Jobs in Education System

EducationWorld September 2019

They said it in August

“Conviction rates tell the tale. Whereas in most rich countries 89 percent or more of those charged with crimes are found guilty, in India the rate is between 40 and 50 percent — and for cases involving politicians just 6 percent.” The Economist on India’s failing law and justice system (August 24) “The larger issue remains a police and prosecution that is woefully under-staffed and ill-equipped, and thoroughly subservient to the political executive so as to be unable to properly investigate and punish crimes.” Editorial on the ‘Misdiagnosis of the lynching problem’ (Economic & Political Weekly, August 24) “It is unclear whether the policymakers in New Delhi have a clear strategy of winning over ordinary Kashmiris after rubbing their nose in the dirt. The time-tested formula of announcing development grants and packages is unlikely to work because that still denies the political nature of the problem.” Bharat Bhushan, well-known journalist (Deccan Chronicle, August 29) “Rural distress is real and deeper and greater than the much-hyped distress of angel investors and high net worth individuals; so a massive increase in rural public expenditure, including in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme to provide public works as well as in social spending would provide immediate relief.” Jayati Ghosh, professor of economics at JNU, Delhi on reviving the Indian economy (The Hindu, August 29) “Reading — something teachers no longer appear to manage — was something almost all those teachers did with a passion. They read because they loved reading… And teachers need to start reading again. Period.” Anjuli Bhargava in ‘The teachers we knew’ (Business Standard, August 31)

Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more
boys day schools

India’s top-ranked boys day schools 2019-20

Since 2013, within the shrinking minority of all-boys day schools, Campion School, Mumbai has enjoyed an undisputed leadership position. This year too, the EWISR 2019-20 sample respondents have voted Campion #1.

Within India’s shrinking minority of all-boys day schools, the CISCE-affiliated Campion School, Mumbai (estb.1943) enjoys an undisputed leadership position. Since 2013, when the composite […]

India’s premier girls day schools

With conservative households still preferring to send girl children to gender segregated schools, the EW 2019-20 league table of India’s best girls day schools comprises 93 institutions (cf. 53 boys day schools).

Although the overwhelming majority of greenfield schools promoted during the past three decades are co-education day schools, all-girls day schools have retained their popularity […]

EW Global School Rankings 2019-20

EW Global School Rankings 2019-20

Since 1999 when the first issue of EducationWorld was launched with minimal fanfare but maximum determination to “build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda,” this objective has not yet been attained. However, there’s no doubt that awareness of the critical importance of QEFA (quality education for all) for national development has impacted the national consciousness like never before. There is rising agreement with the observation made by Nelson Mandela (1918-2013), the indefatigable leader of South Africa’s long freedom struggle against the unremittingly cruel practitioners of apartheid, that “education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”. Undoubtedly people of the world’s least developed countries who have relatively recently broken free from the shackles of imperialism and colonialism need high quality education to catch up with our erstwhile masters. Therefore applying the logic that what’s good for educationally short-changed India is good for the developing countries of the so-called third world, your editors have resolved to rate and rank the most respected schools of developing countries with the objective of acknowledging their contribution to the development of their host countries as also to encourage academic and student exchanges with India and inter se. We believe when nations are well-educated, the risk of armed conflict is greatly reduced and mutually advantageous trade linkages become easier. Education can unite the world. This year in the inaugural EducationWorld Global School Rankings (EWGSR), juries of education leaders and experts have ranked the Top 10 primary-secondary schools in our neighbour countries, i.e, the kingdoms of the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain (CBSE and/or CISCE, Delhi affiliated schools), Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Next year, we intend to rank schools in a larger number of countries and in the fullness of time make the annual EWGSR truly global. UAE’s Top-ranked Schools Dubai 1. GEMS Modern Academy 2. The Indian High School 3. The Millennium School 4. Delhi Private School, Dubai 4. Gems Our Own English High School 5. Gems New Millennium School 6. Gems Our Own Indian School 7. Ambassador School 7. Our Own High School, Al Warqa’a 8. Credence High School 9. JSS Private School 9. JSS International School 10. Rajagiri International School “Since a jury of repute has recognised our excellence, I’m sure our entire school’s community will rejoice. Our school’s vision statement is ‘inspiring children to be positive change-makers’. It’s an honour and privilege your jury has acknowledged the hard work our teachers are doing to live up to this vision statement.” — Nargish Khambatta, principal, GEMS Modern Academy, Dubai. Abu Dhabi 1. Abu Dhabi Indian School, Al Muroor 2. Gems United Indian School 3. Abu Dhabi Indian School, Branch 1, Al Wathba 4. Mayoor Private School 5. St Joseph’s School 6. Bright Riders School 7. Private International English School 8. Sunrise English Private School 9. Global Indian International School 10. Grace Valley Indian School 10. Asian International Private School “This is indeed very good news…

more
Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more
Woodstock School, Mussoorie

India’s most admired international residential schools

Within the small minority of glamorous wholly residential international schools, the vintage Woodstock, Mussoorie, Good Shepherd International, Ooty and Kodaikanal International School continue to dominate the EWISR league table.

