EducationWorld May 06

Letter from London Knowledge-skills debate Debates on education are many and varied as always. The final professed goal of everybody involved in education, is to equip children and young adults with the skills they need to make a living, preferably in an interesting, successful and rewarding manner when they go out into the big bad world. These days debates, proposals and arguments affect children from primary school to university levels. Right now one of the controversial subjects under discussion is a proposal to scrap the national curriculum — a system of study and assessment devised by the Conservative government in 1988 — which all schools are obliged to follow. A report prepared for the Association of Teachers and Lecturers’ conference, held in early April, calls for an overhaul of the system with the consequent abandonment of tests currently held for children aged seven, 11 and 14. “We can’t carry on with a national curriculum which has its roots in the 19th century, doesn’t fit the 20th century and doesn’t prepare children for the 21st century,” commented Mary Bousted general secretary of the association. According to Bousted, many children are so bored by constant testing that they leave school at age 16 disillusioned with further education. Instead a range of skills should be taught in schools, such as creativity, communications and citizenship, rather than subjects such as history, geography, science etc. However, Alan Smithers, professor of education at the University of Buckingham, describes this proposal as “disturbing nonsense”. “The point about testing is that we discovered quite shocking things about how few of our children can handle words and numbers properly at the age of 11. Without that testing we would have assumed everything was OK,” he says. Teachers’ leaders emphasise that pupils don’t need a knowledge-based curriculum, but learning skills for the future. Geography, to take one example might disappear completely. But the argument against abandonment of such a subject is that basic knowledge of the location, size and demographics of countries, not to mention cities of the world, seems even more necessary if the next generation is to make any headway in the emerging new globalised economy. The plain truth which teachers’ representatives seem to have overlooked is that the skill-sets projected as new ideas have always been embedded in traditional subjects, and at university level students’ lack of general knowledge makes a lecturer’s job considerably harder. Let us hope that these areas of study don’t disappear for a generation of students whose skills in creativity, communications and citizenship far outweigh their knowledge of the world around them and its history. We need to know how we ended up where we are. (Jacqueline Thomas is a London-based academic) United States of America Visa restrictions disrupt academic traffic Prominent Indian academics including Dr. Goverdhan Mehta, hitherto director of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore are not exceptions. The Bush administration is under fire for a marked increase in the number of academics who have been denied visas to travel to the US, purportedly on national…

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There’s an old saying that if you visit Burma (now Myanmar) once, you are sure to visit again three times. I have no memory of my first visit, only a sepia photo of myself aged two with my grandmother in Rangoon (now Yangon), the capital of Burma, where my grandfather had established a business in 1890. He exited Burma 50 years later, following a military coup. Last month I was there on visit # 2 with a large family group, which had planned the nostalgia trip. For me it was more than a nostalgic ‘roots’ visit, because ever since I attended a ten-day Vipassana meditation programme in India in 1990, I have been curious about the country in which the Vipassana philosophy originated. This meditation technique has kept the Buddha’s priceless teachings alive for future generations when they were lost to India, until the great Vipassana guru S.N. Goenka brought it back to India in the 1970s. Vipassana proved to be a turning point in my life. The complete silence for ten days which this school of meditation mandates was pure bliss. For those wanting to know more log onto www.dhamma.org. There’s much in contemporary Myanmar to remind one of India. The cities (Rangoon, Bagaan, Mandalay) are Kolkata and Mumbai clones and rural Myanmar replicates rural Goa, especially parts of Inle Lake where time seems to have stood still. Nor has time affected the fisher folk of Inle as they manoeuvre their very basic but elegant canoes across this spectacular 60-mile long lake, casting nets so utilitarian that it makes one reflect upon the virtues of getting and spending and the much-hyped global consumer revolution. As we rode a motorised canoe with water plantations on either side, gazing at blue mountains in the distance, the pristine vista made me feel completely relaxed and in tune with nature and the universe. The big differentiating factor which separates the Myanmar landscape from that of its giant neighbour is the 3,000 pagodas which embellish the country. There are thousands of monasteries and becoming a monk is a very real career option, with the Buddha being revered so passionately. The compounds of pagodas are tranquil playgrounds where mothers with children meet and senior citizens snooze in the shade. The pagodas also have plenty of room inside at the feet of the Buddha, for people to congregate in the shade away from the hot sun. Although in terms of IMF and World Bank measurement criteria the country is rock bottom, even the poorest donate to the pagodas and the people exude calm and serenity while rural and urban environments are spotlessly clean. Myanmar’s duly elected woman leader has been under house arrest for the past 16 years. The daughter of the country’s martyred hero and leader of its independence movement Aung San Suu Kyi is commonly referred to as “the lady”. Our knowledgeable tour guide, when we were far away from government spies and informers, filled us in about her and other realities of this beautiful, tortured…

