EducationWorld January 18

On the first floor of a crumbling colonial building in Yangon, a teacher taps the words written on the board with a bamboo rod. “Repeat after me so you will remember this by heart,” she instructs. The whole class chants back in unison, a familiar scenario in neighbouring India. The children have been regurgitating sentences all morning. No hands are raised, no questions asked. To earn promotion to the next form, there’s no need to gain a proper understanding of the subject; memorising textbooks is all that is required. For the 40 pupils, rote-learning will continue for years to come, until they complete high school. Only one in ten students remain in school that long and passes the final exams. Although the vast majority of children in Myanmar enroll in primary school, half of them drop out by the second year of secondary school. Some do so because their families need the income they could earn by working. But most cite boredom, not poverty, as the main reason. Myanmar’s schools weren’t always so bad. A centuries-old tradition of monastic education gave Myanmar one of the highest literacy rates in South-east Asia at the time of independence, in 1948. The University of Rangoon (as Yangon was then known) was one of the most respected in the region. Under British rule, knowledge of English spread widely. All this changed after the army seized power in 1962. In 2007-10 the government spent less than 1 percent of GDP on education. The military regime saw textbooks as a tool of indoctrination rather than instruction. In class, children were taught never to question authority. Fear, says Ma Thida, a Burmese writer, is rooted in Burmese minds from a very young age. She believes the atrocious education system has led to a society that is “intellectually blind”. Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s de facto leader, whose National League for Democracy (NLD) took over from an army-backed government last year, says things will change. Education is one of the NLD’s priorities. A glossy booklet produced by the ministry of education promises to give Burmese children “21st-century skills”. The National Education Strategic Plan aims to develop vocational training and inject a dose of critical thinking into classrooms. But the process is chaotic and disjointed. At least nine foreign organisations are involved in fixing different parts of the system. Only kindergarten and first grade are using the new curriculum, with four conflicting schedules for when it will be introduced in other years. The final exams — the only thing students and parents really care about — are still untouched. “As it is, the curriculum seems like a bridge to nowhere,” says Rosalie Metro of the University of Missouri-Columbia. The National Network for Education Reform, an organisation of students, teachers and civil-society organisations, says the ministry of education doesn’t listen to them. Thein Lwin, who is a member of the network, used to advise Suu Kyi, but was sacked after helping students air their grievances during the passage of…

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London-based Dr. Ger Graus is director of education and partnerships at KidZania Global, a Mexico-based company which has 24 indoor educational and entertainment theme parks worldwide, where over 68 million children have augmented their education through real life role-play activities in numerous careers and industries. KidZanias offer simulated role-playing activities for over 100 vocations and professions — pilot, surgeon, radio-presenter, fire-fighter, etc. — in replicas of real-world industries. KidZania theme parks are miniature cities complete with paved roads, battery-operated cars, buildings and their own currency. Mexico City-based entrepreneur Xavier Lopez Ancona (an alum of the Kellogg School of Management, Illinois and former vice president of General Electric) established the first KidZania centre in 1999, at a shopping mall in Mexico City under the name and style of La Ciudad de los Ninos (‘The City of Children’). In India, KidZania theme parks are sited in Mumbai (estb.2013) and Noida (2016).  Newspeg. Dr. Graus was in India last October to deliver the keynote address ‘Not all classrooms have four walls’ at the KidZania Education Summit held in Delhi. “Children learn best when they are engaged in hands-on and role play activities. For instance in KidZania theme parks, children learn about money while earning, spending and saving kidZos — the KidZania currency — and operating bank accounts,” says Graus. History. An alumnus of the Katholieke Universiteit, the Netherlands, in 1983 Graus accepted an offer to teach German in the UK and has since made the country his home. Over a three-decade career in the UK, Graus among other important positions, served as a member of the government’s national curriculum working group for modern foreign languages. In 2007, he was appointed founder-chief executive of an award-winning international charity, the Children’s University Trust (estb.2007). Subsequently in 2014, he was appointed director of KidZania, London. Last March, he was promoted to director (education) of KidZania Global. Direct talk. “There is a deep correlation between role play by children and the career choices they make as adults. Children can only aspire to become what they know exists. If you don’t know about books, you will never become a librarian. Therefore at KidZania, our objective is to expand their awareness of the plethora of career options available to them,” says Graus, who was conferred the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2014.  Future plans. Given his extensive experience of education, Graus believes it’s vitally important to research children’s careers aspirations and introduce career counseling in schools at an early age. “Our research shows that stereotypes influence children at age four, so why wait for another ten years to start talking to them about careers? We are making a plea to the British government to start career choices awareness in schools at age five. We want to build momentum with the support of schools to adopt this globally,” says Graus.  Dipta Joshi (Mumbai)

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Almost half of financial planning staff at US universities believes that the current business model at their institution is “not sustainable for the next five to ten years”, according to new research. A survey of 183 US higher education professionals involved in financial planning and budgeting at their institutions found that 47 percent of respondents thought their business model is unsustainable. This figure rises to more than 50 percent when just based on respondents from two-year community colleges and for-profit universities, and drops to about 45 percent for respondents from both public and non-profit private four-year universities, according to Tony Ard, vice-president of higher education software at the Chicago-based management consulting firm Kaufman Hall, which conducted the study. Meanwhile, two-thirds of respondents (66 percent) say that they are not able to respond quickly to changing financial circumstances or are unsure if they could, based on existing tools and processes at their institution. A similar proportion (64 percent) believes that higher education is behind most other industries in terms of “adopting modern financial planning practices and tools”. The survey was conducted in August and September 2017. According to Ard, the findings confirm there’s “growing acceptance from people within higher education, and specifically in finance offices, that at the micro-level we probably can’t grow our way out of these financial challenges”. Ard says that the unsustainability of universities’ business models was because of “flat demographic trends around high school graduates”, a drop in state appropriations to public universities and the “challenges with growing tuition revenue”. “There has been a lot of scrutiny on published tuition rates” and there have been questions over the “average family’s ability and willingness to pay what it perceives as a high tuition rate,” says Ard. He adds that it’s “not that easy” for universities to “influence their costs in the short run because it’s pretty much tied up in people and facilities”. He believes while institutions with “very strong brand names will be fine”, there are risks that more universities will close or merge as a result of financial challenges.

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The UK government will change the immigration rules to make it easier for overseas students and researchers to seek work in the country, signalling a shift to a more welcoming approach. The changes — which include plans to allow students to apply to switch to skilled worker visas as soon as they complete their courses rather than having to wait until their degrees are awarded — were detailed in Budget documents published on November 22.  There are also suggestions from some in the education sector that the home office — taking a fresh approach to the international student issue under home secretary Amber Rudd — is preparing to extend a pilot scheme that has eased visa rules for students applying to Masters courses at the universities of Bath, Cambridge and Oxford, and Imperial College London. But major issues around the UK’s post-Brexit treatment of European Union researchers, graduate workers and students remain to be resolved in the government’s immigration Bill. The Budget ‘Red Book’ says the government will “change immigration rules to enable world-leading scientists and researchers endorsed under the Tier I (Exceptional Talent) route to apply for settlement after three years; make it quicker for highly skilled students to apply to work in the UK after finishing their degrees; and reduce red tape in hiring international researchers and members of established research teams, by relaxing the labour market test and allowing the UK’s research councils and other select organisations to sponsor researchers”. The changes allow a student to switch to a Tier II skilled worker visa as soon as she finishes her studies or has undertaken the final exam instead of waiting until receipt of her degree. That adjustment is thought to have come in response to universities telling the home office that the current rules cause particular difficulties for Masters students, who often must wait several months after their course for their degree. Meanwhile, the change to the Exceptional Talent scheme knocks two years off the current five-year wait for eligibility for settlement under this programme, which is aimed at “existing global leaders or promising future leaders” in a range of sectors. It comes after the number of visas available annually under this scheme doubled from 1,000 to 2,000. The legislation changing the immigration rules is thought to be scheduled for spring.

