023, up from 2.4 million just five years earlier. “The graduate boom is another manifestation of degree inflation in Chinese higher education. Many students could not find jobs or good jobs, so they try to get into postgraduate programmes,” says Prof. Ma.
France’s newly passed hard-line immigration law will repel international students and stifle French research, warn education leaders. The controversial new legislation approved by the French parliament in December, divided President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Renaissance party, while the far-right, anti-immigration politician Marine Le Pen, leader of National Rally, heralded it as an “ideological victory”. The Bill includes migration quotas, restrictions on citizenship for those born in France to non-citizens, cuts to migrants’ benefits eligibility and the potential to remove dual nationals convicted of certain crimes from French citizenship. Despite France’s goal of attracting 500,000 international students by 2027, the new law contains several measures that many fear will dissuade them. To obtain a residence permit, students from overseas will have to pay an as-yet undetermined “return deposit” to cover potential “removal costs”. The deposit would be returned when they leave France upon their permit’s expiration or when they obtain a new visa. International students will also have to demonstrate the “real and serious nature of their studies” on a yearly basis, Le Monde reported, or risk having their residence permit withdrawn. The legislation also makes higher university registration fees for non-European Union students’ compulsory, after their introduction in 2019 on a voluntary basis decided by universities. While French students and those from within the EU pay €170 (Rs.15,470) to register for a bachelor’s degree and €243 for a Master’s, non-EU students will now be obliged to pay €2,770 (Rs.2.52 lakh) and €3,770 respectively. A joint statement released by France Universites, the Conference of Deans of French Schools of Engineering (CDEFI) and several student unions called on Macron to challenge the law. Alexis Michel, director of the Brest National School of Engineering and president of CDEFI’s Europe and International Commission, called the return deposit a “mark of suspicion” that reflected “a desire to select students through money” rather than merit. “The idea that candidates for migration present themselves as students to circumvent the procedures is a statistical fiction. CDEFI requests the removal of the return deposit and waits for the president of the republic to exercise his constitutional prerogatives to provoke a new deliberation of the bill in parliament,” says Prof. Michel. Both Macron and prime minister Elisabeth Borne have already partially walked back the return deposit measure during media appearances, according to Le Monde, with the former saying it was “not a good idea” and the latter commenting, “Is this the best system? Not necessarily.” Sylvie Retailleau, the minister of higher education and research, submitted her resignation over the bill, which Macron rejected. France Universites later said the minister had received “strong commitments” from the president and prime minister, pledging to overturn “discriminatory and ineffective measures” including the deposit.
Nasrin Modak Siddiqi (Mumbai) A class XII student of the wholly residential Hotchkiss School in Connecticut (USA), Haazik Kaizi (17) is a young environment activist battling oceanic plastic pollution. His smart ship christened Ervis uses centripetal force, a multistage cleaner and compactor to sustainably and responsibly cleanse the seas of plastic waste. Last September, Haazik was awarded the Times of India ‘Unstoppable Indian’ award. This articulate teen has addressed several international forums including TEDxGateway Mumbai in 2018, the Seed and Chips Summit (2019), The Economic Times Global Business Summit (2019), and the United Nations High-Level Political Forum 2020. Fully supported by his parents, in 2019 Haazik registered the Ervis Foundation “to create a generational change in the way students associate with marine ecosystems and how they can help preserve them.” The elder of two children of Sarfaraz Kaizi, a Dubai-based IT professional and Nilofer, a homemaker, Haazik began his oceans cleansing crusade when he was just nine, and a student of the top-ranked Indus International School, Pune. “In 2013, I was deeply moved by a photograph of a dead whale washed ashore which had died of intestinal blockage because of plastic waste. Subsequent research indicated that there are 5 trillion pieces of plastic in the world’s oceans. The idea for Project Ervis struck me while washing my hands at a sink. The prospect of building similar ‘sinks’ in the ocean inspired me to start this initiative,” he says. At age ten, Haazik used simple cardboard, a pot lid and an inflatable swimming tube to build the prototype of Ervis. “My parents have been pillars of support. I am equally grateful to my mentor, Dr. Ash Pachauri of the Protect Our Planet movement, with whom I had a chance encounter at a TedEx talk, for supporting my foundation,” says the teen whiz, who moved to the US in 2021. Committed to saving the world’s endangered oceans from plastic wastes pollution, Haazik’s next project is an underwater drone to measure the quality of marine ecosystems. “I want to study environmental sciences after school. We need to enter an era of positive co-existence with the environment and utilise the gift of our natural resources to build a globally sustainable ecosystem,” says this dedicated marine ecologist. Fair winds!
