EducationWorld January 13 Archives

Young Achievers

Vishal Anand

Like other children his age, Vishal Anand (7) loves ice cream and chocolate, and thrills to running, skating and cycling. The difference is, he is autistic. But in medical parlance Vishal is an autistic ‘savant’, an inarticulate individual gifted with innate knowledge. According to American psychiatrist Dr. Darold Treffert, autistic savants have prodigious memory and are exceptionally gifted in specialised fields. Vishal’s special field is physical science, specifically renewable energy. Although socially reticent and unable to verbalise his thoughts, he is a (laptop) computer whiz and with the assistance of his mother Vidhya, keys in his ideas on radioactive renewable energy, which he believes is found in fresh water, and strategies for harnessing this energy, among others. On these weighty matters, he regularly corresponds with Abhishek Shivakumar, a research scholar at Sweden’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Unsurprisingly, Vishal has already written and published his first book Meadow of Moods (2010) when he was six years of age. The book is a wry account of the emotional mood swings of autistic children, with each chapter ending in a philosophical quote in Hindi. Vishal’s love of the sun, rain and water and physical entities also find place in a colourful coffee table book (Landmark, Chennai) for which this young physicist was nominated for the CavinKare Ability Awards 2012 — the youngest ever nominee — and was specially invited to the awards ceremony. One of two children of corporate executive A.R. Anand and soft skills trainer Vidhya, Vishal attends Sankalp, a special school for children with learning disabilities. Although he is placed in the intermediary group II & III, Vishal’s knowledge far exceeds that of his peers, and school mainly serves the purpose of acquiring social interaction skills. “We have taken him to several occupational therapists to help him develop basic skills for independent living, and hone his motor skills. His mentor Mythili Chari, founder of the Chennai-based Institute for Remedial Intervention Services, has been very supportive in encouraging Vishal’s talents,” says Vidhya. Vishal’s parents have started interacting with researchers at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, who have shown interest in his renewable energy theories. ‘My hero is Nobel laureate Albert Einstein. I am keen on doing research to create a device using radioactive renewable energy in columns of fuel cells which can be used in cars, homes and industry,” he enthuses. Power to your elbow! Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)

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Cover Story

Asia’s premier higher education multinational goes global

A slew of big-ticket domestic and overseas projects launched under the banner of its for-profit subsidiary Manipal Global Education Services, are set to dramatically transform the Manipal Education & Medical Group from a competent provider of professional education in peninsular India into Asia’s premier higher ed multinational. Dilip Thakore reports The Manipal (Karnataka) and Bangalore headquarters of the Manipal Education and Medical Group (MEMG) — one of the oldest and most respected names in private professional (medicine, engineering, business and hospitality management, nursing and distance learning) education in India — are buzzing with purposive energy. A slew of big-ticket domestic and overseas projects launched under the banner of its for-profit subsidiary Manipal Global Education Services Pvt. Ltd (MaGE, formerly Manipal Universal), which are scheduled to take wing this year, are set to dramatically transform MEMG from a competent provider of professional education in peninsular India into Asia’s premier higher education multinational. In March, the mint new state-of-the-art, multi-disciplinary Manipal International University, Malaysia — under construction with a projected outlay of US$ 200 million (Rs.1,100 crore) and capacity to accommodate 20,000 students on its 140-acre campus in Nilai, south of Kuala Lumpur — will admit its first batch of 400-500 freshers. Meanwhile back home the equally state-of-the-art Manipal University, Jaipur, legislated by a special Act of the Rajasthan state assembly and under construction on 67 acres on the outskirts of the pink city with a projected capex of Rs.750 crore, admitted its first batch of 960 students in August last year. And on November 26 IDFC Private Equity Fund announced an investment of Rs.100 crore in Manipal Servicecorp Facility Management Pvt. Ltd (MSFM), an MEMG subsidiary promoted to provide premises and facilities management services to corporates, which has recently been repositioned as a student-residences and facilities management company. Top of MSFM’s agenda is construction of 5,000 rooms for Manipal University, Jaipur, 500 rooms for Manipal’s Banking Academy in Bangalore and 600 for the T.A. Pai Manipal Institute B-school in Manipal at an aggregate capital cost of Rs.450 crore. After that the company will roll out its services across India and abroad. These ambitious, capital-intensive and unprecedented initiatives are just a few of the projects on the crowded drawing board of MEMG. With the group’s not-for-profit Manipal University and Sikkim Manipal University (under Indian law, education institutions are obliged to operate as charitable societies or trusts) well established and charting their own course under the supervision of independent boards of directors (see box), Dr. Ranjan Pai, the 40-something third generation scion of the Pai family of Manipal which founded the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) in 1942, has focused his attention on growing Manipal Global Education/MaGE into India’s first heavyweight for-profit education multinational. “With the promotion of Manipal Universal in 2001, now renamed Manipal Global Education Services (MaGE), we have divided the Manipal Group into our not-for-profit domestic institutions, i.e. Manipal University, Sikkim Manipal University and Manipal University, Jaipur, and MaGE which raises capital to establish and manage higher education institutions abroad.…

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Special Report

2013 Big 5+21 milestones

2012 was another much-ado-about-nothing year for Indian education. With the beleaguered Congress-led UPA-II government floundering in a sea of corruption scandals and both houses of Parliament routinely disrupted as a bankrupt BJP-led opposition blocked all legislative business, the policy paralysis in New Delhi which plunged economic growth to a nine-year-low of 5.3 percent in 2012, also afflicted the education sector, stymying all reform initiatives. In a year of stasis wasted in petty politicking, the education and welfare of the world’s largest child population — 480 million — was relegated to the bottom of the national agenda. Three years after Kapil Sibal assumed office as Union human resource development (HRD) minister amid high hopes and great expectations, the plethora of education reforms he initiated are yet to translate into law. Like 2010 and 2011, 2012 ended dismally without a single education Bill being discussed and debated by Parliament. None of the 20 pending education Bills — 11 relating to higher and nine to primary-secondary education — have been legislated. Consequently, the National Commission for Higher Education and Research, Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations), National Accreditation Regulatory, Prevention of Malpractices, and Education Tribunals among other reformist legislation for Indian education are still hanging fire. The only ‘success’ of the Union HRD ministry in the recently concluded year, was validation of the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (aka RTE Act) by the Supreme Court. In a split 2-1 verdict delivered on April 12 in Society for Unaided Private Schools of Rajasthan vs. Union of India & Anr (Writ Petition (C) No. 95 of 2010), the apex court upheld the constitutional validity of the RTE Act, and particularly its controversial s.12 (1) (c) which makes it mandatory for all unaided (financially independent) private schools to admit 25 percent of children in class I or preschool if any, from among poor and socially disadvantaged children in their neighbourhood. However, the court exempted unaided minority and boarding schools from applicability of s.12 (1) (c). But while the government welcomed the judgement, the RTE Act which celebrated its second anniversary last April is still a non-starter as state governments struggle with interpretation of the judgement, funds constraints, shortages of teachers and infrastructure. Yet the highlight of Year 2012 was the ouster of legal eagle Kapil Sibal as HRD minister. In 2009, when the Congress-led UPA-II government was re-elected to office in New Delhi with an increased majority in the Lok Sabha, Sibal who had served in the UPA-I government as minister of science and technology, was appointed Union HRD minister with high hopes of sparking the overdue reformation of the country’s moribund education system. But instead of addressing the supply side of the supply-demand equation for superior K-12 and higher education by offering liberal incentives to domestic and foreign education entrepreneurs and universities to establish greenfield campuses, Sibal succumbed to the temptation of populist tinkering with quotas and administrative fiats to meet pressing demand for admission into high quality private schools…

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Expert Comment

A new age of unreason

– Rajiv Desai is president of Comma Consulting, Delhi On a television talk show recently in which I was a participant, the question posed was “Have opposition politicians misunderstood the nature of lobbying?” The moderator went straight for the jugular, asking the BJP spokesman to defend the assertion of a senior leader of his party, who had asserted in Parliament that lobbying is illegal in India. The anchor said his due diligence had satisfied him that lobbying is not illegal. Somewhat disingenuously and with the brash confidence of a man who knows little, the BJP participant contradicted him, saying there is no law that makes lobbying legal. To which the anchor responded: laws make things illegal, not legal. The BJP man was having none of it. “Why are you standing up for a corrupt company like Walmart?” he asked the journalist. “How can the spokesman of a leading political party accuse an international firm of corruption on prime time national TV?” I interjected. The BJP stalwart was undeterred and continued his rant, insisting lobbying is illegal and no different from corruption. It was plain that he knew very little about business processes and public policy apart from a few stray facts he may have picked up from newspapers. Later, Delhi’s middle classes led by Left-leaning student unions took to the streets to protest the rape of a woman on a bus in the capital. Their demand was for the police chief, the chief minister and the Union home minister to resign. Granted, the police in Delhi are not very high on anyone’s security assurance list, and that one may have reservations about the Congress governments in the state of Delhi and at the Centre. But, the heinous crime was committed by violent psychopaths, like the shooter in Newtown, Connecticut. I didn’t hear any calls for Obama’s head or of the state governor or police chief. Crimes are mostly dealt with in retrospect, except in the Tom Cruise sci-fi film, Minority Report, which is about seers gifted with the ability to look into the future and prevent crime. Crimes are committed the world over and sometimes law enforcement agencies are able to anticipate and prevent them. Mostly, they simply happen and police hunt down the perpetrators and turn them over to the criminal justice system for prosecution and, if proved guilty, punishment. Then there’s the massive media hype about Narendra Modi winning a third term in Gujarat. The truth is he won by a smaller margin than five years ago; even his vote share has declined. Yet the talking heads and anchors of cable television and newspaper reporters would have us believe he will be the next prime minister of India. This is an individual who refuses to apologise for the riots that killed thousands in Gujarat when he was chief minister as well as home minister. While he has never been able to shake off allegations that he connived with mass violence, there’s no doubt he should be held responsible…

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Cover Story

MEMG’s major not-for-profit institutions

Manipal University. This is the successor institution of the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (estb. 1942) and the Kasturba Medical College and teaching hospital founded in 1953 by the legendary educationist-entrepreneur Dr. T.M.A Pai (1898-1979), and developed by his successor Dr. Ramdas Pai into India’s first private deemed university, recognised by the Delhi-based University Grants Commission in 1993. Currently Manipal University provides medical and health sciences, communications and business management, and engineering sciences education to 26,325 students from 53 countries mentored by 2,277 faculty spread across three campuses in India. The largest campus is in Manipal, Karnataka spread across 1,000 acres with 6,000,000 sq. ft of built-up area and complete wi-fi connectivity. The other campuses are in Mangalore and Bangalore. Sikkim Manipal University. Jointly promoted by the state government of Sikkim and MEMG in 1995 with the objective of providing high quality professional education to the student population of the seven sister states of north-east India, SMU, which is spread over two campuses in Gangtok, has quickly established itself as the premier institution for medical and engineering education in the north-east. SMU’s medical college campus hosts a 500-bed teaching hospital which also provides pharmacy, allied health and nursing education to 928 students. Its technology campus provides engineering, business management, applied sciences and twinning programmes with foreign universities to 3,190 students. Moreover SMU’s for-profit Directorate of Distance Education (DDE) has rapidly established itself as the largest provider of distance education via new information communication technologies. Currently SMU-DDE provides 69 learning programmes to 300,000 students mentored by 2,056 university-based and distributed faculty in the hybrid mode through VSAT technology and its 800 bricks-n-mortar learning centres in 300 cities and towns in India and 15 countries internationally. Manipal University, Jaipur. Established under a special Act of the state government of Rajasthan in 2011, this new university is being constructed on a 67 acre site in Dehmi Kalan Village, Tehsil Sanganer, Jaipur district. On completion in 2019 the university will provide engineering, medical, hospitality, allied health, business management, communication and jewellery management study programmes to 20,000 students. Last August, the university admitted its first batch of 960 students into undergrad and postgrad programmes.

