EducationWorld July 11

Lack of job opportunities for young people in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) has created an unemployment crisis that could further destabilise the Arab region, warn experts. The largest generation, which was born in the 1980s, has reached working age… young adults are now perceived as the most problematic age group, notes sociologist and demographer Philippe Fargues, director of the Migration Policy Centre at the European University Institute, Florence. Their growth has outpaced the resources available to them, from employment that provides income and status, to freedom, participation, and agency, adds Fargues, who in a recent paper suggested that the youth bulge will reshape the Arab world.The latest figures from the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics indicate that 21.7 percent of the population is out of work. This translates into 30.8 percent of the population of Gaza and 17.4 percent in the West Bank. According to the UN, 43.4 percent of the Palestinian population is under 15, and in the Gaza Strip 63.4 percent of 15-24 year-olds are unemployed. This figure rises to 75.8 percent among women. And yet, since the Israeli blockade was imposed in 2007, migration has not been an option for the vast majority of Gazans. As a result, there are few options left for young people looking for work. This generation faces many more difficulties than we did, says Mahmoud Abu Libda, a supervisor in an engineering workshop supported by the ACT Alliance in Khan Younis, south Gaza. Libda trains young men to be motor mechanics — perhaps the only trade still flourishing in Gaza. Continual electricity cuts and reliance on generators mean that mechanics are rarely in want of work. Every year there is a huge demand for admission into the workshop, with at least 150 applicants for 22 places. The most important thing for them is to find jobs. We could work in Israel, the Gulf states, but with the blockade we are living in a prison here. Being part of a political faction (Fatah or Hamas) or joining the extremists (Al-Qaeda) are the easiest ways to be supported and earn money in Gaza, says Libda. According to Chris Gunness, spokesperson for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), young people in Gaza face a double whammy — high educational achievement and no work. Having a highly educated, unemployed population is a recipe for discontent, frustration and worse. This is in no ones interests, least of all Israel, says Gunness. In the West Bank, the economic situation is different but still bleak. There is no blockade but the Israeli occupation means the job market cannot support this generation of job seekers. In the West Bank we have heard much about economic success, but years of occupation have set the base line very low. Nor is this economic success spread evenly across the population, says Gunness. According to the bureau of statistics, the number of Palestinians employed in Israel and Israeli settlements had risen from 75,000 to 78,000 in the third and fourth quarters of 2010,…

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The financial future of some Japanese universities is in jeopardy following the exodus of many thousands of foreign students in the wake of the massive earthquake, tsunami and potential nuclear catastrophe that hit the country in March. More than 15,000 people were killed in the devastation that resulted from the natural disasters suffered by the north-east of the nation.The foreign students who subsequently fled the country included tens of thousands of Chinese, who make up the vast majority of the overseas contingent at Japans universities. The exodus has left Chinese students contemplating ruined studies, but it has also highlighted the fact that overseas recruitment is essential to many universities in Japan, an ageing society where the inflow of home students has reduced. Keenly aware that foreign students will be missed at many levels, the education ministrys responses included buying free return tickets for foreign students who are hesitant about returning to Japan. In another scheme, aimed at bringing back tourists, the ministry is paying students to take short holidays around Japan and then report their experiences on Twitter. For university lecturers in Japan, March was the spring recess and academic life was due to rekindle only on April 1. It was vacation time, so teachers were relatively free to travel, says Paul Snowden, a former dean at Waseda University, Tokyo. The quake itself, even in Tokyo, hundreds of miles from the epicentre, was strong enough to scare anyone. And the following few days of paralysed transport, no phones and panic buying of rice, water, toilet paper, batteries and petrol was quite enough to persuade those who could to get out. And flee they did. According to the justice ministry, more than 470,000 foreigners left the country, at least temporarily, between March 12 and April 1. More than 70,000 of the 86,000 Chinese students left the country in March. The sudden stampede closed down local Chinese restaurants, now bereft of student labour. Of those 70,000 Chinese students who left, 22,000 remain absent. Parental pressure, particularly from one-child families in China, has a great bearing on those decisions to quit Japan, says Snowden. To shore up its ailing universities, pre-quake Japan had formulated the ‘300,000 International Students Plan with the aim of boosting its foreign student intake by 2020. Japanese universities have suffered in international rankings because of their sparse numbers of international students and staff. Only two of the countrys institutions appear in the top 100 of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. We value our foreign students… We are keen to invite more students to Japan, says Junsaku Mizuhata of the ministrys higher education bureau. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)