By surrendering to a political mob despite the apparent protection of the world’s most powerful university, Claudine Gay has set a precedent that has left academics wondering who can possibly survive the rising ideological crusades of America. On January 2, Prof. Gay stepped down as president of Harvard University after six months of stifling pressure from an alignment of conservative forces, navigating the howls of pro-Israel activists, only to succumb to borderline complaints about poor editing in her past scholarly writings. It amounts to a politically based toppling of the leader of the nation’s most prestigious and well-endowed university, say several academics, with ominous implications for anyone else in academia who dares to persistently challenge the interests of US political and economic wealth. The ultimate success of the plagiarism complaints as the apparently determinative weapon against Prof. Gay, academics warn, is especially worrying, since it is an allegation that is becoming very easy to raise with the help of advanced computer tools and often very difficult to adjudicate in a fair and consistent manner. “Very few of us can probably withstand that kind of scrutiny,” says Jennifer Ruth, professor of film studies at Portland State University who writes on issues of academic freedom through the American Association of University Professors. “By giving in, Harvard has set the stage for continuing the expansion of this kind of scare and chilling of academic freedom and targeting of higher ed.” The endgame for Prof. Gay began last December, when she and the heads of two other elite US universities — all women relatively new to their presidencies — agreed to appear before Congress to answer Republican allegations that student protests against Israeli military attacks on Palestinian civilians amounted to campus tolerance of anti-semitism. That moment of political theatre — combined with sustained criticism from wealthy individual donors — soon led one of the presidents, Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, to step down. Prof. Gay appeared to have survived the moment, backed by hundreds of faculty demanding that she stay. But she then became consumed by a parallel campaign by conservative activists compiling a list of more than 40 instances — typically brief excerpts of a few sentences or less — that they put forth as evidence that her scholarly record was marred by repeatedly citing others without proper credit. Prof. Gay — the first black president of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious university — said she had resigned “in the best interests of Harvard” to let the institution move forward. In a subsequent article for The New York Times, she described a brief presidency filled with constant attacks including death threats, and urged academic colleagues nationwide not to succumb to “the loudest and most extreme voices in our culture”. She acknowledged that her critics were able to find “instances in my academic writings where some material duplicated other scholars’ language without proper attribution”, but said she immediately corrected such “errors”, and “never misrepresented my research findings, nor have I ever…
Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru) Ahmedabad-based Aryan Rajvanshi (16) is a teenage prodigy representing the growing tribe of social innovators countrywide. Last November, a six-minute documentary video featuring his breakthrough innovation MechaCrop was showcased at the United Nations’ Global Impact Summit — a global initiative to support young innovators — in New York (USA). MechaCrop integrates AI and drone technology to identify and detect crop diseases, monitor crop growth, yield, and quality. A class XI student of the Cambridge International-affiliated Anand Niketan International School, Ahmedabad, Aryan was inspired to build MechaCrop during a 2020 family trip to Udaipur. “We saw the bodies of two farmers from a nearby village lying on the road in a pool of blood. Unable to pay back their farm loans, they had taken the extreme step of ending their lives by suicide. That visual hit me hard, and made me determined to help our neglected farmers. I put my passion for computer programming to use and MechaCrop was born,” recalls Aryan, the elder of two children of Ashish Rajvanshi, a corporate professional, and Ritu, a primary school teacher. The project was selected to be presented at the Sutardja Centre for Entrepreneurship and Technology at UC Berkeley last April (2023), and was shortlisted as the best AI initiative by the jury which invited Aryan to showcase it at the United Nations Global Impact Summit. “Our vice principal Monica Nanda has been especially supportive of my initiative, brainstormed ideas at different project stages, and is a constant source of inspiration. And since the school curriculum doesn’t cover AI or drone technology, I learnt through Coursera and in collaboration with the California-based InSpirit AI,” says Aryan, who also ran a fund-raising campaign for the enterprise. After completing his A levels, Aryan intends to enroll in an engineering degree programme in the US with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning as his majors. “In the long term, I want to spend my life in India fulfilling my commitment towards the nation’s farmers with fully developed models of MechaCrop,” says this youngster and live advertisement of the power of self-learning. Wind beneath your wings!