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Cover Story

“Growing enthusiasm for private initiatives”

Dilip Thakore interviewed Dr. Ranjan Pai, managing director and chief executive of the Manipal Education and Medical Group Pvt. Ltd (estb. 2000) — the holding company of 43 education institutions with an aggregate enrolment of 300,000 students and 47 healthcare institutions including 16 hospitals in India and abroad, in his office in Bangalore. Excerpts from the 90-minute interview: Why has MEMG ventured abroad when there is huge unfulfilled demand for higher education in India? Procedures and processes for approval and clearance of greenfield projects in higher education projects are very slow and cumbersome. On the other hand, perhaps because of the excellent reputation Manipal University and our higher education institutions abroad have acquired for delivering high quality affordable education, we have been receiving numerous invitations to establish professional education institutions overseas. So we go where there is demand for our services. But this doesn’t mean that we aren’t expanding in India as well. Our growth within the country will accelerate as soon as the liberalisation intent of the Central and state governments translates into policies which encourage private initiatives in education. We are very conscious that many initiatives in higher education are needed within the country. What are MEMG’s growth and development plans within India? Manipal University, Jaipur which will attain a capacity of 20,000 students in 2020 has already admitted its first batch of students last July/August. Moreover a proposal to establish a Manipal University branch campus in Bangalore has just been cleared by the Karnataka government. A medical college in Jharkhand and a university in eastern India are in advanced stages of planning with the Bangalore and Jharkhand medical colleges the top priorities. All of MEMG’s new projects in India and abroad are capital intensive and require considerable financial engineering. What’s your modus operandi? The advantage of establishing education institutions abroad is that long term finance is relatively easily available, interest rates are low and students’ tuition fees are substantially higher. For our projects in India because long term finance is scarce and interest rates are higher, we tend to keep borrowals low and avail long term low interest loans and grants from the MAHE Trust. Our modus operandi is to maintain a 2:1 debt-equity ratio. Despite the excellent reputation of Manipal University in India and abroad for medical and engineering education, the university isn’t highly ranked in the India today or QS and THE World University Rankings. What’s your comment? Manipal University is routinely ranked among India’s Top 10 medical universities by India Today, Outlook and Times of India among other reputed publications. We haven’t been ranked by international rating agencies because of registration problems. However this year we have completed all registration formalities and will be ranked next year by QS. But rankings apart, it’s incontrovertible that over the past 60 years, MU has built itself a rock-solid nationwide reputation for delivering high quality medical, dental, engineering and business management education. This is testified by the 106,000 applications the university receives against the 5,800 seats we offer annually. …

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Letter from the Editor

The Manipal (Karnataka) and Bangalore-based Manipal Education and Medical Group (MEMG) represents an excellent example of the theory of enlightened self-interest (“businesses do well by doing good”). Seventy years ago in 1942, doctor, educationist, banker and philanthropist Dr. T.M.A. Pai (1898-1979) established the Academy of General Education, to train youth in the South Canara district of present-day Karnataka in the art of book-binding. Later he promoted the Kasturba Medical College (KMC) in 1953 and the Manipal Institute of Technology (1957) — India’s first ‘self-financed’ institutions of professional education, an institution development model which was foolishly trashed by the champions of neta-babu socialism with dreadful consequences for the development of Indian education. Since then Dr. Pai and two succeeding generations of this enterprising family, have established MEMG as the country’s most respected provider of professional (medical, engineering, business and hospitality management, communications, nursing, paramedical etc) education, notwithstanding a policy environment hostile to private initiatives in higher education. After Dr. T.M.A. Pai passed away in 1979, the mantle of leadership of MEMG devolved upon his son Dr. Ramdas Pai who nurtured the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) and developed its host habitat of Manipal into the country’s first university town. Simultaneously, perhaps encouraged by the enthusiastic response of Malaysian students to medical and professional education dispensed by MAHE (25 percent of all medical practitioners in that country are KMC alumni) — Dr. Ramdas Pai established MEMG’s first overseas campuses in Malaysia, followed by Nepal, and Antigua, West Indies (to prepare medical students to write USMLE (US Medical Licentiate Examination) to qualify to practice in the US). Now with MAHE being conferred the status of Manipal University by the University Grants Commission in 1993, Dr. Pai has focused his attention on developing the not-for-profit academic institutions of MEMG in India. Meanwhile the onus of accelerating the internationalisation of MEMG and developing the for-profit businesses of the group has been assumed in right earnest by the third generation Dr. Ranjan Pai, under MEMG’s subsidiary Manipal Global Education Services (MaGE). For this purpose Ranjan has assembled a formidable team of highly experienced professionals from Indian industry, to storm developing countries with the Manipal brand of high quality professional education at affordable price. There is every chance of this unprecedented initiative succeeding. MaGE has inherited valuable institutional development knowhow and expertise from MEMG which provides high quality, English medium professional education at what are by global standards, rock-bottom prices. (Disclosure: EducationWorld has always enjoyed a mutual admiration relationship with MEMG. Way back in 2001 the group provided seed capital to the holding company of this publication, and currently owns 10 percent of our equity). The inspirational cover story of the first issue of 2013 apart, there are several other interesting features and columns in this issue. Among them: the special report which features a summary of the major events in Indian education last year; a feature on the staging of the Khushwant Singh Literary Festival, Kasauli 2012. Happy New Year!

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Editorial

Gender crime wave requires cold analysis

The brutal gang rape of a 23-year-old paramedic student in a moving bus in the heart of Delhi on December 16, has not only triggered unprecedented student and middle class angst against the incident per se, it has also focussed a powerful searchlight on an important civilisational issue ignored for too long in post-independence India: the rising incidence of sexual harassment and molestation of women citizens. A recent Thomson Reuters Foundation global poll numbered India among the five most dangerous places for women — in the ignoble company of Afghanistan, Congo, Pakistan and Somalia. Curiously, similarly shameful data on child malnutrition, rule of law, unenforcibility of contracts, access to sanitation etc which places India in rock-bottom position worldwide, seems to make no impact upon our self-serving establishment, which on the contrary brazenly demands superpower and United Nations security council status for India. But while the unprecedented fury and revolt has served the useful purpose of revealing the ugly face of the establishment, there is clear and present danger that in the heat of anger and emotionalism a real opportunity to deter, abate and severely punish crimes against women and children will be missed. This is reflected in pervasive misdiagnosis of the causes of the rising wave of gender crimes in Indian society which has its epicentre in the Union and state government budgets and education systems. Shockingly, neither indignant citizens nor media pundits seem to be aware that the number of police personnel per 100,000 people in India is a mere 130 against the world average of 222, and 976 in Russia, 552 in Italy, 369 in France and 233 in the US. Moreover the number of judges per 100,000 people in India is a measly 10.5 against 105 in the US and 55 in the UK. To these dismal statistics, factor in the reality that almost 30 percent of police personnel are assigned for VIP security, and that criminal and civil procedure codes which govern the country’s courtrooms haven’t changed for a century, and the causes of the collapsed police and justice systems become plainly apparent. Therefore to seize the opportunity and effectively take arms against the tide of gender crimes destabilising Indian society, the educated middle class and intelligentsia in particular need to rise to the challenge and press for budgetary allocations to double the number of police personnel and judges. In addition, substantial sums have to spent on training police-persons in forensics, gender sensitisation and other life skills. But it’s foolish to expect gains without pain. Therefore expenditure under other budgetary heads and unmerited subsidies (on higher education for instance) have to be reduced and higher taxes have to be tolerated. While demanding the death penalty and severe punishment for rape and gender crimes may result in emotional catharsis, there’s no substitute for a cold, hard analysis of the ecosystem — covering school curriculums and Bollywood films — to abate the gender crimes wave which is shaming and destroying India. Meanwhile more boots on the ground and…

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Mailbox

Credibility problem

We — Bamboola Play School, Chennai — have been in business for the past ten years now, much before magazines such as EducationWorld started ranking and covering schools in this segment (EW India Preschool Rankings 2012, December). For the past two-three years our school’s ranking has been consistent in your magazine, but this year, I find it quite intriguing to note that our rankings have slipped on several parameters, which I find hard to believe. I am curious as to how your magazine does these rankings. I don’t recall any one visiting our premises or talking to our parents and teachers. For e.g on one of the parameters — teacher welfare — we are rated No. 9. Have you spoken to any of my teachers to get this number? How do you come up with this rating? We have also slipped on the parameter of innovative teaching. What do you mean by innovative teaching for kids who are less than 3.5 years of age? Are you looking at a Smart Board system in the school to teach toddlers? I would appreciate a reply, so we can understand how this rating is done and can continue to work and excel in those areas. Unless the system of rating is transparent and helpful, there’s not much we as directors of a school can do to deliver the best for society, the sole purpose of our existence. Sujata Vijay Director, Bamboola Play School Chennai Our rankings are a reflection of public perceptions, not investigation. The ranking methodology is explained in extenso on p.40 which you are advised to read — Editor Public pressure call I strongly support your suggestion to transform the country’s 1.6 million anganwadis into fully-fledged early childhood education centres (EW December). It’s an overdue initiative which must be taken up immediately by the Central and state governments. Science and education research has now proved beyond doubt that brain development is greatest in the early childhood years (0-8). The consequences of neglecting the vital foundational stage of a child’s development will have long-term implications on the future of the next generation. But as you rightly point out in your cover story, the HRD ministry and education departments in the states have consistently ignored and neglected ECE provision for the country’s vast majority of children whose parents cannot afford the fancy preschools you have ranked in six major cities countrywide. Little wonder that India is ranked last (45) in The Economist’s ‘Starting-Well’ rankings for its abysmal provision of early childhood education. What is needed to push them into action is public pressure. I hope EducationWorld will take the lead in building public opinion. Ajay Kumar Sharma Delhi Curious omission I was pleased to read your EW India Preschool Rankings 2012 cover story (EW December). However Shishya Nursery, a preschool with a strength of 200 students, which has been running for the past 25 years in Bangalore, has not been ranked among the Top 10. In informed circles it’s well-known that Shishya offers enriched learning programmes for young children…

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Education News

Delhi: Policy inertia

With most of India’s cities — especially metros — under-served in terms of privately-promoted primary-secondary schools (middle class households won’t touch government schools with a barge pole), admission of tiny tots into nurseries of Delhi’s most highly-ranked K-12 private schools is a top priority of every aspirational middle class family as it ensures smooth progression of children right up to class XII, because vacancies in upper primary and secondary classes are rare. Therefore in their anxiety to get little loved ones into preschool sections of Delhi’s reputed schools, most parents are ready and willing to buy nursery admissions in schools of their choice — illegal gratification which is strictly forbidden by legislative and case law. On December 12, IBN7 (a news channel of the Delhi-based Network 18 Media and Investment Ltd) ran a sting operation exposing some of Delhi’s top schools including Mother’s Pride, Rohini and G.D. Goenka La Petite for negotiating sale of preschool admissions for Rs.2-3 lakh. Inevitably your correspondent’s calls and emails sent to these schools failed to evoke response. However it’s common knowledge that commercialisation of pre-school seats is routine in the admission season (January-March). “Even seats reserved for the economically weaker sections are sold. A fake income certificate classifying a household as EWS (economically weaker section) can be easily bought from sub-district magistrate offices for a few thousand. With no checks and balances in place to ensure effective implementation of education policies, business is brisk during the admission season,” says Ashok Aggarwal, founder-president of the well-known NGO Social Jurist. The major cause of the manic annual rush for private school admissions is that government-run schools show no sign of improvement in the quality of education they deliver. In its 14 years of uninterrupted rule in Delhi, the Congress party has only succeeded in worsening the quality of school education. According to the 37th issue of the Delhi Statistical Handbook 2012 — an annual publication of the directorate of economics and statistics which contains data relating to industrial growth, health, state domestic product estimates, police, crimes, road accidents etc — released in November, education is almost completely neglected. Except for five additions to the aggregate number of middle schools (class VI-VIII) — 583, the number of government schools has remained static. Indeed, their number has declined from 659 in 2008-09. Even though the Union human resource development ministry and the state government seem blissfully unaware, government/municipal schools in the national capital are closing down because even low-income households are increasingly opting to enroll children in private budget schools — despite their being ‘unrecognised’ — offering better English learning or English-medium education. Yet even as there’s a steady flight of students from Delhi’s 924 primary-secondaries run by the state government/municipal corporation, and plagued by chronic shortages of toilets, water, teachers, infrastructure etc, neither the Union HRD ministry nor the state government have made any effort to liberalise or deregulate the licence-permit-quota regime strangling all private initiatives in school education. Indeed the focus of the HRD ministry and…