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The sartorially conservative city of Chennai will soon inaugurate its first, internationally benchmarked fashion institute. The Pearl Academy of Fashion (PAF), which has built itself a reputation in fashion and textile education for over 12 years since the promotion of its first New Delhi campus in 1993 and its second campus in Jaipur last year, is all set to admit its first batch of 125 students at its Nungambakkam institute on August 1. Promoted by Pearl Global Ltd (estb: 1992) one of India’s leading garment export houses (annual sales: Rs 1,500 crore), PAF boasts collaborations with several national and international institutes including Nottingham Trent University, UK; LDT Nagold, Germany; and the Amsterdam Fashion Institute, Netherlands, for student, faculty and information exchange. PAF, Chennai will offer a globally recognised BA (Hons) degree and postgraduate diploma programmes validated by the Nottingham Trent University, UK. “The choice of Chennai for our third campus was dictated by Tamil Nadu’s traditional strength as a textiles manufacturing base and its proximity to garment industry centres like Tirupur, Salem and Erode. Our industry-oriented study programmes will help bridge the wide gap between skill-sets required by the textile industry and what fashion institutes deliver,” says S. Ramalingam, director, Pearl Academy of Fashion, Chennai. A textile engineering graduate and industrial engineering postgrad of Anna University, Ramalingam has wide experience of this booming industry. He was the first chairperson of the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT: estb 1986), where he served for five years before joining Indonesia’s textiles and engineering giant, Texmaco, as vice-president for four years. He returned to India in 1996 and became an entrepreneur, sourcing garments for European markets, before assuming charge of PAF, Chennai last December. Starting August, PAF Chennai will offer four-year BA (Hons) degree programmes in fashion design and fashion merchandising and production, apart from two-year postgraduate diploma programmes in fashion merchandising, garment manufacturing and textile design (home fashion). Tuition fees range from Rs.60,000-70,000 per semester. Admission is based on performance in an all-India entrance test to be held on June 4, 2006. The first batch of students (25 per course) will be instructed by a permanent, highly qualified faculty of 10-12 and visiting professionals. Housed in the heart of the city in a modish building, PAF, Chennai boasts state-of-the-art textile labs, design and drawing studios, seminar rooms, pattern making, sewing, knitting and cutting labs, computer centre with CAD/CAM software, visual merchandising, fabric testing labs, and a large library with audio visual and photography facilities. “We want to establish the PAF brand in the south, build a rapport with industry and introduce internationally benchmarked study programmes. We are confident we can attain all these objectives in record time,” says Ramalingam. Wind in your sails! Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai) Confident confidence builder Come admissions season and every institution of professional education irrespective of lineage or reputation promises prospective students “guaranteed job placement”. But after completion, most of them suffer acute amnesia on this score. Certainly very few institutional managements offer compensation for failure to deliver the placement promise. The…

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Your Counsellor RepliesI am an economics graduate and would like to do a postgraduate degree at the Delhi School of Economics (DSE). Please advise.Priti Rao, MangaloreFor admission into the MA (economics) programme of DSE, University of Delhi, you need to have a BA (Hons) economics degree with at least 50 percent average (in the case of universities where the BA (Hons) economics degree includes subjects other than economics, 75 percent in economics is required); or have obtained 55 percent or more in M.Com, B.Com (Hons), business economics and MA/ BA (Hons) in history or sociology; or 60 percent plus in MA/ BA (Hons) in agricultural economics, business studies, computer applications, mathematics, operational research and statistics. There is an entrance test which requires familiarity with the curriculum of the BA (economics) honours programme of Delhi University. There are two options for the entrance test; one for economics honours students and another for graduates/ postgra-duates of other disciplines. The entrance test is usually a mix of multiple choice and analytical questions. Visit http://www.econdse.org/ for more information.I‚m in third year B.Com and am interested in a career in human resource development (HRD). Which colleges offer this course?Sheila D‚Souza, PanjimMost business management institutes offer this specialisation as part of their MBA/ MMS progra-mmes. The Tata Institute of Social Sciences is reputed for its MA in personnel management and industrial relations. After completion of Plus Two (science) next year, I would like to pursue a career in aircraft maintenance engineering (AME). Is this as good as any other engineering degree? Avinash Puri, New DelhiUnlike other engineering streams, AME training does not end with the award of a degree or diploma. The first step involves studying the syllabus prescribed by the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) at approved institutions. After completion of the prescribed syllabus and training, an application for the award of an AME licence is forwarded to DGCA who sanctions it after verification and examination. AMEs find employment with various airlines or airline maintenance workshops in the government, public and private corporate sectors. They may also work in aircraft manufacturing/ assembly units. Pay scales vary but you could start with around Rs.10,000 per month as a trainee.I‚ll be completing my B.Sc (maths) in 2007. What career options are available to me after graduation?Venkat Narayan, BangaloreMathematicians are in great demand in the banking, finance and insurance industries. Applied mathematicians work in insurance, finance, medical, social and agricultural research, using mathematical modelling and computational models to solve practical problems. They also work as computer programmers, systems analysts in productivity monitoring and quality control. However, these career choices are open only after postgraduation. Other options are MCA (Master of computer applications), actuarial science, MBA (accountancy) and allied programmes, teaching degree (B.Ed), library and information science (BLibSc) etc.I‚m a Plus Two (science) student and am interested in a career in space sciences. Please advise.Anil Chatterjee, KolkataYou should enroll for an aeronautical/ aerospace engineering degree programme. The IITs, Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh and Anna University, Chennai offer this…