Within the small minority of glamorous international wholly residential schools, the Woodstock School, Mussoorie enjoys exalted status. Constructed in 1854 by American missionaries on a scenic 250-acre […]

Indus International School, Bangalore

India’s best international day-cum-boarding schools 2019-20

Affiliated with offshore examination boards such as Cambridge International (UK) and IB (Geneva), India’s best international day-cum-boarding schools 2019-20 offer the benefits of high-end day and boarding school education have attracted the attention of the upper-middle class. Though within the broad category of international schools affiliated with foreign examination boards such as Cambridge International, Edxcel (UK) and International Baccalaureate (Geneva), the day schools league table is the most competitive and populous (89), international day-cum-boarding and wholly residential schools constitute the high-end glamour segment. Built on sprawling capital-intensive campuses providing state-of-the-art academic, sports and co-curricular education infrastructure and five-star optional residential accommodation, international day-cum-boarding schools have attracted the attention of India’s upper middle class as they offer the benefits of day as well as holistic boarding school education. Since the annual EW India School Rankings were divided into three main categories — day, boarding and international — and further sub-divided into ten sub-categories to create level playing fields for comparison in 2013, the international day-cum-boarding schools national league table has been topped by the state-of-the-art Indus International School, Bangalore (IIS-B, estb.2003). This year too, the 12,213 sample respondents polled by the Delhi-based C fore have voted IIS-B India’s #1 international day-cum-boarding school with top scores on the parameters of community service and teacher welfare and development across all categories of international schools. Set in a 40-acre green campus in suburban Bangalore, this Cambridge International and IB-affiliated K-12 international school provides its 1,200 students from 33 countries globally comparable academic, sports, co-curricular and performing arts education. “It’s always great news when IIS-B is ranked India’s #1 international day-cum-boarding school, more so that we are #1 for a record eighth year. The well-chosen 14 parameters of the EW survey have set new benchmarks for providing comprehensive K-12 education in India, and it’s very satisfying that IIS-B has excelled in all of them. Our top score on the parameter of teacher welfare and development is especially gratifying as we have invested heavily in continuously training our faculty and staff. To supplement the efforts of our teachers, in 2018 we became the first school in India to introduce robot teachers in classes VII-IX. They deliver routine syllabus content and perform mechanical assessment tasks, enabling teachers to focus on enhancing students’ creativity, problem-solving and life skills. I am happy your survey respondents have recognised our commitment to innovation in school education by awarding us the #1 rank once again,” says Sarojini Rao, an economics and education alumna of Pune and Annamalai universities and principal of IIS-B since 2005.ble of international day-cum-boarding schools are the IB-affiliated Pathways School, Aravali, Gurgaon, which retains its #2 national rank and Genesis Global School, Noida promoted to #3 (4 in 2018). Beyond the Top 3, there’s been a major reshuffle of seating in the league table of India’s Top 10 international day-cum-boarding schools. The International School, Bangalore has edged up to #4 (#5), Greenwood High International, Bangalore is ranked #5 (2), Stonehill, Bangalore is promoted to #6 (9) tied with Jayshree Periwal…

more
Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more
co-ed boarding schools