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Education News

Maharashtra: Minorities definition chaos

Even as the school admission season has already commenced in India’s crowded (20.5 million) commercial capital, unaided minority schools exempted by the Supreme Court in its landmark judgement in Society for Unaided Private Schools vs. Union of India & Anr delivered last April from having to compulsorily reserve a 25 percent quota in class I or preschool for children from poor households in their neighbourhood, are still floundering in a sea of confusion. This because under the RTE Rules interpreted by the Maharashtra education department officials (following an enabling June 19 amendment to the RTE Act subsequent to the apex court’s judgement), all unaided-minority schools except madrassas and vedic pathashalas (institutions imparting only religious education), have to toe the reservation line. Quite obviously narked by the prospect of Mumbai’s top primary-secondary schools such as Cathedral & John Connon, Bombay Scottish, Don Bosco, Ryan International among other top-ranked minority schools remaining inaccessible to their own and vote-bank progeny, the state education department narrowed the definition of minority schools while promising to issue a common admission schedule by November 2012, to ensure smooth implementation of the RTE Act in 2013-14. However, on December 5 the state education department asked all private schools to halt the admission process till April 2013, warning that admissions made earlier will be deemed illegal and liable for cancellation. According to Sridhar Salunkhe, state director of school education, the education ministry is waiting for approval of its Rules — particularly its redefinition of minority schools — by the Central government. “We never asked schools to start admission so many months in advance. They’ll have to figure out a way to start admission in April 2013. We will inform minority schools of the correct procedure for admitting quota students. Unaided minority schools will have to wait until a common admission schedule is prescribed for all schools irrespective of their affiliation,” says Salunkhe. With the Supreme Court having clearly exempted unaided minority schools from applicability of s. 12 (1) (c), their managements proceeded to commence the admission process as usual this winter. They argue that waiting until April to start the admission process will jeopardise their operations. “The state government has muddied the waters about the applicability of s. 12 (1) (c) to minority schools. The government must immediately clear this confusion. When we approached the education department, we were asked to wait till the government issues a notification. Our nursery admissions began in October, and even if the state issues a resolution now, it may be too late to implement the provisions this year,’’ says Kashmira Gundevia, principal of the Parsi minority Maneckji Cooper Education Trust school (estb. 1959). Informed educationists in the city also ascribe this faux pas to the last-minute approach of the government. “How can a government re-interpret its Rules so late in the day, especially when they know that a large number of schools begin the admission process in November every year? A lag of so many months between a public announcement and a final…

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Education News

Karnataka: Brewing RTE war

Eight months after the Karnataka state government notified the state Rules for the implementation of the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (aka RTE Act), it is still floundering in troubled waters. The state’s 13,527 primary/higher primary private schools, which as per s.12 (1) (c) of the Act are obliged to admit 25 percent of children in class I or preschool if any, from among poor and socially disadvantaged children in their neighbourhood, are up in arms against the BJP government’s “inefficient and tardy” interpretation of the quota provision, which came into force statewide last June. On December 27, the Karnataka Unaided Schools Joint Action Committee (KUSJAC), an umbrella organisation representing 16,000 private unaided primary-secondary schools, submitted an ultimatum to the state government demanding clarity on the quota provision of the RTE Act. KUSJAC’s main demand is immediate reimbursement of the expense incurred by private unaided schools for tuition dispensed to quota students admitted in June 2012. Under s.12 (2) of the RTE Act, the state government is obliged to reimburse tuition fees “to the extent of per-child expenditure incurred by the State, or the actual amount charged from the child, whichever is less”. Earlier in May, the state government had finalised Rs.11,848 per year per student as the reimbursement fee payable by it to private schools. But nine months later and three months from the end of the 2012-13 academic year, none of the state’s private unaided schools which admitted quota students have received even the first of two installments promised. “The reimbursement aggregating a substantial Rs.65 crore for the first year has not yet been released by the state government. Many schools are finding it difficult to enroll RTE quota students for the next academic year without having received the first year’s reimbursement. Apathy on the part of the government has pushed all private schools to the wall,’’ says L.R. Shiva-rame Gowda, president of KUSJAC. Likewise the Karnataka State Private School Managements’ Federation (KSPSMF), which represents the interest of 800 private unaided schools, is also on the warpath. Its member schools are particularly incensed that households with upto Rs.3.5 lakh annual income have been defined as ‘poor’ by the state government’s RTE Rules. “By defining households with incomes of Rs.3.5 lakh per year as poor, the state government has made a mockery of this provision. Other states such as Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra have set the household income limit for RTE quota students at Rs.40,000 and Rs.60,000 respectively. Karnataka’s Rs.3.5 lakh limit is an attempt by the government to corner all the RTE quota students for its employees and the middle class. We demand that this Rs.3.5 lakh limit is drastically reduced immediately. Moreover private school managements want protection from undue harassment by government officials and organisations demanding admission under the RTE quota,” says Sudi Suresh, secretary of KSPSMF. While the state government is yet to respond to the demand for reclassification of poor households, the education department has assured private schools that the first tuition…

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Education News

Gujarat: English infirmity

After a hat-trick victory at the hustings, and sworn-in as chief minister of the western seaboard state of Gujarat (pop. 60 million) for a record fourth time in a row on December 26, Narendra Modi’s retention of stewardship of the state — widely trumpeted as the fastest (economically) growing in the country — has been cautiously welcomed by the academic community. Though seven of his ministers fell by the wayside, the Modi-led ruling BJP secured 115 of the total 182 seats in the legislative assembly. The top brass of the national BJP, J. Jayalalithaa (Tamil Nadu), Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray and MNS leader Raj Thackeray were present at the swearing in — clear indication of the emergence of Modi as a national leader. Dr. Akshai Agrawal, vice chancellor of the Gujarat Technological University, believes that Modi’s re-election will ensure continuity of the process of raising education standards in the state to global norms. “As in so many fields, Gujarat is also trying to benchmark itself against the best in education globally. This objective has been set by the chief minister who has created the framework for this development,” says Agrawal. Dr. Shirish Kashikar, director of the National Institute of Mass Communication and Journalism, Ahmedabad, is also impressed by Modi’s emphasis on education upgradation. “It goes to his credit that his government has promoted several new institutions of excellence. I can name at least two — Indian Institute of Teachers Education, and the Children’s University. Although in a nascent stage, both have great potential,” says Kashikar. Although the unputdownable — all charges relating to his instigation or even connivance with the dreadful anti-Muslim riots of 2002 in the state have failed to stick — chief minister’s critics allege that education is a low priority item on Modi’s agenda, during his decade-long stint in power, several institutions of super specialisation have sprung up in Gujarat. Among them: the Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University (2001), Gujarat National Law University (2003), Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information Technology (August 2001), The Indian Institute of Technology (2008), Gandhinagar, National Institute of Fashion Technology (2004), Central University of Gujarat (2009), Gujarat Institute of Disaster Management (2004), Gujarat Forensic Sciences University (2009) and the Raksha Shakti University (2009). Academics in the state believe that more institutions of excellence are on the re-elected chief minister’s agenda of the next five years. According to the chief minister’s aides, Modi believes that institutions of learning in the state should not only measure upto national standards but go a step further to compete with the best globally. “If we are to scale new heights of development and take our nation to its predestined mantle of the jaggad guru (world leader), robust progress in our education sector will play a major role. Education is the backbone of the nation’s progress. From the time a child enters primary school till he completes graduation and beyond, it is essential to provide top quality education facilities to our youth,” said Modi on the occasion of inaugurating the Gujarat Forensic Sciences University (2009), described by him as…

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Education News

West Bengal: Teenage resonance

Agitational including street politics popularised by Trinamool Congress Party leader and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who famously ended 34 years of uninterrupted rule in the state of the CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist)-led Left Front government in the summer of 2011, seems to have struck a resonant chord within the state’s student communities. It is now haunting the Trinamool government which is being hoist on its own petard. The pre-Christmas week witnessed a spate of protests and agitations in school campuses across Kolkata with teenage students demanding ‘grace marks’ in selection tests qualifying them to write board exams. All schools conduct internal selection tests before class X and class XII board examinations as permitted by rules of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE). Inevitably some students fail these tests and are held back to write the boards the following year. And it’s an annual ritual for detained students and their parents to plead with the school principal for grace marks to qualify to write the board exams. However, organised protests by students insisting on clearance to write the boards is a new phenomenon. Academics in Kolkata have been taken aback by school students organising — in the manner of college students — to press for grace marks with little regard for school rules or the law. The protests started with the Santoshpur Rishi Aurobindo Balika Vidyapeeth in South Kolkata, spread to Jagatpur Rukmini Vidyamandir in Behala (South Kolkata), Annada Sundari Hindu Balika Vidyapith in Baguihati (North Kolkata), Kasturba Kanya Vidyapeeth in Sinthee (North Kolkata) and Rishi Aurobindo Vidyaniketan in Shyamnagar (North Kolkata). There were organised protests in these schools by flunked students demanding grace marks, with some agitators resorting to strong arm tactics. At the government aided Santoshpur Rishi Aurobindo Balika Vidyapeeth (SRABV, estb. 1950), trouble broke out on Monday, December 17 when 29 girl students who failed to clear the class XII selection test, staged a protest against the headmistress. The agitation was supported by “outsiders” including some guardians who besieged the headmistress’ room, demanding the students be declared passed. Although school officials promised to show the answer scripts of all failed students, the latter insisted that they be deemed passed. A gherao (siege) started around 3.30 pm and continued till 1.30 p.m, Tuesday. Sreemati Ghosh, headmistress of the school, reported the protests, prompting WBSSE secretary Achintya Pal and his deputy Moloy Roy to visit the school on December 18. A meeting was held in the presence of the agitating students where Pal and Roy announced that they had detected gross anomalies in the tabulation sheets and demanded a retest for the failed students, though the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Act, 1975 makes it clear that WBSSE’s role is limited to conducting examinations and framing the syllabus. Meanwhile with news of the ‘successful’ SRABV agitation spreading, similar demands cropped up in schools in Murshidabad and Burdwan districts. Under immense pressure, the principal of the Krishnadebpur Girls High School (Kalna) caved in to the demand of agitating class X students…

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Education News

Tamil Nadu: VET policy lacuna

Despite the southern seaboard state of Tamil Nadu (pop.72.1 million), which is rapidly emerging as a manufacturing hub, experiencing an acute shortage — and rising wages — of skilled technicians in its automobile, construction and service sectors, there are not many takers for vocational education and training (VET) in the state. In spite of the fact that the state hosts 65 state government-run Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs), 627 private Industrial Training Centres (ITCs) and 447 polytechnics which between them have an annual intake capacity of 113,784 students. To encourage youth from socio-economically disadvantaged households to pursue ITI diploma courses, the state government recently raised the financial aid for students signing up for VET programmes from a measly Rs.100-150 to Rs.500 per capita and deployed a sum of Rs.12.94 crore from its budget for the scheme. Earlier in 2009, the Union government in association with representatives of several industry organisations including CII, FICCI and Assocham promoted the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), a PPP (public-private partnership) organisation with an equity base of Rs.10 crore (49 percent government, 51 percent private) “to provide funding to build scalable, for-profit vocational training initiatives”. However with few takers for VET, NSDC has been a non-starter, according to industry experts. According to a recent study by the Confederation of Indian Industry — Tamil Nadu State Council (CII-TNSC), there is no provision for youth opting to enroll in ITIs and other vocational institutes to also receive formal school education simultaneously. Hence vocational courses seem unattractive and inferior. The policy lacuna is that the mainstream education system makes no provision for vocational training which would make students employable, and the vocational stream makes insignificant provision for learning mathematics and English language and communication skills. The study also observed that in the next five years (2017), the demand for skilled personnel for industry in Tamil Nadu will rise to 6.8 million. By that time although 6.5 million will be in Tamil Nadu’s workforce, only 500,000-600,000 will have received formal VET. The rest will have to join the labour force without any skills, or join the swelling ranks of the 7.5 million registered unemployed in the state. “The middle class mindset which segregates formal academic education from hands-on skills such as welding, carpentry, winding etc, has to change to make VET attractive to students and school drop-outs. Parents are strongly biased towards white collar jobs and don’t want children to take up shop floor vocations. At best they enroll them in one of the state’s 500 polytechnics which enables lateral entry into engineering college, or admit them in private professional institutions offering new tech-oriented courses in fashion design, computer programming and maintenance,” says S. Sangapalli, principal, Seshasayee Institute of Technology, a government aided polytechnic in Tiruchi. Unfortunately even education ministry officials don’t seem excited about promoting VET, despite the severe shortage of skilled workers and technicians in industry. This is evidenced by the run down condition of 62 government ITIs with obsolete curriculums which are wholly out of sync with…