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With growing global interest in India’s ancient heritage especially in the fields of holistic medicine, natural healing and tourism, the demand for qualified archaeologists is outrunning supply  If you have an interest in history and antiquity and a penchant for outdoor life, archaeology might be the right career choice for you. With humanities education having re-established itself and growing interest in India’s ancient heritage especially in the fields of holistic medicine (ayurveda), natural healing (yoga) and tourism, the demand for well qualified archaeologists who unearth evidence to interpret the past is outrunning supply.  Archaeology is best described as the study of lifestyles of the distant past. Archaeologists research material remains such as buildings, pottery, coins, plaques, tablets, metal tools, weapons and fragments of bone culled from the remnants of ancient civilisations to derive conclusions about the lifestyles, customs and beliefs of our ancestors. Sophisticated labo-ratory techniques, instruments and computers are used to date such evidence, excavated from ancient sites known as digs. Archaeology study programmes are offered by 25 universities across the country. Among the more reputed ones for undergrad programmes in archaeology are University of Kolkata; University of Pune; University of Allahabad; Banaras Hindu University (BHU); MS University, Baroda; University of Mysore; Nagpur University and School of Archaeology, Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi. MS University, Baroda; Barkatullah Vishwavidhyalaya, Bhopal; Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi; Marathwada University, Aurangabad offer postgraduate programmes. The Master’s programme is a two-year course with the first year focussing on the study of modern, medieval and ancient history, followed by specialisation in either pre-history or epigraphy (deciphering of ancient texts) with the option of further specialisation in the Arabic/ Persian, Devanagari or Dravidian scripts. You could also specialise in numismatics, which is the study of coins, paper money etc. Of the postgrad study programmes, the most reputed is at the Archaeological Survey of India, which offers a two-year diploma in archaeology after a Master’s degree in ancient or medieval Indian history or MA/ M.Sc in archaeology or anthropology. Admission for the 20-25 seats on offer annually is through a written test and interview held every September. Those selected receive a monthly stipend of Rs.2,000 plus free hostel facilities. The National Museum of India, New Delhi has promoted a Museum University which is recognised by the Union ministry of human resource development. It offers Master’s and Ph D programmes in history of art, conservation and art restoration and museology. The Delhi Institute of Heritage Research and Management also offers Masters in archaeology, heritage management and conservation. “There’s been a rapid growth in job opportunities with general and specialist museums like the rail, arms and stamp museum and the yet to be named Tata Archives, in various stages of completion. Moreover with auction houses and private collectors hiring archaeologists and the number of educational and research institutions increasing, there’s no dearth of jobs in this field. Archaeology is like an ocean; you are always discovering something and you get a certain high in discov-ering antiquities,” observes Sabyasachi Mukherjee, assistant…

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“The fact is that 98 percent of all student athletes are not going on to the next level in their sport. But with 18, 22 and 23-year-olds, sometimes education is only a backup plan” — Darin Meeker,athletic counsellor at Ohio State University When I was a kid, one of the sports I played was baseball. As a baseball player, I learned how important it was for me and my teammates to see ‘the big picture’, when we were in the middle of a crucial game. The pitcher needed to be constantly aware, not only of the hitter in front of him, but also who the next batter was, who was currently on base, how many outs there were, and so on. Batters, outfielders and basemen also needed to be aware of these things. Failure to see the big picture could lead to costly errors. Irrespective of which sport we played as kids, seeing the big picture helped us become more effective players, win matches and enjoy competition. Children who did this most effectively would guide the course of the game, take better decisions on the field with regard to substitutions, attack/defence strategy or batting/ fielding issues. Athletes can be great at seeing the big picture when they’re on the field or court. But when they leave the sports arena, they often succumb to tunnel vision in which school becomes a very low priority. What they don’t see is that even if they do realise their dreams of becoming professional athletes, life isn’t going to stop there. Only about five out of every 100 sports-persons who make it to the professional level will earn enough to provide for the rest of their lives. Everyone else will have to work once their sports career is over. Therefore it is crucial to ensure that sports-minded students become aware that there is a larger benefit to participating in sports than aiming for professional status. Very often, children who cannot make the cut professionally give up sports completely. Also, parents and coaches often discourage children from playing sports for the fun of it. In the process, children lose out the positive values that sports teach. With so much emphasis on the end-result, is it surprising that children don’t see the big picture of sports education and find it difficult to use its lessons off the field? When it comes to life off the field, what does ‘getting the big picture’ mean? It means: • Being aware of what’s going on in the world around you • Knowing what is and isn’t important to your long-term happiness • Using this information to make decisions that will have a positive impact on your future This awareness can be achieved by keeeping abreast of the latest developments in the world and in your specific field, understanding how they affect you and your family and be able to plan accordingly. As a teacher or parent involved in the lives of children, what can you do to ensure that young athletes get the big picture when it…

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Union HRD minister Arjun Singh’s proposal to decree a 27 percent quota for OBC students in IITs, IIMs and Central universities has provoked widespread indignation countrywide, and campus India is bracing itself for a festival of student protests. Dilip Thakore reports For the great majority of India’s students constitutionally barred from availing quotas and reservation in institutions of higher education, the world’s toughest entrance examinations are all set to get tougher. On April 5 Union human resource development (aka education) minister Arjun Singh — often described as India’s perpetual prime minister in waiting — grabbed headlines and prime-time coverage in the national media with a bombshell announcement that the 17-party coalition United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre has approved his ministry’s proposal to reserve an additional 27 percent of capacity in all Central government promoted universities and institutes (JNU, IITs, IIMs, AIIMS, etc) for OBC (other backward castes) students. “The decision was taken by the prime minister and the cabinet. Parliament has passed a law; we are implementing it,” Singh told a television news channel.  This seemingly innocuous and politically correct declaration of intent has precipitated a veritable rain of editorials, op-ed articles and analyses by media pundits, educationists and sociologists (see box p.32), because positive discrimination or affirmative action favouring castes and tribes which suffered discrimination and deprivation for centuries under the hitherto rigid Hindu varna or caste system, is a provenly explosive issue in Indian politics. Following this announcement which has also provoked the wrath of the Central Election Commission, the National Knowledge Commission and reportedly prime minister Manmohan Singh (who has maintained a studied silence on the subject), campus India is bracing itself for a festival of student protests. The last time round in 1990 when the then prime minister V. P. Singh pulled a forgotten decade old report of the Mandal Commission recommending varsity and government job reservations for backward castes (other than Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SCs and STs) for whom 22.5 percent of available seats have been reserved since 1950) commensurate to their population out of the mothballs, the student community in north India in particular responded with nationwide street and campus rioting. Inevitably the legality of the government jobs reservation order was challenged and while allowing reservation for socially and educationally backward classes of citizens, the Supreme Court imposed a 50 percent ceiling on reservations in government employment (and education instit-utions). The short-lived Janata Dal fell soon after in 1990 following violent anti-government demonstrations and especially after one student committed suicide by immolation, and the issue of additional reservations for OBC students in Central government educational institutions was put on the backburner by the successor Congress government headed by Narasimha Rao. Meanwhile down south, state governments pursued their own reservation policies with Tamil Nadu and Karnataka reserving more than 50 percent of capacity in higher education institutions for SCs, STs and OBC students. Now as five states prepared to go to the polls in April-May, Arjun Singh has suddenly invoked the Supreme Court judgement in Indira Sawhney vs Union of…