Mahindra-La Trobe concordat Delhi ncr/hyderabad, january 23. Mahindra University and La Trobe University, Australia have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), for upgrading the education of civil engineering students. This strategic collaboration includes a four-year programme, a cohesive student exchange initiative, and faculty exchange programmes. It will offer Mahindra University students opportunity to complete the final two years of their undergraduate programme at La Trobe University, “immersing them in a world-renowned academic environment and unlocking valuable international experience.” La Trobe will offer scholarships valued at AUD 9,500 (Rs.5.13 lakh) per annum to Mahindra University students participating in the programme. Commented Dr. Yajulu Medury, vice chancellor of Mahindra University, speaking on the occasion: “This MoU is a milestone in our efforts to nurture future global leaders in civil engineering. The partnership will provide our students access to cutting-edge knowledge, industry-relevant skills, and a global perspective that will prepare them for successful careers on the international stage.” La Trobe’s Bachelor of Civil Engineering (Honours) programme is accredited by Engineers Australia, ensuring the highest standards for students choosing the programme. CUTM outreach program New delhi, january 10. Centurion University of Technology and Management (CUTM) — the well-known Odisha-based skills university — successfully conducted a faculty outreach programme in Kanpur which attracted the participation of 150 teachers, educational experts, principals and proprietors of coaching institutes. “The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 mandates skill-based futuristic education in schools and universities. Therefore, it is essential that educators co-operate to make it a reality. For over a decade, CUTM has been imparting skills education through experiential learning in on-campus industrial enterprises. These enterprises are engaged in everything from chalk making to e-rickshaw production, and students learn from ideation to production to commercialisation while pursuing conventional study programmes. Such action learning models are urgently needed to develop an industry-ready workforce of the future,” said Dr. Sukanta Parida, director of admissions at Centurion University, speaking on the occasion. Wadhwani’s gift Chennai, january 30. The Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-Madras) announced commitment of an endowment of Rs.110 crore from US-based billionaire Sunil Wadhwani for establishing a Wadhwani School of Data Science and AI. Wadhwani is an alumnus of IIT-Madras and the co-founder of IGATE and Mastech Digital. Wadhwani’s gift is one of the largest endowed by an alumnus to establish a school at an education institution in India. Speaking on the occasion, Wadhwani said: “I see a strong need for a dedicated data science and AI school focusing on foundational and applied research. With advancements in science and technology, India holds immense potential to emerge as a world leader in AI and allied sciences. As a proud alumnus, IIT Madras holds a special place in my life, and I am gratified to be associated with it in this manner.” Added Prof. V. Kamakoti, director, IIT-Madras: “With the advent of industry 4.0, wherein AI and data science are the main movers, the need for a school for data science and AI is critical. IIT-Madras has started this highly interdisciplinary school…
Bihar Coaching centres caveat Patna, january 2. The state’s education ministry has threatened stringent action against government schoolteachers associating with private coaching centres. In a letter addressed to district magistrates, the ministry’s additional chief secretary K.K. Pathak requested them to obtain written undertakings from all private coaching centres within their jurisdiction affirming that “no government school teachers will take classes in their institutions”. “If teachers continue to work in coaching centres, strict departmental action will be taken against them and legal action will also be initiated against the coaching centre,” says a senior ministry official. The ministry has also asked all district education officers in the state to provide details of such teachers on a priority basis. According to a report recently compiled by the ministry, there are a total of 12,761 registered private coaching centres in Bihar, with 9.9 lakh students enrolled in them. Uttar Pradesh Girls Sainik Schools Mathura, january 1. Union defence minister Rajnath Singh inaugurated the country’s first all-girls Samvid Gurukulam Girls Sainik School at Vrindavan describing it as a ‘beacon of light for girls who aspire to join the armed forces and serve their motherland’. The first all-girls Sainik (army) school with an enrolment of 870 students was inaugurated under an initiative to establish 100 new Sainik schools in partnership with NGOs/private/state government schools in all states/Union territories. These are in addition to the existing 33 Sainik schools, a defence ministry statement said. Addressing a press conference, the defence minister said: “They (girls) have the right to protect the nation just like their male counterparts. It was a golden moment in the history of women empowerment when we approved the admission of girls to Sainik schools. Today our women are not only flying fighter jets, they are also securing our borders.” Himachal Pradesh Outer space lab Bilaspur, january 26. On Republic Day (January 26), technical education minister Rajesh Dharmani inaugurated the state’s first outer space lab in the Government Senior Secondary School, Ghumarwin. “The space lab will provide students an opportunity to learn about satellite launcher systems, drones and details of critical ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) projects. The lab has been built at a cost of Rs.10 lakh,” the minister said, speaking on the occasion. Special tour programmes will be organised for students of other schools to access the lab, he added. Jharkhand New APU campus Ranchi, January 24. Chief minister Hemant Soren laid the foundation stone of the Rs.5,000-crore Azim Premji University sited on a 146-acre campus in Ranchi. Azim Premji, chairman of the Azim Premji Foundation, joined the ceremony through video conferencing. “Currently, the foundation’s largest university campus is in Bengaluru — 110 acres. APU’s Ranchi campus will be bigger than that,” the chief minister said, speaking on the occasion. The university, which will include a medical college with a 500-bed hospital besides a K-12 school, will start functioning in 2026, he added. Gujarat Deakin campus inauguration Ahmedabad, january 10. Australian High Commissioner Philip Green hailed the inauguration of Australia’s Deakin University…