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I’m in my final year BA degree programme and am interested in acting. Please give me information about FTII (Film & Television Institute of India), Pune. — Sarla Patil, Mumbai The Film & Television Institute of India, Pune offers a two-year postgraduate diploma in acting. Admissions are open to graduates through a FTII entrance examination followed by personal interview. The National School of Drama, New Delhi also offers a three-year full-time diploma course for graduates intending to make theatre their profession. Alternatively you could consider short-term courses provided by numerous local drama schools. The Center for Research in Art of Film and Television (CRAFT), Rohini, Delhi offers a full-time six-month course in acting and modeling. Veteran Bollywood actor Anupam Kher’s Actor Prepares, Mumbai also offers three-month full-time courses. I’d like to qualify as an aeronautical engineer. Please advise. — John Revello, Panjim An aeronautical engineer designs, develops and tests aircraft, space vehicles and missiles by applying engineering principles and techniques. An aerospace engineer designs, develops, tests and helps produce commercial and military aircraft, missiles and spacecraft. It’s a specialised branch of engineering where only the best students are accepted. Employment is usually with research and development organisations, universities, defence services and other manufacturing industries. The Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh admits students in its BE programme through a common entrance test conducted by Punjab University. Anna University, Chennai offers a B.Tech (three years) programme in aeronautics to B.Sc degree holders. The IITs (Bombay, Kanpur, Kharagpur and Madras) offer four-year B.Tech programmes as well as a five-year integrated M.Tech (excluding Kanpur) in aerospace engineering. I’m interested in a career in archaeology and heritage management after acquiring a BA degree in history. Which institutes offer these programmes and what’s the scope in this career? — Nalini Patel, Mumbai The University of Mumbai offers a bachelor’s degree in heritage management but that’s not advisable because you will already be a history graduate. For a career in archaeology, you should pursue a Master’s degree in the subject. If you are interested in heritage management, consider a two-year Master’s in archaeology and heritage management or the two-year conservation, preservation and heritage management programme offered by the Delhi Institute of Heritage Research and Management. Graduates in any of the humanities or sciences are eligible for admission.  While there is scope for jobs as heritage experts in India with so many heritage monuments to be taken care of, there are no assured placements. However, one could look for viable work options in research, writing, activism or publishing. I’m a BE (electronics) graduate and would like to do a Ph D in astrophysics. How do I go about it and what are the job prospects for an astrophysicist? — Narendra Rao, Bangalore Astrophysics is the study of the physical nature of stars, galaxies and the universe. Astronomers/astrophysicists find work in defence and space research organisations, with electrical and electronic equipment and search and navigation equipment manufacturers etc. They also tend to be employed by universities and large research and…

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Turkey’s crackdown on academic freedom has spawned a feud between rival scientific academies after scholars abandoned their original academy to set up a new one with more political independence. Bilim Akademisi (Science Academy) was founded in Istanbul in 2011, and in September it won full membership of All European Academies (Allea), a continent-wide grouping that includes the British Academy and France’s Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. It was formed by breakaway members of the Turkish Academy of Sciences (TUBA), based in Ankara, who objected to laws passed in 2011 that allowed government-controlled bodies to select two-thirds of new members. TUBA’s president is appointed by Turkey’s prime minister Binali Yildrin. Sevket Pamuk, the new academy’s foreign secretary and a professor of economic history at Bosphorus University, recalls that “the government’s restrictions of academic freedom, freedom of speech and democracy were already growing in those years”. Since then, the situation has worsened drastically: following a failed coup attempt in 2016, thousands of academics have been dismissed from their positions. “We don’t want to present ourselves as part of a feud” or to get into a “mud-slinging competition” with TUBA, he says. However, “most” of TUBA’s new members are academics “without much national or international recognition”; their “most important merit” has been support for the government, argues Pamuk. TUBA disputes these claims. Gulzade Kahveci, an international relations spokesman for the academy, said in a statement that the bodies that appoint most of its members are “autonomous institutions guaranteed by law” made up of “eminent scientists”. Nevertheless, he acknowledges, “the present system is not ideal, and we have been working to reform it”. Set up with the help of a private individual who provided the academy office space in Istanbul, Bilim Akademisi has for five years run a scholarship programme for researchers under age 40 — as TUBA has also done — using funds from private individuals and institutions. It now has 165 members, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Daron Acemoğlu, as well as four Nobel laureates as honorary members. The academy publishes annual reports on the state of academic freedom in Turkey. Its most recent report decries the closing down of universities and the firing of many academics after the coup attempt. The establishment of Bilim Akademisi has also posed a question for Allea — how do you approach an academy set up in protest against an existing member? The European group sent a fact-finding mission to Turkey in 2013 to investigate the rival academies, an Allea spokeswoman explains, and the new academy was accepted as an associate member the following year by majority vote. Earlier in 2017, Bilim Akademisi sought full membership, which was approved by a “large majority” of members at a general assembly in September, a decision fiercely opposed by TUBA. TUBA opposed membership for the new academy because it was guilty of “false statements, distortions and partisan allegations” and also lacked a “significant record of serious scientific work”, says Dr. Kahveci. 

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China’s “new era” of increased global power poses a threat to academic freedom across the world and could result in global university leaders seeking to appease the country’s Communist Party, warn experts. China’s president Xi Jinping heralded the dawn of a “new era” of Chinese power during a recent speech at the Communist Party congress and said that it was time for his nation to transform itself into “a mighty force” that could lead the world on political, economic, military and environmental issues. Academic experts on China say there already are signs that the balance of power in Sino-Western university partnerships is shifting towards China, while recent reports show China is exerting increased ideological control over foreign institutions based inside and outside the country. Cambridge University Press came under fire last August for removing hundreds of papers and book reviews from the online version of one of its journals in China after a government agency threatened to block access to the website. It later announced that it would reinstate the articles after admitting that it had received a “justifiably intense reaction from the global academic community”. Meanwhile, an investigation by the Financial Times in November revealed that Springer Nature had censored some of its content in response to demands from Chinese export agencies. Further, reports indicate that the Chinese Communist Party had ordered foreign-funded universities in the country to install party units and grant decision-making powers to a party official. William Callahan, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, says the “scope of civil society has been shrinking” in China since President Xi assumed office in 2012, but the country’s increased power means the debate has now “shifted from Westerners being concerned about censorship in China to all of us being concerned about how China is censoring what we’re doing all around the world”. “What China has been doing for the past ten years or so is learning how to export its censorship,” he says. Prof. Callahan says China’s strategy for bringing Western expertise into China was to get “big institutions like (the University of) Nottingham and New York University to invest a lot of money and time to… hire people and to build campuses. And then once they had committed an enormous amount of time, money and effort, (China) starts to pull back some of the freedom that people had on those campuses and tighten up ideological control on those campuses.” Steve Tsang, director of the Soas China Institute, says there have already been cases in which Western universities have pandered to China’s demands. He cites the fact that several Australian universities issued apologies this year, and in one case suspended a lecturer, following complaints from Chinese students about teaching materials being incorrect or insulting to China. “Until now the top Western universities are institutions that the elite Chinese universities want to partner with and collaborate with because they see real benefits going to the Chinese side in particular. If we get to…