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Rows of students with bored faces, struggling to absorb yet another method of calculating HCF which the maths teacher is trying to explain. Many of the children silently wondering why they have to learn it in the first place. That’s a typical classroom scenario. Cut to another scene nearby. Students running around in a playground, not in the recess, but during science class. They are playing a game designed to enable them understand the food chain better. Children, representing different animals are stalking each other, subtly developing an understanding of how an increase or decrease in the number of one species affects other animals. These scenarios could be of two contrasting schools with totally different philosophies. In reality, these are ‘before’ and ‘after’ scenes in a school in Madurai, which since 2003 has introduced an experimental programme for curriculum improvement in co-ordination with the Ahmedabad-based Educational Initiatives (EI). ‘Have you understood?’ is an oft heard query in classrooms. Student response to this question tends to be mechanical and meaningless, as the question itself is perfunctory. Ensuring real understanding requires much more than that. What does ‘understanding’ really mean? How can educators design study courses that develop and deepen student under-standing, even while a clear and continuous assessment process informs them of the extent and depth to which learning has taken place? The management of the aforementioned school in Madurai had the vision to recognise this challenge, and decided to do something about it. Experience had shown them that short-term training programmes have no real impact; therefore they opted for a long-term (three years) association with EI. Under a curriculum development and enrichment agreement, a team of resource persons from EI was deployed to work closely with the school’s teachers and students, to revamp the curriculum in all academic subjects grade by grade. The framework chosen for the exercise was christened ‘Understanding by design’ — a planning concept that requires educators to ask three basic questions: What is worthy of understanding? What is the evidence of understanding? What learning experiences will promote real understanding? The answer to the first question helped teachers define and prioritise the goals of teaching; the second helped them set a clear assessment plan to determine whether those goals were achieved, and the third assisted in planning instruction. While the school’s teachers faced certain constraints like having to work with textbooks and a set amount of rigid testing prescribed by an external examination board, they strived for a complete overhaul of classroom transactions and overall assessment. Planning was the first and easiest step in the whole process. The main challenge for teachers was to jettison the traditional ‘chalk and talk’ teaching methodology. In the Indian tradition the teacher is seen as a storehouse of knowledge, whose duty is to transfer that knowledge to her students. So, changing over to a system where the teacher is a facilitator, and students active participants in the learning process, was difficult. However, slowly but surely this change happened. Those same teachers, who…

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The great majority of India’s visually challenged population whose number is estimated at 14 million nationwide, are inhabitants of the Hindi heartland states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. One of the major problems of visually challenged students of the Hindi heartland is that they aren’t able to write their school or college exams due to a perpetual shortage of Hindi fluent exam writers. To meet the needs and expectations of such students Satvir Singh (17), a class X student of JPM Senior Secondary School, Delhi, has developed a path-breaking software – Braille Face — which translates Braille commands into the Devanagri script. Comments Satvir, who is congenitally blind, and has just written his class X CBSE exam using Braille Face: “Software which translates Braille commands into English already exists in the market. But this hardly helps Hindi-medium blind students, even if computer-literate. Without a Braille to Hindi software programme they had to be dependent on writers well-versed in Hindi, who are very few and mostly unavailable during exam time. I didn’t want these students or myself to be dependent on anyone to write exams. Hence I worked tirelessly to create Braille Face.” Braille Face is simple and user-friendly. A student has to use only six keys on the keyboard — F, D, S, J, K, and L — which denote Braille points one to six respectively to type a word or letter on the common PC (personal computer). The software responds to a Braille command which identifies the alphabet combination and automatically translates it into the Devanagri script, used for writing Marathi, Hindi and Sanskrit languages. A supplementary screen-reading software Vaachak instantly flashes the word in Hindi. Expectedly, the pan-India Central Board of Secondary Education (no. of affiliated schools: 8,278) which has time and again come under fire for not allowing exam writing concessions to differently abled children, didn’t allow Satvir to use his own computer to write the board exam. He was obliged to install the software into a computer provided by the examination centre. Since it was written in 2003, Braille Face which is patented by Satvir has been tried, tested and approved by the Indian Standards Institute (ISI). Currently negotiations for mass production and marketing this revolutionary software programme are being conducted with several organi-sations including the British Council and some private school managements in Delhi, which will help iron out its wrinkles before a national rollout. Neeta Lal (Delhi) Preeta Krishna Preeta Krishna (27), a Chennai-based journalist was adjudged the overall and regional winner for Asia in the 2005 Commonwealth Short Story Writing Competition conducted by the London-based Commonwealth Broadcasting Association (CBA), on February 16. Krishna’s short story titled Treason was adjudged the best among 2,500 entries from 53 countries, and won her prize money of £2,000 (Rs.1.5 lakh). The award-winning story traces the life of an innocent young girl who is pushed into prostitution by her own father whom she trusts and adores. “I was inspired to write the story after I saw an awareness programme on television,…