India’s top co-ed boarding schools 2019-20

It’s an indicator of the mindset change in favour of new genre, culturally rooted co-ed boarding schools that upper middle SEC ‘A’ sample respondents have voted vegetarian fare guruji institutions the Top 3 countrywide. Although post-independence India’s K-12 education system — especially the country’s 1.20 million government schools — has been run into the ground, fortunately, despite the imposition of rigorous licence-permit-quota rules and regulations upon them by the education-agnostic neta-babu brotherhood, a substantial number of the country’s 320,000 private independent (aka unaided) schools have survived as islands of excellence in a sea of mediocrity. This is especially true of the few hundred legacy boarding schools established during the pre-independence British raj era, among the few positive outcomes of almost two centuries of ruthlessly exploitative imperial rule over the Indian subcontinent which mercifully ended in 1947. Sited in the country’s salubrious hill stations built for the progeny of British administrators and army officials, and modelled upon England’s famous public (i.e, private, exclusive) boarding schools, these institutions — some of them established over 150 years ago — have not only survived, but also improved with the introduction of new pedagogies, indigenous cultural refinements and modern infrastructure. As such, they have made a great and largely unsung contribution to the development of post-independence India’s middle class which is leading the national development effort to close the gap between India and the developed industrial nations of the West. Although the country’s legacy boarding schools are routinely disparaged as islands of privilege by trendy lefties and jholawalas who despite the implosion of communism and rejection of socialism worldwide continue to dominate the public discourse in contemporary India, ab initio since EducationWorld was launched two decades ago, your editors have always regarded them highly as institutions worthy of support and replication. Therefore, in the pioneer annual EducationWorld India School Rankings introduced in 2007 — which has since evolved into the world’s largest and most comprehensive primary-secondary schools evaluation survey — a special section has been reserved for rating and ranking the country’s vintage co-ed, boys and girls boarding schools separately, to eliminate apples and oranges type comparisons. And surely, it’s a mark of progress that of the country’s boarding schools sufficiently well-known to merit inclusion in the EW league tables, the largest cohort is of co-ed boarding schools. It’s also undoubtedly a marker of the degree to which educators, principals, teachers, fees-paying parents and senior school students have revised their colonial mind-sets that for the past seven years since the annual EWISR league tables were refined to rank day, boarding and international schools separately and these broad categories were further sub-divided into co-ed, boys and girls and day-cum-boarding, that the Rishi Valley School, Chittoor (Andhra Pradesh) has been consistently ranked India’s #1 co-ed boarding school. Conceptualised and established by indigenous, pioneer environmentalist, philosopher and educationist J. Krishnamurti (1895-1986), the 12,213 sample respondents polled have voted RVS (estb.1926) #1 by a wide margin, this year as well. Dr. Anantha Jyoti, principal of this class IV-XII CISCE-affiliated…

more
Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more
best girls boarding schools 2019-20

India’s best girls boarding schools 2019-20

Although in Western countries, girls-only schools are becoming increasingly rare, in 21st century India some women’s rights champions argue that girls-only boarding schools enable girls to uninhibitedly develop into confident young women. Here are India’s best girls boarding schools 2019-20 Although around the world and in Western countries in particular, girls-only day and boarding schools are becoming increasingly rare, in 21st century India where patriarchy continues to rule, and gender segregation and imposition of social restrictions upon girl children are the rule across all cultures and communities, girls schools — especially legacy girls boarding schools which provide high-quality academic, co-curricular and sports education in safe and secure environments — continue to serve a socially beneficial purpose. Contrary to the popular belief that they shelter and mollycoddle students, not a few women’s rights activists argue that they enable girl children to uninhibitedly develop and mature into well-educated and confident young women equipped with excellent life skills to excel in adult workplaces and sports arenas. Indeed even in the gender egalitarian West, there is revisionism on the advantages of gender segregated schools. For instance, members of the US-based National Education Association are divided on the issue of the social costs and benefits of gender segregated schools. A rising number of members argue that single sex schools enable students to focus on their studies and cognitive development without distraction, and discourage premature precocity and sexual gratification. Nevertheless although greenfield girls-only boarding schools continue to be promoted, the general preference of middle class parents is for co-ed education which teaches gender equality and respect for girl children from early age. The list of co-ed boarding schools sufficiently well-known to be included in the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings is substantially longer than of boys and girls boarding schools, a telling commentary on the trend in away-from-home boarding school education which is gaining popularity again, because the country’s wealth-generating metros and larger cities are becoming increasingly polluted and hazardous for growing children. Be that as it may, in this year’s league table of India’s top-ranked girls boarding schools there is considerable rearrangement of seating at the Top 5 table. Mayo College Girls, Ajmer (estb.1988) second ranked since 2016, is India’s #1 girls legacy boarding school of 2019-20. Moreover, while Scindia Kanya, Gwalior retains its #2 rank of 2018-19, two newly-promoted girls boarding schools in Dehradun — Unison World School (estb.2007) and Ecole Globale International (estb.2013) are ranked higher than last year’s top-ranked Welham Girls, Dehradun (estb.1957). “I am delighted to learn that Mayo Girls is ranked India #1 girls boarding school in EWISR 2019-20 by your 12,000-plus sample respondents. It is the outcome of the high level of commitment and hard work of our teachers, students, administrative and support staff. We are an institution committed to holistic development and empowerment of our students and teachers, and our continuous investment in people has paid off. It’s also important to note that our #1 ranking would not have been possible without the encouragement of our managing committee…

more
Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more
boys boarding schools