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Political deadlock over the future of South Africa’s higher education funding system is pushing the country’s universities to crisis point as institutions are unable to set fees or budgets for the coming year, experts have warned. As South Africa’s academic year draws to a close, universities are facing tough choices over how they will balance their books for the next academic year, which starts in February. While many institutions wish to raise tuition fees to offset deep cuts in state funding, there are widespread fears that this may spark a repeat of the violent unrest seen on campuses in 2015 and 2016. Amid anxiety about an escalation of campus protests, the University of Cape Town has even made its final-year students sit their exams in a large marquee on its rugby fields, using fences, guards in riot gear and dogs to prevent any disruption. Most universities have yet to announce their tuition fees for 2018, causing havoc for their financial planning, says Martin Hall, emeritus professor in Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business. “This is the equivalent of a UK university in June not knowing what its financial arrangements will be in September,” says Prof. Hall, former vice chancellor of the University of Salford. “Draconian and unexpected cuts” to research funding, including reductions of up to 90 percent for many individuals funded by the National Research Foundation, had placed “huge pressure” on research-intensive universities, which may be forced to axe staff to balance their books, says Hall. “Cape Town now needs to find money to honour its research commitments at a time when they do not know what their tuition fee income is going to be,” he says. The financial crisis has been caused by an impasse at the national level over university funding. Many students are campaigning for tuition fees to be scrapped but, last November, the long-awaited recommendations of the country’s higher education funding commission backed a UK-style system of fees repaid via income-contingent loans. Lukewarm reaction to the findings led President Jacob Zuma to float his own plans to make higher education free, despite warnings that the country cannot afford the estimated annual 40 billion rand (Rs.19,161 crore) cost of the policy, which would involve cutting other government expenditure. The matter, however, has been largely sidelined as attention focuses on December’s African National Congress elections, which will appoint Zuma’s successor. “I don’t think that there will a short-term solution,” says Ahmed Bawa, chief executive of Universities South Africa, who adds that the students “will not give in easily” to the idea of loans. “The big concern is that income-contingent loans will leave students from low-income backgrounds with large amounts of debt, which is why they have rejected this idea.”  Belinda Bozzoli, the former deputy vice chancellor (research) at the University of the Witwatersrand and the opposition Democratic Alliance’s shadow higher education minister, told Times Higher Education that neither the commission’s plans nor scrapping fees was feasible. She has proposed a “middle way” in which the poorest students…

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The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Arundhati Roy, Penguin; Rs.599, Pages 445 In her first novel after the God of Small Things (1997), which won the prestigious Booker Prize to global hosannas, Arundhati Roy, who switched to polemical non-fiction writing after her highly acclaimed debut novel — The Algebra of Infinite Justice (2001), An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire (2004), Listening to Grasshoppers (2009), Broken Republic (2011), Walking with the Comrades (2011) — returns to fiction with The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, a tour de force novel with a broad canvas stretched across contemporary Delhi and Kashmir.  Curiously, this novel which highlights two burning issues of the times — gross inequalities of wealth between the elite and the underclass in allegedly socialist India, the unending Kashmir conflict as also the struggle of the rural tribal underclass to retain their lands and modus vivendi — has not attracted much attention in the media or academia. This is perhaps attributable to the revivalist winds of change blowing over the country when even to discuss these issues is to run the risk of being labelled anti-national.  This sprawling narrative of Roy’s accumulated knowledge and experience, is peopled with numerous protagonists starting with Aftab, a transgender child born into the home of Mulaqat Ali, a hakim, and Jehanara Begum who live in the Jama Masjid ghetto of Delhi. While his parents love him regardless, because of the ragging and taunts of his schoolmates, at age 15 Aftab moves into Khwabagh, a colony of transgenders only a few hundred yards from where his/her family had lived for centuries. But Khwabagh is an altogether different universe in which she (renamed Anjum) is appreciated for who she is and transformed into Delhi’s most famous hijra.  The thread which binds the thicket of detail in the book is the atrocities and iniquity that the Indian State visits on the poor and marginalised minorities, particularly the Muslim minority of the country, going well beyond the sin of omission. Having done precious little to enable and empower them, it won’t even let them get on with their difficult lives. Even as Anjum and Zainab — an abandoned new born whom she has literally picked off the street — are beginning to enjoy a measure of happiness in their squalid ghetto, the State intervenes with ruthless cruelty.  While invited as transgenders often are, to perform at a wealthy man’s wedding, the revelry is rudely disrupted by the police and Anjum & Co are beaten up and made to run all the way home in pouring rain after Arif, their driver, has his knuckles and kneecaps smashed. This incident happens in 1976, at the height of the Emergency when Sanjay Gandhi’s goons visited a reign of terror on the population to enforce his diktat of forced sterilisation of poor males, mostly Muslims.  Again in 2002 when Anjum is on a religious pilgrimage to Ajmer with Zakir Mian, an aged flower-seller of their slum, the duo fatally presses on to Ahmedabad, where they plunge headlong into the…

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Kalvari, the first of six Scorpene class conventional submarines — also the first submarine to be inducted into the Indian Navy in 17 years — was commissioned by prime minister Narendra Modi at the Mazagaon Docks, Mumbai on December 14. Two more are expected to be inducted into the navy in mid-2018 at six-month intervals. The submarines, designed by French naval defence and energy company DCNS, are being built by the public sector Mazagaon Dock Ltd (MDL) in Mumbai as part of Project-75 of the Indian Navy. Speaking on the occasion, the prime minister described it as a fine example of the fast growing strategic partnership between India and France. Although the prime minister cited it as an exemplary project of his Make in India initiative, the Indian role in it is restricted to assembling the subs at MDL. Most of the sophisticated inputs and design for this project are provided by the French company. Therefore a party-pooping, perhaps anti-national question arises. How come even a century after Indias show-piece Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and half a century after the much acclaimed Indian Institutes of Technology have been established, a fully Indian designed and manufactured sub hasnt been accepted by the Indian Navy? For that matter, nor has a wholly indigenous light combat aircraft proved acceptable to the Indian Air Force or prototypes of the Arjun battle tank to the Indian Army. Please note that all this combat equipment has been in the making at 52 laboratories of the DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation) of the Central government for over three decades. There are two possibilities: either students graduating from Indias best engineering colleges — i.e, those who haven’t fled abroad — are duffers, or the science and engineering syllabuses/curriculums even in India’s elite engineering colleges/universities are obsolete. Take your pick.

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Alas, poor Mani Shankar Aiyar! I knew him well. After years of unshakable loyalty to the Congress party and its ruling Nehru-Gandhi family, his membership of the party was peremptorily suspended by the newly anointed party president Rahul Gandhi on December 7. Now his detractors in the Congress — and their number is not minuscule — are dumping a substantial share of the blame for losing two elections — General Election 2014 and the Gujarat assembly election which concluded on December 18 — at his doorstep. In 2014 on the eve of the General Election, in a reference to the opposition BJPs prime ministerial candidates humble origins, Aiyar made a bloomer to the effect that Narendra Modi was unqualified to become prime minister, though he would make a good chaiwala (tea vendor). This remark was cleverly turned by Modi to his advantage by pinning the labels of elitism and anti-poor on the Congress, and undoubtedly cost the party millions of votes. And this time around on the eve of the Gujarat assembly election, he described the prime minister as a neech (low-down) individual. Its quite clear to the minority of English-savvy citizens, that Aiyar speaking in Hindi had literally translated the English word ‘low-down’ as neech in Hindi. But this word was also cleverly converted by Modi as a reference to his low caste origins by the brahmanical upper caste Aiyar and the Congress party. Once again Aiyars ill-advised vituperation cost the Congress dearly in the Gujarat assembly elections and resulted in his suspension. The cognoscenti in Delhi and elsewhere are well aware that Aiyar, a highly educated (Doon School, St. Stephens College and Cambridge) true-blue liberal and brilliant debater, would never knowingly make a casteist remark. But with General Election 2019 around the corner, Aiyar is likely to be despatched to campaign in some distant constituency beyond the reach of media, to prevent him from unwittingly causing damage to the resurgent Congress.

