EducationWorld March 2019 Archives

Your counselor replies

I’m interested in a career in sports and fitness. Please advise. — Sarika Gupta, Lucknow You can explore a range of careers in the sports and fitness industry such as sports coach, psychologist, scientist, nutrition and diet specialist, personal trainer, sports manager and physical education instructor. I’m a class XI student determined to make a career in teaching. What are my best study options? — Anushka Goyal, Delhi Teaching is a noble career choice. If you want to teach in primary school, you should consider the following study options after completing class XII: B.El.Ed (bachelor’s in elementary education); D.El.Ed (diploma in elementary education); and NTT (nursery teacher training). After graduation you become eligible to sign up for B.Ed (bachelor’s in education) programme for teaching in secondary and higher secondary schools. However to become eligible to teach in Central government-run schools, aspiring teachers need to also clear the Central Teacher Eligibility Test, and for employment in state government schools the Teacher Eligibility Test. For college/university level teaching, postgraduates need to write the National Eligibility Test. Alternatively, you could sign up for the BTC (basic training certificate) programme for assistant teachers. What are Moocs and why are they so popular? — Nakul Rao, Bangalore Over the past decade, massive online open courses (Moocs) have emerged as a popular mode of learning with their certification increasingly being recognised by academic institutions and companies worldwide. Moocs allow learners to study online at their own pace and time. The academic courses — designed by some of the world’s top-ranked universities including MIT, Harvard and blue-chip companies such as Microsoft, Linux etc — comprise videos, reading material, and interactive sessions on online forums. Among the most popular MOOCs providers are Edx, Coursera, Udacity, Udemy and Codeacademy Which higher ed institutions in India offer the best study programmes in finance? — Aman Singh, Gwalior There are two study routes to qualify as a finance professional in India — an MBA/M.Sc in finance, or through the chartered financial analyst (CFA) programme. Among well-reputed institutions offering these study options are: Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai (M.Sc finance); Department of Financial Studies, Delhi University, South campus (MBA in financial management); NMIMS, Mumbai (M.Sc finance); Indian Institute of Finance, Noida (business finance management and postgraduate finance diploma); Xavier School of Commerce, Bhubaneswar (business finance Masters); the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts, Hyderabad; Securities & Exchange Board of India, Mumbai; Institute of Finance, Banking and Insurance, Bangalore and Indian School of Business and Finance, Delhi (CFA). Which are the best colleges offering BCA (bachelor’s in computer application) degree programmes in India? — Sumit Deshmukh, Pune Among the most well-reputed colleges offering high-quality BCA study programmes in India are the Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra (Ranchi); Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi; Christ University, Bangalore; SRM University, Chennai; Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies & Research, Pune; St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore; Bharati Vidyapeeth (Deemed University), Pune; Fergusson College, Pune; Loyola College, Chennai and Scottish Church College, Kolkata What is the difference between…

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Soaring demand for commercial pilots

According to Indian aviation experts, there’s a requirement of 10,000 commercial pilots per year against the current supply of 8,000, of whom 1,100 are women – Paromita Sengupta The nationalisation of Tata Airlines and its transformation into the public sector monopolies Air India in 1948 and Indian Airlines in 1953, heralded a new age of commercial aviation in India. However, post 1991 when the Congress government headed by prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao liberalised and deregulated the socialist Indian economy, several private airlines — Indigo, SpiceJet, Vistara, GoAir, Air Asia, Jet Airways etc — have been flying Indian skies. Since then, air routes have multiplied and the demand for trained pilots in the domestic aviation industry has risen exponentially. According to Indian aviation experts, there’s a requirement of 10,000 trained pilots per year against the current supply of 8,000, of whom 1,100 are women. Consequently, commercial aviation is a lucrative and much sought after career option for youth, especially those with a penchant for flying and travel. Flying clubs (i.e, schools) provide practical training for aspiring commercial pilots who are obliged to obtain a commercial pilot’s licence (CPL) awarded to those who acquire stipulated experience of flying a wide range of aircraft as also of flying solo, cross country, night flying and a minimum number of take-offs and landings etc. India is currently facing an acute shortage of pilots because of its limited number of flying clubs (31 cf. USA’s 2,000) authorised to issue private pilot’s licences (PPLs) to trainee-aspirants. This has compelled domestic airlines to employ foreign pilots. Foreign licence holders are allowed to fly Indian skies after clearing a written exam conducted by the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). Study programmes The minimum eligibility for youth aspiring to qualify as commercial pilots is completion of Plus Two with physics and maths. There is no upper age limit to apply for a licence which are of three genres. A PPL allows you to fly two-four passenger small civilian aircraft; a commercial pilot’s licence allows you to fly small aircraft as well as co-pilot a passenger jet and an airline transport pilot’s licence (ATPL) qualifies you to fly all genres of aircraft. Training for a CPL/ATPL could cost between Rs.30-40 lakh. Eligible youth (with PPL) aspiring to work with reputed airlines are required to apply for a CPL after clocking 250 hours of flying (which takes 12-18 months) in a flying club approved by DGCA. In addition, they need to clear aviation subject exams and undergo medical examination also conducted by DGCA. Former Air Force pilots are also required to apply for civil aviation licences (see dgca.nic.in) which requires them to clear written aviation subject exams, an interview and few hours of flying in DGCA-approved flying clubs, before being licensed to fly passenger jets. Pay & progression A co-pilot of an airline company can expect a monthly salary package of Rs.2-3 lakh while a captain draws between Rs.6-10 lakh. Additionally, captains can work overtime to draw an additional 30…

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Bright Diamond Schools of Small Town India

With India’s metros fast reaching saturation point, the expansion of small town India’s neo middle class has fuelled demand for high-quality globally benchmarked K-12 English-medium schools, especially in tier II-IV cities – Summiya Yasmeen With the Indian economy growing at 7 percent-plus annually — the highest annual growth rate of all large economies worldwide, according to spokespersons of the BJP/NDA government at the Centre — India’s middle class is expanding commensurately even as income inequality between the country’s top 10 percent and rest of the population is increasing. And with metropolitan and larger cities fast reaching saturation point, the country’s estimated 600 tier II-IV cities are experiencing exponential expansion of the middle class. Inevitably, fast-paced growth of the non-metro neo middle class has fuelled demand for high-quality globally benchmarked K-12 English-medium schools in small town India. According to latest (2011) census data, there are 53 cities with a population of 1 million-plus and 256 with populations ranging from 100,000-999,000 countrywide. Ernst & Young’s India Attractiveness Survey 2015 indicates that tier-II cities such as Surat, Jaipur, Indore and Patna are clocking annual economic growth rates of 40 percent, way higher than Kolkata and Mumbai. Between 2001 and 2011, while economic growth plateaued in several metros, the E&Y survey says that “tier-II cities continued on their growth trajectory with their economies growing at an unprecedented rate”. “In 2014, FDI (foreign direct investment) projects in smaller cities surged 79 percent, compared with just 21 percent in metropolises. Cities such as Chakan, Halol, Jaipur, Mohali, Sanand, Thrissur, Vapi and Varanasi are increasingly becoming industrial hubs.” Similarly, E&Y’s more recent report titled India’s Growth Paradigm — How Markets beyond Metros have Transformed (2017), identifies 42 ‘new wave’ cities — “a new emerging class of cities, with millions of aspirational consumers who are vying for attention on the national stage”. Among these “new wave cities”, two new metros — Jaipur and Surat — are top-ranked followed by ten ‘high potential’ cities (Kanpur, Jabalpur, Indore, etc) and 30 ‘emerging markets’ (Agra, Dhanbad, Gwalior, Madurai, Hubli-Dharwad, etc). These 42 new wave cities are India’s fastest growing urban habitats in terms of annual GDP growth in the 2015-20 quinquennium, says the E&Y report. With the benefits of economic liberalisation and industry deregulation belatedly flowing into India’s tier II-IV cities, the aspirational middle class with higher disposable incomes has been quick to discern that high-quality, globally benchmarked English medium school education offers their progeny a good chance to enter nationally top-ranked higher education institutions and land highly-paid jobs in India and abroad, and enjoy the material comforts to which they aspire. Rising demand for high-quality English-medium education has prompted new-age education entrepreneurs (‘edupreneurs’) to establish internationally benchmarked private K-12 schools which are developing the hitherto neglected human capital of small town India. “Over the past decade, the action in K-12 education has shifted from the metros to small towns. With tier II-IV cities becoming the new centres of India’s economic growth story, there’s pressing demand from parents for English-medium education…

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Union Budget 2019-20 – Low priority for human capital development

A striking feature of pro tem finance minister Piyush Goyal’s 100-minute budget address to Parliament and the nation on February 1 was that the word ‘education’ was mentioned only once and the allocation for education at Rs.93,807 crore was marginally higher than last year – Dilip Thakore A major infirmity of the Indian State is that its institutions don’t listen to each other. On January 15, the globally respected Delhi/Mumbai-based Pratham Education Foundation (estb.1994), which raises millions of dollars abroad annually to fund its remedial primary education programmes, formally released its Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2018. The report — the outcome of the combined effort of 30,000 field personnel, mainly college/university students and NGO volunteers who tested the academic learning outcomes of class I-VIII children of 300,000 households in 596 districts of rural India (the total number of administrative districts countrywide — urban plus rural — is 701), says that 27 percent of children in class VIII cannot read/comprehend class II textbooks, and a mere 44 percent can manage simple three-digits by one-digit division sums. The previous ASER 2017, which in a departure from standard practice assessed the learning outcomes of adolescents aged 14-18 years schooled in rural India, reported that 60 percent couldn’t correctly calculate the price of a shirt sold at a 10 percent discount and/or read the time on an analogue clock. These annual learning surveys of the Pratham Foundation provide telling insights into the capabilities and productivity of the country’s rural citizens who constitute the majority (68 percent) of 21st century India’s 1.3 billion people. A fortnight later on February 1, Piyush Goyal, Union minister of railways and coal in the BJP-led NDA government, presented the Union Budget 2019-20, the last budget of the incumbent government before General Election 2019 scheduled for this summer. Goyal was standing in for Union finance minister Arun Jaitley who had flown abroad for medical treatment. Technically, it should have been an interim vote-on-account budget for funding government expenditure for the next three months before the general election. But to advertise the BJP/NDA government’s professedly excellent management of the Indian economy during the past five years and to spell out the ruling party’s utopian vision for the future, Goyal presented a full-fledged Union budget to Parliament and the nation. However a striking feature of the minister’s 100-minute budget address was that the word ‘education’ was mentioned only once, the allocation for education was static (adjusted for inflation) at Rs.93,807 crore and conveyed the impression that the Rt. Hon minister had never heard of ASER 2018 or its predecessor reports which are often released with great fanfare by Union ministers. The detailed ASER surveys — which routinely report that learning outcomes in the country’s 1.20 million government primaries are significantly worse than in private budget rural schools — aside, finance ministry bureaucrats who shaped Union Budget 2019-20 seem equally oblivious of the World Bank’s Human Capital Index and UNDP’s annual Human Development Report which rank India among the contemporary world’s negligent…