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Education News

They said it in December

“An education programme, is by definition, a societal programme. Work should be done in schools rather than at home.” French President Francois Hollande on why his government wants to ban homework in schools (Times of India, December 16) “What I advocate is that during classroom time — when you get human beings together — we should be interactive with each other, we should be problem solving with each other, we should be peer-tutoring.” Salman Khan, founder Khan Academy in a Forbes cover story which describes him “the world’s most famous teacher” (Forbes, December 21) “These pretty women, highly dented and painted, who come for protests are not students. I have seen them speak on television; usually women of this age are not students.” Abhijit Mukerjee, Congress MP and son of President Pranab Mukherjee, on protestors demanding justice for a 23-year-old gang rape victim in Delhi (December 28) “An overwhelming majority of India’s young MPs are inheritors who have long been accustomed to the aam aadmi looking up to the netas with forlorn eyes and the leaders in turn responding with a show of noblesse oblige. For them, good politics always meant doling out favours to a supplicant India.” Swapan Dasgupta on why young MPs avoided meeting Delhi protestors (Times of India, December 30) “What’s truly terrible is the manner in which film heroes for decades pestered, stalked and forced their unwanted attentions on heroines in thousands of films, yet ended up getting the girl. That sends the most outrageous of all messages to the public: pestering girls is what heroes do, and a girl’s no actually means “yes”.” Swaminathan Aiyar on Bollywood films sanctifying pestering and stalking of women (December 30) “The expressionlessness of his face as he sits in Parliament is one of the wonders of the world. We know he is not sleeping because sleep gives an expression of its own to the human face. The Manmohan face does not have that either.” T.J.S. George on prime minister Manmohan Singh (Indian Express, December 30)

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Education Notes

Arunachal Pradesh First professional ed varsity With laying the foundation stone of the privately promoted Indira Gandhi Technological and Medical Sciences University (IGTMSU) in lower Subansiri district in the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh (pop. 1.38 million) on December 28, the first step has been taken to provide professional higher education in the state. “The commitment of my government to provide higher education to the people has been fulfilled,” said chief minister Nabam Tuki speaking in Hapoli on the occasion. Citing criticism that Arunachal was the only state without a technical and medical college, Tuki said the commissioning of IGTMSU marks the beginning of a new era which will bring Arunachal on a par with other states of the Indian Union. The university will commence offering study programmes in nano-technology, laboratory management, radiology, and physiotherapy from January next year (2014). Under construction on 150 hectares at Gano village by the Delhi-based World Institute of Building Programme, “the university will offer technical and medical programmes,” said local member of the legislative assembly Padi Richo, who is supervising the project. Chhattisgarh Project prayas roll out Encouraged by the success of its education initiative Prayas, which prepares tribal students in Naxal-hit areas for admission into engineering colleges, the Chhattisgarh state government has extended the scheme to four more districts. In a directive to collectors of Sarguja, Raigarh, Korba and Bastar districts, tribal welfare minister Kedar Kashyap has asked them to launch the project in their districts at the earliest, said a government official addressing the media in Raipur on December 28. The tribal welfare department started Prayas — a residential school-cum-coaching institute for boys — in Raipur in 2010. The department selected students from Naxal-hit districts, who had cleared the class X boards that year. Since then 249 students of the first batch have passed their class XII board examination with a substantial number performing well in public entrance exams, including PET (Pre-Engineering Test), All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) and IIT-JEE. Besides providing free education, the department funds food, uniforms and other expenses. Following the success of Prayas, hitherto restricted to Plus Two (class XI-XII) students, the state government has applied the scheme to class VIII students to be selected from schools in remote areas. The new residential schools will be developed in the public-private partnership model and district collectors have been directed to coordinate with prominent companies such as NMDC, South Eastern Coalfields, Balco and Jindal Steel to implement the project. Jharkhand Anglo-Indian reservations demand Geoffery bonjour, vice chairman of the minority department of the Jharkhand Pradesh Congress Committee, briefed reporters in Jamshedpur on December 15 about the demands of a delegation of Anglo-Indian leaders from across the country who submitted a memorandum to President Pranab Mukherjee on December 11 demanding reservation of seats for deserving students of the community in higher education. Other demands of the delegation include establishment of an Anglo-Indian desk in the ministry of minority affairs to deal with issues concerning the community, and national cultural centres…

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Education Briefs

Pearson’s VET pilot programme

In association with the government of Assam, Pearson Group — the world’s largest and most diversified education and publishing conglomerate — has launched a unique programme to deliver vocational education and training (VET) to schools in the state. Pearson has established vocational skills centres in ten selected government-run schools in Guwahati, initially offering training in two streams — retail and computer hardware and IT. By early December, over 600 students had signed up for these programmes. The VET curriculum is designed and administered by two Pearson companies: IndiaCan, one of India’s most reputed vocational skills providers, and Edexcel, the UK’s largest qualifications awarding board, recognised the world over for its rigorous accreditation of courses and students. As a precursor to this initiative, an orientation programme was organised for teachers and students of the selected schools. Classes are conducted after school hours for students of class IX onwards. “The curriculum is hands-on, encourages the use of audio-visual aids, and includes lectures by industry experts and factory visits to familiarise students with shopfloor conditions. Encouraged by the enthusiastic response of the government and students, Pearson intends to roll out this initiative statewide in the near future,” says a company spokesperson. GE Edison Challenge Winners Team Aarogya of the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati (IIT-G), was adjudged winner and awarded an incubation prize of Rs.10 lakh at the fifth edition of GE Edison Challenge held at the GE India Technology Center, Bangalore on December 7. The winning team’s entry was selected by a panel of judges comprising senior technologists and members of the Edison Engineering Development Program of the GE India Technology Center. Under the rules of the contest, students were required to create ‘An idea for India’ in one field — healthcare, energy or transportation. The IIT-G team’s project proposes wireless EEG (electroencephalogram) for monitoring autistic patients with signals transferred through wireless media while the patient is at home. Team BioMedical Blazers of the Vellore Institute of Technology was adjudged runner-up and awarded a prize of Rs.5 lakh for its Veinloc, which proposes a low-cost vein detection solution. “The 2012 edition of the GE Edison Challenge is a one-of-a-kind contest which encourages students to create an idea that will make India a better place to live in. Our country is on its way to becoming a global superpower and it’s up to us to encourage our innovators of tomorrow to match to the speed. I was impressed with the balance of innovative ideas and practicality demonstrated by the winning and runner-up teams,” said Dr. Gopichand Katragadda, managing director of the GE India Technology Center, speaking on the occasion. KISS Human Chain for Humanity The Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS), Bhubaneswar, reputedly the world’s largest residential school, celebrated Human Rights Day on December 10 with 20,000 tribal/indigenous K-12 students forming a 25 km Human Chain for Humanity — said to be world’s longest human chain. The children’s chain demonstrating the theme ‘My Voice Counts’ started from the KIIT University campus and covered almost the entire city…

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Institution Profile

Candor International School, Bangalore

Promoted by US-based IT entrepreneur Suresh Reddy to realise a dream, the garden city’s newest international school, Candor International School, Bangalore (estb. 2011) has got off to a great green start Meticulously landscaped over a 30-acre campus in the sylvan environs of Hullahalli village contiguous to Electronics City (pop. 500,000) — the hub of Bangalore’s IT industry and headquarters of several IT behemoths including Infosys Technologies, Wipro and C-DOT — the year-old Candor International School (estb. 2011) is receiving excellent notices from the city’s parents community for providing internationally benchmarked education supported by state-of-the-art infrastructure. This Cambridge International Examinations (CIE), UK-affiliated school, which admitted its first batch of 50 students in August 2011, now hosts 150 students (including 30 boarders) — mentored by 40 teachers — from 16 countries enroled in kindergarten to class X. “Candor International was promoted to provide students with a world-class educational experience delivered through an enquiry-based, student-centric and trans-disciplinary curriculum which integrates emerging information technologies such as iPads and Smart boards. Through our dedicated faculty — most of whom have international teaching experience — we are committed to producing future-ready, free-thinking, responsible youth with a solid academic foundation which will enable them to assume leadership positions anywhere in the world,” says Pradip K. Das, principal of Candor International. An alumnus of Bristol University, UK, Das acquired valuable experience in several well-reputed schools including Mount Hermon, Darjeeling, Baldwin Boys High and Greenwood High (Bangalore), and Kodaikanal International School and Indus International School, Pune, prior to signing up as founder-principal of the school last year. Candor International School, Bangalore is promoted by the Saket Educational Trust, constituted in 2009 by Suresh Reddy, a US-based IT entrepreneur, who has invested an estimated Rs.100 crore to realise his dream of “nurturing lifelong learners in a private, independent institution which will deliver high quality English-medium education to children of expatriates and IT employees serving the garden city’s Silicon Valley”. Significantly, Candor’s first two students were children of Japanese expatriates. To meet its institutional objective of delivering holistic internationally benchmarked education, the Candor management has invested heavily in contemporary academic and sports infrastructure. Accredited by the Hyderabad-based Indian Green Building Council, the school’s clusters of ‘white’ buildings host the kindergarten, primary and secondary blocks and offer 40 spacious classrooms, state-of-the-art computer, science and maths laboratories, multimedia rooms, teachers’ resource and counseling centres, music and art rooms and an indoor multi-purpose hall. The academic and administrative blocks are wi-fi enabled. The junior and senior libraries are equipped with e-readers and host 50,000 volumes with several journal subscriptions. A fleet of ten air-conditioned buses equipped with safety and speed tracking systems transport children to and from school. According to Das, sports education is a priority area with the school having signed up with Mumbai-based Globosport — a brand advisory and sports company promoted by India’s Davis Cup star and winner of several Grand Slam tennis doubles titles, Mahesh Bhupathi — to provide an integrated sports programme and coaching to students. Sports infrastructure includes…