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In the year before she went to teach in China, Laura Getty, head of the department of English at North Georgia State College and University, USA, made sure she was well prepared for the trip. The professor of literary studies studied the language, read relevant books and developed plans for the course she would be teaching.What she hadnt prepared for was the culture shock she experienced during her five months in the worlds most populous country. Writing about her experiences in a paper for the latest edition of the journal Teaching in Higher Education, Prof. Getty highlights a blind spot over the impact of cultural differences on the globalisation of higher education. Lip service to the concept is not the same thing as understanding the challenges involved, she writes. Speaking to Times Higher Education later, Getty said administrators with little or no experience of teaching are unlikely to understand the challenges academics face when adapting their teaching methods to the demands of international partner institutions. For example, I found out at the end of the semester that all my grading had been for very little, because the university didnt allow anything other than As or Bs for most students, she says. But not all her experiences were negative. The students were in many ways more prepared, more cheerful and more enthusiastic than a lot of my American classes. But the administration side of things, on the other hand, was a bit of a shock, she adds. The problems were exacerbated, she said, by the mistrust of e-mail by many of her Chinese colleagues, a stance that proved warranted. Getty says her own e-mails sometimes took more than eight hours to be delivered because they were read by the authorities before being sent on. She also faced frustrations upon her return to the US, writing in her paper that she was surprised (and occasionally offended) by the flat rejection of some of her descriptions of life at the Chinese university. I felt that (my American colleagues) were looking at my experience as being related to me, that in some way I had not done well enough. When the second person went and encountered some of the same difficulties, it became clear this was not the case; it was a cultural difference. Nevertheless despite many differences and difficulties she encountered, Getty says that lecturers thinking of taking up academic exchanges in China or elsewhere should not be deterred. It was worthwhile, but in the sense that sometimes growth requires a certain amount of discomfort, she says. Anyone going on an experience like this, needs to understand that growth can be difficult. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)

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I just keep goin up there and swingin at ‘em — Babe Ruth, Hall of Fame baseball great.A coach i greatly admire wears a T-shirt proclaiming on the first day of his teams softball practice: MISTAKES R WUND-ERFUL OPPORTUNITIES 2 LERN! I love his shirt, for it admirably captures the cornerstone of my teaching and coaching philosophy — the ‘mistake center concept. The most powerful way to teach children skills and at the same time create a joyous environment for them, is to encourage them to take risks in trying new things. I believe we learn best by attempting, analysing our mistakes, implementing the correction, and being congratulated for the effort. In this contribution, I want to emphatically make this point to athletes, coaches, teachers and parents: that practice fields and ballgames are ‘Centers of Mistakes, places where worrying about goofing-up is not allowed. This philosophy is a contradiction of the prevailing ideology that winning isnt everything — its the only thing. Too many coaches, parents, and teachers believe that losing is synonymous with failure to be avoided at all costs. To many athletes, a loss on the playing field or sports arena is so devastating it prompts them to quit sports altog-ether. But the reality is that failure cannot be avoided. The greatest of the great have failed at times, and so will you sometimes. There are three basic myths about failure that make it difficult, if not intolerable, to digest. These myths are self-limiting, and there are ways to demolish them cognitively. Myth 1 — If you work hard enough, you can avoid failure. Not so! The best of the best havent escaped failure, so why should you? Ive worked with Americas top professional and amateur athletes and coaches for more than 40 years, and theyve all experienced failure at some level. Like so much of what we resist in life, failure expands and teaches us. Myth 2 — Failure is worthless. Failure is the prerequisite of success, and mistakes are lessons; they have much to teach us if we learn from them. Indeed they are crucial to individual growth and development. Successful and creative people in all walks of life have higher-than-ordinary tolerance for their own errors, mistakes, and failures. They are willing to learn from setbacks and transform them into ‘schooling experiences. Though its natural to regret making mistakes, they are inevitable. Therefore they should be regarded as stepping stones to success. Myth 3 — Failure is devastating. Of course! But negative sentiments eman-ating from setbacks and failure are invariably exaggerated. The best coaches are aware that children learn faster from mistakes than from repetitive ‘correct practice, although conventional wisdom in sports decrees that kids learn best when they practice the ‘right way to do something over and over. But back in 2009, researchers writing in the Journal of Experimental Psychology on learning, memory and cognition found that kids actually learn quicker and better when they make a mistake! Their observations coincide with those of Carol…