India’s premier boys boarding schools 2019-20

India’s globally famous vintage boys boarding schools such as Doon, Mayo, Bishop Cotton, Shimla, St. Paul’s Darjeeling are popular as ever with the country’s aspirational new middle class. According to some education savants, single-sex boarding schools are going out of fashion as they’re not quite in keeping with the gender-egalitarian temper of the new millennium. But by all indications, 21st century India is not in step with global trends and norms. India’s globally famous vintage boys’ boarding schools such as Doon, Mayo, Bishop Cotton, Shimla, and St. Paul’s, Darjeeling, seem to be flourishing and are as popular as ever with the country’s aspirational new middle class which values the mix of high-quality academic, co-curricular and sports education they provide in cool climes and unpolluted environments. This is testified by the huge number of admission applications top-ranked legacy boarding schools — modelled on the famously tough boys boarding schools of Victorian England — continue to receive at the start of every academic year. Most of them conduct mandatory written and viva voce entrance tests and are choosy about the boys they admit into their hallowed portals. Within the close-knit fraternity of the country’s top boys boarding schools — most of whom are institutional members of the low-profile but highly influential 77-strong Indian Public Schools Conference (estb.1939), — The Doon School, Dehradun (TDS, estb.1935) towers like a colossus and despite its relatively lesser vintage, has captured the imagination of post-independence India’s aspirational middle class. Promoted in 1935 by Satish Ranjan Das, a prominent Calcutta-based barrister, 84 years ago as a nationalist response to some British raj-era schools in India refusing admission to upper-class Indians, TDS’ first headmaster was an Englishman, Arthur E. Foot, a former science master at Britain’s famous Eton College (estb.1440). Since the early 1940s, this boys-only boarding school set within a 70-acre green campus in the equable climate of Dehradun has earned an enviable public reputation, particularly after Rajiv and Sanjay Gandhi, grandsons of Jawaharlal Nehru, were enrolled as students in the 1950s. Unsurprisingly, TDS has been ranked India’s #1 boys boarding school ab initio since the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) were introduced in 2007. However in recent years, TDS’ dominance has been challenged by several legacy all-boys boarding schools which have jettisoned the toxic bullying traditions of offspring of British army officers of the Raj era, one of whose favourite sports was to don special boots to kick native Indians. In 2014, Bishop Cotton Shimla was ranked the country’s #1 boys boarding school by that year’s sample respondents. This year, TDS is obliged to share the winner’s podium with The Scindia School, Gwalior (SSG), founded by the late Maharaja Mahadeo Scindia of Gwalior in 1897 as The Sardars’ School for the education of the progeny of the princely families of British India. Renamed The Scindia School in 1933, over the past half century it has evolved into a highly-respected private CBSE (Delhi) class VI-XII boys boarding school, which offers a carefully calibrated mix of contemporary digitally-enabled…

more
Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more
best day-cum-boarding schools 2019-20

India’s best day-cum-boarding schools 2019-20

In the co-ed day-cum-boarding schools 2019-20 EW league table, there is a constant churn with schools from new, better planned cities giving vintage, established schools in metros stiff competition. When day schools become popular with parents and students in any city, they experience public pressure to transform into day-cum-boarding institutions to enable access to children in far-flung districts of a state, or even distant suburbs of India’s ever expanding, ill-planned metros and larger cities. Currently, there are 40 cities across the country with more than 1 million inhabitants and some metros such as Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata grudgingly host over 12 million residents. Therefore in several metros where there is lebensraum, top-ranked day schools have transformed into co-ed day-cum-boarding schools which cater to children from distant districts of India’s country-size states and increasingly distant urban suburbs. The island, land-starved city of Mumbai is perhaps the sole metro that doesn’t host a high-quality day-cum-boarding school. The wisdom and/or expertise of constructing bridges to the mainland — a mere 5 km as the crow flies — has not dawned upon the suffering citizens of India’s commercial capital. With an increasing number of schools offering the option of day and residential schooling, co-ed day-cum-boarding schools are springing up across the country. Consequently, the annual EW league table of the best co-ed day-cum-boarding schools is in a constant churn with schools from new, better planned cities giving vintage well-established schools in metros stiff competition. Nevertheless the league table of India’s most respected day-cum-boarding schools has been dominated by two centrally located vintage institutions in Delhi — Modern School, Barakhamba Rd (MSBR) and Delhi Public School, R.K. Puram (DPS-RKP) with the two alternatively voted the country’s best every year. This year, MSBR has pipped DPS-RKP to win the best seat at the top table of India’s most preferred day-cum-boarding schools. Although on the critical parameters of teacher competence, teacher welfare and development and academic reputation, DPS-RKP is awarded higher scores by the EW sample respondents, with highest ratings under the parameters of co-curricular and sports education, leadership and infrastructure, MSBR is awarded a total score of 1,266 (of a maximum 2,000) cf. DPS-RKP’s 1,265. “Given the vigorous efforts of our faculty and students to excel in academics, co-curricular activities and sports, our #1 ranking this year is well-deserved. The hard work of our teachers and staff to reclaim our #1 position has borne fruit. It is also the result of all our stakeholders including our board of trustees’ insistence and support for sustained excellence over the decades, that has made this top-ranking a natural expectation for MSBR,” says Dr. Vijay Datta, a biology and engineering postgrad of Rajasthan University with a doctorate in life skills and emotional intelligence management awarded by the Regional Institute of Education, Ajmer. Moreover Datta acquired valuable teaching and admin experience at the blue-chip Mayo College (1991-2011) and Army School, Dagshai (2011-14) prior to being appointed principal of MSBR in 2016. Datta is especially pleased that MSBR is ranked #1 in this…