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Institution Profile

University of Loughborough, UK

Consistently ranked among Britain’s top 20 universities, University of Loughborough, UK has been voted ‘England’s best student experience’ in the Times Higher Education Awards for five consecutive years Sited on the largest (437-acres) single-site varsity campus in Great Britain, University of Loughborough (LU, estb. 1966) is consistently ranked among the top 20 universities of the UK. The Guardian University Guide 2013 ranks LU 11th of 120 institutions, and the top university of East Midlands. In the Complete University Guide 2013 Loughborough is ranked 14th, and also rated among UK’s top ten universities in 11 of its 28 subject areas, and top-ranked in the sports sciences table. Moreover, for five years consecutively (2006-10), the university has been voted ‘England’s Best Student Experience’ in the prestigious Times Higher Education Awards, and was also recipient of the Sunday Times ‘2008/09 University of the Year’ award. “A research-intensive university, Loughborough is renowned for its relevance of work. Our interdisciplinary approach is driven by society’s need for applied solutions to real-world problems which help to improve people’s lives. Loughborough has a tradition of working closely with business and industry, and benefits from extensive partnerships with companies of all sizes. 70 percent of our research is conducted in collaboration with external partners, compared to the national average of 20 percent. Professional institutions and business regard our programmes highly, and our graduates are consistently targeted by top recruiters,” says Prof. Robert Allison, vice chancellor and president of the university. University of Loughborough, UK traces its history to a modest technical institute founded in 1909 in the town of Loughborough to provide diploma programmes in technical subjects, science and art. In April 1966, the institute was awarded its charter, in acknowledgement of the excellence achieved by the Loughborough College of Advanced Technology and its predecessor colleges. Christened the Loughborough University of Technology, it was the country’s first technology university and was renamed Loughborough University in 1996. Given its origins as a technical university, its science and technology degrees are highly valued. Currently the university’s 24 academic schools and departments offer a wide range of bachelor’s and Masters programmes to 18,500 students. Moreover University of Loughborough, UK hosts the world’s largest university-based sports technology research group, housed within its internationally acclaimed Sports Technology Institute. Loughborough. Sited in the county of Leicestershire, Loughborough (pop. 55,000) offers students great choices in restaurants, entertainment and shopping. The town boasts the world’s largest bell foundry cast by John Taylor Bellfounders, who forged the bells for the Carillon War Memorial, Great Paul for St. Paul’s Cathedral, and York Minster. It also hosts four museums, the largest being the centrally located Charnwood, which displays a range of exhibits reflecting the natural history, geology, and industry of the area. Loughborough’s location is ideal for exploring the neighbouring cities of Nottingham, Leicester and Derby as well as a variety of tourist attractions such as the Peak District, Sherwood Forest, the National Space Centre and Charnwood Forest. The town offers easy access by road, rail and air to every part of the…

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Young Achievers

Shashrek Ambardar

Shashrek Ambardar (16), a class XI humanities student of Ryan International School, Noida and a Bharatnatyam dancer since age nine, is busy preparing for a solo dance performance at the International Children’s Festival of Performing Arts (an annual global event of the Ryan International Group of Institutions) scheduled for January 2013. Awarded the Balshree for creative excellence in the performing arts by the National Bal Bhavan — an autonomous Delhi-based organisation of the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry which confers the honour upon talented children in the age group nine-16 years — in 2009, Shashrek’s stage grace and fluidity has won him laurels in India and abroad, in competitive and non-competitive performances. To date, this promising young dancer/ choreographer has staged 22 — mostly solo — performances at prestigious events such as the Bonn Festival, Germany (2005), World Festival of Children’s Performing Arts, Toyama, Japan (2008) and World Children’s Theatre Ensemble, London (2010). Moreover, he is routinely invited to perform at major public events, before audiences of foreign and national dignitaries and artists. “Initially, my friends found it difficult to appreciate me as a classical dancer which was embarrassing, but after I started winning awards and laurels, everything fell into place. I have an amazing support team which includes my parents, school and my guru Sindhu Mishra, who have always stood by me and encouraged me,” says Shashrek. Shashrek’s dedication to Bharatnatyam — the vintage classical dance form of Tamil Nadu — has not deterred him from doing well academically. He cleared his class X CBSE board exam with a cumulative grade point average of 10 last year and is currently a member of the school parliament. An excellent debater, he has been participating in the India Model United Nations (IMUN) since class VIII. His creative expressions extend on stage through theatre and his paintings. He bagged the Student of the Year Award — instituted by The Times of India’s Newspaper in Education (NIE) programme for academic and all-around excellence — in 2011. Also a contemporary dance and choreography enthusiast, this accomplished teen’s career ambition is to enter the Indian Administrative Service. “I want to serve my country and bring a positive change in the functioning of the Indian bureaucracy. I took up humanities so I could acquire in-depth and extensive knowledge of the subjects I will opt for in the civil services exam after graduation. Unfortunately, classical dance is not a viable career option,’’ says Shashrek, while sincerely hoping it gets more exposure in the media, especially cinema. Swati Roy (Delhi)

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Guest Column

Homework utility & purposes

Great learning outcomes happen when children have the time and freedom to think. During my attempts to understand the Canadian school education system and role of parents, I became acutely aware that aversion to homework is universal. Therefore most Canadian schools instruct parents not to interfere with the education of their children and let schools follow their own pedagogies without external — including parental — interference. This not only translates into no homework, but children are assured of ‘instruction-free’ environments in their homes. On the other hand, there’s been no reappraisal in the Indian school education system about the validity or utility of homework for students. One can state with certainty that the great majority of parents consider homework a necessary component of learning, and of a good school. However, not all parents are comfortable with it. Every interaction opportunity with the heads of top-ranked independent schools invariably reveals that most of them are firmly convinced that more homework means more learning and that further, it enhances institutional credibility as it “convinces parents that we are very serious, far more than other schools”. Some schools don’t hesitate to recommend more books than the quota prescribed and recommended by examination boards, cavalierly ignoring persistent and genuine demand for reduction of the curriculum load. In government schools, teacher shortages are endemic. Therefore, the emphasis on homework is greater. Moreover, while private school teachers are discouraged from giving private tuition, such restrictions apply to government school teachers only on paper, and offers them vast opportunities to earn supplementary incomes through ‘extra-inputs learning’ (aka private tuition) which has various implications and impact on learning and levels of attainment. The much-hyped comprehensive and continuous evaluation (CCE) system is ineffective in government schools as teachers are either overworked, not interested and/or not appropriately trained to implement it. Remedial teaching would really help government school children who mostly don’t have appropriate home environments to complete homework. In the circumstances, it’s unsurprising that demand for admission into private schools is fast increasing. In 2011, private school enrolment countrywide rose to 25.6 percent of the school-going population compared to 18.7 percent in 2006, with the percentage rising to over 40 in some states. Even in small towns, villages and urban slums, private budget schools with low fee structures are flourishing while government schools are steadily losing credibility. Although the Central government’s Kendriya Vidyalayas and Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya schools have good reputations, their number is too limited. On the other hand, state governments have shown little interest in upgrading their schools to comparable levels. They seem unaware that government schools can be brought on a par with private schools only if infrastructure support is adequate and teacher shortages are eliminated. The essential objective of assigning homework to children is to enable them to replenish learning and inculcate the skill of self-study in them. But this requires teachers to do their own homework thoroughly and plan the quantum of homework for children. Absence or inadequacy of prior preparation on the part…

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Career Focus

Landscape designers in great demand

As real estate and property prices spiral, construction companies, architecture firms, corporates and education institutions are ready and willing to pay top dollar to landscape professionals With schools, colleges, universities and corporate offices and campuses countrywide going — or aspiring to go — green, careers and opportunities in landscape design are readily attracting environment-friendly youth, especially those with concern for rapidly deteriorating ecologies and environments. Landscape design is the art of regenerating flora and beautifying areas through disciplined utilisation of sculpture, water, foliage and flora in limited spaces. Architects, aesthetes, and environmentalists are unanimous that landscape design is simultaneously a science and an art. A professional landscape designer needs a good grounding in biology and civil engineering. Recently it has emerged as a specialised field of study in which students are taught how to transform institutions, campuses, public parks, and civic areas into eye-pleasing and aesthetic spaces compatible with their surrounding environments. Aspiring landscape professionals need to be imaginative and creative, and possess knowledge of horticulture, hydraulics and lighting. The basic educational qualification required for admission into diploma programmes in landscape design is Plus Two (science). Higher secondary school leavers have the option to sign up for diploma or degree programmes in horticulture with specialisation in landscape design, or to enroll in a B.Arch programme with specialisation in landscape design. Knowledge of architecture is helpful as landscaping requires familiarity with construction material, plumbing and drainage. Among the reputed universities and colleges of horticulture and agriculture are College of Agriculture, Pune; Konkan Krishi Vidyapeeth, Dapoli; College of Horticulture, Rahuri; Rev. Carey Institute of Horticulture, Kolkata; Dr. Yashwant Singh Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Solan; Kerala Agricultural University, Thrissur; Gujarat Agricultural University, Sardar Krushinagar; and Institute of Agricultural Sciences, BHU, Varanasi. Reputed architecture institutes include the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi; Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology, Ahmedabad; Sir J.J. School of Architecture and Planning, Mumbai; Anna University, Chennai, and the Chandigarh College of Architecture. With India experiencing a prolonged luxury real estate and home construction boom, there’s no dearth of demand for professionally qualified landscapists. Careers typically include employment or self-employment in garden and landscape design firms which require design technicians, managers and supervisors, in private and public gardens, historical gardens, nurseries, garden centres and parks. Garden designers tend to be self-employed and work with builders and landscape architects. As property prices spiral, construction companies, architecture firms, and school and college promoters etc, are ready and willing to pay top dollar to talented landscape professionals who through intelligent design, can boost property values multifold. Pay packets are good in this budding profession. A horticulture graduate starting as field manager or supervisor can expect Rs.4 lakh per annum and those with specialisation in landscape design can command Rs.5-6 lakh. After acquiring on-site experience most designers start their own companies and if they establish a good reputation, annual incomes could skyrocket. “Qualified landscape designers are highly sought after within the best infrastructure and construction companies which are growing at 200-300…

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Career Focus

Your Counselor Replies

I’m a computer science engineering graduate working in a multinational company for the past two years. I want to enroll in an MBA programme abroad. Will my technical background help me in getting admission? Ravi Krishnan, Chennai Your engineering degree and work experience will be given weightage in the MBA admission process, especially the latter as work experience is a mandatory requirement of most B-schools abroad. You should highlight your strengths in your resumé and statement of purpose, and submit letters of recommendation from your employers and college. Could you suggest some reputed universities/business schools in Canada or Australia which offer a Masters in finance? What are their eligibility requirements? Satish Rao, Bangalore A masters in finance degree programme is offered by Monash University and University of New South Wales in Australia as also by Queens and York universities in Canada. For admission into postgraduate study programmes in Canada you need to submit GMAT and TOEFL scores. For Oz universities you need to write the IELTS exam. Should I enroll in a BBA (bachelor of business administration) course after completing class XII (commerce)? Will it help me secure admission into an MBA programme later? Or should I enroll in a B.Com programme? Neelam Chawla, Pune The BBA programme is the equivalent of the BMS (bachelor of management studies) course of Mumbai University. Other varsities such as University of Delhi offer the BBS (bachelor of business studies) degree programme. The subjects you study in BBS/BBA/BMS will give you an idea of what to expect of an MBA programme but it will not facilitate admission. Admission into an MBA programme, depends upon performance in entrance tests such as CAT, XAT, CET, etc — the curriculum of which is not covered in BBA or any equivalent programme. If you want the option of pursuing professional courses such as chartered accountancy, cost and works accountancy or company secretaryship, then pursuing B.Com would be useful, but not necessary. What subjects should I opt for in Plus Two if I want a bachelor’s degree in marine engineering? Peter Vaz, Panjim For marine engineering, you should study science with physics, chemistry and maths as your optional subjects in Plus Two. After that you can apply for admission into a four-year marine engineering degree programme. A list of colleges offering marine engineering is available on www.dgshipping. com and www.dte.org.in. Admission is through a written entrance exam. Another option would be to complete a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering or naval architecture from an engineering college and then enroll in a one-year pre-sea training course. For which disciplines apart from medicine and engineering do I have to write the Common Entrance Test. Also is there an entrance test for admission into the bachelor of management studies (BMS) programme? Daisy Irani, Mumbai CET is required for admission into hotel management and architecture degree programmes as well as fine/applied arts. The common entrance exam for BMS is known as the Centralised Common Entrance Examination (CCEE). After completing my BA (psychology) next year, I want to sign…

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n Flow India, we believe that a child needs to connect to real experiences right from the start of schooling

