Against the backdrop of India’s poor representation in international equestrian events (except for Inderjeet Singh Lamba’s participation in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics), if Noida-based Raunaq Anand (16) is given the encouragement and support he deserves, India can expect him to bring home an equestrian Olympic medal in the near future. This skilled horseman finished the […]
Under the stern glare of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), its ideological guardian and mentor, the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre is unlikely to incorporate the comprehensive, sensible and overdue recommendations of the T.S.R. Subramanian Committee Report into its New Education Policy 2016 (see cover story). However, it’s likely to cherry pick some of […]
In the face-off between entrenched leftists and ‘invader’ right-wing intellectuals and academics on university campuses countrywide, the detailed and constructive recommendations of the Subramanian Committee have little chance of being incorporated into the New Education Policy 2016: Dilip Thakore
Two years after it was first proposed by former firebrand Union minister for human resource development Smriti Irani, […]
Almost 180 years after British educationist Lord Macaulay penned his famous Minute on Education decreeing an education system to train clerks for the British raj, an overwhelming majority of the country’s 1.4 million schools are loyally following Macaulay’s education system. Fortunately all is not lost – Summiya Yasmeen
1916. Typical school classroom scene in British India. […]
Displaying entrepreneurial zeal and capability rare among academics, former IIM-Bangalore director Prof. J. Philip has nurtured the Xavier Institute of Management & Entrepreneurship into a nationally reputed B-school with campuses in Bangalore, Kochi and Chennai: Sujata Choudhury
To celebrate its silver jubilee year in a purposive and socially beneficial manner, the Bangalore-based Xavier Institute of Management […]
In a short span of time JMPS (estb. 2005) has established a reputation as Jammu & Kashmir’s top-ranked co-ed primary-secondary. In the EducationWorld India School Rankings 2016 it is ranked #1 statewide: Autar Nehru
Sited on a six-acre campus on the Channi Himmat hillock in Jammu — the winter capital of the strife-torn northern state of Jammu […]
Over the past 121 years, 37 world leaders including former prime ministers and presidents have studied or taught at London School of Economics which has also nurtured 16 Nobel laureates: SUMMIYA YASMEEN
Founded in 1895 by Fabian Society members Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Graham Wallas and renowned author George Bernard Shaw, the London School of Economics and […]
Dilip Thakore interviewed Prakash Javadekar, Union HRD minister, over the telephone. Excerpts:
Since the TSR Subramanian Committee submitted its report on April 30, considerable time has elapsed. When is NEP 2016 likely to be officially published?
The report of the TSR Subramanian Committee is only one of the many inputs the Union government has invited for framing […]
The Committee for Evolution of the New Education Policy aka the TSR Subramanian Committee submitted its National Policy on Education 2016 draft to the Union HRD ministry on May 28, 2016. Highlights of the 49-page ‘Summary of Recommendations’ of the report are given hereunder.
9.4 Challenges for NEP 2016
Despite many gains, the Indian education system faces […]
Dr. Naushad Forbes is president of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and co-chairman of Forbes Marshall Pvt. Ltd.
1. Every college and university should be autonomous — it must swim or sink on its own.
2. Higher ed institutions must determine their curriculums, admission, fees and faculty recruitment.
3. Colleges and universities must compete for […]
Although America’s universities are globally acclaimed for the academic, co-curricular and sports education they provide to 20.5 million students, including almost a million from overseas, the role they play in developing the civic responsibilities of students is not so well known. But this is an important role for this country’s 4,726 universities. Universities in the […]
Returned to power in West Bengal (pop. 91 million) for the second time in the 16th state assembly elections held in summer this year, Trinamool Congress (TMC) party supremo and chief minister Mamata Banerjee is now shifting her attention to the education sector which experienced neglect during the TMC’s first term (2011-16) in office. Prior […]
I’m a final year B.Sc (microbiology) student interested in a career in virology. Please advise which universities offer study programmes in virology. […]
If chronic teacher absenteeism and pathetic infrastructure were not enough, children in Uttar Pradesh’s 169,000 government primary and upper primary schools are experiencing a chronic shortage of textbooks, seven months into the academic year. Classes I-VIII students are yet to receive the full complement of textbooks which the state government is obliged to distribute to […]
All parents want the best education for their children. They want them to become healthy, happy adults who contribute to society in a positive way and to succeed financially. Most parents are willing to invest whatever resources they have to attain these objectives. For the middle class, one way of achieving this objective is to […]
“What we need is not a Uniform Civil Code but uniformity of rights across different religions. For this we need to follow the premise, ‘Reform from Within’ in the same way Hindu law was reformed, Christian Law was reformed and the Muslim law has been reformed without invoking any major political controversy.”