more
Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more
international day schools

India’s top-ranked international day schools

Within the broad category of international schools, the most rapid growth has been of co-ed day schools which provide the benefits of international certification at relatively affordable prices compared to international day-cum-boarding and wholly residential schools.

With the demand for new genre international schools providing readily accepted school-leaving certification which smoothes students’ entry into the world’s […]

special needs schools

India’s most admired special needs schools

In 2015, EducationWorld introduced a separate league table ranking the country’s most admired special needs schools to acknowledge the pioneering work done by the small minority of special needs institutions.

Unesco’s State of the Education Report for India — Children with Disabilities 2019 estimates that 7.8 million children and youth under 19 years of age countrywide […]

budget private schools

India’s top 25 budget private schools

India’s unique budget private schools reportedly educate a staggering 60 million children from low-income households. Despite their being unpopular with government, EW has been ranking and celebrating them in the public interest.

With awareness dawning on the vast majority of bottom-of-pyramid households that quality education (especially learning English) is the passport to upward socio-economic mobility, budget […]

best government day & boarding schools 2019-20

India’s best government day & boarding schools 2019-20

To encourage and motivate managements and teachers of government schools to raise teaching-learning standards, EW has ranked the country’s Top 10 best government day & boarding schools inter 2019-20 se in separate league tables. It’s common knowledge that despite most of India’s 1.30 million schools promoted/managed by the Central, state and local governments providing free-of-charge primary education with free mid-day meals, textbooks and uniforms thrown in to their students, there is a rising trend of even bottom-of-pyramid households making great financial sacrifices to send their children to private schools. This is hardly surprising given that the great majority of government schools are characterised by crumbling buildings, lack of toilets, drinking water, electricity, and suffer acute teacher shortages, multi-grade teaching and rock-bottom learning outcomes. However, to encourage and motivate managements and teachers of government-run schools to raise teaching-learning standards, since 2014 EducationWorld has rated and ranked the Top 10 government day and boarding schools inter se in separate league tables. For this year’s league tables, a survey of 1,126 SEC (socio-economic category) ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’ households was conducted by C fore, the Delhi-based market research and opinion polls company which orchestrates the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR). In the EWISR 2019-20 national league table of the country’s Top 10 government day schools, the Delhi state government-promoted Rajkiya Pratibha Vikas Vidyalaya (RPVV), Dwarka, Delhi, is ranked India’s #1 for the second year in succession. It is followed by Kendriya Vidyalaya (KV), IIT-Madras, Chennai (ranked #2 for the past four years) and the Government Vocational Higher Secondary School for Girls, Nadakkavu, Kozhikode ointly ranked #2 (3), KV-IIT Powai, Mumbai #3 (5), KV, Pattom #4 (6) and Rajkiya Pratibha Vikas Vidyalaya, Lajpat Nagar, Delhi #5 (6). It’s also noteworthy that Rajkiya Pratibha Vikas Vidyalaya, Sector 11, Rohini, a class VI-XII CBSE school, is ranked #7 (12) in the dozen strong league table of government schools sufficiently well-known to be included in EWISR 2019-20 (schools evaluated by less than 25 respondents are not ranked). Credit must be given to the Aam Aadmi Party which has ruled Delhi state since it won the legislative assembly election of 2015 with a huge majority, for placing education on the top of its development agenda. In 2015, it became the first state government nationwide to allocate over 20 percent of its budget (Rs.9,836 crore) to education. In the recent 2019-20 budget, it raised the allocation for education to 26 percent (Rs.15,601 crore). Dr. Rajpal Singh, a maths and history alumnus of Meerut University with 28 years of enriching teaching and administrative experience and principal of RPVV, Dwarka since January 2019, acknowledges the enabling support of the AAP government. “I am grateful that your informed sample respondents have recognised and rewarded the culture of academic excellence we have in RPVV, Dwarka, thanks to generous and valuable government funding. This recognition for the second consecutive year, will motivate our team to work harder. I am not surprised our school has been awarded top score on six of 14 EW…

more
Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more
The Heritage Xperieential School

India’s top co-ed day schools

With the Constitution guaranteeing gender egalitarianism under the law, co-ed day schools have become normative in urban and even rural India. Therefore the 600-plus co-ed day schools league table is the longest and most competitive in EWISR 2019-20.