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Study destination Gold Coast

Last December, Study Gold Coast invited a group of 15 delegates from India, including EducationWorld’s Mumbai correspondent Dipta Joshi, to acquaint them with the state-of-the-art campuses, aims and objectives, impressive curriculums, infrastructure and student body diversity of the city’s three show-piece universities A sombre geo-political climate sparked by tightening visa policies, limited jobs market, the rupee’s depreciation against the dollar which has raised price of higher education in the US and Britain’s sudden pull-out from Brexit among other phenomena, is prompting Indian students aspiring for international qualifications to enroll in Australian universities which according to all indicators, offer as good quality education in equally, if not more, salubrious and multicultural environments at substantially lower prices. For instance, annual tuition-cum-residence fees in Australian universities is in the range of AUD 60,000-62,000 (Rs.30-31 lakh) cf. Cornell University, USA’s $73,000 (Rs.52 lakh). Although Australia has six universities ranked in the Top 100 WUR (World University Rankings) league table of Times Higher Education in 2019 — University of Melbourne (#32), Australian National University (49), Sydney (59), Queensland (69), Monash (84) and University of New South Wales (96) — Indian students tend to sign up with lesser-known universities in cities boasting fast-paced lifestyles and high entrepreneurial drive. In particular, Australia’s Gold Coast — a city (pop. 638,090) which offers three research-intensive universities, i.e, Griffith (estb.1975), Bond (1987) and Southern Cross (1994) — has attracted an estimated 1,497 of the 68,404 Indian students enrolled in higher ed institutions Down Under. With the hitherto low-profile higher education institutions of the southern hemisphere having begun to challenge their much-lauded counterparts in the UK and US, in early December 2018, Study Gold Coast (estb.2008) — an initiative of the city council to increase international student enrolments — invited a group of 15 delegates including journalists, from India to acquaint them with the state-of-the-art campuses, aims and objectives, impressive curriculums, infrastructure and student body diversity of its show-piece universities. By virtue of being promoted by the municipal council, Study Gold Coast encourages strong linkages between academia and local industry and business. “The Gold Coast is a dynamic, entrepreneurial and growing city offering world-class education institutions and training facilities, with a community of professionals committed to transforming today’s students into tomorrow’s leaders. The city accepts, nurtures and embraces a diverse student community — opening its arms to people from all around the world and providing a safe and nurturing environment,” says Alfred Slogrove, CEO, Study Gold Coast. Gold Coast. An hour’s drive from Brisbane, the administrative capital of Queensland state, Gold Coast — the venue of the spectacular 21st Commonwealth Games staged last April — is Australia’s sixth-largest city and Queensland’s second largest. With a robust economy valued at AUD 31 billion (Rs.156,989 crore), Gold Coast is steadily transforming from a tourist into an education destination. Widely known for its surfing-friendly beaches, high-rise buildings, theme parks, nightlife and rainforest hinterland, Gold Coast attracts 13 million tourists annually and hosts over 30,000 students from 130 countries around the world. The city offers…

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Curious contradictions

With GDP growing at 7 percent-plus per year, the Indian economy is the fastest growing worldwide, China included. This claim is being made from every available roof top by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which is readying for General Election 2019. But while this claim is accepted by the IMF, World Bank and even The Economist at face value, several proxy indicators of the well-being of the Indian economy arouse disturbing doubts. Last March, 25 million youth applied for 90,000 jobs advertised by Indian Railways, indicating massive unemployment. In January, the well-respected private sector Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy reported that in the year ended December 2018, total employment countrywide decreased by 11 million to 397 million. Moreover, although the Modi government claims that inflation has been tamed, coin currency has almost disappeared and even roadside mendicants (whose tribe is increasing) refuse to accept coins for being valueless. Worse, the stock market seems to have no faith in the glittering economic policies of the BJP/NDA dispensation. Market indices have plunged to all-time lows and investors seem to have lost all conviction. Your correspondent — founding editor of India’s first two business magazines who hitherto prided himself on careful sectoral investing — has experienced a balanced portfolio of blue chips plunging into the red. Moreover, according to the US-based Morgan Stanley Investment Management, 23,000 dollar-millionaires have emigrated from India since 2014. Curious contradictions of the world’s fastest growing economy.

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Ugly face

The Pune-based Bajaj family which owns and manages the eponymous Bajaj Group of companies is riding high these days. In January, the Delhi-based Business Today certified it the country’s fourth biggest business group in terms of market capitalisation (Rs.3.77 lakh crore). Moreover on January 23, the House of Bajaj was voted the country’s #1 family business house by the Economic Times. The principal protagonist behind the rise and rise of the House of Bajaj into a major force in Indian industry is the machiavellian Rahul Bajaj, chairman of the Bajaj Group of Companies, operating in the automotive two-wheeler, consumer electricals, financial services and steel, among other industries. As soon as he returned from Harvard University in the mid-1960s, he elbowed out H.K. Firodia who built Bajaj Auto’s scooters manufacturing plant and his family which was a major shareholder in Bajaj Auto (BA), the group’s flagship company. Utilising the close connection of his father Kamalnayan with then dominant Congress party, Rahul ensured that BA enjoyed a total monopoly of the automotive two-wheelers market to the extent that a registered purchaser had to wait for 14 years to take delivery of his vehicle. Moreover, not content with having pushed the Firodias out of BA, he did his darndest to hijack their company Bajaj Tempo. But Mercedes Benz (Germany) which owned 50 percent of the equity refused his blandishments, and the Firodias retained control of BT (since renamed Force Motors). However despite Rahul’s best efforts, the Bajaj monopoly of the two-wheelers industry ended in the mid-1980s when the Ludhiana-based Hero Cycles teamed up with the Honda Motor Company, Japan, to quickly emerge as the country’s premier manufacturer of scooters and motor-cycles. This transformed Bajaj into a bitter opponent of liberalisation and deregulation of the economy. Meanwhile Dipak Poddar the MIT-educated professional who built up Bajaj Financial Services, a hire-purchase firm, was shouldered out and replaced by son Sanjeev Bajaj, as have the Shah brothers out of Mukand Steel. As editor of Business India and Businessworld, your correspondent was the country’s first journo to write up Rahul Bajaj as ‘King of the Road’ enabling the Bajaj clan to multiply the market capitalisation of BA. Yet when EducationWorld was struggling, Rahul point blank refused to lend a helping hand by way of advertising or even utter a few words of support. Yes, the Bajaj clan has transformed into a successful business dynasty. But it represents the ugly face of Indian capitalism.

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Fradulent hero

Fiery trade unionist, socialist and former Union minister George Fernandes who passed away on January 29 was given an indulgent, even laudatory send-off by the editorial writers in the media. The reality that he was one of the most self-serving and turncoat politicians in the history of post-independence India, was interred with his bones. Your correspondent is aware of this because after he was appointed Union industries minister in the ill-fated post-Emergency Janata government in 1977, I wrote a detailed biographical cover story titled ‘The enigma that is George Fernandes’ in a previous avatar as editor of Business India. As industry minister, his prime contribution was to expel IBM and Coca Cola — then the most respected companies globally — from India. Shortly thereafter when the tottering Janata government faced a vote of no-confidence in Parliament, he made a brilliant speech in its defence and voted against it the very next day. Subsequently, his Samata Party joined forces with the BJP which had been his sworn enemy for decades, and in 1999 Fernandes was appointed Union defence minister in the BJP/NDA coalition government led by prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. In 2004, he was forced to resign after Jaya Jaitley, secretary of the Samata Party and his constant companion was caught accepting a bribe in a sting operation organised by Tehelka magazine. Earlier in 2002 he barely survived a scandal in which his ministry imported coffins for soldiers killed in the Kargil war at thirteen times their market value. In short, George Fernandes was a mere ideological poseur bereft of any principles except his own material advancement and self-aggrandisement, who inflicted heavy damage upon public life and the Indian economy. And the final irony: his only son Sean has opted to live and work in the United States, a country for which Fernandes had nothing but absolute vitriol. Typical.

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China’s new Chairman Mao: Inside the Mind of Xi Jinping

Inside the Mind of Xi Jinping, Francois Bougon CONTEXT; Rs.599, Pages 181 Xi Jinping is now the all-powerful leader of China. A country of 1.4 billion people, it has some 90 million members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It is the world’s second largest economy with a 2017 GDP estimated at US $12 trillion (Rs.857.33 lakh crore) representing nearly 20 percent of global income, which makes it larger than the next three — Japan, Germany and the UK — put together. Xi Jinping assumed office as general secretary of the Communist Party in 2012. He has since acquired trappings of power comparable to Chairman Mao. The collective leadership model created by Deng Xiao Ping has, for all practical purposes, given way. With the constitutional bar on holding office beyond two terms having been lifted, Xi may be around for a long time as the supreme leader of China. Clearly, the world needs to know more about him. Francois Bougon’s book does just that. An experienced China-hand and a correspondent with the French daily Le Monde, he uses Xi’s speeches and initiatives to piece together a portrait that provides telling insights into Xi’s thinking and leadership style. Xi is a product of privilege (his father was a vice premier, post-1949) and privation (his father fell out of favour and Xi was sent out to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution). Instead of disillusionment with the Party, he emerged with renewed resolve to reach the top. After several initial rejection of applications to join the Party, he was finally accepted and worked his way up from local and provincial levels to national leadership. That experience has made him empathetic to rural and local-level poverty alleviation while instilling a winner-takes-all instinct for complete control over the CCP and state apparatus to realise his vision for China. Xi has reiterated and reinforced his conviction in the supremacy of the Party and its sole monopoly over political power. However, the people’s acceptance of CCP’s monopoly of political power is conditional upon the party’s commitment to continuously improving their standards of living. In recognition of that, at the 19th CCP Congress, Xi framed this bargain as “the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life”. He noted that this was a “historic shift” and “creates many new demands for the work of the Party and the country”. But the reality of contemporary China is that the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer. A study by Peking University in 2016 showed that China has one of the world’s highest levels of income inequality, with the richest 1 percent of households owning 33 percent of the country’s wealth, and the poorest 25 percent households owning just 1 percent. Ironically, communist China has over 3 million dollar millionaires, and its nearly 600 dollar billionaires outnumber those in the US. Moreover the Party has become corrupt and sleazy materially and ideologically. Its cadres and leaders have become wealthy feeding off…