Flavia Agnes, well-known lawyer, […]
To believe some young voters — especially those who showed up at Bernie Sanders rallies earlier this year — America is in the midst of a student debt crisis. In 2010, student loans overtook credit cards to become the biggest source of American household debt other than mortgages. Today, they total about 7 percent of […]
Assam
Youth mentoring programmes
Addressing 200 serving and retired civil servants of the Assam cadre in Guwahati on October 22, chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal launched ‘Arohan’, a mentoring programme for the state’s aspirational youth.
The chief minister underlined the programme’s importance in guiding youth to fulfill their career goals and appealed to the bureaucracy to aid the programme […]
The University of Oxford has become the first UK university to top the Times Higher Education World University Rankings in the 12-year history of the table. It knocks five-time leader, the California Institute of Technology, into second place in the World University Rankings 2016-2017.
Oxford’s success can be attributed to improved performances across the four main […]
The Bangalore-based Indus Training and Research Institute (ITARI, estb.2009) and the University of Bath (UoB), UK, have formed a strategic alliance to offer dual certification postgraduate training programmes for teachers. A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed in Bangalore between Prof. Jeff Thompson (a founder of the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO), Geneva), Dr. Mary Hayden, […]
The European Union has long been committed to a policy of promoting “global awareness of the high quality and the rich cultural and linguistic diversity of European higher education”. Since 2014, a central programme has been Study in Europe. This initiative produces promotional material, offers expert guidance, organises real and virtual education fairs and hosts […]
Wheelchair on Power, a PowerPoint presentation showcasing an innovative and affordable robotic wheelchair for the physically challenged, has bagged Kolkata-based Shramona Chakraborty (22) — a final year computer engineering student at the M.C. Kejriwal Vidyapeeth Institute of Engineering, Howrah — the top prize of the IET South Asia Present Around The World (PATW) 2016 competition. […]
In the eyes of some Australian newspapers, the nation’s universities have been admitting “large numbers of sub-standard students”. It led Simon Birmingham, education minister in the Liberal-led government, to convene a review of university admissions transparency in February this year. The government “wants to ‘shine a light’ on the practices and habits that may be […]
At a boarding gate in Delhi’s chaotic Terminal 1, an Armani-clad young man bristling with the accoutrements of wealth: flashy phone, big watch, designer sunglasses, tried to push past me. “Excuse me, we’re all going to board the same aircraft; it will not leave without you,” I admonished him. He stared back uncomprehendingly, insolently. It […]
Turkey is now the number one country for applications from under-threat scholars seeking safety in Western universities, according to two charities that help at-risk academics. With hundreds of academics sacked, suspended or under investigation in the wake of the unsuccessful coup attempt in July, the Scholar Rescue Fund is confronted with an “unprecedented” number of […]
Chinese students at top-ranked universities are less creative than those at less prestigious institutions, a new study has found, with the authors blaming China’s exam-dominated education culture and intense university workload. The research sheds further light on the long-running debate over whether Chinese graduates lack creativity and critical thinking skills or if it’s simply a […]
It’s a telling commentary of how child-centric is Indian society that the new National Policy on Education 2016 (NPE aka NEP) is being formulated after a hiatus of almost three decades. The last NEP formulated for the world’s largest child population was in 1986 and touched up in 1992. Quite obviously, if the pathetic condition […]
It is generally accepted that every level of Indian education and research, from primary schools to universities, has very few institutions of high quality. The demographic dividend that India expects to leverage during the next 30 years is predicated on the young age of its population. The premise is that their youthful energy and high […]
The best people to ascertain whether Indian education has been sufficiently liberalised — as has Indian industry since 1991 — is the country’s 300 million students’ community. They are the ones suffering the brunt of an archaic, dysfunctional education system. Unfortunately, little is being done to correct it.