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“Those opposing the bullet train project should travel on bullock carts. We won’t mind.” Prime minister Narendra Modi responding to the Congress party’s criticism of the Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train project, addressing an election rally in Gujarat (December 3) “Higher education — particularly, the idea of a liberal university — is in crisis… Possibly, Jawaharlal Nehru University — some sort of intellectual embodiment of the ‘socialist’ legacy of Nehruvian progressive science and secular humanism — does no longer fit into the changing ethos of technocratic reasoning and religious nationalism.” Avijit Pathak, professor of sociology at JNU (Deccan Herald, December 26) “Over more than a century, our system of schooling has honed its tools to oppress and defeat the adolescent. The tool used to subdue the rebellious adolescent mind is the Board examination. Fear of failing in it and thereby closing all doors to a worthwhile future figures in many autobiographies written during the colonial period… The class X examination continues to ‘fail’ millions every summer.” Krishna Kumar, former director of NCERT (The Hindu, December 29) “Many Americans are now, rather blasphemously, asking why their country does not follow the European model of public delivery… Private education, such as it is in America, dis-incentivises higher studies as they have become so expensive. A 2012 survey showed that seven out of ten college seniors in the US have student loans amounting to as much as $30,000 per person. Investing so much for an uncertain future turns many Americans away from universities.” Dipankar Gupta, well-known sociologist, on ‘American lessons for India’ (Times of India, December 30) “I do not want cadres. I want watchdogs.”  Rajnikath, Tamil movie superstar announcing his entry into politics (December 31)

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Some important lessons need to be learned from the Gujarat state legislative election which concluded on December 18. First, the BJP juggernaut led by former three-time chief minister of Gujarat and incumbent prime minister Narendra Modi, can be stopped. Contrary to most forecasts which predicted a BJP sweep, the party’s majority in the 185-strong legislative assembly dropped from 115 to 99, and the opposition Congress party’s number rose from 58 to 77. The contest was even closer. In 16 constituencies, the BJP margin of victory was less than 3,000 votes, and but for the Congress vote being split by several spoiler parties such as Mayawati’s BSP (which contested all 185 seats and didn’t win even one) and NCP which won one, the election outcome could well have been totally different. Secondly, the Gujarat election marked the coming of age of the Congress party’s newly elected president Rahul Gandhi, a scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty which has with a few interregnums ruled at the Centre and in most states for over half a century. Hitherto dismissed as a reluctant politician forced into national politics, Rahul fought a mature campaign revamping the Congress traditional overtly pro-minorities campaign to counter the BJP’s majoritarian Hindu vote consolidation strategy. Although the Congress lost the recent Gujarat assembly election, most media pundits agree that the party has acquired momentum and there’s a strong chance of Rahul (47) emerging as a formidable youth candidate of the overwhelmingly youthful electorate in the General Election scheduled for 2019. The other strong message of the Gujarat assembly election to all political parties is to pay greater attention to the agriculture sector and rural development. Curiously even though agriculture supports 67 percent of the population, it is woefully backward by developed world standards. The Green Revolution of the 1970s which saved the country from Russian and Chinese-style mass starvation, has long run out of steam, and rice and wheat yields in India are a fifth to half of the US, France and China. Moreover 16 percent of the annual horticulture produce of the nations farmers valued at Rs.41,000 crore rots every year because of a conspicuous failure to improve rural road and rail connectivity and lack of downstream agro-produce processing industry and infrastructure. State legislative assemblies are especially to blame while the Central government, economists and academics are passive witnesses to this blatant and continuous injustice. The result is mass immiserisation and a suicides pandemic in rural India. As the late agriculture economist Sharad Joshi vainly argued, India’s farmers don’t need government subsidies and loan waivers, they need better primary education and remunerative prices for farm produce. The significant rural vote against the overtly pro-industry and business BJP in the recently concluded Gujarat assembly election is a notice to all political parties that the long-suffering rural worm is about to turn.

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Theres a dangerous strain of puritanism wafting through school and college campuses across India. The spontaneous hug exchanged between a class XII boy and a class XI girl of the co-ed CBSE-affiliated St. Thomas Central School, Trivandrum, Kerala over a prize-winning achievement which resulted in the school authorities expelling the students and depriving them of the right to write the class XII school-leaving board exam, is symptomatic of the spirit of illiberalism sweeping through campus India. At best, it should have resulted in a warning that such public display of affection would influence younger boys and girls and should be avoided. Instead, it has been transformed into a federal issue resulting in punishment wholly disproportionate to the alleged offence. The irony of the incident is heightened by the fact that not only is Kerala the most literate state of India which reports 99 percent literacy, its also a matrilineal society with a long-standing communist/leftist history which would have pre-supposed greater egalitarianism and liberalism towards inter-sexual behaviour. The exaggerated reaction of the school management apart, the response of the judiciary to this innocuous episode is also shocking. When the hapless students appealed to the Kerala high court to direct the school management to rescind its expulsion order, the learned judges ruled in favour of the school. An indicator of how deep and wide Victorian prudishness and narrow-mindedness has permeated Indian society. In this particular case, it is pertinent to note that the Mar Thoma Syrian Church, promoter of the school — run by the clergy — is heavily influenced by the tenets of the Roman Catholic church that tends to be more suspicious of interaction between the sexes. This is because the archaic rules of the Catholic church mandate that all priests and nuns who dedicate themselves to the service of Christ are obliged to be celibate, while priests of the Protestant Christian church are free to marry and raise families. Imposition of the vow of celibacy has cost the Roman Catholic church dearly in terms of a spate of sex scandals worldwide, and there is a strong movement within the church to review this onerous diktat which is obscuring the good work that missionaries of the Church of Rome are doing around the world. Meanwhile, it would be best for the clergy of Catholic and associated schools to revert to managing single sex schools as they have traditionally done. With the rise of feminist movements, social mores and gender relations have undergone a sea change which requires sensitive handling, and is likely to be far beyond the ken of the cloistered men and women of the cloth, and best left to secular management professionals. The extreme reaction of the St. Thomas Central clerical management to the hugging incident in the school validates this proposal.