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Nelson’s eye memoir

Of Counsel: The Challenges of the Modi-Jaitley economy, Arvind Subramanian, Penguin Random House, Rs.699, Pages 347 The abrupt manner of his departure and flimsy excuse he proferred for quitting his high office as chief economic adviser (CEA) to the government of India (family matters including the birth of a grandson), for spiriting himself to the bowers of Harvard University, leaving the billion-plus citizens of this tottering republic to an uncertain fate, had prejudiced your reviewer against Arvind Subramanian, author of this memoir. However the resolve to write a jaundiced review of Of Counsel melted away after one started — and substantially finished — reading this clear-eyed account of the author’s four-year stint in North Block, Delhi as principal economic advisor of the BJP-dominated coalition government at the Centre. Despite its plain and understandable bias in favour of the BJP/NDA government and his “dream boss” Union finance minister Arun Jaitley, this book is written in a frank, fluent and engaging style unexpected of a practitioner of the dismal science, and is notable for its deep lateral thinking, logic and mentally stimulating properties. Your reviewer purchased this volume in hope that it would provide illuminating insights into the complex and controversial economic issues of the past quinquennium — demonetisation of high value currency notes in 2016; the troubled rollout of a complicated Goods and Services Tax; the RBI-government clash on the issue of recapitalising public sector banks which prompted the resignation of the Central bank’s governor Urjit Patel; the deep agrarian crisis which has resulted in a suicides epidemic in rural India, and a chorus of demand for waiver of farm loans which could destroy the country’s banking and credit systems. To the author’s credit, these challenges and issues which have snowballed to the extent that the odds against re-election of the BJP in General Election 2019 — now barely 75 days away — have reduced considerably, are squarely confronted and intelligently debated, even if not satisfactorily answered. According to Subramanian, it’s important to understand that post-independence India is a unique “precocious development nation” inasmuch as it is “a complete outlier in having sustained democracy at very low levels of literacy, deep social fissures, and with a highly agrarian economy”. Despite these formidable challenges, in his opinion, the “economy hasn’t been doing too badly: 6-6.5 percent growth rates for the past 35 years, but with lots of problems,” he writes. Against this backdrop, Subramanian provides his take on the landmark economic initiatives of the Modi-Jaitley administration of the past five years. On demonetisation the CEA makes it plain that he was not consulted or informed about this “unique initiative” which “presupposed an extraordinary amount of resilience in the economy”, and of which he heard on television on November 8, 2016. Without directly criticising demo, the author comments on its “two puzzles” — political and economic. First, if demo was as great a shock to the poor and vulnerable at the bottom of the social pyramid, why did the BJP sweep the assembly election in Uttar…

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Hong Kong: China proximity benefits

China’s surge in global university rankings has come largely at the expense of its neighbours, with competitors shunted backwards by the momentum of the world’s most populous nation. But for its diminutive half-sibling, China’s hulking presence is a launch platform for new opportunities. Hong Kong’s university leaders say the benefits of living next door to China far outweighes the drawbacks, and lures top academics from around the world. Blessed with a familiar working environment, British-style institutional autonomy, a widespread grasp of English and a plethora of Top 200 institutions, the territory offers a natural base camp for East-West collaborations. Just a short train ride from some of China’s biggest and fastest-growing finance and technology hubs, Hong Kong universities also have unparalleled access to research partnerships, industry investment and an almost inexhaustible supply of foreign students. “Many universities would like to be sitting exactly where we are,” says Hong Kong University (HKU) vice-president Ian Holliday. “Students around the world can see that China is going to be part of their future, their personal story. We’ve been in the right place at the right time, in a sense.” Hong Kong’s top universities have experienced continuous improvement in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings over the past three years. Since 2017, the territory has claimed five Top 200 institutions, a total equalled only by London. Prof. Holliday says that inclusion in what is known as the Greater Bay Area — a development strategy encompassing Guangzhou, Shenzhen and seven other Chinese cities clustered around the Pearl River Delta, as well as the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau — promises to accelerate the progress. “The rest of the world is looking at the Greater Bay,” he says. “We would be foolish to ignore it.” As a hotbed of entrepreneurship and innovation fuelling a gross domestic product of about $1.5 trillion (Rs.107 lakh crore), the region offers enormous business opportunities. And with a population of similar size to the UK, it is a boundless source of international students — not only for subsidised undergraduate places which are tightly rationed in Hong Kong, but also for self-financing Masters programmes. The University of Chicago Booth School of Business has premises in Hong Kong. But with space limited in the territory, much of the action is taking place on the Chinese mainland, where Hong Kong universities have forged partnerships with companies, district authorities and universities, including China’s prestigious C9 League — the equivalent of the US Ivy League or the UK’s Russell Group. Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), ranked just five places below HKU despite being 80 years younger, also leverages its proximity to China through mainland partnerships. Positioned as Asia’s answer to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and specialising in a similar range of disciplines, it invested strongly in commercialisation and knowledge transfer “from the very beginning”, according to president Wei Shyy. That Western flavour has lived on, with about 10 percent of HKUST’s undergraduates recruited from outside China and Taiwan,…

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Zimbabwe: Hard days ahead for academy

Academics say that the violent crackdown on protests in Zimbabwe has squashed any optimism for the future of universities in the country that remained after the ousting of former president Robert Mugabe in 2017. Zimbabwe has experienced its worst violence in over a decade as the forces of Emmerson Mnangagwa, Mugabe’s successor as president, brutally suppress demonstrations against fuel price rises. Police have shot 12 people dead and many more have been injured, while hundreds of protesters have been arrested. The economic difficulties that prompted the government to dramatically increase fuel prices in January are likely to have a significant impact on universities, according to Stephen Chan, professor of international relations at SOAS University, London, who says Zimbabwean universities are already badly underfunded. “This is something that will build and build. The country is not going to get better economically any time soon… and so the government is likely to cut its public subsidies to the universities,” Prof. Chan told Times Higher Education. Chen adds that the government’s intermittent blocking of the Internet during the violence has already disrupted access to vital educational materials for students and staff. Because Zimbabwean university libraries often lack funding for printed books, foreign governments have funded electronic access to periodicals and books. Without the Internet, however, such access is of limited use. Admire Mare, a Zimbabwean academic based at the Namibia University of Science and Technology, says transport costs have soared beyond the reach of higher education staff and students. “The fuel price hike is certainly going to affect students. Transport and accommodation prices are likely to go up… I can see the situation becoming dire if progressive social policies are not put in place in the next few days and months,” says Mare. Simukai Chigudu, professor of African politics at Oxford University, describes the situation in Zimbabwe as “deeply disturbing and deeply troubling”. “The university is certainly a site where violence and politics play themselves out (in Zimbabwe)… frequently there have been crackdowns from the government,” he says. However, Chigudu says Zimbabwe’s universities offer a beacon of hope. He recalls that during the turbulence of the mid-2000s, academics remained committed to their work. Even when the University of Zimbabwe was “absolutely cash-strapped, with no flowing water, they continued to write, publish and convene and have intellectual discussions”. “It tells you quite a bit about the function of the university as a social institution… a lot of people are doing what they can, not only to get by, but to continue to be educators and teachers,” he adds. (Excerpted and adapted from The Economist and Times Higher Education)

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Venezuela: Academics invite UN intervention

University leaders in Venezuela have called on the United Nations to intervene in the country’s political crisis amid warnings that deterioration of the higher education system is approaching the point of no return. After years of political turmoil resulting in sky-high inflation and scant public investment, some 3 million Venezuelans are said to have left the country since 2014. Many of them are believed to be students and early career professionals, including academics who can no longer afford to live on what they receive from poverty-stricken universities. Scores of people have died in protests sparked by the stand-off between Nicolas Maduro, who has led the country since 2013, and Juan Guaido, president of the National Assembly, who declared himself national president in January in the wake of 2018’s contested elections. University students are believed to be among the dead. In a statement, the country’s rectors’ association, Averu, condemned the “impossible violation” of human rights in Venezuela. It urged the UN to intervene, calling on the body to examine “the possibility of taking measures to prevent (further) aggravation”. Jose Ibarra, professor of social care at the Central University of Venezuela, says that staff at his institution are living on “very poor salaries” and, in some cases, are not getting paid at all. Last year, lecturers across the country were encouraged to seek secondary sources of income as institutions warned of an increasing struggle to stay afloat through a deepening economic crisis. But Prof. Ibarra says his university is trying as best as it can to continue teaching. On January 30, Simon Bolivar University, one of Venezuela’s most prestigious institutions, announced that it has been cut off from the main water supply for 65 days. The university campus is rationing the water left in two reserve tanks, and allowing the surrounding community limited access to bathrooms. Raisa Urribarri, emeritus professor of human and social sciences at the University of the Andes, says this is one of countless examples of how universities are striving to support the community despite all the upheavals. However, she warned that “if a change is not achieved in Venezuela, breaking the cycle of (universities) deteriorating… will be impossible”. “It will be a task for the new political leadership to create the right conditions to faculty to return,” she says, adding that “universities in Venezuela have been devastated” by a draining of resources. (Excerpted and adapted from The Economist and Times Higher Education)

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China: Rising wave of foreign students

In a restaurant in the backstreets of Beijing, 12 Pakistanis and Afghans studying at the China University of Communications tell scary stories of their arrival in China. But any ill feeling about those early days has long since dissipated. They agree that apart from some taxi drivers, the Chinese are very helpful. Friendly relations between their countries and China mean they are welcomed as brothers. Most important, they are all on full scholarships — free tuition, free accommodation and a stipend of 3,000 yuan (Rs.31,514) a month, more than three times Pakistan’s GDP per person. Beijing’s many Xinjiang restaurants serving halal food are a big plus. There are nearly 500,000 foreign students in China, about 50 percent of whom are on degree programmes. South Koreans are the most numerous. They often come to China if they cannot get into good universities at home — unlike Americans, who come out of cultural and political curiosity, and because it looks good on their CVs. But the share of students from the developing world is growing fast, especially from dozens of countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan that have signed up to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a global infrastructure-building project. Overall numbers of foreign students grew fourfold in 2004-16; student numbers from BRI-related countries expanded eightfold. In countries such as Britain, Australia and America, foreign students are welcomed mostly because universities can make more money out of them than out of locals. For many of the foreign students, a cheap foreign degree is the main attraction. Several of the Pakistanis tried, but failed, to get European, North American and Australian scholarships; getting a degree at home would be much costlier than the one the Chinese are offering. And the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a huge BRI-related project in Pakistan, means that jobs are plentiful for those with knowledge of Mandarin. For many students, language is a problem. Some universities have created English-medium courses — Richard Coward of China Admissions, a firm that helps students find university places, knows of 2,000 such programmes — but most students have to use Chinese and few speak it well. That is difficult for teachers. “The government and universities don’t want the foreigners to fail, but as the number has increased, the quality has fallen,” says Shuiyun Liu of Beijing Normal University. Foreign students have reservations, too, says Ms Liu, who has researched foreigners’ satisfaction with teaching in China. “The rules are all hidden here,” she says. And the relationship between teacher and pupils is different. “There’s not much critical thinking. Students are not always encouraged to challenge the teachers.” Learning in China can also be an endurance test. Lectures commonly go on for three to four hours, with only a ten-minute break. That said, students from developing countries tend to be more enthusiastic than students from the West. “The culture is amazing,” says Ugochukwu Izundu, a Nigerian who did a Masters degree in data analysis at the Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University in the eastern city of…