Inevitably the longest league table in the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) is of the country’s most […]

EW India school rankings 2019-20

Top 1000 – EW India school rankings 2019-20

To conduct the EW India School Rankings 2019-20 survey, 122 field personnel of the Delhi-based C fore interviewed 12,213 fees-paying parents, school principals, teachers and senior school students in 28 major cities and education hubs across India. This is the world’s most detailed schools rankings survey – Dilip Thakore & Summiya Yasmeen Initiated in 2007, over the past 12 years the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) has matured into India’s — and the world’s — largest and most comprehensive survey of Top 2,000 primary-secondary schools divided into three broad categories — day, legacy boarding and international institutions. Initially, in our very first survey, all schools were ranked inter se without classification and produced distorted results. Therefore after a change of the rating and rankings agency from IMRB to the Delhi-based C fore (Centre for Forecasting & Research Pvt. Ltd), the unprecedented annual EWISR divided the country’s most well-known schools into the said broad categories for evaluation by a large number of knowledgeable stakeholders in education — school principals, teachers, educationists and fees-paying parents — who were designated sample respondents — reflecting a broad consensus of informed public opinion. Subsequently in 2013, we further refined our broad day, boarding and international categories after receiving feedback from educators and teachers that the EWISR was comparing apples with oranges. Accepting this argument, each category was further sub-divided. Thus day schools were sub-divided into day co-ed, day-cum-boarding, boys and all-girls schools and ranked inter se in their distinctive sub-categories. This logic was also applied to boarding and international schools. Moreover, unlike school rankings published in developed Western countries which rank schools on the single parameter of academic excellence, right from the start your editors insisted that the EWISR should rate and rank schools on several (currently 14) parameters including teacher competence, teacher welfare and development, institutional leadership, co-curricular, life skills and sports education, infrastructure etc, in addition to academic reputation. This is because we firmly believe that there’s much more to children’s education experience than academic excellence and are fully convinced that the best schools provide holistic, balanced education which enables development of the multiple intelligences inherent in every child. Therefore unlike in the UK or several states in the US where schools are ranked, in the annual EWISR it’s perfectly feasible for a school which isn’t highly ranked in school-leaving exams to be top-ranked because of its management and faculty according equal importance to life skills, co-curricular and sports education. Indeed in the annual EWISR, academically excellent schools are seldom top-ranked. Consequently, the logic of assessing and evaluating schools on wider parameters of education excellence rather than just academic outcomes is widely accepted in India. Several education-focused publications such as Digital Learning, Education Today.com and ScooNews have ‘adopted’ our carefully conceptualised parameters of school education excellence. However, we have neither objected nor condemned them for plagiarism or passing off because we believe that in their own way, they are expanding the market for education products, media and services. Nevertheless it’s important for the public to…