Teacher-to-Teacher

Experiential learning can’t begin too soon

Eliza Hilton Within academia and among K-12 educators there’s a general consensus that new types of learning are necessary for success in the contemporary world. A world in which information is instantly available, but critical and creative thinking skills are required for students to excel at the highest level. However, at what age should ‘new era’ learning begin? Should educators worry about learning the alphabet and basics first, and address the big questions later? In Flow India, we believe that a child needs to connect to real experiences right from the start of schooling. That’s why we advocate and organise visits to museums, and heritage and cultural sites in the Delhi and NCR region — field trips hitherto reserved for senior secondary students — for all K-12 children, linking them to practical programming which helps to unpack the dry knowledge of textbooks. We believe that presenting real experiences to children as early as possible, impacts their learning. They succeed better in managing their curriculums, improve recall and respond more intelligently. Our work is based on the insights of American psychologist and founder of the internationally acclaimed Flow Theory, Mihali Csikzentmihalyi. Flow Theory has examined leading scenarios in the work-place, sports and education. It propagates a mode of learning in which learners are motivated by personal passion and relevant challenge. It is rooted in our species’ instinct for deriving meaning through exploration of the physical, material and natural worlds. Csikzentmihalyi described ‘flow’ as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake”. Self-motivation, critical thinking and creative exploration don’t always correlate with exam success. But such skills go a long way in helping students bring their own meaning and motivation to the slog of hard work and are certainly appreciated in progressive seats of learning such as Harvard, Oxford or LSE. Collaborative and open-ended thinking is also highly regarded by employers in the new global economy. So what are the vital building blocks of ‘new era’ capacities at the most basic level? Critical thinking. Young children need to be continuously challenged to think about important issues and commit themselves to defending different points of view, both orally and in writing. They need to be able to distinguish between what they know, what they can infer, and what they can imagine. Moving out of the classroom and examining objects in a museum, observing the natural world outdoors, or trying out their own ideas, bring about conditions conducive to creativity. Creativity. If time and space is given to children to make imaginative journeys and reflect on their own processes of creativity, they develop the confidence to innovate and experiment in the adult world. A fine example of this is provided by Larry Page and Sergey Brin — founders of Google — who credit Montessori education for their success. “I think it was part of that training, of not following rules and orders, and being self-motivated, questioning what’s going on in the world and doing things a little bit differently,” said Page, in a recent television…

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People

Kunskapsskolan debut: Mark Parkinson

Mark Parkinson, the high-profile director of The Shri Ram School, Delhi (TSRS, estb. 1988), routinely ranked among the country’s top three day schools (No. 1 in 2011, No. 2 in 2010) in the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings, has called it a day at TSRS after a five-year inning. And since September, he has taken fresh guard as director of the Kunskapsskolan school under construction in Gurgaon in Delhi NCR. Kunskapsskolan. The first Kunskapsskolan school was established in 2000 in Tyreso, Sweden by Peje Emilsson, a politician, entrepreneur and consultant in strategic communications. Since then, 34 Kunskapsskolan schools have been established in Sweden, three in Britain and one in New York city. Kunskapsskolan is the owner and developer of the KED (Kunskapsskolan Education) programme — a coherent and proven personalised education programme for children in the age group two-and-a-half to 18. In Kunskapsskolan schools, teachers, the timetable and learning spaces are adapted to the customised needs of students by way of personal coaching and individualised goals. In April 2012, the chain announced its entry into India under the aegis of the Sweden-based Kunskapsskolan Eduventures Pvt. Ltd, with Kunal Bhadoo, son-in-law of Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, as its co-promoter chief executive. The first school is rapidly assuming shape on a 6.5-acre campus in Gurgaon’s Sector 50 and will admit its first batch of preschool to class VI children in April 2013. Tuition fees range from Rs.25,000-45,000 per year. History. A law graduate of Wolverhampton University, UK, Parkinson recently completed 13 years of work and residency in India. Starting his career as a marketing executive with a private British bank in 1985, Parkinson “accidentally strayed” into South Asia when he accepted an offer to teach English to priests of the Swaminarayan sect in Ahmedabad. After completing this assignment in 2000, he taught business English at IIM-A and MICA for three years before being appointed headmaster of the Oxford International School, Dhaka (2005-07). In 2007, he was inducted into TSRS as director. Direct talk. “The KED model is a breakaway from the one-size-fits-all approach that most schools have practiced for too long. It’s child-centric, reformist, international in processes and methodologies while simultaneously adaptable to national board curriculums. It allows students to work at their own pace and focus on subjects of their choice, with the teacher being a sage on stage and a coach on the sidelines. I found the system very appealing and one that could catalyse a paradigm change in K-12 education,” says Parkinson. Future plans. The Kunskapsskolan school in Gurgaon will be the first of an Indian chain. “We’ll stick to the original model and cap the classroom size at 20 students. A team from Sweden will be here in March to train our teachers in KED pedagogies. After our processes and architecture are established, we plan to enter tier-II cities charging lower tuition fees,” says Parkinson. Swagatam! Autar Nehru (Delhi)

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People

Stanford seer: Dr Garth Saloner

Dr Garth Saloner, dean of the globally renowned Stanford Graduate School of Business (Stanford GSB, estb. 1925) is one of the rare academics who has stepped out of his ivory tower to spend time with start-up ventures and enterprises. Newspeg. Saloner was in India in early November to launch the online Stanford Innovation and Entrepreneurship Certificate Programme. During his four-day sojourn in the country, he visited Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi. Stanford University’s latest online programme priced at $995 (Rs.54,630) is focused on “the student and her aspirations”. Direct talk. “People who sign up for this programme are looking to accelerate… to change the way they look at entrepreneurship,” says Saloner, who also launched the part-time Stanford Ignite Bangalore Programme in Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the occasion. According to Saloner, India’s entrepreneurial energy is remarkable and its pace of innovations exciting. “Bangalore looks like a young Silicon Valley. We want to be there for two reasons. We want to share the type of education our students receive, and share opportunities with the city’s fantastic young entrepreneurs. Secondly, we want to learn. Entrepreneurship is location and culture-specific. Therefore we want to teach our students not just about entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley but entrepreneurship in Bangalore and in other innovation hubs around the world,” he says. History. A commerce graduate of the University of Witwatersand, Johannesburg, South Africa-born Saloner pressed on to Stanford which awarded him a Masters in statistics and economics and a Ph D in economics, business and public policy. Beginning his career in 1982 as an assistant professor, he rose to the position of tenured professor in the economics department of MIT’s Sloan School of Management and also lectured at Harvard. In 1990, he moved west and signed up with Stanford GSB, and was a key architect of the school’s innovative new curriculum introduced in 2007. Crystal-ball gazing. Saloner believes the future of education and global progress is dependent upon including more people in higher education, which is being transformed by MOOCs (massive online open courses). Jumping on this bandwagon, Stanford University has participated in Coursera and offers several of its own online courses as well. However, the don doesn’t believe online education is a substitute for the immersive experience that a great university can offer. “But for colleges and universities which can’t attract the world’s top 10-20 teachers and provide excellent teaching and content, there’s a disruptive period ahead. Teachers will have to do something different in classrooms to supplement the wealth of content available online,” warns Saloner. Teachers, please note! Meeta Sengupta (Delhi)

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People

Experiential education missionary: Saurabh N. Saklani

Saurabh N. Saklani is a co-founder and director of Delhi-based Inme Learning Pvt. Ltd (estb. 2009), a company focused on providing adventure-based experiential learning programmes to children in classes IV-XI. Inme’s experiential leadership and life skills development programmes are conducted in owned/leased outdoor campuses sited in Uroli, Tons, and Rishikesh (Uttarakhand), Coorg (Karnataka), and Yercaud (Tamil Nadu). Newspeg. Inme celebrated its fourth anniversary (an annual event observed after completion of each summer season) in July 2012. During the past four years, over 5,000 students of top-ranked private schools (in addition to another 10,000 students in summer open programmes) including The Doon School, Dehradun; Inventure Academy, Bangalore; NSS Hillsprings International, Mumbai; The International School Bangalore (TISB); Sanskriti School, Pallikoodam, Kerala; Bangalore International School; Vidya Devi Jindal School, Hisar; The Lawrence School, Sanawar; Assam Valley School, Tezpur; and Vasant Valley School, Delhi, among others have enroled in its 5-10 day life skills development outdoor programmes, conducted by behaviourial science practitioners and qualified outdoor experts of Uttarakhand’s reputed Nehru Institute of Mountaineering. Direct talk. “Our Whole School Leadership (WSL) life skills curriculum approaches the entire school ecosystem by first understanding the needs of students, teachers, and school leaders including owners. The programme is unique inasmuch as its components include teacher empowerment and student leadership workshops, culminating in a recommendation report for school leaders providing them expert inputs on their school environment and needs,” says Saklani, an alumnus of Knox College, USA and INSEAD, France with a specialisation in organisation behaviour, who together with three co-founders — Tarun Chandna, Gaurav Saklani and Satindra Sen, all alumni of XLRI, Jamshedpur — staked their entire savings to promote Inme Learning in 2009. Prior to starting the Inme programme, Tarun and Gaurav co-founded iDiscoveri in 1996 where they created and managed the Youreka summer programmes until 2006. History. A former Silicon Valley entrepreneur who studied and worked in the US and France for a decade before setting up base in the national capital, Saklani has also authored What Teens Need But Can’t Quite Say (Rupa, 2005) and written a number of comment columns on enhancing personal effectiveness at work. “Inme’s curriculum was inspired by our own beyond-the-classroom learning experiences as students. Those experiences powerfully complemented our academic development by helping us build real life skills which have helped us professionally. We believe adventure-based challenges provide opportunities to engage and learn by doing. We also believe that the great outdoors instill a sense of awe, which opens young minds to introspection and hands-on education,” says Saklani. Fees. Rs.10,000 + travel (per student) for a four nights five day programme. Future plans. Inme’s target is to sign up 100 “forward thinking, ambitious schools” across India to inculcate valuable life skills and a culture of self-discipline and leadership in students. “We are constantly building our school relationships and are well on track to attaining this ambitious objective,” says Saklani. Wind in your sails! Paromita Sengupta (Bangalore)

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People

Unique skills developers: Sunil Vishnu, Karthik Kumar and TM Karthik

Sunil Vishnu, Karthik Kumar and TM Karthik (TMK) are co-founders of Chennai-based Sideways Training (ST, estb. 2011), a division of Evam Corporate Training Pvt. Ltd, a soft skills training company that uses creative performing arts pedagogies based on theatre, dance, music and games. ST is a new venture of Evam Corporate which also owns Evam Entertainment, an English theatre company co-founded by Sunil Vishnu and Karthik Kumar in 2003 which has staged more than 25 plays and 450 performances. Newspeg. ST has launched workshops for college students and teachers in partnership with retail expert, consultant, trainer and author V. Rajesh, based on the latter’s 94-page self-help book Out of Syllabus, which expounds on the ‘three-bucket theory’ of career planning. The content of the book has been adapted for theatre-based workshops to train students in behaviour and communication, interview preparation, and develop their employability and career skills. ST’s lively, hands-on workshops have been conducted in 11 colleges including IIM-Bangalore; Mudra Institute of Communications (MICA), Ahmedabad; Chitkara College, Chandigarh and the Chennai Business School. ST has also conducted 130 workshops of varied durations for 35 different companies including Google, Sify, Vodafone and HSBC. Direct talk. “Today, our workshops engage participants in music, dance, crossword puzzles, contests and role play with an express purpose and agenda. Our emphasis is on creating non-threatening environments and using the media of art and theatre to enable people to shed inhibitions and express themselves freely. Our USP is combining the arts and business to develop leadership and team-building skills and enhance the emotional intelligence and creativity of people,” says Sunil Vishnu. Genesis. The Evam story began when Karthik Kumar, a chemical engineer of Anna University, Chennai and Sunil Vishnu, a commerce graduate of Bhopal University, signed up for a marketing communications programme with MICA. They started a theatre group in the institute and wrote a joint thesis on the feasibility of a theatre company. After graduation, they parted ways for two years and took up corporate jobs to earn the capital to start their own theatre company. In 2003, both quit their jobs and with an initial investment of Rs.200,000, moved to Chennai and promoted Evam. The duo collaborated with T.M. Karthik, an engineering graduate of Anna University and well-known stage and film actor ab initio. An engineer with 19 years of experience in IT majors including Cognizant, HCL and Satyam, TMK is also an experienced business and team skills trainer. When ST was promoted in 2011, he joined them as co-founder and chief mentor. Future plans. “We travel a lot to deliver soft skills training and over the next few years hope to roll out nationally. Almost half of our clients have done repeat courses with us and we plan to develop more performance arts-based pedagogies to fulfil the people skills needs of varied clients,” says Sunil Vishnu. Right on! Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)