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United States: Early childhood education boom

From hot dogs, to automobiles, to diesel fuel, Americans have been touched by plenty of German inventions. Kindergarten (‘children-garden’) is one of them. The programme for educating youngest children through play and social interaction, meant to ease transition from home to formal schooling, was first brought to America in the 1850s and spread quickly. Kindergarten has flourished, becoming so entrenched that it is part of the formal education system’s name (‘K through 12’). Yet the garden of even younger Americans, including preschoolers, has too often gone uncultivated. The share of three and four-year-olds enrolled in preschool hasn’t changed much in two decades. While the average country in the OECD, a club of rich nations, enrolls 80 percent of its three and four-year-old children in school, America enrolls just 54 percent, lagging behind Chile and Mexico. This is true despite abundant evidence of the benefits of early education, especially for disadvantaged children. High-quality preschool programmes can have lasting benefits, including improving the odds of graduating from school, earning more and staying away from drugs and out of prison. For parents there are gains, too: when their children are in day care, they can work. In the shadows of a government shutdown and chaotic governance generally, one achievement of President Donald Trump’s administration has gone unnoticed. In 2018, Congress approved more than $5.2 billion (Rs.37,440 crore) in “childcare and development block grants”, which subsidise child care for low-income families, nearly doubling available funding and indicating a rare example of bipartisan collaboration. Head Start, a federal programme that educates poor children before they enter kindergarten, has also received more funding. In the 36 gubernatorial elections held last November, 29 winning candidates either publicly commented on the importance of early childhood education or supported such programmes. For example, Mike DeWine, the Republican governor of Ohio who assumed office in January, promised expanded access to preschools during his campaign. In a politically symbolic move, his first staffing announcement was to choose a director of children’s initiatives. California’s new governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has the biggest and most closely watched plans of any state. He recently announced $1.2 billion (Rs.8,539 crore) in new funding directed at the spectrum of young children’s needs, from home visits, to affordable childcare, to expanded pre-K. Such widespread support tends to mask two trade-offs inherent in making early-years education more widely available. First, researchers believe it is better to back smaller, higher-quality programmes. “It’s always easier for a state to go from better to bigger than bigger to better,” says David Kirp, author of The Sandbox Investment (2007), a book about preschool and politics. For impatient politicians, it is tempting to go for scale first. Second, early-years teachers are often ill-paid. This can hurt the quality of the programmes on offer. Earnings are so paltry that 58 percent of child-care workers in California qualify for some form of public assistance, such as food stamps, says Deborah Stipek of Stanford University. This contributes to extremely high turnover. Around a quarter of…

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Letter from London: Constrained by obsolete traditions

In my last Letter from London I discussed the continuing and accelerating decline in the financing and quality of tertiary education in the UK, and promised to examine some of the fundamental principles on which our higher education system is based. For a start, there is nothing sacrosanct about the three-year university course. The private University of Buckingham, for example, has compressed the traditional three-year degree programme into two years by reducing universities’ ridiculously long holidays. My daughter, who studied English literature there, had excellent tutors with Oxbridge doctorates and found her assignments and the stringency of evaluation to be of Oxbridge standard. Admittedly this isn’t true of all subjects, but it shows what can be done if institutions are prepared to jettison time-honoured traditions. It’s also useful to remember that students coming back from War service in 1945 completed short-term degree courses, which didn’t prevent them from doing well and pursuing brilliant careers. Likewise the assumption that higher education should start at age 18 is questionable. For some young people, signing up for short-term courses appropriate to their aptitudes and ambitions with professional colleges or apprenticeships in business firms would be a more advisable option, leaving university till later. There’s also the option of pursuing a degree programme with the Open University or taking other online courses which cater to almost every interest. It is also absurd that entry into so many professions is restricted to university graduates. Why should nursing, for example, need a university degree, except at highest specialist levels? Surely it would be better taught on the job, as it used to be, with frequent in-service short courses arranged by hospitals. Even law doesn’t need to be a postgrad programme. My wife, who read classics at Cambridge in the 1960s, went on to study the practical course of the Law Society’s College of Law, where graduates studied for three years and non-graduates for five, while serving apprenticeships with law firms. This didn’t prevent her becoming the youngest ever lady partner of a city of London law firm (no small achievement in days when it was a heavily male-dominated profession). Jurisprudence is, of course, a proper university subject, but the practice of law is another matter altogether. The recent fascinating EW essays of Prof. Li Liyang from Beijing indicate how much we can learn from the Chinese in their relentless drive for excellence. Despite their enormous undergraduate population the universal gaokao university entrance examination is uncompromisingly tough, to the extent that only 500,000 of the 9.5 million takers enter pre-eminent universities into which colossal resources are poured. And China’s latest plan for a super-category of Double First Class institutions should give us pause for thought about the wishy-washy egalitarian nonsense that has become so depressingly fashionable in the decadent West. (Dr. Peter Greenhalgh is a Cambridge classical scholar and former professor at Cape Town University)

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Preparing for the all-important job interview

Asha Kaul, professor and chair, communication area and former chairperson, placements, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Adapted from Harvard ascend.com) With contemporary India experiencing the phenomenon of jobless growth, particularly in the organised sector or formal economy, competition for the shrinking number of best jobs at the entry and middle management levels is intensifying. Here are some guidelines and useful tips for bagging that all-important job. When you enter the room and are facing the interview panel, the first question you are likely to be asked is, “Tell me something about yourself”. Before you begin answering, bear in mind that these days, recruiters care less about grades and academic performance and more about soft skills — how quickly and creatively a candidate thinks, whether she will be able to cope in high-pressure environments, and what is the candidate organisation fit. Therefore it’s important to prepare yourself for the big day by being familiar with the organisation’s culture and values. It’s easy to source this information from the company’s annual or media reports, or by connecting with current employees over LinkedIn and reading up reviews on websites such as Glassdoor. Look for clues: For instance, is there age diversity and what is the overall attrition. Low attrition will indicate that the organisation nurtures its employees. Now comes the critical part of preparing for the difficult questions. Based on my interaction with recruiters as the former placements chairperson at IIM-Ahmedabad, I am aware that some questions are designed to unnerve the candidate and test her responses in a stressful situation. Here are some tricky questions you can expect, along with suggestions for conceptualising responses that will demonstrate your suitability for the job. “Why should we hire you?” Your response to this question should be steered to indicate a ‘fit’. Demonstrate confidence and present your personality traits which match the recruting organisation’s culture. “My achievements match your requirements” (spell out the requirements which you have researched) is a starter to lead recruiters in a direction that’s comfortable for you. The next question is likely to be, “What are your achievements and to what extent do they match our requirements?” This is a good time to detail your achievements in sports, academics and extracurriculars. Be careful, though, to link them to the position you’re discussing. For instance, tie your accomplishments in sports to leadership; in academics to project management; and in extracurricular activities to teamwork. Another question recruitment managers are likely to ask is: “What are some of your weaknesses?” This is a query framed to test your honesty. While responding, spell out some of your weaknesses in a straightforward and honest manner. You are human after all! However, the confessed weaknesses should not be ones that may be interpreted as detrimental to work. Responses such as, “I nitpick”, “I am in the habit of interrupting”, “I tend to talk while eating” are neutral and won’t hurt your chances of landing the job you want. It’s advisable not to be too frank and confess…

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Soaring demand for commercial pilots

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University of Canterbury, New Zealand

Registered as Canterbury College in 1863, University of Canterbury, New Zealand admitted women students in its very first batch and produced the first woman graduate of the British empire. In 1961 University of Canterbury, New Zealand was granted autonomous university status The University of Canterbury (UC, estb.1873), New Zealand’s second-oldest institution of higher education, is consistently ranked among the Top 1 percent of universities worldwide with an excellent reputation for faculty research. Sited on an expansive 170-acre campus in Christchurch, UC is ranked #231 in the latest QS World University Rankings 2019 and awarded 5-Star QS certification for research and teaching excellence. The Times Higher Education WUR (World University Rankings) 2019 ranks UC in the #300-350 band. Currently, University of Canterbury’s five colleges — arts, business, education, law, science and engineering — offer 70 study programmes to 14,000 students from over 100 countries mentored by 715 full-time faculty and visiting faculty from top-ranked universities including Oxford and Cambridge. A research-intensive institution, University of Canterbury, boasts the most extensive network of research field stations in New Zealand (pop. 4.7 million) including a premier astronomical research facility on Mount John, Tekapo and research establishments in Antarctica and Nigeria. Registered as the Canterbury College in 1863 by several Oxford and Cambridge graduates, University of Canterbury, New Zealand admitted women students in its very first batch and produced the first woman honours graduate of the British empire. In 1961, Canterbury College was granted autonomous university status and transformed into the University of Canterbury. Famous University of Canterbury, New Zealand alumni include prominent NZ politician Sir Apirana Ngata; legendary physicist Ernest Rutherford; children’s author Margaret Mahy; Creig Nevill Manning, engineering director of Google, and internationally respected economist David Teece. Christchurch. Christchurch (pop. 350,000) is the second-largest city of this island nation and is currently undergoing a major makeover to transform into the world’s most modern and sustainable city. Hosting the country’s largest ICT industry cluster, this ‘digital city’ is a hub of innovation, research and technology, and boasts the lowest unemployment in Australasia. Major industries include engineering, biotechnology, avionics, electronics, software engineering, agriculture, education, forestry, nutraceuticals, Antarctic research and tourism. This coastal city offers a wide range of recreational options with surfing-friendly beaches 15-minutes drive from the city centre and alpine skifields within two hours drive. Other attractions include the historic French town of Akaroa, thermal hot springs of Hanmer, snowboarding slopes of the Southern Alps and whale watching waters of Kaikoura. Christchurch is also popular among students for its variety of restaurants, cafes, pubs, concerts, sports and cultural events. The city experiences temperate, dry summers with temperatures averaging 22°C in summer. But in winter, temperature often falls to sub-zero. Campus facilities. UC’s 170-acre main campus, overlooking the River Avon, is currently under renovation expected to be completed by year end. Over the past decade, the university management has invested $163 million (Rs.800 crore) in building new state-of-the-art science and engineering labs with over 1.9 million units of research equipment, teaching spaces, 24/7 computer suites,…