To harness India’s demographic dividend — 500 million children and youth below age 34 — it is critical that we identify weaknesses in our K-12 system and fix them pronto. An overview of the deep-rooted problems of Indian school education with some remedial solutions writes Sridhar Rajagopalan In the emerging hyper-competitive global marketplace where the quality of human resources is likely to prove a critically important factor, India’s foundational K-12 education system is not in good shape. Year after year, the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), published by the independent Pratham Education Foundation, has been reporting that over half of class V children in primary schools of rural India — which grudgingly hosts 60 percent of the national population — can’t read class II texts or manage simple math sums. And in the latest ASER 2023 report released on January 17, which field tested 34,375 teens in the 14-18 age group, the survey reveals that 25 percent cannot read a class II level textbook fluently in their regional language. “More than half struggle with division (3-digit by 1-digit) problems. Only 43.3 percent of 14-18-year-olds are able to do such problems correctly,” says ASER 2023. Unsurprisingly, as reported in the EW cover story last month (January), at the last minute India opted out of PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), an international exam which tests the reading, science and maths capabilities of representative batches of 15-year-olds from over 80 countries. With the Indian economy clocking 6 percent-plus annual GDP growth rates and forecast as the fastest growing major economy worldwide for the next decade, there will be a desperate need for well-educated and skilled human resources which have to emerge from its education system. When Apple weighs moving 25 percent of its iPhone production to India, a critical factor in its decision will be the quality of the workforce it can recruit. Simultaneously, there is the risk of AI impacting tech outsourcing that contributes an estimated 7.5 percent of India’s GDP. The common perception is that India’s private schools which host 48 percent of in-school children are excellent. But studies have shown that while they provide a certain measure of drill and practice, they are not sufficiently developing modern 21st century thinking skills of relatively privileged children. To harness India’s demographic dividend — 500 million children and youth below age 34 — it is critical that we identify weaknesses in our K-12 system and fix them pronto. An overview of the deep-rooted problems of Indian school education is detailed below with some remedial solutions. Rote learning and the exam system. The elephant in India’s K-12 classrooms is rote learning. Simply put, rote learning is mechanical learning where students can recite dates and definitions and solve ‘typical’ problems, but cannot demonstrate deeper understanding of subjects and apply their knowledge to real-life situations. Rote learning is not simply ‘memorisation’, which is a learning tool and may be useful at times. For example, memorisation of formulas for quick recall, once understood, or of…
“Deeply regret the passing of Dr. Jagdish Gandhi, founder-chairman of the Lucknow-based City Montessori School, acknowledged by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest single city multi campus school with over 57,000 students. Dr Gandhi was among the first to encourage the novel EducationWorld venture and a committed supporter throughout his life. From modest beginnings he built CMS into a powerhouse school repeatedly ranked Uttar Pradesh’s No.1 coed day school in the EW India School Rankings. All of us in EducationWorld deeply mourn the passing of this great educator who overcame overwhelming odds to build a great education institution.” Dilip Thakore, Editor, EducationWorld in a tribute to CMS founder Dr. Jagdish Gandhi (January 22) “Our ability to remain relevant as an institution requires us to recognise challenges and begin difficult conversations.” DY Chandrachud, Chief Justice of India, flagging some of the challenges faced by the judiciary including adjournment culture and long vacations (ndtv.com, January 28) “We have also seen that those parents who have not been very successful in their lives have nothing to say or want to tell the world about their successes and achievements, make the report card of their children their visiting card. Whenever they meet someone, they will tell them the story of their children. This is not good.” Prime minister Narendra Modi interacting with students, parents and teachers during his annual Pariksha Pe Charcha programme (January 29) “The Skill India Mission has trained 1.4 crore youth, upskilled and reskilled 54 lakh youth, and established 3000 new ITIs. A large number of new institutions of higher learning, namely 7 IITs, 16 IIITs, 7 IIMs, 15 AIIMS and 390 universities have been set up.” Nirmala Sitharaman, Union finance minister, in her Interim Union Budget 2024-25 speech (February 1)