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Im a class X student keen on a career in chemical engineering. What are the job prospects in this field?Nikhil Chandran, Chennai Chemical engineering graduates are employed in the pharmaceutical, healthcare, pulp and paper, food processing, polymers, biotechnology, electronics, and environmental health and safety industries. Also in technical and research departments in the chemical processes and petrochemical industries. Specialisation options include plastics and polymers, food technology, ceramics, chemical process, bioprocess technology, pharmaceutical technology, perfumes and flavours, and petroleum engineering among others. In short, job prospects for qualified chemical engineers are excellent. Im keen on signing up for an auto-mobile engineering degree programme after class XII. Which colleges offer this specialisation? Sumit Chawla, New Delhi Very few colleges in india offer automobile engineering as a degree programme. However some offer it as a specialisation in the mechanical engineering degree programme. My advice is you enrol in the mechanical engineering degree programme of prestigious institutions such as the IITs, NITs, BITS Pilani, BIT Mesra etc and choose to specialise in automobile engineering. Which field offers better career prospects — food technology or biotechnology? Im planning to do an M.Tech in either subject after comple-ting my B.Tech degree in 2012. Shalini Karmarkar, Pune An M.Tech degree in biotechnology definitely offers more job options, provided it interests you as much as food technology. Biotechnology is a broad discipline and a biotechnologist has wider options to work in the chemical and pharmaceutical, plant engineering and equipment manufacturing, energy resource and biomass industries, farm-ing, agriculture and forestry, environmental protection, environmental measu-rement and instrumentation, air purification and effluent/sewage treatment. Food technologists, on the other hand, have limited opportunities. They usually work in food products development, preservation, processing, packaging and distribution. What are the job opportunities available to biomedical engineers? Ivan Fernandes, Mumbai Biomedical engineers have a bright future. They tend to be employed in hospitals and companies manufacturing medical equipment including artificial organs (hearing aids, cardiac pacemakers, artificial kidneys and hearts, blood oxygenators, synthetic blood vessels, joints, legs), automated patient monitoring systems etc. However if you want to work in research and development, you should complete an M.Tech/ME or MS in this field. In Mumbai, among the prominent colleges offering biomedical engineering are the Thadomal Shahani Engineering College, D.J. Sanghvi College of Engineering and Watumull Institute of Electronics Engineering and Computer Technology. Im planning to do an MA (history) after my graduation next year. What employment opportunities can I expect? Aparna Chatterjee, Kolkata Postgraduates in history can work in teaching and research as also in publishing, mass communication, archaeology, museums, travel and tourism, heritage management etc. If you also possess research and writing skills you could write film/documentary scripts, work on educational CD ROMs, compile oral histories of organisations, communities, families etc. Historians also design museum exhibitions, serve as consultants for historical stage and cinematic presentations, and compile guides and literature for tou-rism if they have the inclination for it. Im a class XII student. I want to know which colleges offer bachelors and Masters programmes in…

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Here we go again. language chauvinists in Goa have launched disruptive protests against the state governments proposal to allow primary and secondary schools to offer English as the optional medium of instruction in addition to Marathi and Konkani.A bunch of rabble, associated with Hindutva forces, stopped traffic in Panjim recently and threatened to hold the state hostage to their misbegotten worldview. Its not just about Goa, its all over India. They are the same people who protested the screening of Slumdog Millionaire; the same people who assaulted women emerging from a bar in Mangalore; the same who renamed the airport and the railway terminus in Bombay, and who rechristened Bombay, Madras and Calcutta. English, both as a language and our cultural heritage, is a convenient horse to flog. Increasingly though, the burgeoning middle class is embracing it as the key to success in a modernising country. Thus, while politicians go on renaming sprees, ‘Indianising names of city streets and entire cities, real estate developers across the country sell their projects with Western-sounding names such as ‘Provence, ‘Belvedere and what not. Coming back to Goas language disturbances, even the usually rational Mano-har Parrikar, opposition leader and erstwhile chief minister, backed the obscurantists protests. He said if children are educated in English, they will look down on their parents who dont speak the language. He is right. The problem with the English language is that it is subversive. To accept it is to accept the cultural and philosophical worldview of the Enlightenment. It requires acceptance of the rules of courtesy, egalitarianism and right of dissent. In the Hindutva worldview, these values dont count for much. Instead the focus is on superstition, indulgence, exclusivity and conformism. Children schooled in English wont easily buy into backwardness. If you look around today, journeyman classes that offer students English language proficiency are mushrooming everywhere. Parents and children know that to make their way in the world, English is essential. They have no time for chauvinist arguments against the language. Parents just want their children to get ahead and like all middle class Indians, place their faith in education. Its high time obscurantists who oppose English learning became aware that English has always been an Indian language, and that in recent years the number of people who use English as the lingua franca has increased exponentially. A new form of Indian English has taken shape which incorporates Indian idioms. Today globally, literary salons celebrate Indian writers in English for introducing Indian cultural flavours to the world. I can name at least a dozen and their number is probably in the hundreds. Therefore its madness for people in India to dismiss English as a foreign language. The Supreme Courts judgements are in English as is government legislation. They may be translated into various languages but the first draft is written in English. Vernacular chauvinists, who disparage the use of English in India, are products of a feudal mindset that still regards India as a long-suffering victim of colonial…