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A large number of middle class Indians tend to exult in the statistic that the country hosts the world’s third largest technical work force. The fact is we probably have the largest number of plumbers, carpenters, masons, welders, house painters etc. Yet as any home owner will swear, the quality of plumbing, carpentry, masonry or welding services is abysmal. Unfortunately what is true of lower end technical manpower is also true of higher end technical manpower. The half a dozen IITs and a handful of other technical institutions combined constitute a minuscule tip of a massive technical education iceberg submerged in a sea of mediocrity. The plain truth is that the great majority of institutions that pass for contemporary India’s engineering colleges produce graduates who are hardly employable in the domestic market, let alone internationally. Why are the great majority of our technical institutions of higher learning in indifferent health? What policy interventions are required to revitalise them? What are the management challenges in raising the floor level of our technical education? These questions need to be addressed and answered in the public interest. India hosts an estimated 1,300 engineering colleges. Together they graduate 500,000-600,000 engineers every year. The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) mandates a teacher-pupil ratio of 1:15. This translates into a 33,000-40,000 faculty requirement. If we accept a 5 percent faculty attrition rate conservatively, on an average we need 1,650-2,000 new faculty every year in our engineering colleges. Ideally, if our engineering colleges were truly institutions of higher learning, the new teachers ought to be Ph Ds. But sadly, India produces less than 450 Ph Ds in technology annually. Of these 450 Ph Ds, half are not employable as teachers because of poor communication skills, if not knowledge base. Half of the remaining prefer to go abroad or into industry. Thus, of the 450 Ph Ds produced, the supply available to engineering colleges annually is barely 100-125 against a requirement of around 1,600-2,000! Why is our annual output of Ph Ds so low? Because India has never been a technology research-oriented country. This is evidenced by the fact that even today, much of what passes for ‘innovation’ or ‘research’ in India is little more than recycled versions of research conducted elsewhere in the world. Little wonder that typically higher engineering education (M. Tech and Ph D) has remained a way of postponing unemployment. But over the years, as alternative careers opened up in management, information technology, software, BPO etc, the need for postponement of unemployment has reduced and hence the number of M.Techs and Ph Ds has also dwindled. Today almost every undergraduate engineer, if he/ she is any good, wants immediate employment or enrollment in a B-school. That’s also the reason why even in IITs, one hardly ever finds an IIT graduate working for his or her Masters or doctorate. Most such scholars are from lesser engineering colleges, typically from smaller towns. There are several motivators behind this situation. Unlike technology driven countries such as Germany, Japan,…

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Although it was granted university status as recently as 1992, this new university has earned an enviable reputation for academic excellence Sited in Britain’s picturesque midlands region and granted university status as recently as 1992, the University of Wolverhampton (UoW) has quickly earned an enviable reputation in the international higher education market for its contemporary hi-tech learning facilities, teaching innovations and academic excellence. Spread across four campuses, this new university, which recently inaugurated its South Asia regional office in Delhi, boasts an enrollment of 23,000 including 3,000 international students. It was the first varsity in the UK to be awarded the Charter Mark for excellence in customer service.  Although UoW was designated a university in 1992, its origin can be traced back to the promotion of the Wolverhampton and Staffordshire Technical College in 1931. In 1969 this technical college was merged with the local College of Art to form Wolverhampton Polytechnic, which in 1992 became the University of Wolverhampton. Since grant of university status, UoW has invested millions of pounds in providing some of the most state-of-the-art learning and student facilities in Britain. In 1994 it inaugurated a multi-million pound campus in Telford and two years later the Wolverhampton Science Park in partnership with the Wolverhampton Council. In 1997, two hi-tech learning centres in Telford and Wolverhampton offering the most advanced facilities to students and staff were promoted. And in 2000 the university management announced its most ambitious plan — a £60 million (Rs.4,560 crore) seven-year building programme “to create some of the most modern facilities in UK higher education”. Comments Prof. Caroline Gipps, vice chancellor of UoW: “Wolverhampton is a first-class regional university with a strong widening access agenda, high-quality teaching and learning provision, well-established links with key players in the regional economy and wonderful new buildings. I look forward to leading the university into the next stage of development and helping it gain the national recognition it so richly deserves.” Adds Pragyat Singh, the Delhi-based South Asia representative of UoW: “Wolverhampton offers several advantages over London University. Among them: 20-25 percent lower tuition fee and 40-50 percent savings in terms of residential accommodation.” Wolverhampton. A 20-minute rail journey from Birmingham, Britain’s second largest city, Wolverhampton or ‘the high town on the hill’ as it’s historically known, is a well-developed city of 250,000 people (including a large south Asian population). Sited in the scenic west midlands, Wolverhampton is surrounded by the picturesque Shropshire and Staffordshire country-side, historic houses and an extensive leisure canal network. Strategically located at the heart of the motorway and rail networks, Wolverhampton is within easy reach of London and boasts an excellent public transportation network, ranging from the Midland Metro to city centre cycle lanes. Campus facilities. UoW is spread across four campuses (City, Crompton, Telford and Walsall) in the west midlands. The main City campus is sited in the heart of Wolverhampton and is home to the Millennium City Building, which contains state-of-the-art psychology laboratories, a hi-tech 300-seat lecture theatre, food court and social learning spaces. The…