more
Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more

Draft NEP 2019: Command & control prescription

The draft National Education Policy (NEP) 2019 released by the Union HRD ministry on May 30, strikes so many different notes in the same breath that one doesn’t quite know which ones might eventually form the tune. Many of the notes are jarring while some are sweet and familiar. Of the latter, some are very old notes. One has heard them over and over again from the Central and state bureaucracies and politicians, but they still sound sweet to some academics and policy formulators. New listeners may get taken in when these familiar notes are struck. For instance, a lot of people will feel pleased to learn that the examination stress of children will be reduced, that all education institutions will have autonomy, that liberal constitutional values will occupy centrestage in the final NEP 2019. If these goodies are about to be distributed, there will be plenty of takers to receive them. However, this stream of pleasant anticipation is interrupted by a statement on p.180 of the 484-page draft NEP 2019. The second paragraph of s.8.1, titled ‘System architecture and roles in the system of education’ of the policy draft says: “The new regulatory authority for schools called the State School Regulatory Authority (SSRA) will have the regulatory mandate and will set basic and uniform standards for both public and private schools.” A little later paragraph 8.1.2 says the “Department of Education of the state will be the apex policy-making body and shall also be responsible for policy and the overall coordination and monitoring of the system” (italics mine). The very next paragraph, i.e, p.8.1.3 explains that as a “single independent” regulator, SSRA will handle all aspects of school regulation including oversight of the school system and implementation of “accreditation”. Keep reading and soon you will be told that “SSRA will report to the RjSA (Rajya Shiksha Aayog) in the absence of which it will report to the chief minister of the state”. One can’t be blamed for being confused about the actual apex-level authority. This confusing architecture recommended by the draft NEP 2019 is fully manifested in higher education, more specifically in Chapter 23 titled Rashtriya Shiksha Aayog (RSA aka, National Education Commission). While RSA is the national apex authority for education, the states will have their own Rajya Shiksha Aayog (RjSA), mentioned above. With so many new layers of authority added at all levels to the old colonial set-up for disciplining foot soldiers of the education system — teachers and institution leaders — the complexities of running a school are likely to be multiplied. It is nobody’s case that private schools should be left alone or that commercialisation of education shouldn’t be challenged. But regulation and accreditation by newly established bodies — linked with Central and state-level bureaucratic and political authorities — in addition to examination boards whose power is well-entrenched and familiar, is hardly likely to serve the cause of autonomy. Well-intentioned principals and teachers will wonder how NEP 2019 will confer the autonomy promised to enable…

more
Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more

Erasmus+ scholarships

New Delhi, August 2. Nearly 450 Indian students and faculty have been awarded Erasmus+ scholarship and mobility grants funded by the European Union to study in top-ranked universities across Europe this year. With grants also offered by EU member states, more than 50,000 Indian students are pursuing higher education in Europe. Of the 450 Erasmus+ Indian students awarded scholarship/grants this year, 89 have been awarded fully-funded scholarships for the Erasmus Mundus joint Master’s degree programmes (EMJMD), which enable them to attend classes in two different countries of Europe. With a 23 percent jump in Indian nationals bagging Erasmus+ scholarships compared to last year, India remains one of the Top 5 recipients of Erasmus scholarships. In addition, 350 students and faculty from Indian higher education institutions have been given scholarships under Erasmus’ International Credit Mobility (ICM) programme which funds mobility agreements between European and Indian universities. “Europe has much to offer in terms of globally ranked universities with high academic and research standards. European universities offer a unique blend of tradition and innovation, state-of-the-art facilities and cutting-edge research opportunities,” says Tomasz Kozlowski, ambassador of the European Union to India. Taj-Les Roches concordat Mumbai, August 2. The Indian Hotels Company Ltd (IHCL, aka Taj Group), South Asia’s largest hospitality company, and the Switzerland-based Les Roches Global Hospitality Education, ranked #3 for hospitality management in the QS World University Rankings 2019, are joining forces to address the skills gap of India’s travel and tourism industry. “We look back on a long-standing presence in India and are thrilled to associate Les Roches’ Swiss model of education with IHCL, developing necessary skills and promoting career opportunities in the hospitality industry,” said Dr. Christine Demen Meier, managing director of Les Roches, addressing a press conference in Mumbai. A dedicated initiative titled ‘The next General Manager of India’ designed for young hospitality professionals, will award one full scholarship to study Les Roches’ MBA in global hospitality management programme in Switzerland, followed by a fast-track intern programme at an IHCL hotel. Additionally, Les Roches will offer 50 percent scholarships to five runners up. Shortlisted applicants who meet the programme’s admission requirements will submit a business case study and compete at a final selection event in Mumbai. Embassy-Cerner CSR initiative Mumbai, August 14. Embassy Group, one of India’s largest real estate developers and the US-based Cerner Corporation, a global health platform and innovation company, have promoted a consortium of corporates and NGOs to improve health and hygiene conditions in 62 government schools of Bangalore. Under its Corporate Connect Program, Embassy Office Parks will build a coalition of its business park tenants with aligned corporate social responsibility (CSR) mandates and experienced NGOs to address a diverse number of challenges faced by government schools. Since 2016, Cerner and Embassy together have provided free health check-ups and maintained medical records of more than 4,000 students of 14 Embassy adopted government schools. “At Embassy, we strongly believe that collaboration in the CSR space is key to creating sustainable and in-depth impact among our…