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Mumbai-based Mexus Education Pvt. Ltd announced the winners of Iken Scientifica 2011-Season IV Student Icon of India national competition at the Knowledge Centre, IIT-Bombay on June 11.Iken Scientifica 2011 — an annual nationwide science and technology talent hunt organised by Mexus Education, now in its fourth year (season IV) — attracted 275 finalists from 26 cities shortlisted for the title of Student Icon of India 2011. From among them eight students were adjudged winners in the junior (class V-VI) and senior (class VII-VIII) categories. In the junior category, Taha Juzar (Kuwait); Samyak Parmar of Bright Day School, Baroda; Joel Jaison of J.H. Ambani Saraswati Vidya Mandir, Surat and Gauri Manoj Lad of Fatima High School, Mumbai were adjudged student icons. In the senior category, Devika of Maharani Gayatri Devi School, Jaipur; Rishi Raj of Laxmi International, Vapi; W. Keerthana, Hyderabad and Jaspreet Sandhu of Saupins School, Chandigarh were declared senior icons. Mexus Education awarded an all-expenses paid tour of the National Aeronautics & Space Agency (NASA), USA as the grand prize for all student icon title winners. Moreover prizes valued at Rs.50 lakh were awarded to other participants of Iken Scientifica, 2011-Season IV. Iken Scientifica aims to encourage budding talent to showcase extraordinary aptitude in lateral thinking and experimentation, says Saurabh Saxena, director of Mexus Education. This year we hosted participants from several schools and students in the Middle East. Moreover, schools and students in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Africa are showing increasing interest in Iken Scientifica, he adds. GTAVMs good start GT Aloha Vidhya Mandir (GTAVM), Chennai, a K-IX co-ed school, completed its first academic year on June 15. Directly supervised by the Maharishi Vidhya Mandir, the GT Aloha management claims to have carved a niche for itself among the elite schools of Chennai. The foundation of the school rests on inspiration, innovation, intensity and integrity — the guiding principles in our pursuit of absolute excellence, says K. Kumaran, chief executive of the school. Every school teaches students what to study, but in our school we teach them how to study. We educate children through neuro linguistic program (NLP) techniques and impart knowledge on life and leadership skills. According to Kumaran, the unique characteristic of GTAVM is that all students are trained in transcendental meditation, yogasana and pranayama by experts. These self-development practices perfected by the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi enable students overall academic activities and performance. We are confident that GTAVM is moving in the right direction in the pursuit of excellence, he adds. ICoFP scholarships invitation The New Delhi-based International College of Financial Planning (ICoFP, estb.2002), which offers super specialised certification programmes in financial planning, is offering scholarships to 12 students who enroll for postgraduate studies at ICoFP. Financial planning is one of the fastest-growing professions around the world and is experiencing a huge demand-supply gap. In India, youngsters in financial planning have a bright future and can take advantage of many opportunities available across the banking, finance, insurance and allied industries. ICoFP is helping students achieve…