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Venkateshwar International School, Delhi

Established 18 years ago in Sector 10, Dwarka to offer high-quality primary-secondary education, Venkateshwar International School, Delhi has experienced steady rise in enrolments year-on-year, from 200 to 2,700 students including 1,079 girl children because of favourable word-of-mouth publicity – Autar Nehru Established in 2001 in the then newly notified suburb of Dwarka, Venkateshwar International School (VIS), Sector 10, has steadily built a reputation in Delhi NCR for providing rigorous, contemporary IT-enabled K-12 education supplemented with a wide array of co-curricular and sports education options. In the EducationWorld India School Rankings 2018-19, VIS is ranked #8 in Delhi and #12 in Delhi NCR in the highly competitive co-ed day schools category. Affiliated with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), Venkateshwar International School was promoted in the new millennium by Rajpal Solanki, founder and managing director of Sohn Steel Pvt. Ltd and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader, under the aegis of Sri Venkateshwar Education Society, to offer high-quality primary-secondary education to parents flocking to the high-rise housing societies of Dwarka. Since then, student enrolment has risen year-on-year from 200 to 2,700 including 1,079 girls mentored by 150 teachers, mainly because of word-of-mouth publicity. “Venkateshwar International School is positioned as a progressive school offering internationally benchmarked education rooted in Indian values and traditions. Since inception, our objective has been to focus not only on academic excellence but on social, emotional and ethical development of children as well. Since then over the past 18 years, we have maintained our growth momentum and reputation through continuous improvement on all fronts,” says Mrinalini Kaura, director and founder-principal of Venkateshwar International School. An alumna of Kurukshetra and Delhi universities who taught at Modern School, Barakhamba Road and served as vice principal of DPS, Noida and Ghaziabad, Kaura had a fortuitous meeting with Rajpal Solanki, when she was flat-hunting in Dwarka. “It was a meeting which changed my life and gave me an opportunity to apply my knowledge and skills of institution development,” recalls Kaura. True to her word and the driving force of Venkateshwar International School for the past two decades, Kaura has played a major role in developing VIS into a 21st century institution infused with Indian traditions and culture as per the promoter’s brief, while simultaneously introducing international best practices, teacher development programmes and upgrading the school’s infrastructure. “Today we pride ourselves on our contemporary infrastructure, excellent teachers who deliver personalised experiential learning, and our wide range of co-curricular and sports activities. Our alumni are doing well in their chosen professions with many having been admitted into prestigious IITs and top-ranked foreign universities,” says Kaura. Venkateshwar International School‘s child-centred experiential learning pedagogies, designed to develop students’ critical thinking skills, have resulted in consistently good board exam results. In 2018, of the 200 Venkateshwar International School’s students who wrote the class X CBSE exam, 62 scored 90 percent-plus. Similarly, the average score of the class XII school-leaving students was 84.2 percent, with 72 scoring 90 percent-plus. The high-quality, comprehensive academic programme is supported by excellent…

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No idea of building knowledge society

Budgetary allocations in India are not just a parade of numbers, they represent a parable of messages articulating a regime’s logic of welfare and its vision of the future. Budgets also provide a sense of how a government senses the nature of citizenship. When one reads budgetary allocations, one summons not the accountant but the psychoanalyst to decipher what ails the ruling dispensation in Delhi. When proxy finance minister Piyush Goyal presented the Union budget 2019-20 on February 1, he described it as a roadmap for the future. If one takes words seriously, one must tell Goyal that what he has mapped are not the highways of the future, but a series of roadblocks. Uncle Scrooge seems like Santa Claus compared to Piyush Goyal. This essay will use the budget, especially the statistics on education, to speculate what the regime thinks about developing a knowledge society. It’s obvious that the Union budget 2019-20 is a rhetorical device to hide the BJP/NDA government’s indifference to academic education. In its gargantuan style more attuned to the Guinness Book of Records, the BJP visualises a $10 trillion (Rs.714.8 lakh crore) economy because of its emphasis on technology and infrastructure development. It promises revolutions in space and transport, but is absent-minded about people. It seems to think rockets and vehicles make an economy, but it has no sense of the quality of people required to build a knowledge economy. Consider the facts. In a mood of election euphoria, it has promised a 10 percent reserved quota in higher education and government jobs for the upper castes, but has failed to translate what this means for the university. There is no plan for the necessary increase in capacity. Goyal visualises an increase of 200,000 seats but has made little provision for academic personnel or infrastructure. Presumably seduced by the promise of the digital economy, he has forgotten the tangible requirements of laboratories, libraries and classrooms. Secondly, the budget awards Central universities Rs.6,604.46 crore. The money, if spread across 49 Central universities is meagre. In fact, one senses a benign neglect of education in this era of elections. There’s a clear hint that universities should be self-financing in terms of research and infrastructure. Yet in the Orwellian world of Mr. Goyal, some institutions are more equal than others. The regime is unembarrassed about starving ordinary higher education institutions to fatten what it describes as institutes of eminence, including the yet non-existent Ambani centre. This allocation creates privileged institutes encouraged to indulge in conspicuous consumption in a wider desert of half-starved universities. Institutions of eminence have been allocated Rs.400 crore, a new year gift that will no doubt delight them. Regrettably the Union budget 2019-20 shows little understanding of linkages between skills, jobs, innovation and education. Creating this synergy has been left to the self-help plans of the students’ community. The BJP seems amnesiacal of its promises around skilling as a key strategy of education policy. In fact, the Union budget is an abandonment of youth at…

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Bhavya Raninga & Nihar Shah

A team comprising Bhavya Raninga (class XII) and Nihar Shah (class X) — students of the CBSE-affiliated St. Kabir’s School, Vadodara — was recently (November) crowned national champions of the TCS IT Wiz (TCSITW) 2018. In the national finale staged in Mumbai, the duo outsmarted teams from St. Paul’s English School, Bangalore; St. Jude’s, Kotagiri; Navy Children School, Kochi; Loyola School, Jamshedpur, and Centre Point School, Nagpur. The team from St. Jude’s Kotagiri was adjudged runner-up. Following three rigorous elimination rounds which began in early August, the duo — regional and final qualifiers in the past — bested 13,908 teams of 1,200 schools from 12 cities countrywide in the 20th edition of TCSITW to win Amazon vouchers valued at Rs.210,000, a gold medal each and the outsized champions trophy for the school. A general knowledge new technologies testing quiz started in 1999 by the Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy Services Ltd — India’s most valuable company in terms of market capitalisation (Rs.7.4 lakh crore) — TCSITW is the largest inter-school IT Quiz in India open to students of classes VIII-XII countrywide. The objective of this annual inter-school quiz is to “build awareness, emphasise the importance of IT skills and enable students to view technology from a holistic perspective”. The duo is obviously elated about winning the country’s most prestigious open inter-school quizzing trophy. “Our school is very supportive of co-curricular activities such as debates, quizzing, environment clubs etc. Our computer science teachers Swarna Durga and Dilip Chaini in particular, took great pains to prepare us for TCSITW and other inter-school contests. They have enabled us to win several general knowledge and science quiz contests over the past two years, and groomed us to work as a team,” says Nihar Shah. Currently, Bhavya Raninga and Nihar Shah are in the thick of preparing for their class XII and X board exams. While Nihar Shahwants to research new-age technologies after completing his Plus Two, Bhavya is an aspiring medical practitioner. “But that’s in the future. Right now, we are focused on winning national and international quiz competitions,” she says. Way to go! Paromita Sengupta (Bangalore)

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Apurva Chauhan

A class XI student of City Montessori School, Gomti Nagar, Lucknow — ranked Uttar Pradesh’s #1 co-ed day school in the EW India School Rankings 2018-19 — Apurva Chauhan (15) is the youngest Indian to join the elite group of world-renowned opera singers such as Cecilia Bartolli (Italy), Renee Fleming (USA), Montserrat Caballe (Spain) etc. Next month (April), Apurva will be awarded a level 4 diploma of the Associated Board of Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM), London at the board’s Southeast Asia Diploma Awards 2019 ceremony scheduled to be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The elder child of high-profile civil servants Padmaja Chauhan, inspector general of the Police Recruitment Board, Lucknow and her husband Ajay, commissioner of the Uttar Pradesh housing board, Apurva inherited her mother’s love for music and started training in Hindustani classical music at age three and learning the piano a year later. In 2014, she signed up with the city’s Arya Institute of Performing Arts, an ABRSM exam centre for western classical music including operatic singing. Within two years, this child prodigy successfully completed the Grade VIII ABRSM vocal exam, mastering the combined syllabuses of grade I-VIII in 12 months, a “unique achievement” which qualified her to take the Level 4 diploma exam last October. A soprano who performs in Italian, French, German, English and even Hindi languages, Apurva’s repertoire includes arias from Mozart, Beethoven, Purcell, Puccini and Vivaldi, among others. “I attribute my quick learning of opera music to my early induction into Hindustani classical music and piano. This helped me to read music and pitch high notes with ease,” she recalls. Also a nationally ranked tennis player, she has already been conferred the Advanced Placement Scholar Award of the US College Board which eases admission of awardees into American universities. “My dream is to make opera music popular in India and perhaps blend opera vocals with Hindustani music ragas. I also hope to intern with the Royal Opera House, London and Metropolitan Opera, New York,” says this multi-talented teenager who has developed the knack of realising her dreams. Sruthy Susan Ullas (Bangalore)