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The jewel of the Salesian congregation which administers 306 institutions across the country, Don Bosco is among the commercial capital’s most well-known education landmarks In Matunga, a neighbourhood in Mumbai dominated by Tam Brahms (Tamilian Brahmins) and sundry other communities from peninsular India, there is a sylvan spot that’s forever Turin. On a small patch of green is the headquarters of the Salesian congregation in India and their most famous educational institution — Don Bosco School, named after the Italian saint of the church of Rome who founded the Salesian order (originally known as the Society of St. Francis de Sales) in Turin in 1868. Within the campus between the primary and secondary sections of the school is Mumbai’s famous shrine of Don Bosco’s Madonna. The Salesian congregation, which is celebrating 100 years of existence in India this year, administers 306 education institutions across the country.   The Maharashtra state board (SSC) affiliated class I-X Don Bosco School is the jewel of the Salesian institutions, and among Mumbai’s most well-known landmarks. It began its existence as the Catholic Educational Institute of the Immaculate Conception in Tardeo in 1915. In 1928 it was offered to four Salesian missionaries — Fr. Joseph Hauber, Fr. Austin Dehlert, Bro. William Haughey and Bro. Michael Devalle — who took over the school with an enrollment of 189 day scholars and 98 boarders. Two years later in June 1930, the school’s name was changed to Don Bosco High School. However, eviction notices of the landlord at Tardeo forced the school management to relocate the school to a spacious plot in Matunga in central Mumbai. On January 31, 1942, the construction of a new school campus under the leadership of Fr. Aurelius Maschio was completed to house both the primary and secondary sections. In January 1965 accommo-dation for about 150 boarders was additionally provided. “Since its foundation, Don Bosco School has been committed to the all-round development of its students — drawing out of the best in body, mind and spirit. From the primary section onwards, we strive to not only develop the cognitive and psycho-motor skills of our students, but also to enrich their individual and social lives,” says Fr. Crispino D’Souza, a mathematics graduate of Pune University who took charge as principal in 2001. According to Fr. D’Souza, the school is alma mater of several of the commercial capital’s celebrities including Bolly-wood actors Shammi Kapoor and Shashi Kapoor, directors Mahesh Bhatt and Anant Mahadevan, and former test cricketers Ravi Shastri and Farokh Engineer, among others. Though over the years the school’s student profile has changed with the city’s haute bourgeoisie enrolling their children in more elite schools, Don Bosco continues to enjoy a good reputation for academic excellence and all-round development. For instance a Times of India survey (October 14, 2004) rated the all-boys Don Bosco as the most socially conscious school in Mumbai and fifth in India. Some 150 children from neighbourhood slums attend special night study classes at the school. “We have identified three focus areas: faith and value…

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The Bangalore-based Sun Microsystems India announced the roll out of its second edition of the Sun Matching Grant Program, on April 26. Under this initiative, Sun will provide a series of hardware, software and web-based training materials, which will allow an unlimited number of Indian educational institutions and students to benefit from Sun’s technology. The initial Sun Matching Grant Program conducted last year enabled a record 45 educational institutions to build and upgrade their education and learning infrastructure to global standards. According to Mohan Doss, regional director (education & research) South Asia of Sun Microsystems India, “The roll out of this program will deliver valuable benefits to the Indian student community as a whole by creating skilled technical professionals who contribute to the economy of the country.” The Sun Matching Grant Program is a co-investment programme under which Sun donates equipment subject to a matching investment from the educational institution or partnering aid organisation. This allows education institutions to purchase selected items at special institutional prices and qualify for a second identical unit free of charge. The Sun Matching Grant Program complements the company’s Edusoft and Sun Academic Initiative (SAI) programmes. Through Edusoft, Sun offers selected educational institutes software at virtually no cost for teaching purposes. SAI Sun extends approved institutes free access to course content on Java and Solaris. All Saints International open for admisson The All Saints International Residential School, Thana (a suburb of Mumbai) — a day-cum-residential institution promoted by the Shilpakar Education Society in 2002, invites applications for kindergarten to class X admissions for the academic year commencing July. “Our mission is to make the school a learning community of motivated, buoyant, energetic and confident students for global needs. We offer to realise the immense inner potential of children, to foster academic excellence, physical fitness, psychological and spiritual health and social consciousness among our students through a dedicated, enthusiastic and highly qualified faculty,” says a school spokesperson. Set in a sprawling 25-acre campus within an hour’s driving distance from Mumbai, All Saints International is a CBSE affiliated co-educational school with cricket and football grounds, tennis courts, swimming and other sports facilities. An audio visual theatre, dance and music halls, and a large library create a suitable environment for the well-being and all-round development of students. For further information write to: All Saints International Residental School, Near Kalyan, Off Kalyan-Nasik Highway, Bhawale Village, Pisa Dam Cross Road; Tel: 02522-283079, 283077, 283078; Website: www.shilpakar.com; e-mail: [email protected]. First ever online entrance exams The Manipal (Karnataka)-based Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) has set a new benchmark in the field of education. MAHE recently conducted online entrance exams for admission into its medical and dental postgraduate study programmes — the first by any education institution in India. Around 7,000 students across India wrote the online examination in MAHE test / learning centres in Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Mangalore, Manipal and Ernakulam. “We are very glad to be the first in India to introduce online entrance exams. The response to this initiative has…