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Thank you for apprising us of your decision to rank Step by Step #2 among the top preschools of Delhi. We respect your process of evaluation and humbly suggest if people from your organisation could personally visit our school to get a sense of all that is being done.  We are constantly attempting to raise the bar by introducing new methodologies which are child-friendly and relevant. Step by Step also takes great pride in organising interactive programmes with our parents where we work together as a team and family. But as I have already conveyed to you, it is not fair to assess preschools and their teachers’ competence in the absence of relevant information. We are neither competent to make such an evaluation nor would it be a fair and unbiased judgement. Ramani Chopra Principal, Step by Step Nursery School, New Delhi   The EW India Preschool Rankings methodology is exhaustively explained on pgs 37-38 of our cover story narrative. It’s financially and logistically impossible for us to visit every preschool countrywide — Editor Inappropriate curriculums Congratulations for publishing the extensive and detailed EW India Preschool Rankings across 16 cities (EW December). This is a valuable service provided to parents of young children as there is no reliable information on preschools. In fact, there are so many preschools mushrooming across the country that it’s very difficult to tell the good ones from the bad. Your rankings give parents credible information about the best nursery schools in major cities. I also believe it’s a good idea for state governments to issue a list of approved preschools in major cities and provide curriculum guidelines to be followed by private preschools. As a young parent, while doing a recce for my daughter, I noticed that many preschools follow age-inappropriate and child-unfriendly curriculums. They are like full-fledged primary schools forcing children to learn the three R’s and even write term end exams. This is thoroughly unprofessional and can make children learning-averse in their early years. Suman Mishra Delhi   Words of praise Thanks for the excellent 18th Anniversary issue of EducationWorld. I eagerly wait to get the latest copy of this magazine. Reading EW is always a wonderful experience. Dr. Shayama Chona New Delhi   Upgrade Indian Railways  Thank you for your 18 years of service to Indian education. Re your editorial ‘Indian Railways need radical reforms’ (EW November), I agree with you that our trains need urgent upgradation. Though the introduction of high-speed bullet trains is welcome, existing trains need to be modernised first. Indian Railways trains are dirty as are the railway stations, notwithstanding the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan programme. Mahesh Kapasi Delhi   Wrong categorisation Re the EW India School Rankings 2017-18 published in your September issue, parents have a lot of faith in your evaluation process and the credibility of the rankings.  However, it has come to my notice that you have ranked Asian School (Dehradun), Taurian School (Ranchi), The Aryan School (Dehradun), Shree Vidya Niketan International School (Tirupati), Usha Martin…

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Despite several decisive victories for autonomy — T.M.A. Pai vs. Union of India (2002) and Inamdar’s Case (2005) — in the Supreme Court, private independent education institutions are experiencing incremental pressure from the Central and state governments — and a subsidies-addicted middle class — for government ‘regulation’ (reduction) of their tuition fees. This time round, the pressure is for regulation of the fees of private unaided (i.e, independent) K-12 schools.  Given the power and influence of the country’s 200 million strong middle class — despite new millennium Supreme Court liberal judgements freeing private education institutions from government shackles — the regulation of fees levied by private independent schools has become a hot potato political issue with state governments countrywide imposing tuition fees regulation mechanisms. In a milestone verdict on December 27, the Gujarat high court affirmed the constitutional validity of the Gujarat Self-Financed Schools (Regulation of Fees) Act, 2017 which imposes annual tuition fee ceilings on primary (Rs.15,000), secondary (Rs.25,000) and higher secondary (Rs.27,000) schools statewide, regardless of exam board affiliation.  In Delhi, a state government directorate of education’s circular of October 17 permitting schools to hike tuition fees to meet the obligations of paying teachers arrears and enhanced salaries awarded by the Seventh Pay Commission, has stirred a hornet’s nest. It permitted a fee increase of 7.5 percent retrospectively from January 1, 2016 to June 2017 and 15 percent thereafter.  On the basis of the state government’s circular, several schools in the national capital sent demand letters to parents. This mid-term demand and quantum decreed has angered many parents who protested and according to the Delhi government, it received numerous complaints against schools. The issue took a curious turn when through activist-advocate Khagesh Jha, 88 children of ASN Public School, Mayur Vihar, challenged the fee hike notification and sought its quashing on the ground that it was an ad-hoc decision and was passed without examining the accounts of schools. On December 21, while hearing this petition, the Delhi high court stayed the government’s notification allowing the fee hike to private unaided schools. A bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Deepa Sharma granted an interim stay after the AAP government undertook to keep the fee hike notification of October 17, 2017 in abeyance. In a tweet hailing the high court’s stay order, Manish Sisodia, the education minister who is also the powerful deputy chief minister of the government of Delhi state, wrote, “I assure parents we will protect their interests. The government is committed to fighting financial malpractices in private schools, and haven’t let fees be hiked for two years. We will not let private schools hike their fees illegitimately in the future too.” An audit has been ordered of the schools that have already increased fees as per the state government’s circular.  Armed with the court order, the AAP government has demanded the financial statements of all 1,700 private schools in Delhi state for the past three years for audit by a panel of chartered accountants. The report of…

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The municipal corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) — the richest local government institution in the country (2017-18 budget: Rs.25,138.91 crore) — has failed to arrest the steady exodus of children from its 1,000-plus primary schools. Over the years, MCGM’s free-of-charge schools, essentially for bottom-of-pyramid households, have become infamous for ill-conceived government interventions, teacher absenteeism and poor learning outcomes. The number of children enroled in them declined from 383,000 in 2015-16 to 343,000 in 2016-17.  Released last month The State of Municipal Schools in Mumbai, a report published by the Praja Foundation, a Mumbai-based NGO, using data obtained under the Right to Information Act, 2005, highlights that the number of students who applied for admission in class I of MCGM schools declined to 32,218 in 2016-17 from 34,549 the previous year.  MCGM owns 1,082 primary (class I-VIII) and 148 secondary (class IX-X) schools which provide free-of-charge education to children from low-income households in seven languages — Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu and English. Over the years, unlike the corporation’s English-medium schools, all of MCGM’s vernacular medium schools have witnessed declining enrolments to the extent that the civic body was forced to shut 35 vernacular medium primaries in September 2016 due to zero enrolments in class I. Student enrolments in Marathi (the state’s official language)-medium schools also fell from 71,454 in 2015-16 to 62,692 in 2016-17. Simultaneously, enrolment in English-medium schools rose from 71,266 students in 2015-16 to 74,035 in 2016-17, indicating growing demand for English-medium schools even in lowest-income households.  “The civic body spends between Rs.44,394 (2016-17) to Rs.52,142 (allocated for 2017-18) per year per student, which is substantially more than the per capita expenditure of budget private schools. If despite this, MCGM schools are unable to reduce student attrition, there is a systemic problem that needs to be addressed,” says Milind Mhaske, Praja’s project director. While MCGM officials blame the growing aversion to vernacular medium schools and parents’ high preference for private English-medium schools which are obliged to reserve 25 percent of capacity in class I for low-income children in their neighbourhoods, Praja’s survey of 2,767 households indicates poor learning outcomes in all corporation schools is the prime factor which prompts parents to move their progeny from free-of-charge MCGM schools into fees-levying private budget schools, many of them unrecognised and violative of RTE infrastructure norms.  A comparison of the total percentage of MCGM students versus private schools passing the class X school-leaving exam of the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education indicates that only 69 percent of corporation school students passed the March 2017 board exams as against 92 percent of private schools.  Even as MCGM is somewhat over-ambitiously drawing up a plan to introduce “international curriculum” in 25 of its schools to stem student dropouts and school closures, education is low priority for the maximum city’s 227 municipal councillors. According to the foundation’s report, questions relating to closure of MCGM’s schools and high student drop-out rates were raised only once in the corporation’s debates,…