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) Released on January 17, the latest Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2023 ‘Beyond Basics’ of the highly respected Pratham Education Foundation paints a dismal picture of the pitiable condition of school education in West Bengal (pop.91 million), a state that prides itself on its intellectual prowess. In Bengal, ASER 2023 field tested the learning outcomes of 1,361 youth in the 14-18 age group from 1,200 households in 60 villages of Cooch Behar district. According to the survey, 79.2 percent of 14-18 year-olds can’t solve simple 3-digit by 1-digit division sums. Also, 61.3 percent of 14-18 year-old youths in the district couldn’t read simple sentences in English. Moreover, 38.38 percent of students in the 14-18 year age group couldn’t follow written instructions, and 34.4 percent can’t read basic class II textbooks in their native Bengali language. A growing number of monitors of education in Bengal attribute the pathetic learning outcomes of the state’s youth to the prolonged lockdown of schools statewide during the Covid-19 pandemic. India’s education sector lockdown during the pandemic (2020-21) averaging 82 weeks was the longest worldwide. But the lockdown of education institutions in the state was way above the national, at 99 weeks, due to which 28 percent of pupils in government-run primaries became totally disconnected from academic activities because many families could not afford smartphone connectivity due to low household incomes. ASER 2022 confirmed that learning outcomes plunged precipitously during the reckless pandemic lockdown of schools in West Bengal. The percentage of class V students who could read class II-level texts plunged to 47.1 percent from the already abysmal 50.5 percent in 2018. ASER 2023 reveals the consequences of protracted lockdown of schools and neglect to undertake meaningful remedial education initiatives, bordering on indifference, of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) government — now in its third consecutive five-year term in office. Although the ruling TMC government and chief minister are being criticised for the poor learning outcomes of children and youth of West Bengal, it’s pertinent to note that the rot started during the 34 years of uninterrupted rule (1977-2011) of the CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist)-led Left Front government when illiterate party apparatchiks captured teachers’ posts in K-12 education and massively infiltrated the academy, ruining West Bengal’s nationally admired education system. However during their past 13-year rule over Bengal, Banerjee and the Trinamool Congress government have not only failed to break the hold of powerful communist teachers associations/unions in schools and colleges, but have become embroiled neck deep in multi-crore teacher recruitment scandals prompting the Calcutta high court to halt the recruitment of teachers urgently required in the state’s 92,000 government schools. The consensus of opinion among Bengal’s dwindling tribe of bona fide academics and influential bhadralok (refined middle class) is that chief minister Banerjee who famously routed the CPM in 2011 and has ruled over Bengal since, has failed to root out the corruption and extortion culture of CPM cadres. And with close aide and education minister Partha Chatterjee having…
Nasrin Modak-Siddiqi (Mumbai) Responding to a query filed under the Right to Information Act, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has disclosed that 218 primary schools, including some highly reputed private primary schools in Mumbai — Anandilal Podar, Santacruz; St. Michaels, Mahim; St. Andrews Primary, Bandra; St. Aloysius, Santacruz; Alexandra Girls, Fort; Rustomjee Troopers (Dahisar), and Gloria Convent, Byculla — have been operating for several years without renewal of their recognition certificates. Under s.18 of the landmark Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, all schools are obliged to obtain a ‘recognition certificate’ from the ‘local authority’, which is empowered to issue it “subject to such conditions as may be prescribed”. BMC has prescribed that it should be renewed every three years. Although the RTE Act mandates that recognition should be given for five years, state government educracies across the country are attempting to reduce it to lesser periods for private schools to inspect them for violation of fire safety regulations, and playground provision. However, old schools, some of them established over a century ago, are unable to adhere to all the norms prescribed by s.19 and the Schedule of the RTE Act. Some of these norms include a teacher-pupil ratio of 1:35, barrier-free access and a one-acre playground — impossible in land starved Mumbai. S.19 of the RTE Act states that “no school shall be established or recognised under s.18 unless it fulfills the norms and standards specified in the Schedule”. For older schools, s.18 (2) provided a grace period of three years for them to “take steps to fulfill such norms and standards at its own expenses within a period of three years”. That period has long since elapsed. Institutions failing to obtain this certificate can be derecognised and heavy fines to the tune of Rs.10,000 per day and Rs.1 lakh penalty may be imposed by BMC. Notably this provision applies only to private schools, including institutions affiliated with the ICSE and CBSE exam boards. Hitherto, they required a mere no-objection certificate from the state education ministry. In defence of their alleged violations, private school managements query why these infrastructure and other norms are not applicable to Mumbai’s 220 government schools. “After the RTE Act became law in 2010, the state and municipal governments have legislated fire safety rules prescribing width of staircases and school corridors which is impossible in our buildings, some of which, are a century old. Moreover, the state government has imposed a ceiling on tuition fees under the Maharashtra Educational Institutions (Regulation of Fee) Act, 2011. So how do you fund the infrastructure development proposed by the RTE Act and the state government?” queries an irate private school promoter. While admitting the inequity of RTE Act rules and regulations being applicable only to private schools, most monitors of Maharashtra’s K-12 education sector insist that private and public schools need to be inspected for compliance with provisions of the Maharashtra Fire Prevention & Life Safety Measure Act, 2006 and inexpensive provisions of…