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People

Child rights champ: Joydev Mazumdar

A law and social work alumnus of Calcutta University, with advanced diplomas in child rights and public service management from Sweden, Prof. Joydev Mazumdar is executive director of the Vidyasagar School of Social Work (a unit of the Jayaprakash Institute of Social Change founded by the late Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan in 1973), affiliated with Vidyasagar University, West Bengal. The school of social work of the Jayaprakash Institute of Social Change (JISC) is the only NGO accredited by the University Grants Commission. Newspeg. Earlier this year, JISC was given the mandate to conduct a needs assessment survey for child protection agencies and prepare a District Child Protection Plan for all districts in the state by the department of child development, the government of West Bengal, with technical and financial support from the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef). Prof. Mazumdar completed the assignment and submitted his report in November. History. A widely acclaimed expert on child rights and education, Prof. Mazumdar played a key role in drafting the state rules for the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000, Prohibition of Child Marriages Act, 2006, the Welfare and Maintenance of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007 and the Commission for Protection of Child Rights Act, 2005. With more than 25 years of experience in the field of social development with specialisation in child rights and protection, Mazumdar has conducted important research studies on juvenile justice, child labour, child domestic workers, human trafficking etc in collaboration with the Union government, Unicef and Save the Children (UK). Direct talk. ”My aim is to provide professional training in social work to government and NGO personnel based on applied social sciences and social action and invest them with knowledge, skills, attitudes and appropriate values. I believe that students of the social sciences should be familiar with an array of cultural and community perspectives and adopt alternative, multi-faceted approaches to learning, analysis and problem solving,” says Mazumdar. Future plans. Following completion of the District Child Protection Plan for West Bengal, Mazumdar’s next priority is to train and develop a cadre of professional social workers to execute and implement the plan. “I plan to start a counselling centre staffed by expert professionals to deal with problems of mental health by early next year which will serve the need of field practicum for students. Moreover, I’m also working on starting a research and monitoring unit,” says Mazumdar. God speed. Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)

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International News

United States: Most favoured academic mecca

The number of overseas students attending university in the US reached a record 764,495 during the academic year 2011-12, according to figures from the Institute of International Education. The data, published annually in partnership with the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, shows a 6 percent increase on the previous year and reveals that foreign students contributed $22.7 billion (Rs.123,546 crore) to the US economy during 2011-12. The number of international students in US higher education has risen for six consecutive years, and there are now 31 percent more of them studying in US colleges and universities than a decade ago. According to the data, the number of Chinese enrolments is up 23 percent in total, 31 percent — among undergraduates alone — the largest increase at that level. There was also a 50 percent rise in student enrolments from Saudi Arabia, explained by the greater availability of Saudi government scholarships. There was a 2.7 percent rise in the number of British students opting to study in the US, increasing from 8,947 to 9,186. However, numbers from India, South Korea and Japan have declined (down 4 percent, 1 percent and 6 percent, respectively), a downturn driven by global economic factors, improved domestic higher education and stronger employment opportunities at home. Meanwhile, the number of Americans opting to study abroad hit an all-time high in 2010-11, with 273,996 earning credit at foreign institutions — an increase of more than 1 percent on the previous year. The UK remained the leading destination (33,182 US students), followed by Italy (30,361), Spain (25,965) and France (17,019). Twelve percent more went to India to study, while the numbers heading to China rose by 5 percent. Conversely, there was a 33 percent decline in the number opting for Japan, with the 2011 earthquake and tsunami putting Americans off. There was also a 42 percent decrease among students heading for Mexico after the State Department issued travel warnings. Dark clouds over academia On the face of it, American higher education is still in rude good health. In worldwide rankings more than of the top 100 universities, and eight of the top ten, are American. The scientific output of American institutions is unparalleled. They produce most of the world’s Nobel laureates and scientific papers. Moreover college graduates, on average, still earn far more and receive better benefits than those who don’t have a degree. Nonetheless, there is growing anxiety in America about higher education. A degree has always been considered the key to a good job. But rising fees and increasing student debt, combined with shrinking financial and educational returns, are undermining the perception that university is a good investment. Concern springs from a number of factors: steep rises in fees, increases in the levels of debt of both students and universities, and declining quality of graduates. Start with fees. The cost of university per student has risen by almost five times the rate of inflation since 1983, making it less affordable and increasing…

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International News

Australia: New higher ed regulatory agency

When former University of South Australia vice chancellor Denise Bradley in her landmark 2008 report recommended that Australian higher education move to a demand-driven system, she was equally clear that an independent national regulator was required to ensure that teaching quality did not suffer. Previously, higher education had been officially regulated by the country’s states and territories. However, government funding gave Canberra a de facto prerogative to police standards — which it did via the Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA). Nevertheless, there was widespread concern over a lack of clarity and consistency in standards. Having accepted Prof. Bradley’s report, the Labor government passed legislation in 2011 establishing the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (Teqsa), replacing AUQA. Teqsa’s remit, according to the government, is to “enhance the overall quality of the Australian higher education system” by accrediting and evaluating institutions and programmes, encouraging best practices, and simplifying and harmonising regulatory arrangements. Unlike the AUQA or the UK’s Quality Assurance Agency, Teqsa assesses each institution not against its own stated standards but against a universal set of more than 100 common “threshold standards”, which relate to both institutions and courses. Teqsa also directly accredits the courses of institutions that lack their own authority to accredit. In the agency’s first annual report, published on October 30, Teqsa’s chief commissioner, Carol Nicoll, said “in time” the agency would also begin to explore “the relative quality of higher education being delivered over and above minimum requirements”. The threshold standards are largely based on existing “national protocols”, developed by AUQA in collaboration with the sector. Dr. Nicoll says Teqsa’s five commissioners have already developed a “shared understanding” of the standards framework and the regulatory principles by which the agency is to operate. She is confident the agency’s decision-making will be “consistent, fair and robust”. But according to Vicki Thomson, executive director of the Australian Technology Network of universities, many in the sector feel the speed with which Teqsa has been established — regulatory powers were conferred in January — has exacerbated the inevitable teething problems which arise when a new body is created. Thomson is concerned about Teqsa’s interpretation of some threshold standards, and says “evidence is mounting” that its thirst for information is creating an unreasonable and, in some cases, “unsustainable” administrative burden for universities, which is draining “resources that should be directed to supporting teaching and research, with little in the way of offsetting gains in quality for students and the community”. However, Teqsa’s communications manager, Tony Mithen, says the agency has already “significantly reduced” the burden of applying for registration and accreditation of courses. He says a further lightening of the load is likely as Teqsa, and its relationship with the sector, “matures”. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)

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International News

China: Migrants challenge education apartheid

Of the many reforms that China’s new leaders will be expected to tackle after they took over in mid-November, one of the most urgent yet potentially divisive is giving migrants and their families the same opportunities in the cities as other citizens. Recently in Beijing, mere talk of allowing children of migrants from the countryside or other cities to write university exams in the capital has triggered a fierce debate and heated exchanges in public between rival groups. The heart of the problem is China’s system of household registration, or hukou. It forms the basis on which local governments define the privileges to which residents are entitled. Beijing has a large migrant population and also boasts many of the country’s best government-funded schools and universities. The city is not keen to make it easier for holders of non-Beijing hukou to grab a share of these spoils. Even private schools set up specifically for the children of rural migrants are routinely razed by city officials. In effect, a kind of apartheid is at work. For those with university aspirations it becomes nearly impossible to stay on. This is because students must write the gaokao, or university entrance exam, in their place of household registration. Never mind that this may be somewhere in the sticks which children have rarely if ever visited, and where they may not have close relatives. To make things worse, the gaokao syllabus varies from place to place. Those who leave Beijing to write the gaokao have little chance of qualifying for higher education in the capital, since the city’s universities allocate a disproportionate number of places to holders of Beijing hukou. Officials have hinted at change. In August the government asked local administrations to produce “concrete plans” by the end of the year for allowing students to write the gaokao where they actually live. Parents are sceptical. Ominously, the directive calls on local governments to come up with ways to prevent gaokao “migration”: moving to a city in order to a have a better chance of getting into its universities. The directive implies that cities can still set high hurdles for students wishing to take the exam, such as proof of their parents’ employment and of their tax payments and contributions to local social security funds. Many migrants lack such documents. On October 18, a group of migrants encountered a group of Beijing hukou holders, equally large and upset, outside the commission’s office. During a four-hour standoff, the migrant parents were sworn at. “They keep blaming outsiders for everything that’s wrong in the city,” including traffic jams and crime, says one migrant. In recent months, activists say, they have collected tens of thousands of signatures in Beijing in support of the migrants’ campaign, but have received little love in return. The capital’s police have warned them to stop their petitioning. One was detained and roughed up. But migrants remain defiant. “Now is the time to test their sense of historic responsibility,” says one father, of the country’s…

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International News

European Union: Academy modernisation initiative

After serving 14 years as president of the Republic of Ireland, one could be excused for wishing to take a step back from public life. However, just a year after stepping down as head of state, Mary McAleese has returned to public service as the chair of a new European Commission inquiry into higher education. Over the next three years, McAleese, who has been a law professor, journalist as well as Ireland’s president, will, as part of the High Level Group on the Modernisation of Higher Education, examine three areas of the academy. First, the group will explore how to improve university teaching. Next it will study digital learning, and in the third year it is likely to look at lifelong learning, creativity in universities and student entrepreneurialism. McAleese will convene forums in Brussels and in Rome, where she is now based, to hear evidence of good practices in universities that could be adopted in higher education institutions across Europe. Having served as pro vice chancellor with responsibility for teaching and quality assurance at Queen’s University Belfast, McAleese will understand exactly how difficult it is to tell academics to change their teaching methods — let alone entire universities or national higher education systems. Nonetheless, she believes that her inquiry role, which is unpaid, can make a difference by championing the innovative and exciting teaching methods found across the European Union’s 27 member states. “It is not about scolding each other or saying, ‘You aren’t doing things right’,” says McAleese. “Neither is it about producing a prescriptive set of ordinances or commands… What we hope is to present a story about the importance of good teaching practices that is so compelling that universities will not be able to ignore it.” McAleese is also keen to see how the EU’s own education spending — which could be about £1.8 billion (Rs.15,840 crore) a year from 2014 depending on the outcome of budget talks under way now — could encourage teaching innovation. “We will be looking at where money is currently spent and how it could be used to incentivise good teaching,” she says. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)

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International News

Tunisia: Islamist shadow over varsities

The trial of a university dean has raised concerns about the future of higher education in Tunisia and the longer-term plans of the dominant Ennahda (Renaissance) Party. It was in Tunisia that street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set fire to himself on December 17, 2010 in protest against ill treatment by local police, thereby sparking the regionwide wave of demonstrations that became known as the Arab Spring. And it was Tunisia which witnessed the first change of regime, on January 14, 2011, when President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali ended his 23-year dictatorship and went into exile in Saudi Arabia. The elections of October 23, 2011 brought to power a ‘troika’ government led by President Moncef Marzouki, prime minister Hamadi Jebali and Mustapha Ben Jafar as leader of the Constituent Assembly, although with Ben Ali’s former prime minister Mohamed al-Ghannushi as a major power behind the scenes. Rob Prince, a lecturer at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies, lived in Tunisia as a Peace Corps volunteer almost 50 years ago and has often used the contrast between oil-rich Algeria and oil-less Tunisia as a case history in his courses on development. He decided to return to the country for a month not long after last year’s elections. “I went with a very positive sense of what was going on,” he recalls. “The election itself seemed fair and open. A coalition of Islamicists and more secularist elements seemed realistic.” What Prince discovered, however, was that while “politics on a formal level was based on a coalition between more secular and Islamist forces, the real coalition was between the (moderate Islamicist) Ennahda Party and the (strict, traditional) Salafists”. One of the clear signs of this was “challenges to the university system” from those who wanted to “reshape (higher education) in Tunisia along Islamic lines”, says Prince. Although there was suggestion of a coordinated national campaign for more Islamic education, it was the demonstrations at Manouba University that were “at the front line and in the public eye”. The university was most likely targeted because the faculty board had just banned female students from wearing the niqab in class or during exams. Prince had heard reports of trespass, vandalism and intimidation at the campus, and when he went to see what was happening, he found “the Salafists were very aggressive, in people’s faces, blocking entrances”. “The problem was not so much their demands but that they seemed to have been given a green light. Habib Kazdaghli (the dean of Manouba’s faculty of letters, arts and humanities) was left to defend himself, with no support from the state to challenge what was going on,” says Prince. On March 6 this year, two veiled students entered Prof. Kazdaghli’s office and allegedly started destroying some papers. According to the professor, when he reported the incident to the police, one of the young women called an ambulance and accused him of assaulting her. Kazdaghli was subsequently arrested and charged. Then, during the initial hearing…