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Tainted with corruption, mismanagement and poor quality teaching, Tamil Nadu’s once highly reputed 22 state universities have lost their lustre. In the latest NIRF (National Institutional Ranking Framework) 2017 league tables of India’s best universities compiled by the Union HRD ministry, only one state government university — Anna University — is ranked in the Top 10 (#6) with the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore in the Top 20. Moreover, in the NIRF 2017 ‘overall’ category, only IIT-Madras and Anna University among government institutions of higher education are ranked among the Top 20, although nearly 20 government and private deemed universities in the state are ranked among the Top 100 institutions.  The performance of Tamil Nadu’s government universities in international higher education rankings is inevitably more disappointing. In the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings 2017-18, Anna University, Chennai, is ranked in the 651-700 band and in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2018, IIT-M is ranked in the 601-800 band with Annamalai University, Chidambaram, in the 801-1,000 band. In an attempt to evaluate the performance and improve the quality of Tamil Nadu’s 22 state government universities, the AIADMK government plans to introduce its own ranking framework from June 2018. According to state education ministry sources, this ranking framework will assess universities under five broad parameters — research, teaching, placement, public-peer perception and equity apart from 29 other sub-parameters. Sunil Paliwal, principal secretary for higher education, says a private agency which designed a university ranking framework for Karnataka, will most likely be commissioned to conduct a similar exercise for Tamil Nadu, although the state will evolve its own model.  Even as informed educationists in the state welcome the AIADMK’s intent to introduce a ranking framework for state universities, they believe it will be an exercise in futility if the state’s 28 private, deemed-to-be universities aren’t included in the league tables. According to them, it will not be a fair and competitive exercise if state universities aren’t compared with private universities.  “By exclusively ranking state universities, the government is acting on the assumption that state universities are necessarily of better quality than private varsities. This assumption is false because several private universities in Tamil Nadu offer as good if not superior-quality education with excellent infrastructure and faculty. Several private varsities have also been ranked higher than state universities in the QS World University Rankings,” says Dr. Albert P. Rayan, senior educationist and columnist of the highly respected national daily The Hindu.  The plain fact is that Tamil Nadu’s state government universities are steadily losing reputation because of scams, systemic corruption and nepotism that are constantly being reported in the media. Certainly it’s no secret that over the past decade, the selection and appointment of vice chancellors of state universities has become a highly politicised and monetised process. Ditto the selection of university syndicate members, members of VC search committees and faculty. Knowledgeable academics are unanimous that unless the state government appoints persons of integrity and proven professional competence to apex-level positions…

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The central government is set to introduce the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (Second Amendment) Bill, 2017, in Parliament’s winter session that began on December 15, clearing the path to detain children in class V, VIII or both, while allowing for re-examination. However, education being on the concurrent list, the Central government can’t force the states to follow suit and reintroduce the pass-fail system solely in classes V and VIII. On December 22, Partha Chatterjee, West Bengal’s education minister, met representatives of teachers’ associations, academics and leaders of the opposition to decide from which class and when the pass-fail system should be reintroduced in the state’s 92,000 government schools. The Centre’s Bill proposes to amend s.16 of the RTE Act which prohibits detention of children in any year until class VIII. But under the Amendment Bill, a re-examination is to be conducted for failed students within two months of declaration of results. On subsequent failure after re-examination, such students will be obliged to repeat the class as per directions of the ‘appropriate government’ — i.e, governments at the Centre, state and Union territories can frame Rules which may differ. However, no students are permitted to be expelled until the completion of elementary education (class VIII).  West Bengal along with Punjab, Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Assam, Nagaland, Odisha and Daman & Diu have supported the Centre’s decision to abolish the RTE Act’s no-detention provision (NDP). These states are blaming NDP for the declining learning outcomes of children in public school-leaving examinations (classes X and XII).  Under the RTE Act, 2009, as guaranteed by Article 21-A of the Constitution, every child between 6-14 years of age is entitled to free and compulsory education. It included the NDP because of the perception that children from underprivileged households were dropping out of primary education in large numbers because of fear of failure in annual examinations. To evaluate the performance of children, the Act proposed the continuous and comprehensive evaluation (CCE) system as an alternative to year-end examinations. The December 22 meeting convened by Chatterjee revealed deep divisions within the state’s political parties and teachers’ community over the Bill’s proposal to drop the NDP. Even while it was in the opposition when the RTE Act was enacted in 2009, the TMC had protested s.16 of the RTE Act.  The TMC did not change its stand after coming to power in 2011 and in its feedback sent to the Union HRD ministry, which was sought during the tenure of Smriti Irani as HRD minister, the TMC government had informed the Centre about its intent to reintroduce the detention system, subject to a retest for unsuccessful students. Chatterjee is reportedly disturbed over complaints that academic standards of schools, particularly in rural areas, have been declining since the scrapping of the pass-fail system in elementary education. The minister has the support of renowned educationist Pabitra Sarkar on this issue. Sarkar, who played a key role in shaping the Left Front government’s…

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Although Karnataka’s congress government seems blissfully unaware, the annual scramble of middle class parents to secure admission for their children into private English-medium schools has become more intense with every passing year. On December 6, a software engineer immolated himself after he was cheated of Rs.1.25 lakh by a middleman who promised to secure a seat for his seven-year-old son in an upscale private school in Bangalore. Ritesh Kumar (35) had paid Rs.2.5 lakh to the middleman, who returned only half the money after all his efforts to discharge his promise failed.  With six months still to go for the next academic year to begin — even as teachers outnumber students in several free-of-charge government primaries and where seats are going abegging — the frenzy for admission into private primaries especially in Bangalore (aka Bengaluru), the admin capital of Karnataka (pop.63 million), has already begun. While uber-rich parents have the option of enrolling their children in international schools charging Rs.3-5 lakh per year, the great majority of middle class citizens are driven to desperation in their efforts to get their children into the city’s vintage English medium schools which charge Rs.1-3 lakh. From standing in serpentine queues for application forms, preparing their toddlers for admission interviews (conducted by most schools despite an RTE Act ban) to using influence with politicians and bureaucrats, parents have a harrowing time getting their offspring admitted into private schools, which they rightly believe will secure their children’s future. The season is also stressful for principals, who go incommunicado to avoid pressure from powerful politicians and babus to make irregular admissions.  Year on year, the government’s education department announces an admission calendar starting in March for the state’s 19,593 private unaided K-12 schools. But this calendar is openly flouted with several schools closing admissions as early as January. “We have to stand in long queues from midnight to collect application forms as they are distributed only for a day, with no understanding of the school’s admission criteria. The form requires submission of several annexures such as attested birth certificate, baptism certificate, etc which is also a tedious process. The only readily available admission is in government schools, which are in a shambles and avoided by the middle class,” says Anju J, a postgraduate in social work and mother of a three-year-old vying for a convent school admission in the city’s north-eastern suburbs.  Despite the rising desperation of the garden city’s fast-expanding middle class for private primary-secondary education, Karnataka’s governments irrespective of political colour, have never favoured promotion of much-needed greenfield private schools. Premier national schools such as DPS and highly-regarded institutions such as National Public School, New Horizon, the Gear Innovative School and Inventure Academy have axed expansion plans, disheartened by bureaucratic hassles, red tape and corruption.  “A greenfield school promoter requires 70-90 permissions from several departments including the women and child welfare, police, transport ministry, municipal corporation and department of public instruction. Moreover, if the promoter is very persistent, the permission granted is only to…