Autar Nehru (Delhi) The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) published every year by the independent not-for-profit Pratham Education Foundation (estb.1995) usually field tests primary school (classes I-VIII) children in rural India to measure their real learning outcomes. An army of over 1 lakh volunteers — mainly college and university students — test the reading and maths capabilities of children in household, not school/classroom, surveys. As such the annual ASER survey has acquired an excellent reputation for independent reporting which is respected by government and the establishment, including the academy for providing an accurate picture of learning outcomes of primary school children in rural India which hosts 60 percent of the country’s 1.4 billion citizens. This, despite ASER painting a dismal picture of children’s learning attainments year after year. In 2017, the Pratham management broke with tradition to examine the learning outcomes of a representative batch of teenage secondary and higher students. ASER 2023 released on January 17 in Delhi, again reports on the learning outcomes of rural teens in the 14-18 age group whose learning was severely impacted by the prolonged (82 weeks) closure of K-12 education because of the Covid-19 pandemic. ASER 2023 ‘Beyond Basics’ explores four key domains — academic capability, awareness and digital aptitude, and aspirations of a sample size of 34,745 teens drawn from 28 districts in 26 major states across the country. The survey work began in March 2023, was completed by July and the report was prepared in December. The representative sample youth was tested in basic reading, math and English capability; ability to do everyday math calculations; reading and understanding written instructions. Unsurprising but still shocking, ASER 2023 confirms that a sizeable proportion of our secondary students do not have basic reading and numeracy skills. Over 25 percent (26.4) of teens in the 14-18 age group can’t read a class II text in their regional language (cf. 23.4 percent in 2017). In arithmetic, 43.3 percent can’t do a simple division sum (39.5 percent in 2017) indicating that learning outcomes of teens have declined because schools were shuttered during the Covid-19 pandemic (2020-21). More bad news. Over 40 percent (42.7) can’t read a sentence in English. Moreover while 85 percent of surveyed youth can measure length using a scale when the starting point is 0 cm, when the starting point was moved, only 39 percent could. Overall, close to 50 percent senior and higher secondary students casually promoted year after year, can’t manage common tasks such as calculating time, adding weights and calculating discounts and repayments. The possibility of their being routinely short-changed and swindled by rural retailers and moneylenders is huge. The only silver lining of this unhappy picture is that children — even rural children in this age group — are digitally savvy. Smartphone penetration into rural India is enabling India’s youth to self-learn. ASER 2023 reports that almost 90 percent of teens have access to a smartphone in the household and know how to use it. Almost all youth (90.5…
Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) Against the backdrop of rising student suicides being reported from Kota, Rajasthan — the tests prep capital of India where 26 secondary students committed suicide last year, the highest ever annually — the Union ministry of education has been under pressure to rein in the unchecked growth of the Rs.58,000 crore coaching classes industry. On January 19, the ministry announced a new set of guidelines for the country’s estimated 31,000 coaching centres/private tutorials which prepare secondary/higher secondary students for competitive tests such as IIT-JEE, NEET, CUET, among other undergrad entry exams. The guidelines, which direct the country’s 29 state governments to re-register coaching centres, prohibit the latter from enrolling children under 16 years of age; allow only individuals with graduation and above qualifications to be hired as faculty; restrict classes to not more than five hours per day and mandate all tutorial centres to upload websites furnishing details about tutors, courses, curriculum and fees. They also bar coaching centres from publishing “misleading” advertising claims about student success — “coaching institutes cannot publish or cause to be published or take part in the publication of any misleading advertisement relating to any claim, directly or indirectly, of quality of coaching or the facilities offered therein or the result procured by such coaching centre or the student who attended such class”. More importantly, citing “tough competition and academic pressure on students”, the guidelines direct coaching centres to prioritise the mental well-being of their students. “They should establish a mechanism for immediate intervention to provide targeted and sustained assistance to students in distress and stressful situations. The competent authority may take steps to ensure that a counselling system is developed by the coaching centre and is easily available for the students and parents.” Other guidelines relate to fire safety, infrastructure requirements, and greater transparency in fees structures/refunds. Penalty for violations of the guidelines range from a monetary fine (Rs.25,000-1 lakh) to revocation of registration of errant coaching centres. However it’s pertinent to note that the Centre’s guidelines are applicable only to coaching centres with an enrolment of 50 students and above. The guidelines define a coaching centre as “a place providing coaching for any study programme or competitive examinations or academic support to more than 50 students at school, college, and university level, but does not include counselling, sports, dance, theatre and other creative activities”. A prime factor driving the growth of the test prep industry and student stress/student epidemic, is intense competition to secure admission into the limited seats available in the country’s too-few high-quality colleges and universities such as the IITs, medical institutions, and top-ranked undergrad colleges. For instance, the country’s 23 IITs admit a mere 17,385 students — 1.6 percent of the 1.1 million who write the IIT-JEE exam. Ditto the country’s 695 medical colleges admit only 1.06 lakh of the 1.14 million school-leavers who write the NEET exam annually. This demand-supply gap supplemented with the persistent failure of government to upgrade the country’s 45,000 undergrad colleges is…