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International News

Kenya: Steady digital revolution

Until recently Grace Wambui, a 14-year-old pupil in Nairobi, had never touched a tablet computer. But it took her about “one minute”, she says, to work out how to use one when such devices arrived at her school, a tin shack in Kawangware, a slum in the Kenyan capital. Other students at the Amaf School were no slower to embrace the new tool. Teaching used to be conducted with a blackboard and a handful of tattered textbooks. Now children in groups of five take turns to swipe the touch screen of the devices, which are loaded with a multimedia version of Kenya’s syllabus. The tablets at Amaf School are an exception; they are part of a pilot project run by eLimu, a technology start-up. But if it and other firms are right, tablets and other digital devices may soon be the rule in African schools, many are betting on a boom in digital education in Kenya and elsewhere. Some executives even expect it to take off like M-Pesa, Kenya’s hugely successful mobile-money service. Such growth in digital education would be timely. The number of children in Africa without school places may have dropped in recent years, but a flood of new pupils has overwhelmed state schools, which are already underfunded and poorly managed. “Business as usual is not working,” says Mike Trucano, an education and technology expert at the World Bank. A for-profit venture, eLimu (“education” in Swahili) is one of several local publishers looking to disrupt the business of traditional textbook vendors, who are often slow and expensive. It aims to show that digital content can be cheaper and better. Safaricom, the Kenyan mobile operator which pioneered the M-Pesa service, hopes to repeat its success in digital education. It is developing classroom content, from videotaped lessons to learning applications, that any of Kenya’s 7,000 state secondary schools will be able to access online. The prospect of many of Africa’s 300 million pupils learning digitally has not escaped the attention of global technology giants either. Amazon has seen sales of its Kindle e-readers in Africa increase tenfold in the past year. The firm’s developers are adding features to its devices with the African consumer in mind: talking books, new languages and a longer battery life. Intel, a chipmaker, hopes education will generate much of the double-digit growth it expects in Africa. Such success is proof that even the poor are willing to pay for digital education — as they already do for the conven-tional kind. In Kenya, eight out of ten parents pay tuition for courses outside school. Amaf School charges about $10 a month. Start-ups such as eLimu hope to make money with micro-payments, very small sums paid per download. A bigger question is whether digital tools will actually improve education. Early results are encouraging. In Ghana, reading skills improved measurably among 350 children who had been given Kindle e-readers by Worldreader, a charity. In Ethiopia, researchers found that even in the absence of teachers, children figured out how…

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Sports Education

Golden Rules for Golden Oldies

“Isn’t this terrific?” I said to my daughter-in-law recently while watching my granddaughter’s soccer game. It’s amazing how much more fun and relaxing it is to watch one’s grandkids play sports, versus the gut-wrenching anxiety that often came when my own children were in the thick of action. And because there’s less anxiety, I believe I’m able to be more supportive of my grandchildren (and by extension, their parents) as they do their thing in sports arenas. The good part about being a grandparent is that one can sit back and admiringly watch grandkids play without worrying about whether they are winning or losing. We find it easier to say, “Did you have fun?” rather than “Did you win?” Just watching them be who they are regardless of how well they perform is enough to evoke joy in the hearts of most elders. People I know who have grandchildren in sports seem to be more aware that our primary function is to be “understanding.” That is, to stand under them so if they falter we can soften the fall. Bearing in mind the potential of grandparents to positively influence the world of youth sports, I’ve come up with what I call ‘Golden Rules for Golden Oldies’. These rules are guidelines for grandparents (or senior citizens playing out that role) to improve the sports experiences of grandchildren and generations to come. Transform into a senior ambassador for good sports. Youth in sports need all the wisdom and perspective they can get. Many seniors have learned, through a lifetime of experience, the best way to support their grandkids is in the living room, family setting, or after a sports outing. They know they need to be there for them. They have matured to the point where they have developed perspective. They have learnt when to take their grandchildren out of harm’s way, and when to allow them to chart their own course to derive the satisfaction of solving their own problems. I recommend that seniors become ambassadors for good sports. Within them they have the wisdom, patience, experience, and time to make a significant difference to the sports experiences of young children. Help envision a better sports future. Through our awareness that we are not going to be around for much longer, many of us grandparents start to appreciate what’s really important in life. Why not use this wisdom to make the world of sports a better place for young ones? We know that sports can inspire, educate, and unify. We are aware that in most cases, sport is underutilised as a quality of life-improving medium for grandkids and their families. Sport can empower the main actors in youth sports: kids, parents, coaches, and spectators. But to realise this empowerment goal, it is necessary for sports parents, with our counsel and support, to evaluate current and future sports trends and practices. Parents need help to eliminate toxic influences that threaten the sports experiences of their children. Resist offering unsolicited advice. It is essential for seniors…

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Books

Shocking contrast

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling; Little Brown Book Group; Price: Rs.850; 503 pp J. K. Rowling, the 47-year-old British novelist best known as the author of the Harry Potter fantasy series, is a unique phenomenon. She failed to get admission to Oxford and had to settle for Exeter University. She was on social security in her thirties and as she put it later, as “poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless”. It says something about the type of personnel book publishing companies employ, that 12 publishers turned down her first Harry Potter book which she wrote on train journeys and in cafes. As Rowling recalls, she regarded herself “the biggest failure I knew”: her marriage had failed; she was jobless, with a child to care for, and at one time even contemplated suicide. Then, the eight-year-old daughter of the head of Bloomsbury publishing house was asked to read the first chapter of the rejected manuscript. She told her father that she couldn’t wait to read the next chapter. Cautiously, Bloomsbury published Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone with an initial print run of 1,000 copies. Following several editions it became a huge bestseller. Other Harry Potter titles followed, and have sold a staggering 400 million copies internationally, making them the best-selling book series in history. Since then the seven Harry Potter books written by Rowling have been translated into almost every major language, indicating their universal appeal, and have been made into hugely popular films. Rowling is now the best-selling British author ever. Within five years, from being a virtual pauper, she became a multi-millionaire. Forbes magazine has estimated her net worth at an astounding $1 billion (Rs.5,500 crore). Before I take up the book under review, first an admission: I haven’t read any of Rowling’s runaway bestsellers. My acquaintance with Harry Potter is restricted to a film version of one of them which I saw together with the ten-year-old daughter of a close friend. She knew all the intriguing details of the plot and between delighted squeals, predicted what was going to happen. I couldn’t make head or tail of the procession of weird characters and creatures that floated in and out of the film. Clearly, despite the immense wealth and accolades she has received as a children’s writer, Rowling felt the need to prove herself as a story-teller for adults. Hence The Casual Vacancy described on the jacket cover as her “first novel for adults”. The book is centred around a provincial English town, Pagford, and its title refers to a vacancy in its parish council, after a parishioner — a journalist, Barry Fairbrother — suffers a stroke and dies in the parking lot of the town’s golf club. Although popular and admired in Pagford, it turns out that the 40-something journalist wasn’t above taking kickbacks to support dicey construction projects. Close to half the book’s length, revolves around his death and its impact upon his friends. The author deftly introduces her main characters and their children, and the schools they attend, into the…

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Eduleader Bytes

Lina Ashar, Founder-director, Kangaroo Kids Education

Lina Ashar, Founder-director, Kangaroo Kids Education Pvt. Ltd Where would you place education on your national list of priorities? There’s a dire need to have education and the social welfare of children at the top of the national agenda. How best to upgrade 1.6 million government anganwadis into preschools? Allow NGOs and corporate organisations to transparently operate anganwadis with the funds allocated for them by government. Thinker/philosopher you admire the most. Albert Einstein. I love his thoughts on learning and education, the importance of imagination and the intuitive mind. Your favourite Nobel laureate. I admire all the Nobel laureates who worked to bring peace to the world. Especially Albert Einstein and Rabindranath Tagore. Your leadership style. I do the dreaming and visioning and communicate my thinking with as much inspirational energy as I can muster. I then give plenty of space and room for the team to execute and implement. Your favourite book on education. It is not a conventional book on education, but it should be read by every child caregiver: The Biology of Belief by Dr. Bruce Lipton. For or against the 25 percent reservation for underprivileged children in private schools? I am for the right to education for all children. But I believe we should examine what has worked and what has not worked around the world. In its current format the RTE Act has opened doors to even more corruption and manipulation. How satisfied are you with the growth and development of Kangaroo Kids Education Pvt. Ltd? We started the journey with no capital and one preschool in Bandra, Mumbai with a batch of 13 children. Today KKEL provides its services to 55 Kangaroo Kids preschools and 18 Billabong High International schools in 24 cities in India as well as Dubai and the Maldives. That’s not so bad! Pessimistic or optimistic about the future of education in India? This is a challenge to answer as it all depends on government policy and how much autonomy it allows private schools. The positive development is that education is widely discussed now. Also read: Lina Ashar – Secrets of successful franchised preschool management

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Postscript

Straight-talking judge

In the tower of Babel which is the public discourse the world’s most populous democracy dominated by politicians whose prime motivation — it’s easy to discern — is not the public good but primitive capital accumulation, Justice (Retd) Markandey Katju, chairman of the influential but toothless Press Council of India (estb. 1966), stands out as a pillar of rectitude and straight talk. As Press Council chairman, the learned judge has fired broadsides at the media casting aspersions on the learning, training and competence of the fourth estate; called for the arrest of policemen who wrongfully detained two Mumbai women students for a Facebook post about the Mumbai shut-down following the death of Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray, and recently opined that 90 percent of the nation’s population are “idiots”, easy prey to religious bigots in the business of provoking communal riots. Addressing a seminar in Delhi on December 8, Katju said that all it takes for mischief-mongers intent upon sparking a communal riot is a pay-off of Rs.2,000 to an unemployed youth to throw the severed head of a pig into a mosque or of a cow into a temple, to ignite a bloody communal riot. This observation has provoked two Lucknow-based law students to issue a legal notice to the judge to withdraw his remarks or face legal action for hurting sentiments of the citizenry. The classical Greek definition of an idiot is a person who doesn’t vote in elections. With just over 50 percent voter turnout in every general election, it’s proven that 50 percent of the population are idiots. And given that citizens who do vote, repeatedly elect ill-qualified dynasty darlings, communalists, casteists, charlatans and crooks, it’s not a far stretch to describe 90 percent of the population as idiots. Therefore the learned judge’s opinion of the quality of the citizenry requires serious introspection rather than law suits for stating the obvious. Unwarranted fear The publication in Britain of the Justice Leveson Report in November, has sent alarm bells ringing within the Indian media. The 2,000 page report of the judge who was appointed to investigate the culture, practice and ethics of the runaway British press, and replacement of the toothless Press Complaints Commission by an independent regulatory body with powers to levy fines and force prominently displayed apologies from the media, has scared the proprietors and top brass of several indigenous newspapers, magazines and television channels. Appointment of a similar commission in India could spell finis to the extortion, blackmail and sundry rackets routinely practiced under the guise of exercising freedom of speech guaranteed by Article 19 (1) (a) of the Constitution. Set up on the lines of the British Press Complaints Commission, the Press Council of India is also a toothless watchdog which can censure — but not punish — media top brass and journalists. And whatever strictures it passes can be safely buried away in the inner pages of newspapers on the assurance that competitive publications or television channels — following the dog doesn’t eat…

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