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“Global relevance comes from how you work in a company; how you build a global company. This did not exist earlier and our educational institutions are not preparing students for it.” Shiv Nadar, chairman HCL Technologies (Outlook Business, June 11) “Corruption is like a chameleon; it adjusts to poor and stagnant Africa as well as emerging Asia. It flourishes under democracy in India and under an authoritarian regime in China.” Gilbert Etienne, professor emeritus, Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva (India Today, June 13) “Forget me, even if Shakespeare were to come back and take the English exam today, he will not score 100 percent.” CPM Politburo member Sitaram Yechury on the sky-high admission cut-offs stipulated by Delhi University colleges (June 17) “Even though there is a hue and cry about English, everybody should realise that English is a universal language and in the long run, it is essential for the future of our children.” Goa chief minister Digambar Kamat justifying the state governments decision to allow schools in the state to offer English as a medium of instruction in addition to Marathi and Konkani (June 20) “Now is the time to be daring to combine the existing technical knowledge with the political will to change the lives of hundreds of millions of children in India. There can be no greater investment than that of investing in children.” Karin Hulshof, Unicef India representative (The Times of India, June 26) “As marks obtained in class XII exams, whether CBSE or state boards, have climbed, so have cut-offs. It is wrong to blame universities or their undergraduate colleges for this situation… The challenge in higher education is to increase opportunities without diluting standards.” Deepak Nayyar, former vice chancellor Delhi University on the mad scramble for admission into DU affiliated colleges (The Times of India, June 28)

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Prior to June 15 when the new school year began in Tamil Nadu, parents of 5 million children enroled in the states 10,934 private matriculation schools affiliated to the Board of Matriculation Schools, and nursery and private schools affiliated with the Directorate of Elementary Education, paid widely varying first term tuition fees. While students of 4,534 private schools paid fees ranging from Rs.3,500-11,000 (for classes K-XII), as prescribed by the Private Schools Fees Determination Committee (PSFDC) headed by Justice (Retd) K. Govindarajan in July 2010, students of 6,400 private schools, which opposed the fees fixed by the PSFDC, paid fees mandated by school managements.State government controls and ceilings in private K-XII schools affiliated with the Tamil Nadu State Board of Secondary Education (TNSBSE), which has 52,303 schools statewide affiliated with it (including 10,934 private schools), has been a contentious issue since December 2009 (CBSE, CISCE and schools affiliated with offshore examination boards are exempt) when the erstwhile DMK government enacted the T.N. School (Regulation of Collection Fee), Act 2009 and appointed the Govindarajan Committee (PSFDC) to determine the fees chargeable by each school. Inevitably, PSFDCs verdict was challenged in the Madras high court and Supreme Court. On April 9, 2010, the high court upheld the validity of the Act on the ground that it was in consonance with the law laid down by the Supreme Court in the Islamic Academy Case (2003) which allows government to constitute fees adjudication committees to prevent commercialisation of educa-tion. A year later on May 10, the Supreme Court also upheld the judge-ment of the Madras high court while stating that each school is free to petition the PSFDC for revision of the ceiling imposed in its case. Meanwhile, in October 2010 the former DMK government appointed Justice Raviraja Pandian as chairperson of the PSFDC which revised the tuition fees of 6,400 aggrieved private schools upwards on June 13. However, even the new fee structure has greatly disappointed private matriculation school managements. Although we have received a 30-40 percent increase over the fees fixed by the Govindarajan Committee, the new tuition fees are still inadequate for providing quality education to students. For instance, we had requested an annual fee of Rs.28,000 for higher secondary school but have been sanctioned only Rs.15,500. Also since sanctioned tuition fee ceilings are valid for three years, we wont be able to pay our Plus Two teachers well or give them annual increments. In turn this makes it difficult for us to recruit and retain good teachers, says B. Purushothaman, correspondent and principal of Everwin Matriculation Higher Secondary School, which has an enrolment of 4,533 students and 178 teachers. Private school managements question the methodology employed by the new PSFDC to prescribe tuition fee struc-tures. Schools without any claims to excellence but run by former politicians have been sanctioned very high fees. The tuition fees we have been sanctioned are far below expectation and will not cover expenses incurred by us on students participation in cultural activities, arts, sports and…