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Diplomathon UAE 2019

Mumbai, February 3. More than 330 students of 30 schools across the United Arab Emirates and seven schools from India attended a two-day inaugural Diplomathon UAE 2019 conference in Dubai city on February 1-2. “Diplomathon is a unique platform for constructive leadership and engagement of youth in real time dialogues via new technologies to become ‘world-ready’ in the new age of globalisation,” explained Niyati Khanna, co-founder and international head of the Mumbai-based Apogeeoh Education Pvt. Ltd, which organised the two-day conference for class V-XII students in the UAE and India. “Diplomathon is a student leadership conference that promotes a different approach towards learning global affairs through simulations of the United Nations and other international organisations to enable students to develop a variety of skills such as leadership, role play, sandboxing, public speaking, critical thinking, negotiation and diplomacy.” The top six schools of Diplomathon UAE 2019 were The Winchester School, Jebel Ali, Dubai; Oxford School, Dubai; Podar International School, Khar (Mumbai); Podar International School Powai (Mumbai); Gems Modern Academy, Dubai with the Best School Delegation trophy awarded to Sri Sri Ravishankar Vidya Mandir, Borivali, Mumbai. Honda Foundation awards 2018-19 New Delhi, February 4. Honda Cars India Ltd (HCIL) presented the 12th edition of the Young Engineer and Scientists (Y-E-S) Award for 2018-19 to 14 students of India’s Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in New Delhi. The Y-E-S awards were instituted in India by the Honda Foundation in 2007 and are facilitated by HCIL to nurture students who have excelled in science and technology. The awards are conferred annually upon the best IIT students after a rigorous evaluation by a panel of senior Honda executives and prominent Indian scientists. Scholarships of US $3000 were presented to the 14 students selected from six IITs — Bombay, Madras, Kharagpur, Kanpur, Roorkee and Guwahati — on the basis of their cumulative grade point average (CGPA), essays and two rounds of personal interviews with the selection committee of senior Honda executives and Shirish Garud, director of TERI, the chief assessor of the selection committee. “We received tremendous response and enthusiasm from students this year. Thus far, we have awarded 154 IIT students in 12 years. The Y-E-S Awards are a small contribution to encourage them to fulfill their academic dreams,” said Gaku Nakanishi, president of HCIL, speaking on the occasion. GIIS scholarships offer Mumbai, February 5. The Singapore-based Global Indian International School (GIIS), which has a network of 19 campuses in seven countries, announced generous scholarships of Rs.4.75 crore for students in India. Now in its tenth year, the Global Citizen Scholarship will enable ten awardees to study for two years (2019-2021) at the GIIS Smart Campus in Punggol, Singapore. GIIS, which has established six campuses in India, has invested SGD 7.5 million (Rs.39.3 crore) in this programme and enabled 80 Indian students to enter top-ranked universities worldwide. To apply for this two-year scholarship programme, students in India can log onto www.giisscholarships.org and register before March 17. “We have always been committed to India. Our Global…

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Sikkim: Government – Microsoft agreement

Gangtok, February 1. The Sikkim state government has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with megacorp Microsoft Inc, to prepare youth to become future-ready and transform its e-governance and core sectors, said R.B. Subba, the state’s minister for education. Under the agreement, Microsoft will support the state to integrate IT (information technology) content in the curriculum of state board-affiliated schools and build teacher capacity through the Microsoft Educator Network and Innovative Educator programmes. Meghalaya Teacher test leakage charge Shillong, February 1. The state police has invoked the assistance of cyber security experts to investigate an alleged leakage of a question paper of the Meghalaya Teacher Eligibility Test (MTET) for graduates aspiring to teach in lower and upper primary government schools. The leakage was reported hours before the examination was due to commence on January 31. Congress MLA Dr. Azad Aman who represents Rajabala constituency of West Garo Hills district, has demanded a CBI inquiry. “To ensure transparency, there should be a full CBI inquiry into the entire system of who sets the questions, where question papers are printed and under whose custody printed questions are stored,” says Aman. Punjab Free bicycles for girl students Amritsar, February 1. The Congress-ruled state government has resolved to distribute 138,000 free-of-charge bicycles to girl students in government higher secondary schools statewide, to encourage them to continue their education beyond high school, said a government spokesperson. The scheme, to be administered by the women and child development ministry, has a projected cost of Rs.40 crore, said Punjab education minister Om Parkash Soni. Of the total 138,000, 11,085 bicycles will be awarded to girl students in Amritsar district. Delhi NTA mobile app New Delhi, February 4. The National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts computer-based entrance examinations for admission into several higher education institutions countrywide, has launched a mobile application for school-leaving students to practice and take mock tests on their smartphones, says a government communique. Responding to a question in the Lok Sabha, Satyapal Singh, Union minister of state for HRD, said the NTA has established a network of 4,000 Test Practice Centres across the country to acquaint aspirants, especially rural candidates, with computer-based tests. More than 100,000 have already registered and over 1 million students have benefited from these app and web services, he added. Rajasthan Textbooks review initiative Jaipur, February 13. The newly-elected Congress government of the state has constituted two textbook committees to review the content of government school textbooks for children in classes I-VIII and IX-XII “The previous BJP government had made changes in syllabus for fulfilling its political agenda. Our government is against infusion of politics in education and keeping that in mind, committees comprising highly qualified educationists have been set up to review the syllabus,” said education minister Govind Singh Dotasara. Both committees are expected to submit their reports to the government shortly. Maharashtra Self-defence classes Mumbai, February 16. The state government is all set to introduce self-defence training in the state’s school curriculums, said education minister Vinod Tawde. The…

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They said it in February

“I daresay that humanity hasn’t matured.” Pope Francis, acknowledging Catholic priests’ sexual abuse of nuns after a mass in Abu Dhabi (February 5) “My resignation is not an attempt to be heroic or to make a statement. It is simply the only thing I felt anyone in this position must do. It is not just for one individual, Jignesh Mevani’s freedom, but the larger freedom of ideas, including my freedom, being curtailed.” Hemantkumar Shah, principal of HK Arts College, Ahmedabad, who resigned after the college management acceded to the demands of BJP student leaders and cancelled an event to be addressed by Congress MLA and Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani (February 12) “When I was a kid there were lots of superheroes that I wanted to be. But I can tell you right now, from where I stand, with all my experience, the real superheroes are teachers — they’re the ones that change the world.” Hollywood star Hugh Jackman, unveiling the Top 10 finalists for the Global Teacher Prize 2019 (February 20) “I was an eighth-grade dropout… no education, forced to play tennis, and no choice. So, I always correlate ‘no education’ with ‘no choice’. Education endows you with choice… My lack of education was probably the greatest vehicle to my commitment and interest in the education sector.” Andre Agassi, former international tennis star, at the launch of Square Panda’s India operations (The Economic Times, February 21) “The sedition law is a low IQ piece of legislation. If we want to improve the national intelligence quotient, we should scrap it.” Well-known author Arundhati Roy, on the Uttar Pradesh police filing sedition charges against Aligarh Muslim University students (Outlook, February 25) “Yes, we are doing politics over education. It is our responsibility to bring education into politics and we want to do it.” Manish Sisodia, Delhi deputy chief minister, allocating 26 percent of the budget to education (February 26)

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West Bengal: Campus election politics

As the country waits for the Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora to visit the troubled state of Jammu and Kashmir on March 4-5 after which he will announce the Lok Sabha election schedule, West Bengal’s fiery chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who is a prime ministerial possibility should the united anti-BJP parties (mahagathbandhan) win General Election 2019, is fighting on two fronts in West Bengal. This two-fronts battle has the potential to cloud her prime ministerial ambitions. Even as Banerjee and leaders of her Trinamool Congress party (TMC) are trying to stitch an alliance of diverse political parties together, they are under fire from national allies — Congress and CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist) — because of a chit fund scam in which her party members are allegedly involved. An incident of student unrest at Jadavpur University — one of the few surviving top-ranked higher education institutions of West Bengal — on February 19 has created another major problem for Banerjee and the ruling TMC, now in its second term of office in West Bengal after it dramatically ended 34 years of uninterrupted rule of the CPM-led Left Front coalition over the state in the legislative assembly election of 2011. On February 19, during an agitation of CPM and Left Front students demanding student union elections, JU vice chancellor Suranjan Das was injured and had to be hospitalised. The students had surrounded the vice chancellor demanding formal student union elections. In May 2017 the TMC government had banned student union elections (following recommendations of the J.M. Lyngdoh Commission appointed by the Supreme Court in 2006) and restricted students’ participation in varsity governance to representation by students nominated by the vice chancellor and faculty to student councils. The back story of the on-going agitation for representative students’ union elections is that in July 2017, the TMC implemented the Lyngdoh Committee’s recommendations and promulgated the West Bengal Universities and Colleges (Composition, Functions and Procedure for Elections to Students’ Council) Rules 2017. The rules laid down a uniform indirect system of elections to student bodies and banned students unions backed and funded by political parties. However, the results of a two-day referendum conducted on January 30-31 by students in Jadavpur University indicated that 97 percent of the 9,176 students who voted, favour representation by directly elected student unions rather than student councils. This prompted the February 19 fracas on the JU campus which resulted in the alleged injury to vice chancellor Suranjan Das. Informed observers are of the opinion that revival of the call for direct student union elections by CPM-aligned student organisations is a strategy of the discredited CPM/Left Front parties to reassert their power and influence in the state’s higher education institutions prior to the state assembly elections due in 2021. With the TMC’s Chhatra Parishad (youth wing) steadily extending its power and influence in student councils under cover of the Lyngdoh Committee’s rules, the CPM leadership, drawing inspiration from Maharashtra which has re-introduced direct student union elections, is keen to reassert…

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Uttar Pradesh: Long hot summer forecast

In the new globalised world, it was inevitable that the freedom of speech on campus debate, which is sweeping across university campuses in the US and Europe, would be echoed in India. On February 12, a motley group of 20 students of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) gathered in the university circle to protest an invitation to Asaduddin Owaisi, Lok Sabha MP from Hyderabad and the president of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, a minority rights political party. The protest was prompted by an announcement of the AMU Students Union (AMUSU) that it had invited several political parties to demand that all of them nominate Muslim candidates to give the community representation commensurate with the population of India’s largest minority community (172 million). An hour into the protest, the district head of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), the BJP’s youth wing, filed a first information report (FIR) against 14 university students and “other gathered AMU students” under several sections of the Indian Penal Code including sedition (s.124-A), robbery (392), rioting (147), attempt to murder (307) and promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language (153-A). The artillery of serious criminal charges filed against office-bearers of the AMUSU for exercising their perfectly legitimate constitutional right to invite Owaisi — a former barrister and respected Member of Parliament — to address them on the issue of minority rights, has aroused anxiety in the academy about the extent to which the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression guaranteed by Article 19 (1) (a) of the Constitution, is being suppressed in Uttar Pradesh — India’s most populous state (215 million) — ruled by the BJP, which after it swept the legislative assembly election in 2017 appointed a militant Hindu priest — Yogi Adityanath — as chief minister of this Hindi heartland state. Unsurprisingly, issues such as cow protection and building a Ram temple in Ayodhya on the site of the Babri Masjid which was razed to the ground in 1992 by Hindu militants, are at the top of the state government’s agenda. With the encouragement of militant Hindu BJP leaders, vigilante lynch mobs roam the countryside targeting Muslims engaged in their traditional cattle and meat marketing trades. Moreover, with millions of under-educated simpleton youth with weak foundations crowding university campuses, there’s little awareness of constitutional issues and minority rights on college and university campuses of the state. “The charges filed against student union leaders and the police registering the frivolous FIR is clear misuse of power. We are perfectly entitled under the Constitution of India to invite Mr. Owaisi, a respected MP to address us on the issue of minority rights. The BJYM has no right to object to the invitation,” says Hamza Sufiyan, vice president of AMUSU. With eight students suspended by the university in the immediate aftermath of the protest incident, even as a three-member fact finding committee is in the process of recording statements, the communal temperature in AMU, founded in…