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They said it in April”A donkey is like a housewife. In fact, the donkey is a shade better, for while the housewife may sometimes complain and walk off to her parents‚ home, you‚ll never catch the donkey being disloyal to his master.” — Excerpt from a class IX-X Hindi-language textbook of the Rajasthan state education board “No one who visits India can fail to be impressed by the huge advances the economy and the education system are making and I returned determined that we need to radically to improve our links with a country that is producing hundreds of thousands of graduates each year.” — British prime minister Tony Blair in The Guardian (April 18)”We all need to ensure that no group feels excluded from enjoying the fruits of rapid economic growth. I urge industry to seriously consider enhancing educational and employment opportunities for weaker sections in an affirmative manner.” — Prime minister Manmohan Singh in his address to members of the Confederation of Indian Industry (April 18)”As mandated law, reservation can impede competitiveness. But industry has to come forward and help in skills development.” — Yogi Deveshwar, chairman of ITC on a proposal to introduce reservation in private sector jobs”The Union government‚s new-found policy of quotas in professional institutions smacks of vote-gathering populism, claims to fulfill social equality and threatens caste tensions in the name of justice.” — Rajeev Dhawan, Supreme Court counsel in The Times of India (April 18)”The executive power of the kingdom of Nepal, which was in our safekeeping, shall from this day, be returned to the people.” — Nepal‚s King Gyanendra (April 21)”India too should think seriously about its Muslim population and rising radical Islamic terrorism. Can India remain completely immune to its Muslim population given the kind of Islamic terrorism that is rising in the Middle East?” — Former US ambassador to India Robert Blackwill (April 26)

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Tamil Nadu Skills shortage paradox Every year India’s 1,300-plus engineering colleges churn out an estimated 500,000 engineering graduates to feed the manpower needs of the booming IT-ITES (information technology and information technology enabled services) industry (annual revenue: $36 billion or Rs.162,000 crore). Yet, paradoxically the IT-ITES industry is suffering a severe shortage of manpower because only 7-8 percent of the annual output of engineering graduates is employable. The looming employability crisis confronting engineering graduates across the country has been the focus of studies conducted this year by the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM); an expert team of the Indian National Academy of Engineers (INAE — an autonomous society under the department of scientific and industrial research, headed by distinguished scientist Dr. K. Kasturirangan) and CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) Tamil Nadu chapter. These studies highlight serious shortcomings in India’s human resource development effort. The conclusions of the studies are of particular significance to Tamil Nadu (pop: 62.1 million) where 225 engineering colleges and 13 deemed universities provide technical education to an estimated 1.5 million students. According to Mapping of Manpower Skills for Tamil Nadu — 2015, a report released by CII-Tamil Nadu in March, 43 percent of graduate engineers and 47 percent of diploma holders in the state are finding it difficult to find suitably remunerated employment even two years after completion of their study programmes. The study says that although Tamil Nadu produces 80,000 engineers and 60,000 diploma holders annually in addition to a large number of Industrial Training Institute (ITI) graduates, and has emerged as the largest producer of technical manpower in the country, high levels of unemployment prevail in its engineering talent pool. Even among those who found jobs within two years, at least 50 percent had to wait for nearly a year and 40 percent for close to two years before offers fructified. The authors of the study cite three reasons for this dismal state of affairs: lack of an integrated education system which monitors the education quality from school to postgraduate level; varying standards across educational insti-tutions, and failure to continuously update college curriculums to industry expectations. “Established institutions such as IITs, NITs, and others continue to deliver their brand promise. However, several hundred new engineering colleges which have sprung up in the past decade have difficulty in attracting adequately qualified faculty, retaining them, and enhancing their skills. Many of them therefore don’t attract the best students. It is the growing number of students graduating from these non-academic, poorly managed colleges who experience unemployment. Fresh engineering graduates also require additional training in soft and behavioural skills, therefore there’s a growing need for ‘finishing schools’ that provide such inputs,” says R. Chandrasekaran, managing director, Cognizant Technology Solutions (annual sales: Rs.3,600 crore), one of the largest recruiters of engineering graduates in India. But while academicians agree that the quality of education imparted in second and third rung engineering colleges leaves a lot to be desired, they argue that it is unfair of IT companies to expect fresh…

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Kudos to your cover story ‘Union Budget 2006-07: Lip service to education’ (EW April). The cover story was a revelation, because while the rest of the media was inclined to take finance minister P. Chidambaram’s claim that Budget 2006-07 gives “primacy” to education and health at face value, you have examined the issue in great detail and have come to the conclusion that it doesn’t bear scrutiny. It is truly shocking that while in the US, annual per capita spending on education is $2,254, in India it is a mere $26. If you had calculated it on per pupil rather than per capita basis, you would have found that the gap is even wider. Yet there is seldom a day when our foolish politicians don’t advise our youth to get ready to compete with American youth in the emerging new global market. What a joke! I entirely agree with you that even record annual incremental budgeting will not make a dent on the massive education and health disaster which is looming on the horizon. As you rightly suggest, there’s no alternative to biting the bullet and slashing defence expenditure and non-merit subsidies and canalising the savings into improving the nation’s schools and schooling. Hard decisions are required now if India is to reap the ‘demographic dividend’ in the 21st century. Prashanth Salvi  Mumbai Teach pursuit of happiness I am a 68-year-old retired principal working for a small school and am really enlightened by your cover story on Pratham’s Annual Status of Education Report 2005 (EW March). It was interesting and educative. I also read your special report titled ‘Foreign influx into international schools’ in the very same issue. Read together these two feature stories arouse many concerns. The ASER report indicates that most children in our country are not learning survival competencies in the new, highly competitive society created by the knowledge explosion. These children are huge in number and cannot afford international schools. How can these children compete with those in international schools providing world class education? We need to think of teaching new ways to government school children to acquire wisdom and happiness by tapping our spiritual heritage, and imparting life skills to them. Learning in five-star schools is a distant dream for most Indian children. But learning to live happily is possible for all. There are experts in our society to teach the ‘art of living’ to the rich. Why don’t we explore people and organisations to teach ‘art of being happy’ even to those who can’t access international schools? C.G. Nagaraja Mahabodhi School, Mysore Skewed priorities I read your editorial â€˜Indefensible subsidisation of IIM students’ (EW April) with interest. Everyone in the country agrees that primary education is a public good and a nation-building activity and therefore, should be subsidised. But higher, especially professional education, is a private good and should be paid for by the recipients and not the tax payer. The Central government should immediately withdraw subsidies to IIMs and deploy the money thus saved in primary education projects. The savings of approximately Rs.105 crore (Rs.2.5 lakh…