Contrary to the assertions of die-hard Left influenced secularists and regressive Muslim leaders, the smooth establishment and consecration of the resplendent Ram Mandir in Ayodhya on January 22 will strengthen Hindu-Muslim harmony rather than damage it. As such, it bodes well for snuffing out the embers of communal fires lit by Muslim warlords from Central Asia who invaded the subcontinent and colonised it from the 16th century onwards, and subsequently the British who devised a successful divide and rule strategy that enabled it to colonise and plunder the Indian subcontinent for almost two centuries after the end of Mughal rule. For one, it’s important to note that unlike the sacred sites of Christianity and Islam — the Vatican and Mecca — which were established by fire and sword, the new Ram Temple in Ayodhya is the outcome of prolonged judicial deliberation and courtroom battles stretched over half a century and finally adjudicated in 2019 by a full bench of erudite judges steeped in the knowledge of constitutional law and the rules of natural justice. While describing the vandalisation and destruction of Babri Masjid three decades ago as a condemnable “gross violation of law” but accepting it as a fait accompli, in their lengthy reasoned judgements, the full bench of the apex court (which included a Muslim judge) permitted the petitioner Hindu religious trusts to re-erect a new Ram Temple at the disputed site, which many devout Hindu citizens revere as the birthplace of Lord Ram. Simultaneously in a commendably Solomon-like judgement, the apex court judges decreed the award of a 5-acre site nearby for the construction of a new mosque for citizens of the aggrieved Muslim minority community to offer prayers and devotion. To its credit and in the interest of communal peace and harmony, the Sunni Waqf Board of UP representing the Muslim community has accepted the verdict and intends to construct a mosque in Ayodhya to be named after Prophet Mohammed’s father. Now the onus is on the BJP government at the Centre and in several states that unreservedly backed the Ram Mandir proposal to ensure that the judicial verdict is not transformed into vengeful Hindu triumphalism, and instead culminates in Hindu-Muslim harmony, which was Mahatma Gandhi’s most cherished dream. For educators and teachers in particular, obliged to narrate the history of the successful construction of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, it is important to present the facts and circumstances as set out above in the cause of communal peace and harmony going forward. The truth that this new centre of worship of India’s Hindu majority population has been established by the rule of law rather than fire, sword and bloodshed, represents a triumph of Indian civilisation. They should teach that resolution of religious disputes through secular, unbiased judicial verdicts provide opportunity for the next generation to unite to develop a peaceful and prosperous India.
Even as the Great leader and the acclamatory establishment, including academics who should know better, are predicting best days ahead for the Indian economy which is all set to emerge as the world’s third largest — never mind population advantage and pathetic per capita income data — the country seems to be oblivious that the ground is slipping under its feet. Over 12 million children and youth are streaming out annually from schools and colleges without having learned to read and write properly. The latest Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2023 of the highly-respected, independent Pratham Education Foundation says the majority of 14-18 year-olds graduating from rural schools can’t read class II textbooks in their vernacular languages or calculate discounts and percentages. And 42 percent can’t read simple sentences in English, the language of business, commerce and the courts. Yet despite your editors continuously blowing the whistle about poor learning outcomes in the vast majority of the country’s neglected education institutions, there’s little visible urgency about addressing this vital issue. In the latest Union budget presented to Parliament and the nation on February 1, the Central government’s outlay for public education inched up from Rs.1.12 lakh crore last year to Rs.1.20 lakh crore in 2024-25. As a percentage of GDP, it fell from 0.37 to 0.36. Admittedly, most of the spending on education is done by state governments. But added together, the national expenditure for public education is unlikely to exceed 3 percent of GDP against the minimum 6 percent recommended by the high-powered Kothari Commission way back in 1967. The plain truth is that because of weak foundational and primary-secondary education dispensed in the country’s dilapidated public/government schools, the majority of India’s college and university graduates can’t match up to their counterparts in developed OECD and South-east Asian countries. This explains the low productivity of Indian industry, agriculture and services and the country’s widespread poverty and misery. Be that as it may, since our whistle-blowing has limited impact, this time round we invited Sridhar Rajagopalan, Co-founder and Chief Learning Officer of Educational Initiatives (estb.2001), a successful Bengaluru-based K-12 learning outcomes assessment and institutional development company, to write a diagnosis and prescription for the infirmities of India’s primary-secondary school system. The result is an engaging lead feature written from an education professional’s perspective that is mandatory reading for all education policy formulators and school leaders and educators. As usual, there’s a big bouquet of features and news features in this issue of EW. Check out our editorials and columns written by intelligent commentators and educators, as also our Education and International News sections. Lots of food for thought in them.