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Karnataka: OOS children outcry

Despite the landmark right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 mandating that every child aged 6-14 should be in primary/elementary school, 70,016 of the estimated 14.4 million children in the southern state of Karnataka are out of the formal education system, according to a Union human resource development ministry survey released on February 6. Although this is a five-fold increase over the number of out-of-school (OOS) children in 2017-18, state education ministry officials don’t seem unduly worried. They attribute the increase in number of OOS children to a more robust tracking system with increased community cooperation and involvement of local governing bodies. Additionally, the upper age limit for identifying out of school children has been increased to 16 years. Hence, the larger number of OOS children reported. Bangalore, the country’s premier new technologies hub, has the highest number of OOS children (10,233) according to the report. The authors of the study have adduced 21 reasons why children are out of school with the largest number (11,813) being children of migrant labour attracted to Karnataka’s real estate construction boom. “The number of OOS children in Bangalore and Karnataka continues to be high because the attendance authorities in most of Bangalore’s 13 block education offices are sleeping on the job and are insufficiently monitored by the office of the commissioner of public instruction,” says Kathyayini Chamraj, executive trustee of Citizens’ Voluntary Initiative, Bangalore which works for the urban poor on food, water, health and education issues in the garden city. Nevertheless, despite educationists in Bangalore expressing alarm over the number of OOS children, Karnataka’s RTE Act enrolments record is relatively good. According to the ASER (Annual Status of Education Report) 2018 survey conducted by the highly-respected Pratham Education Foundation, against the national average of 4.4 percent of OOS children, Karnataka’s average is 1.7 percent. The better performing states are Kerala (0.3 percent), Tamil Nadu (0.6), Himachal Pradesh (0.7), Mizoram (1.0), Tripura (1.2), and Maharashtra (1.3) . The records of Madhya Pradesh (7.7 percent), Chhattisgarh (7.2), Uttar Pradesh (6.9), Meghalaya (6.0), Rajasthan (5.7), Gujarat (5) and Bihar (4.7) are substantially worse than Karnataka. Surprisingly, despite a profusion of anecdotal narratives about rampant corruption and indolence in the education ministry and departments under it, Karnataka is also awarded high marks in a working paper titled Resource Requirements for Right to Education (RTE): Normative and the Real, published by the Delhi-based National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, an autonomous research institute of the Union finance ministry, in 2017. The paper estimates “the resource requirement for universalisation of elementary education” in 12 major states and the gap between requirement and actual expenditure. In the study, Tamil Nadu has made the highest expenditure — 107 percent of requirement (as per RTE Act norms) followed by Uttarakhand (94.3 percent), UP (88.5), Maharashtra (78.5) and Karnataka (68.4). Unsurprisingly, Bihar’s ratio of actual expenditure to requirement is the lowest (29.9 percent). Conversely, UP’s 83.5 percent is surprisingly high. Against this backdrop, the outcry in the…

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Tamil Nadu: Unwarranted teachers strike

An indefinite strike called by the Joint Action Council of Tamil Nadu Teachers’ Organisation and Government Employees Organisation (JACTTO-GEO) on January 22, supported by over 700,000 government school teachers and public sector employees ended with a whimper on January 30. The incumbent Edappadi K. Palaniswami-led All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) state government firmly refused to yield to their demands. On the contrary exhibiting unusual resolve, the state government started recruiting temporary teachers to replace the striking teachers and suspended 422. But the decisive factor in the government’s stick and carrot policy was an offer to transfer the striking teachers to places of their choice. The end result was that on the ninth day, 95 percent of teachers and government employees resumed work, forcing JACTTO-GEO to call off the mammoth strike. But although government school teachers are back in their classes, they still believe their unmet demands are justified. Among the main demands: scrapping of the contributory pension scheme (CPS) introduced in 2003 and revival of the predecessor completely state-funded pension scheme; speedy disbursement of arrears after the state government accepted the Seventh Pay Commission recommendations in October 2017; regularisation of services of contract teachers; hiking salaries of primary teachers with double degrees on a par with their Central government counterparts; reversing mergers of primary with secondary schools; and refraining from appointing double degree teachers to teach in kindergartens. Confronted with this charter of demands from government school teachers, the AIADMK government resolutely refused to revive the old pension scheme, pay Seventh Pay Commission arrears or raise teacher pay scales pleading that it is struggling to contain its budget deficit of Rs.14,300 crore. In a written response to JACTTO-GEO, D. Jayakumar, minister for fisheries, personnel and administrative reforms, said the state government allocates 71 percent of its tax revenue towards salaries and pensions of teachers and government employees. After adding administrative expenses and interest on loans, a mere 29 percent is available for social welfare programmes. Informed educationists are of the opinion that the current face-off between teachers unions and the state government is the outcome of vote bank politics played by Tamil Nadu’s two major political parties (AIADMK and DMK) which have been voted to power alternately in Tamil Nadu for decades. In the run-up to state legislative assembly elections in 2011 and 2016, the AIADMK had assured teachers unions that the old government-funded pension scheme would be revived and recklessly promised to pay Seventh Pay Commission salaries retrospectively from January 1, 2016 although it is not mandatory for state governments to do so. “Relative to national income per capita, government school teachers are very well paid, but they are always clamouring for more. Although teachers who joined after 2003 agreed to CPS under which employees and the state government would jointly contribute to the pension fund, they have since reversed their stand. They should realise that since their salaries have increased manifold after implementation of the Seventh Pay Commission scales in October 2017, it is not feasible…

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Maharashtra: Poor rich MCGM schools

Faced with a steady exodus of students from its 1,192 schools, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) — the wealthiest local government in the country (budget: Rs.30,692.59 crore for 2019-20) — has drawn up an ambitious plan to revamp them. To attract and retain children, the budget for this fiscal is 6 percent higher at Rs.2,733 crore and promises installation of CCTV cameras, digital classrooms, e-libraries, introduction of music academies and spruced-up playgrounds in MCGM primary-secondaries. According to a study The State of Municipal Education in Mumbai, released by the Mumbai-based NGO Praja Foundation in January, the number of students in MCGM schools declined by almost 10 percent from 3.23 million in 2016-17 to 2.97 million in 2017-18. The report says that if this trend persists, MCGM schools will empty out in ten years. Praja Foundation’s report is the outcome of a survey of 24,290 households and information obtained from the state government under the Right to Information Act, 2005. It compares the learning outcomes of MCGM school students against government-aided, private and unrecognised budget private schools (BPS) children. By Indian standards, MCGM provides well for children from low-income households who attend its 1,192 primary-secondary schools. Unlike most state governments which insist on their dominant vernacular language being the medium of instruction in primary/elementary education, MCGM offers a host of schooling options in English as well as Marathi, Hindi, Gujarati, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu mediums. Its per-student expenditure of Rs.65,290 per year (2018-19) is way higher than the national average (Rs.13,974) and also higher than of most budget private schools, and includes free stationery, uniforms, books, bags and even electronic tablets for children in secondary schools. Yet despite this generous provision, enrolments in MCGM’s Hindi and Urdu-medium primaries, which host the largest number of students have steadily dropped to 85,756 and 82,349 respectively. Enrolment in schools offering Marathi — the state’s official language — as the medium of instruction has also fallen from 62,692 in 2016-17 to 56,969 students in 2017-18. This is because the achilles heel of MCGM schools — including English-medium schools — is poor learning outcomes. In the class X school-leaving exam of the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education, 73 percent of MCGM school students cleared the exam in 2018. But of them, 26.42 percent secured a rock-bottom ‘pass’. Against this, a mere 8 percent of private school students who wrote this exam were in the ‘pass’ category. The poor learning outcomes of children in MCGM schools seldom, if at all, surprises the maximum city’s parents community. It’s an open secret that well-paid teachers jobs in MCGM schools — and government schools in general — are the preserve of kith and kin of the state’s powerful neta-babu brotherhood, and that unionised government school teachers get automatic promotions regardless of learning outcomes in their classrooms. “Clearly, MCGM’s education department has failed the citizenry because Mumbai’s municipal school students lag behind in learning outcomes despite the corporation teachers getting far higher salaries than…

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Delhi: Poor children admission fracas

There’s a virtual unanimity among political pundits and educationists that no political party countrywide is as committed to improving and upgrading K-12 public education as the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which has an overwhelming majority (67 out of 70 seats) in the Delhi state legislative assembly. Despite this huge majority, the AAP government has not been given sufficient elbow room by the BJP/NDA Central government, to rule Delhi state since 2015 when shortly after the BJP/NDA coalition swept General Election 2014, it trounced the BJP in the Delhi legislative assembly election. Prompted by the AAP state government, the Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights (DCPCR), established under s.31 of the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, is all set to publish a first-ever evaluation report of 5,800 schools in Delhi. In this report all schools will be graded on a 1-4 scale on three broad parameters: safety and security; teaching and learning; community participation and social integration. The DCPCR evaluation report ran into headwinds as soon as the school surveys began. Municipal corporations controlled by the BJP refused to cooperate. Though they have relented, another controversy has been sparked by allegations that budget private schools are not adhering to s.12 (1) (c) of the RTE Act which makes it mandatory for all private schools to reserve 25 percent of capacity in classes I-VIII for children from poor households in their neighbourhood. This controversy flared up after DCPCR member Anurag Kundu alleged that private schools regulated by the Delhi state government have a “fill rate” of 76 percent under s.12 (1) (c) whereas schools regulated by municipal corporations controlled by the BJP have a fill rate of less than 20 percent. In support, Kundu cited a report of the Delhi-based NGO Indus Action prepared in association with IIM-Ahmedabad and PVR Nest, which assessed the s.12 (1) (c) compliance records of private schools in the national capital. However, R.C. Jain, president, State Public Schools Management Association, Delhi, contends that the Indus Action initiative is a politically biased exercise. “There is a political agenda behind this. While conducting the survey, they are collecting data about children from economically weaker sections, interviewing teachers and parents to show the Delhi state government in better light. The state government hasn’t sent any children to our private budget schools for admission under s.12 (1) (c). Therefore, obviously our fill rate will be low,” says Jain. The Indus Action report titled The Bright Spots, published just before yet another anniversary (April 1) of the landmark RTE Act and General Election 2019, says that nationwide there is a slowdown in admissions under s.12 (1) (c), from 2.27 million in 2015-16 to 2.18 million in 2016-17. Moreover the number of private schools admitting poor children from their neighbourhood had declined from 60,000 in 2015-16 to 46,000 in 2016-17. The constitutional validity of s.12 (1) (c), which mandates that all private schools should reserve 25 percent of capacity in class I for poor children from…