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For 20,000 children enroled in the 137 Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagar Palike (BBMP), i.e the municipal corporation, K-X schools spread across greater Bangalore (pop. 8.4 million), the new academic year which commenced on June 1 doesnt look promising. Almost half (301) of the sanctioned 750 teaching posts are vacant, forcing students to attend multi-grade classrooms or manage without teachers at all. Although deputy mayor S. Harish had promised the vacancies would be filled by BBMP before the commencement of the new academic year, in an interview to The New Indian Express (June 16) he passed the buck to the BJP-ruled Karnataka state government. We thought the corporation would handle this issue but the state governments public instruction department has undertaken to appoint the teachers, he says.According to V. Ashok, additional commissioner (education), BBMP, the public instruction department has informed the corporation that it intends to fill up teacher vacancies through a common entrance test conducted by it. The state government has approved filling up of the vacant 301 teaching posts. Now its up to the department of public instruction to conduct a common entrance exam to fill up the vacancies. New teachers will be appointed in a few months time. Till then, we have enough teachers to take care of academic duties, says Ashok. The indifference and lack of urgency to address the massive teachers shortage plaguing the citys 137 free-of-charge BBMP schools, already crippled with abysmal infra-structure including lack of toilets and drinking water facilities, and offering vernacular medium (Kannada) instruction, has resulted in a consistent fall in academic standards and student learning outcomes. In the class X results announced in May by the state governments State Secondary Leaving Certificate (SSLC) board, BBMPs 33 secondary schools recorded a pass percentage of 55 cf. 75.38 percent in government schools and 84.88 percent in private unaided schools. Little wonder student enrolment in Kannada medium BBMP primaries in particular, is steadily falling with students voting with their feet in favour of private schools which guarantee better learning outcomes and offer English medium instruction. The majority of BBMP primaries sited on prime real estate in the city, host less than 100 class I-VII students. Awareness that even low income households prefer, and are willing to pay for English medium education seems to be belatedly dawning upon BBMP officials. In November last year, the corporation, which has an annual education budget of Rs.40 crore, announced promotion of four English-medium K-X schools in the city. But since then nothing has been heard about them. Against this backdrop of inertia and indifference in BBMP, which spends an estimated Rs.20,000 per child per year (equivalent to the tuition fees charged by some of the citys top private schools), there is growing public demand for accountability, efficient utilisation of resources and public-private partnerships (PPPs). BBMP corporators busy with petty politicking have little interest in improving corporation schools. The schools need to be assessed regularly, teachers given continuous training, and children extra help and attention. Obviously, the Rs.20,000 BBMP spends…

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I read your latest issue featuring the ‘Leadership mantras of 28 best school principals (EW June) with rapt interest. I am in complete sympathy with the view expressed in your ‘Letter from the editor that the task of leading an educational instit-ution is more complex than of running a company or busi-ness organisation.The reality is that as heads of school we deal with human beings from the age of six-86 years including children, teachers, parents and grandparents. More challenging is the fact that Indian society is in a flux, and there is a great churning of values, ethics, and character happening everywhere — regrettably for the worse. Old patterns and stereotypes are changing, as are parents and their priorities which is adversely affecting the education of children. Against this background, the role of teachers and principals has never been more important. We need to first get our own conduct and priorities right, so we can deliver value-based education to children under our care. Praveen Vasisht, Headmaster The Lawrence School, Sanawar Elitist attitude charge I was surprised, even shocked, to see that your June cover story featuring the leadership mantras of Indias 28 best school principals didnt include even one government school principal. Does this mean that Indias best principals are to be found only in elite private day, boarding and international schools? The reality is there are hundreds of government school principals, partic-ularly in the rural hinterland working in very difficult conditions to deliver quality education. Real-life stories of how government school principals deal with the challenges of poor infrast-ructure, absentee teachers, and first generation learners would have proved more inspirational than the banal homilies mouthed by your selected principals working out of air-conditioned offices. My advice: shed your elitist attitude and include government schools. Sumita Ganguly Kolkata We repeatedly contacted T. Mrinalini, principal of Kendriya Vidyalaya, IIT-Madras campus — Indias top-ranked (No.50) gover-nment day school in the EW-C fore Indias Most Respected Sch-ools Survey 2010 — but she procrastinated beyond the deadline — Editor Bang on target I read with avid interest Dr. C.N.R. Raos prescriptions for rejuvenating Indian higher education (EW June). The distinguished scientists observation that India has an examinations rather than an education system, is bang on target. Its not unusual for Plus Two students to write six-seven entrance exams in addition to their board exams. This is cruel, to say the least. Dr. Raos suggestion of instituting a single national entrance exam for admission into all colleges countrywide is excellent, and needs to be implemented immediately. Moreover his other recommendations for revamping and upgrading Indian higher education need a nationwide debate. Sunil Malhotra Delhi Managing census shock Re the news story ‘China: One child policy revisionism? featured in the international news section (EW June), Id like to draw your attention to the recently concluded Census 2011 of India. The latest data indicates that adult literacy has risen to 74 percent. However, if population growth is to be controlled, India needs nothing short of 100 percent…

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