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The ouster on March 20 of octogenerian Dr. Verghese Kurien from the chairmanship of the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) following withdrawal of confidence in him by constituent members of GCMMF, marks the end of a momentous success story in the history of post-independence India’s failed national development effort. Regrettably the reams of comment in the media has not adequately acknowledged Kurien’s contribution to the white revolution which transformed chronically lactose deficient India into the world’s largest producer of milk within a mere three decades. It is insufficiently appreciated that in sharp contrast with the Gandhian ideal of low-tech self-sufficiency in village republics, Kurien engineered an indigenous white revolution through massive infusion of sophisticated technology into rural India. Way back in the 1950s when heavily subsidised European farmers with huge surpluses of milk and dairy products were about to dump them upon starving Indians, fearing a crash in the already low prices of domestic milk and dairy produce, Kurien prevailed upon prime minister Nehru to canalise import of dairy food aid through the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), an apex level consultancy and project engineering organisation also founded by Kurien. These imports were cautiously sold in urban markets to create a corpus for NDDB, which then utilised it to develop a sophisticated indigenous dairy machinery and equipment manufacturing industry. This was discerned as necessary by Kurien because of the peculiar seasonal production cycle of Indian milch cattle which lactate heavily in the winter months and run dry during hot summers. This resulted in wide price variations with milk prices dropping below cost in winters and going through the roof in summer. Kurien’s genius was that he persuaded farmers of the Kaira district to promote farmer-owned dairy cooperatives which would pay steady year-round prices for milk through the expedient of purchasing their full winter production, and utilising sophisticated technology to convert it into milk powder. In summer the milk powder was recombinated into milk assuring urban consumers steady supply at farmer-determined prices. Yet the secret of Kurien’s success was the chain-length cooperative model designed by him. The feature of this model is that the unit member of each cooperative — the farmer — controls every operation along the chain, i.e production, distribution and marketing. It is this whole-chain ownership of cooperatives by India’s perpetually short-changed farmers which Dr. Amrita Patel, chairperson of NDDB and directors of the GCMMF board are endangering with their proposal for corporatisation of milk cooperatives. According to Kurien this would be tantamount to returning to square one. This is the essentially correct argument that the modernisers led by Dr. Patel, have not fully grasped. With mega corporates preparing to enter the agri-business sector, GCMMF needs to stick with its tried and tested model of farmers’ ownership of whole-chain operations. In this case better is likely to prove the enemy of good. GCMMF certainly ain’t broke; so there’s no need to fix it. No shortcuts to equal opportunity If translated into action, the declaration of intent by Union minister…

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The interests of social justice, fair-play and equity demand that special provision is made for the access of citizens from historically deprived castes and communities into top-rung institutions of professional education. When as a consequence of graduating from excellent institutions members of socially and educationally backward castes enter and excel in government service, the professions or industry, they serve as an example and inspiration to other socially disadvantaged communities to avail education opportunities, move out of traditional low-end occupations and participate fully in the national development effort as equal and respected members of society. This is the rationale of positive discrimination or affirmative action — societal apology for past wrongs and institutionalised injustice. While drafting the Constitution of India, members of the Constituent Assembly acknowledged the need for affirmative action and reserved concessional quotas in institutions of higher education and government employment for historically disadvantaged Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes commensurate with their population (22.5 percent). However SCs and STs apart, there were numerous other backward castes and communities which had historically been denied upward mobility by the rigid Hindu varna system. Constituted in the 1970s, the B.P. Mandal Commission enumerated other backward castes (OBCs) and recommended similar reservation for them commensurate to their population. Following implementation of the recommendations of the commission by the Janata Dal government led by prime minister V.P. Singh in 1990, the government order reserving 27 percent of Central government jobs for OBCs was challenged in the Supreme Court. In Indira Sawhney’s Case (1992), the apex court ruled that government could make reservations for SCs, STs and OBCs in government and higher education institutions. But the interests of organisation and institutional efficiency demanded that aggregate reservation for backward castes and classes be restricted to 50 percent. The institutional efficiency caveat is presumably applicable with greater force to education institutions because for over a decade additional reservation for OBCs in Central government sponsored universities and institutes was not mandated. But on April 5, Union HRD minister Arjun Singh made a bombshell announcement that the Union government has approved a proposal to reserve an additional 27 percent of capacity in IITs, IIMs and Central universities for OBC students. This announcement has sparked a huge furore across the country as if this proposal becomes law, already severe competition for admission into the nation’s too-few institutions of academic excellence will become more intense for ‘merit’ students. The ramifications of this additional reservation proposal which threatens to dilute academic standards in the country’s few surviving institutions of academic excellence, are examined in detail in this month’s cover feature. But learning isn’t all work and no play. Or shouldn’t be. With summer here assistant editor Summiya Yasmeen checks out the best summer camps countrywide which offer the pleasurable option of learning while playing. Dilip Thakore

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