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Teacher retention lacuna

Your February cover story ‘Institution development mantras of India’s top-ranked schools’ was interesting and revealing. I enjoyed reading the interviews with promoters/principals of India’s top-ranked schools and their prescriptions on how to develop great schools and sustain them. Successful management of education institutions is the unwritten precondition of ensuring high achievement in academics, co-curricular and sports activities. However, I was hoping to know more about how the country’s best schools develop and retain great teachers. The lack of quality teachers and teacher attrition is the biggest bugbear of Indian K-12 education. Hope you will address this important issue in future editions. Krutika Desai Ahmedabad xposé request I am an aam aadmi, frustrated by the apathy of officials in government and over-hyped NGOs. For the past two weeks, I’ve been trying to place an out-of-school child in my neighbourhood in a school or non-formal education centre. The boy whom I suspect is eight-nine years old spends most of his time in our office lobby, while his migrant labour parents toil on a construction site nearby. The state government’s child helpline and the nodal NGO that collaborates with it — APSA — were indifferent to my requests, citing staff shortage. Other NGOs I approached asked for parents’ ration card, Aadhaar card, parent’s permission letter, etc. Every time I step in and out of my office building, I witness the plight of this wide-eyed child wasting his childhood in dark corners of our office building, even as authorities sit a stone’s throw away, unmoved by the rising number of school drop-outs reported in their own surveys. I appeal to you to do an exposé of the education ministry and government-affiliated NGOs which are doing precious little to put out-of-school children back into school. Geetha Nayar Bangalore PM & servants Rajiv Desai’s description of prime minister Narendra Modi (Expert Comment, EW February) as fascist, capricious and whimsical, is accurate. He has skilfully managed to marginalise prominent BJP leaders like L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi. The aides he has retained — Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and Rajnath Singh — function like servants rather than trusted confidants of the PM, who clearly has a mind of his own. Mid-February newspapers report a spurt in real economic growth with rising availability of cash in the system. The country is clawing back from the devastation of the “demonetisation masterstroke” the PM sprung on this hapless nation on November 8, 2016. Could anyone else in any party — ‘Pappu’ and the Congress included — have visited such a calamity upon the nation? I doubt it. Seethalakshmi Coimbatore Good example I am a subscriber of your magazine and enjoy reading your international news section. In the EW February edition, the story titled ‘OECD: Preschool education resurgence’ caught my attention. Denmark’s innovative ideas on early childhood education centred on play-based learning should inspire Indian preschools, which are always in a tearing hurry to teach reading and writing skills as soon as a child is able to hold a pencil. Keep…

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Intelligence agencies need to deliver

The dastardly attack on one of the buses of a convoy of 78 vehicles deploying 2,500 CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) personnel at Pulwama on the Srinagar-Jammu highway on February 14, which has resulted in the murder of 44 jawans by a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) suicide bomber — the Pakistan-based JeM has acknowledged responsibility — confirms one’s worst fears that India’s intelligence agencies — RAW, IB, CBI — are sleeping on the job. Several deeply disturbing questions arise and need to be debated frankly. First, how come neither the Central nor J&K state intelligence agencies were aware that a huge quantity of 400 kg of deadly explosives was being freely transported within the state? All these agencies — particularly RAW (Research & Analysis Wing) and IB (Intelligence Bureau) which are India’s external and internal espionage organisations — are very well-funded and have hundreds of field agents and informers on their pay rolls. How come none of them delivered the vitally important information that a huge cache of explosives had been smuggled into J&K and was doing the rounds? Some heads must roll. Equally disappointing is the response of the establishment — government ministers, opposition party leaders, and media pundits. The most foolish recommend direct military action against Pakistan by way of punitive ‘surgical strikes’ against specific targets in that country, for its transgression of harbouring Maulana Masood Azhar, leader of JeM. These hotheads don’t seem to be aware that Pakistan is armed with nuclear weapons and is a viper’s nest of religious fanatics at highest levels of the military-dominated establishment who won’t mind blowing up the sub-continent in the cause of misinterpreted Islam. In the circumstances, the obvious solution is for the intelligence and covert operations units within the defence services to collaborate and discharge their duty to take out Masood Azhar and the key JeM leadership. This is what America’s CIA and the Navy Seals did in May 2011 to liquidate Osama bin Laden who was holed up in Abbottabad after masterminding the 9/11, 2001 terrorist strike in New York. Moreover, striking at war criminals and terrorists themselves rather than risking international wars, is the standard operating procedure of Mossad, Israel’s dreaded intelligence agency. The assumption of the dim-witted Indian establishment that all Pakistanis support JeM and ISI-instigated cross-border terrorism against India is unfounded. There are millions of decent, law-abiding people in Pakistan fed up with hate-crazed anarchists such as Maulana Masood and his ilk. They can be incentivised to provide covert information about their hideouts and whereabouts. Even within JeM, there is certain to be dissidence and disaffection. It’s the duty of RAW and IB to gather intelligence and also recruit and run agents in hostile nations and neutralise individuals who plot, plan and execute terror strikes in Indian territory. It’s important to understand that India’s public enemy #1 is not Pakistan but Masood Azhar and the JeM leadership.

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Heavy price of diplomatic ineptitude

The air of mystery, confusion, corruption and malfeasance surrounding the purchase of 36 MMRCA (medium multi-role combat aircraft) Rafale fighter jets by the Indian Air Force (IAF) for a humongous €7.8 billion (Rs.59,000 crore), is an indicator of the extent to which pernicious corruption and abuse of power has seeped into the arteries of post-independence India. In 2012, the Congress-led UPA-II government initiated negotiations with the Paris-based Dassault Aviation to purchase 18 fully-armed and equipped Rafale fighter jets in ‘fly-away’ condition and 108 in knocked down condition to be assembled by the public sector Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), Bangalore under Dassault’s supervision. However before an agreement to this effect could be signed, the UPA government was swept out of office in General Election 2014. In 2016, the BJP-led NDA government resumed negotiations with Dassault. Under a revised tripartite agreement between Dassault and the governments of India and France (IGA), the number of fly-away fully weaponised jets was increased to 36 at a price of €7.8 billion (Rs.59,000 crore). The IGA included an offset clause, under which of the total price of €7.8 billion, Dassault/ French government would invest 20 percent in local production of Rafale components. Moreover, the IGA replaced the floundering HAL with a newly promoted Reliance Defence Ltd, a company promoted by flailing business tycoon Anil Ambani. Against the backdrop that defence equipment purchases have always been a cash cow for the country’s amoral neta-babu brotherhood which negotiates these big deals, it’s unsurprising that chopping and changing the size of the order, secrecy about weaponisation and therefore price per aircraft, interference by PMO (prime minister’s office) with negotiations conducted by the defence ministry, and particularly the choice of Reliance Defence in lieu of HAL as the offset partner, has aroused widespread suspicion of corruption and cronyism. However in the melee, several important issues have been trampled underfoot. The prime issue is: to what extent can this desperately poor country in which 22 percent of the populace lives below the global poverty line income of $1.90 per day, afford fighter aircraft priced at Rs.1,639 crore each? Clearly a diplomatic peace offensive against Pakistan and China is the more sensible option. Negotiating the status of Kashmir — even conceding a referendum in the Kashmir Valley — and redrawing the Sino-India border in the north-east and north-west — are surely a smaller price to pay than waging continuous undeclared wars on two fronts and running a non-stop arms race in the subcontinent. Unfortunately for the world’s youngest nation ill-served by a bankrupt intelligentsia, myopic political class, and inept diplomatic corps, these fundamental questions are seldom posed or seriously debated.

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Letter from the Editor

Decades of under-funding and neglect of public K-12 education has sparked a private schools revolution across the country. With public/government schools anathema to the country’s fast-expanding middle class, a multiplying number of education entrepreneurs, aka eduprenuers are running the gauntlet of incorrigibly corrupt government bureaucrats to promote well-equipped, new genre private preschools to primary-secondaries offering relatively sky-high quality English medium education to the world’s largest (480 million) and most short-changed child population. In the lexicon of left intellectuals who dominate the academy, and even in the eyes of post-independence India’s subsidies-addicted middle class, edupreneurs are exploitative businessmen extracting high tuition and other fees from hapless middle class and poor households struggling to make ends meet. In reality, they are risk-bearing nation builders driven by the spirit of enlightened self-interest and compassion for the country’s neglected children and youth, cruelly denied their fundamental right to good quality, globally comparable early childhood and K-12 education by India’s myopic and amoral neta-babu brotherhood and uncaring academy. The plain truth that private school education in contemporary India is priced lower than in any country worldwide has been suppressed, as has the reality that children from a substantial number of foreign countries travel long ways to avail primary-secondary education in India’s private schools. In 2007, your editors initiated the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR), an unprecedented and unreplicated field interviews- based survey to rate India’s Top 1,000 schools on 14 parameters of education excellence and rank them in ten separate categories to avoid apples with oranges type comparisons. Since then the annual EWISR survey has blossomed into the world’s largest and most comprehensive schools ranking initiative. Although over the years the annual EWISR survey has expanded its ambit to cover tier II-IV cities and towns, the league tables — and the annual EWISR Awards — tend to be dominated by metropolitan and legacy institutions. In this path-breaking issue of EW managing editor Summiya Yasmeen has turned the spotlight on top-ranked schools of provincial and small town India. The outcome is inspiring stories of altruism and idealism, combined with enlightened self interest. And in this month’s special report feature, as usual we examine the last Union budget of the incumbent BJP/NDA government before the forthcoming General Election 2019. Once again it’s a sad story of failure to accord sufficient importance to developing India’s abundant and high-potential human capital. Yet the unique differentiation is that we provide a road map for the next Union finance minister to raise Rs.6.37 lakh crore to augment and contemporise India’s education eco-system. Similar schema have been presented annually for the past several years with no response from government or the intelligentsia. Nevertheless, undaunted, once more unto the breach.

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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