Neglect outcome Your cover story analysing the reasons why India pulled out of PISA 2022 (EW January) was well argued. Let’s face it! The time has come for India to accept that years of education neglect has resulted in poor student learning outcomes. We need to devise strategies to overhaul teaching-learning. Running away from competition can never be a solution. Mahmood Ali Visakhapatnam Missed opportunity The first issue of the year made absorbing reading, especially your thought-provoking cover story ‘India opts out of PISA: prudence or cowardice?’ (EW January). The BJP government’s U-turn on India’s participation in OECD’s global reading, science and math attainments test for 15-year-olds is disappointing, especially after it expressed its firm resolve to participate. The writing is clear on the wall. Our K-12 education system is obsolete and addicted to rote learning and memorisation pedagogies as manifest in the pathetic outcomes of our students in PISA 2009. The NAS (National Achievement Survey) 2021 survey results are also a national embarrassment for the BJP government. I agree with Prof. Geeta Kingdon that domestic testing can never compare with international testing. PISA 2022 was indeed a ‘missed opportunity’ to measure the standing of our 15-year-olds against their global counterparts. Sandeshana Jain Mysuru Discriminatory & casteist In your Education News titled ‘Toilets cleaning row’ in Karnataka (EW January), it’s not shameful that children are being made to clean toilets of their schools. What’s shameful is that only children of government schools are being made to do so. Prof. Seetharamu has cited the example of Japan where all children — including those in private schools — are assigned classroom/toilet cleaning duties. But it’s clear from the Karnataka incident that only poor children are being asked to clean toilets. This is discriminatory and casteist. Ramabhadran Bengaluru Inspirational stories The success stories of two young achievers (EW January) — Anandkumar (speed skating) and Anahat Singh (squash) — raised in sports loving families was inspirational. It’s very heartening that progressive parents are encouraging children to take up sports without being overly obsessed with academics. Also, it’s great to read that schools/colleges are offering budding sportspersons institutional support to pursue sports professionally. Jatin Handa Delhi Serious issue Your well-written Special Report detailing the UGC’s discretionary rules and regulations for setting up foreign university campuses in India is warning that this initiative will have few takers. I fully agree with Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta that universities cannot flourish without academic freedom and autonomy. For the world’s top universities, autonomy is a serious and live issue. If we want to attract the world’s best to India, our higher education regulators need to learn to respect this concept. Vikram Sen Kolkata Red carpet caution Your Special Report ‘Half-hearted invitation to foreign universities’ (EW January) was interesting. However, I don’t fully agree with your argument that the UGC regulations are onerous and will dissuade foreign universities from setting up campuses in India. Let me bring to your notice that officials of Deakin University, the first foreign varsity to…
From mosque to temple: An Indian tragedy
– Rajiv Desai The consecration of the Ram temple was presided by the prime minister himself like a medieval priest before an audience comprising the country’s who’s who. It was a collective takedown of India’s precious secular ethos Nearly 75 years after India awoke “to life and freedom”, Jawaharlal Nehru, who uttered these stirring words celebrating India’s independence, is once again the centre of attention. Prime minister Narendra Modi and his acolytes have spent almost their entire time in government trying to diminish free India’s first prime minister, a farsighted leader with the vision to understand that his country could survive and thrive only as a secular democratic republic. Now under control of bigots, India lurches from event to event in the hands of men, desperately trying to outrun their inability to govern. It’s true Modi and company have had the experience of running the Gujarat state government, a successful venture judging on economic development data. But as many point out, the Gujarat model was established much earlier, starting with Dr. Jivraj Mehta, the first chief minister who took office in 1960 after the old Bombay state was divided on linguistic lines. Under Mehta and later Hitendra Desai, both medical doctors, Gujarat became well-known for its efficient state and private enterprises. From petrochemicals and fertilizer to textiles and plastics; from capital goods and consumer products, Gujarat sowed the seeds of the revolution finance minister Manmohan Singh celebrated in his pathbreaking 1991 budget. The result: the economy boomed, overflowing with jobs, goods and services. In Gujarat, the early signs of a crypto fascist state also emerged. A latent Hindu revivalist movement grew into hindutva, a political platform focused on reaching out to groups left behind in the rush to modernity. Shrewdly mixed with undertones of fear and prejudice, the call to hindutva appealed to many voters. It also served as fodder to anti-minority extremists. Riots erupted all over cities and towns of the state and spread over north India. The denouement was hordes of political cadres of hindutva parties overran and demolished the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh in 1992. The growth and spread of their retrograde manifestos threaten to change perceptions of India from an advocate for peace with visionary leaders into a witches’ cauldron, bubbling with dishonest toil and deadly trouble. To keep global criticism at bay, the plan seems to be to cultivate developed countries with multibillion weapons purchases, and mesmerise their leaders with the charms of India like the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort, spectacles like Republic Day with its parade and regalia. But mostly, it is about keeping India diverted by dubious statistics on the economy and even more dubious claims to the wonder that was India. These are published by the media which has transformed from guardians of democracy to lapdogs prevented from “barking with a juicy bone”. The most recent event staged and publicised by the regime’s media mavens was the “consecration” of a new Ram temple built on the ruins of…