The doubling of India’s annual GDP growth rate […]
Exactly 17 years ago we launched EducationWorld — The Human Development Magazine with the avowed mission to “build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda”. Quite clearly that mission hasn’t been accomplished because public opinion is insufficiently, if at all, aroused. Therefore, neither the Central nor state […]
The inaugural Educationworld grand jury awards 2016 were instituted in September to felicitate low-profile and/or emerging schools which have introduced best 21st-century practices in primary-secondary education. To shortlist and select low-profile and/or newly-promoted progressive schools countrywide, we invited nominations from educationists, individuals and schools themselves supported by evidence of best practices in ten categories such […]
“With the arts made marginal to culture as a whole and with religion in relative decline, especially in its communal ritual elements, we are left with sports as a last resort” — Thomas Moore, The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life (1996)
I am indebted to my college teammate, friend and collaborator, Dr. David Epperson, for the title of […]
The cover story profiling the UK-based Cambridge International Examinations (EW October) was enlightening. The diligent and meticulous manner in which this exams board revises and updates its syllabuses every six years is an example to our Indian exams boards, particularly state boards. Sadly in India, most state boards revise syllabuses after 15-20 years and even […]
The Indian institute of Management (IIM) Bill, 2015, which created a furore because it severely circumscribed the autonomy of the country’s 20 IIMs (see EW cover story August 2015 on www.educationworld.in archives) and was subsequently cold storaged, is being readied in a new variant and will be presented to the Union cabinet […]
Islam and The Future of Tolerance — A Dialogue by Sam Harris & Maajid Nawaz Harvard University Press; Price: Rs.859; Pages: 138
Sam Harris is a well-known American atheist ideologue. Maajid Nawaz is a former Islamist activist who experienced a momentous change of heart and mind and is now member of a circle of reformers committed to combating […]
With elections to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) — the country’s richest municipal body with a 2016-17 budget of Rs.37,052 crore — scheduled for next February, antagonism between Maharashtra’s ruling alliance partners — the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Shiv Sena (SS) — is spilling into the open. Although the minister of state for education […]
Harsh Kapadia
Trustee, HB Kapadia Group of Schools, Ahmedabad
Where would you place education on your national list of priorities?
“Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world,” said Nelson Mandela famously. I fully agree.
How best to upgrade government schools?
One way is to make digital content freely available to government school […]
Karnataka’s public school system, comprising 50,190 government primary-secondaries with an aggregate enrolment of 5 million students, is mired in a major textbook printing scam. The state’s primary and secondary education minister Tanveer Sait has ordered an inquiry into reports that government-contracted private printers have printed sub-standard textbooks and pocketed “crores of rupees” by lowering the […]
Education policy in India ensures children’s right to sit in classrooms, but not the right to learn. Yet schooling without learning is meaningless and squanders the life-chances of millions of Indian children and jeopardises economic growth.
The draft National Education Policy (NEP) 2016 and associated discussions so far have almost totally ignored the Right of Children […]
It’s hardly surprising that master manipulator and skilled practitioner of corporate intrigue and machinations, Ratan Tata has emerged victorious from the dramatic October 24 boardroom coup in Bombay House, Mumbai, head office of the globe-girdling Tata Group and India’s largest business conglomerate (annual revenue: Rs.726,000 crore). In the coup d’etat, the unsuspecting Cyrus Mistry, chairman […]
India’s top-ranked international day schools 2023-24 Among international schools the league table of day schools is the lengthiest. Not surprising. They provide globally benchmarked international certification ... 
Manipal Group’s K-12 Education Debut The entry of the Manipal Education Group, which over the past half century has focused its energies on higher education ... 
EW India Preschool Rankings 2023-24 Introduced in 2010, EWIPR has become an annual fixture on the national education calendar with the number of cities covered ... 
Karnataka: 4 formative, 1 summative exam evaluation pattern in schools Reshma Ravishanker Students between classes I and X in Karnataka’s state board schools will have four formative and one summative ... 