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Panel discussions on the seminar circuit normatively discuss how education needs to evolve and keep abreast with the times. While in the educational discourse widespread criticism of the system is warranted, quite a few education institutions are evolving. Despite facing backlash from uninformed parents unhappy with change, some schools are doggedly marching ahead in their journey to discover, renew and deliver education fit for the future. Let’s examine how progressive schools are evolving: Transition to reflective learning. Hitherto, the teacher was the revered guardian of knowledge, and students/parents flocked to her. But with Google, YouTube, Khan Academy etc, this no longer holds true. Knowledge is now available at your finger-tips, and so the role of the teacher has to evolve from an imparter of knowledge to a facilitator in the learning process. Erudite teachers are now focussing on the ‘how’, instead of just the ‘what’. And in progressive schools there is a silent transition from teaching to learning.  Typically, in most schools, in a six-hour working day, five hours are spent in teaching, and one hour on co-curricular and sports education. When do we give children the time to think, reflect, and do? Worse, parents often push them for additional tuition. Where’s the time for the child to absorb, and learn through reflection?  Children need free time to reflect on what they’ve been taught. With their hectic schedules, they seldom get the time to do that. This needs to change, and in progressive schools we are putting innovative ideas into practice. We have designed a two-hour teaching, two-hour learning, and two-hour doing school day.  Addressing syllabus challenges. To be fair to teachers, with the pressure on them to complete the syllabus, they don’t want to digress from the prescribed curriculum. Nor do they encourage too many questions to add depth to learning.  Heavy reliance on textbooks and the prescribed syllabus automatically limits the scope of incorporating newer content into classroom teaching. Therefore, it’s important to question whether the textbook should be the primary learning resource. The obvious answer is in the negative. But due to prior conditioning, most schools rely on it as the main resource. Therefore, in putting together learning material for a class, it is crucial to focus on what skills need to be developed in children, and accordingly use multiple resources to make teaching-learning more engaging.  Unfortunately, in language learning most schools follow a cookie-cutter template by leading students through ten passages, and five essays. That’s not how language skills are developed! An evolved approach encourages students to reflect on what they have read, and express their interpretations rather than requiring the teacher to explain each paragraph. Revisiting assessment objectives. Sadly, in traditional mainstream schools little thought and planning goes into what is to be assessed, and why it is to be assessed. Terminologies such as CCE, formative and summative assessments are randomly bandied around without proper understanding of their nature. Rarely do assessment exercises reflect upon the evolution of children. Neither do new parameters find their…

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On December 27, the Gujarat high court ruled that the law enacted by the state legislature to regulate fees levied by private schools is constitutionally valid. Rejecting 40 petitions filed by private schools including CBSE and minority schools challenging the law, a division bench upheld the Gujarat Self-Financed Schools (Regulation of Fees) Act, 2017.  Under the Act, the prescribed annual tuition fees ceiling for primary, secondary and higher secondary schools is Rs.15,000, Rs.25,000 and Rs.27,000 respectively. Private schools which want to levy tuition fees beyond the prescribed limits, need to submit justification to zonal fee regulatory committees.    Uttar Pradesh Tuition fees regulation Bill Dinesh Sharma, the state’s deputy chief minister, introduced draft legislation titled the Uttar Pradesh Self-Financed Independent Schools (Regulation of fees) Bill, 2017 to regulate school tuition and other fees levied by private schools, in the legislative assembly on December 29. Addressing the assembly, the minister said: “This will put an end to the arbitrary and often cruel manner in which private schools treat parents. All schools across all boards whose annual fee is above Rs.20,000 will be covered by the Bill. Schools violating the provisions of the Bill are liable to face a penalty of Rs.1-5 lakh, and de-recognition or have their registrations cancelled,” the minister said. The proposed Bill is set to cover the state’s 83,385 private primary-secondary schools but excludes private pre-primaries.   Maharashtra Tata Motors-IIT BHU agreement The country’s third largest automobiles manufacturer Tata Motors has signed a five-year partnership agreement with IIT-BHU, Varanasi to launch innovative programmes in education and research, said an official communique issued in Mumbai on December 7. “Through this agreement, we intend to establish a multi-dimensional partnership with IIT-BHU which will help us retain our competitive edge and develop next-gen engineering skills, not only within the company but also within our academic partners,” said Gajendra Chandel, chief human resources officer of Tata Motors, speaking on the occasion. “This partnership will enable joint research in specific areas which will feed into the future products of Tata Motors, as well as advanced training of students. At the end of the five-year programme, we will have a talent pool ahead of the curve, equipped with advanced knowledge,” said Prof. Rajeev Sangal, director of IIT (BHU)-Varanasi.   Madhya Pradesh Assistant professor suspended An assistant professor of a government college in Sanver was suspended under the Madhya Pradesh Civil Services (Conduct) Rules for reportedly demanding a monetary bribe and sexual favours from a student to pass her in a subject in which she had failed, K.N. Chaturvedi, higher education additional director, informed the media in Indore on December 27. According to the complainant, a second-year B.Com student, the assistant professor demanded Rs.10,000 to re-evaluate her answer script favourably, said Chaturvedi. While a police case hasn’t been filed thus far, the anti-sexual harassment committee of the college is investigating the matter.   Meghalaya New community colleges initiative The state government has made plans for establishing nine community colleges across Meghalaya, chief minister Mukul Sangma…

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Pearson India, a subsidiary of the globe-girdling Pearson Plc, London (estb.1844), launched MyPedia Reader Storybook — a compilation of 42 stories written by young authors — on November 29. The volume features stories of the winners of MyPedia Reader Creative-writing Contest 2017, organised by Pearson India.  For the contest, Pearson received more than 1,500 stories from students across the country with the youngest author in this selection being an eight-year-old class IV student. These stories were judged by a three-member jury comprising Santhini Govindan, children’s writer, Arundhati Venkatesh and story-teller Indira Ananthakrishnan.  “Imagination and creativity is crucial to adequately equip the next generation for the future. We at Pearson, love stories, and have designed MyPedia Reader which is an endeavour to share children’s best stories with the world. We provided a platform to children to share their stories and ended up with a path-breaking learning solution for reading and writing of the English language,” said Ujjwal Singh, vice president (products & innovation) of Pearson India, speaking on the occasion.   Samsung E.D.G.E 2017 Team ‘Athena’Z’ — comprising Sudarsan M.S, Saurabh Sinha and Makesh S. of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Madras — was adjudged winner of the Samsung E.D.G.E 2017 national finals staged in Gurgaon on December 1. Teams from the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad and Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (IIM-L) were ranked #2 and #3. Samsung E.D.G.E 2017 attracted participation of 2,370 students from 19 higher education institutions. The winning team was awarded Rs.3 lakh as prize money and a Galaxy Note8 smartphone each while Team NID received Rs.1.5 lakh and Team IIM-L received Rs.75,000. Moreover, members of Top 10 finalist teams were awarded Samsung vouchers of Rs.10,000 each. The annual competition gives student participants an opportunity to interact with the Samsung leadership, work on real-world business problems and ideate unique solutions. This year, the Top 10 teams worked on ideas around Samsung’s intelligent interface Bixby, growth opportunities in smart cities, designing devices for young single-person households, online skilling and certification models and marketing. “At Samsung, we strive to encourage young minds and nurture the spirit of innovation among them. We are overjoyed by the level of enthusiasm and ideation of student participants at Samsung E.D.G.E. 2017,” said B.K. Lee, director (human resources) of Samsung Southwest Asia.   Mindlogicx launches IntelliPAD Mindlogicx Singapore Pte Ltd launched the “world’s first anti-fraud device-based solution” at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, Singapore on December 1. According to a company spokesperson, the invention is a fool and tamper-proof e-ink invention that enables exam administrators to conduct high-stakes tests using biometric and encryption technologies.  The launch of the device, christened IntelliPAD comes amid a global rise in exam malpractices including question paper leakage, candidate impersonation and other illegal practices for obtaining question papers for personal use or resale. Mounting pressure on examination boards has led to calls for tighter surveillance and security on exam production and delivery.  “Top universities and professional certification providers have witnessed an epidemic of exam fraud in recent…

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Mumbai-based Meghna Mishra (16) is creating ripples in the Bollywood playback music circuit with her debut tracks ‘main kaun hoon’ and ‘nachdi phira’ which have been featuring in the Top 20 play-list of several popular radio channels since the October 2017 release of Hindi film Secret Superstar, produced by veteran actor Aamir Khan assisted by music director Amit Trivedi. This class XI humanities student of the CAIE (UK)-affiliated Witty International School, Goregaon, was also the youngest to be nominated for best vocalist in the recently concluded Star Screen Awards 2017.  “Public appreciation is my greatest reward. I am deeply grateful to Amitji and Aamirji for their faith in me. Moreover, I am glad the film has recorded a box office collection of Rs.80 crore and counting,” says Meghna, who has fond memories of her recording sessions at mega star Aamir Khan’s Panchgani home last summer.  Singing comes naturally to this only child of classical vocalist Sanjay and Aarti Mishra, the latter a Kathak dancer and tabla exponent. “Although we are a musical family, my parents never imposed pressure on me to start training early. They left it to me to discover my aptitudes and inclinations. Soon enough, I discovered that I had inherited my parents’ talent for music,” says Meghna, who has also enrolled as an external student at the city’s Akhil Bharatiya Gandharva Mahavidyalaya Mandal for its bachelor’s programme in music.  While Meghna began her formal training in Hindustani classical music under her father’s tutelage when she was ten, she also taught herself to play the guitar, piano and harmonium. A year later, impressed by her excellent voice quality at an informal gathering, a family friend invited her to sing for Vitti Dandu, a Marathi film produced by him. Last April, she landed the contract for Secret Superstar after receiving a phone call from Amit Trivedi’s assistant requesting a voice sample on Whatsapp. After completing her Plus Two next year, Meghna intends to focus on sangeet visharad (bachelor’s degree) in Hindustani classical music and simultaneously prepare for stage shows and playback singing for Bollywood productions. “Music is my life now. There is nothing that gives me more pleasure,” says this promising vocalist who is set to hit the big time. Way to go! Dipta Joshi (Mumbai) 

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It’s thanks to carefully planned interventions of restoration architects that the public can appreciate the splendour of Unesco World Heritage Sites – Swati Roy There’s growing public awareness world over of the cultural importance and value of preserving and restoring heritage buildings and monuments for the benefit of the present and future generations. It’s thanks to carefully planned interventions of conservation/restoration architects of the 21st century, that we can today appreciate the architectural details of Unesco World Heritage Sites such as Humayun’s Tomb, Delhi, the ornamental shrines of the Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple complex, Tiruchirapalli, the Mahabodhi Temple complex, Bodh Gaya, the Gohad Fort of Madhya Pradesh among others, centuries after they were built.  Following the lead of Unesco, the Union government provided a modest Rs.680 crore in its 2017-18 budget for the restoration of 3,667 historical monuments by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). Under pressure from historians, NGOs and private philanthropists, it also identified and promotes 22 heritage tourist destinations countrywide. Today, qualified restoration architects find employment in the ministry of culture of local/state governments, with ASI as also in private architectural and engineering consulting firms, and with private owners of heritage properties (e.g, palace hotels of Rajasthan).  Study programmes  To qualify as a professional in this field, a degree in architecture with specialisation in architectural conservation is essential.  Among the reputed institutes offering the five-year bachelor’s and two-year postgraduate degree in architectural conservation are the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi and Bhopal campuses; Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture and Environmental Studies, Mumbai; Centre for Environment Planning and Technology, Ahmedabad; Aayojan School of Architecture, Jaipur and University of Pune. Bachelor of architecture (B.Arch) graduates of private/public engineering colleges are also eligible for admission into postgraduate architectural conservation study programmes.  Pay and progression Pay packages of conservation architects employed by private firms or government departments involved in restoration efforts of historic private/public property, vary according to level of expertise, years of experience and evidence of completed projects. Freshers can expect remuneration in the range of Rs.10,000-15,000 per month, rising to Rs.1.5-2 lakh for experienced professionals. Those working for the Archaeological Survey of India earn an estimated 7.5 percent of the total project cost.  Professional profile  “India is a melting pot of diverse cultures, religions and people. Given its rich historical past, there’s no dearth of ancient monuments, universities and World Heritage Sites. Therefore there is no shortage of prospects for those interested in this vocation. Unlike a decade ago when private players were proactive in conservation work, currently there is a perfect private-public partnership in this field,” says Kruti Garg, director (conservation) of Abha Narain Lambah (ANL) Associates, Mumbai, a conservation and historic building consultants firm awarded eight Unesco Asia Pacific awards for heritage projects across India. An architecture alumna of the D.C. Patel School of Architecture of the Institute of Environment Design, Gujarat, and the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi, who pressed on to acquire a certificate in masonry conservation of Restore, a New-York based…

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Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

There’s a pernicious evil abroad in the republic which is disturbing the peace, equanimity and citizenship of over 600 million women citizens on a daily basis. This is the evil practice of large-scale molestation of women, causally dismissed as ‘eve-teasing’ by benighted leaders of the country, police and the judiciary. This phenomenon which has its roots in patriarchy and the inferior status accorded to women by society is costing the economy dearly, by way of productivity and output loss. Although pundits and prophets tend to make light of it, the second class status of women is reinforced by popular cinema — in which stalking and harassment of women is projected as a courtship ritual — and free streaming of pornography over the Internet, where women are depicted as enjoying humiliating and tortuous sex. Regrettably but inevitably, regressive social attitudes towards the status of women have permeated the countrys already weak public education system characterised by crumbling infrastructure, teacher absenteeism, and poor learning outcomes. From early childhood, girl children suffer inequality and discrimination at home and in school. And to add to their burden as they grow to maturity, the small minority of women who enter higher education live in constant fear of sexual harassment in public places and on college and university campuses. Incidents of open, uninterrupted and continuous harassment of women citizens are especially prevalent in the Hindi heartland of Uttar Pradesh — India’s most educationally backward and lawless state. However in September, women students of Benares Hindu University — the oldest university in the state which ironically observed its centennial anniversary in 2016 — protested vigorously against the thousand unnatural shocks they have to endure daily. The establishment’s response was to order a brutal police lathi charge against them on September 23. Since then, the women’s protest at BHU has acquired momentum and its quite possible this agitation will inspire women students in all 39,000 junior and undergraduate colleges, and 800 universities countrywide to take up arms and wrest their constitutional rights of equality, freedom to access campus spaces, and dignity of personhood. A victory for the women students of BHU in the struggle for emancipation and gender equality is a necessary pre-condition for improvement in the status of women across the country. For the first cover story of the new year, our intrepid Lucknow-based correspondent Puja Awasthi travelled across UPs campuses to write this first-hand report. Inevitably, there’s more in this inaugural issue of 2018. Our tireless managing editor Summiya Yasmeen highlights the milestone events of another all-sound-and-fury-signifying-nothing year for Indian education. And in our People section, check out the profiles of individuals who carry on regardless, to improve education in perhaps the most change-resistant nation worldwide. Happy New Year!

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