more
Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more

Karnataka – Floods havoc

Heavy rains and flooding following a devastating drought in 17 districts of the south-western sea-board state of Karnataka (pop.64 million) in early August have taken a toll of 86 lives and inflicted property damage estimated at Rs.40,000 crore. The districts hit hardest include Belagavi, Chikkodi, Bagalkot, Kodagu, Chikkamagaluru and Gadag. Although relief and rehabilitation plans for over 200,000 people displaced by rain and floods fury are being drawn for restoration of road, rail and communication links, the issue of huge damage caused to the state’s education infrastructure has been placed on the back burner. Visits to villages in the Belagavi, Bagalkot, Chikkodi and Chikkamagaluru districts by your correspondent in end August indicated that classes are being conducted in the open as most schools have been converted into relief camps for the flood affected. Since government schools have basic facilities such as toilets, kitchen etc, they have been taken over by local authorities to house the displaced, disrupting school calendars across the state. Moreover, according to estimates of the Directorate of Public Instruction (DPI), over 5,500 school buildings have been severely damaged in the flooding. The largest numbers are in Chikkodi (1,200) and Belagavi (1,300) academic districts, with 31,200 classrooms requiring immediate repair. As per the preliminary estimate of DPI, Rs.371 crore is required to restore Karnataka’s impaired government schools. “With lakhs of families being shifted from their homes to safe zones, we are allowing students in flood-hit areas to attend classes in other government schools without producing documents or paying fees. No transfer or birth certificates are necessary for such enrolments and neither are uniforms compulsory. If the students require hostel facilities, district officials have been asked to provide them,” says M.P. Madegowda, director of DPI. According to education ministry officials involved in flood relief operations, the biggest challenge faced by them is forced dependence upon either the public works department or the rural development and panchayat raj local governments to repair schools. “DPI doesn’t have its own engineering section. Therefore, from drawing up damage estimates, monitoring construction and repairs, education officials are forced to depend upon other government agencies. Repair and rehabilitation work is moving at a very slow pace,” complains a senior DPI official. The predicament of children in Karnataka’s 43,000 government schools has been worsened by political paralysis following the collapse of the Janata Dal (U)-Congress government in July. Although B.S. Yeddyurappa, leader of the opposition and president of the Karnataka unit of the BJP, was sworn in as chief minister by governor Vajubhai Vala on July 23, it took him four weeks to balance inimical factions within the BJP and appoint a minister for education. Meanwhile repair and reconstruction work in government schools damaged in the recent deluge has slowed to a crawl. Monitors of Karnataka’s education scene are unanimous that fixing and reviving the 5,500 government schools in the flood-ravaged districts will test the mettle of the new primary and secondary education minister S. Suresh Kumar. “Repairing 5,500 schools is a huge challenge. But the…

more
Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more

West Bengal – Mamata Banerjee’s teacher troubles

After the BJP stormed the bastions of the ruling Mamata Banerjee led-Trinamool Congress (TMC) in General Election 2019 — winning 18 of the state’s 42 Lok Sabha seats, only four less than TMC’s 22 — the electoral prospects of TMC, which ended 34 years of uninterrupted rule over West Bengal (pop. 91 million) by the CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist)-led Left Front government in the legislative assembly election of 2011 and again in 2016, have dimmed. Enthused by its wholly unexpected performance of winning 18 Lok Sabha seats, the BJP leadership is strengthening its grassroot structures to win “at least 250 seats” (out of a total 294) in the next assembly elections scheduled for 2021. But even as the saffron party surges ahead in West Bengal, Banerjee has done little to investigate grave charges of violence, extortion and corruption levelled against TMC leaders in several districts of the state. Instead, she is resorting to strong-arm tactics by trying to stop BJP victory rallies and arresting people for chanting Jai Shri Ram, a response interpreted as petty and dictatorial. Meanwhile, there’s simmering discontent among state government employees including teachers, who are peeved that their dearness allowance is not on a par with their Central government peers. Recently, even as the state is recovering from the impact of the 14-day long primary teachers’ pay hike agitation in July which ended after the government conceded a grade pay increase, on August 16, nearly 50,000 para-teachers (i.e, classroom assistants, but not full-time teachers) began a mass agitation including hunger strikes, demanding a similar pay increase and upgradation to the status of permanent teachers. With the Parsasikshak Aikya Mancha (PAM), a non-political confederation of para-teachers being backed by the CPI-M-affiliated All Bengal Para Teachers Association and BJP-affiliated Para-teachers Coordination Committee, on August 17, the state police resorted to baton-charge to disperse protesting para-teachers who assembled in the Nadia district, injuring several para-teachers and some journalists. Currently, 50,305 para-teachers recruited in 2004-2005 by the Left Front government are employed in West Bengal’s 92,000 government schools. The police baton charge on protesting para-teachers on August 17 has aroused the indignation of Left liberals in the state. On August 19, Citizenspeakindia — a forum of artists and activists including well-known filmmaker Aparna Sen (one of Mamata Banerjee’s earliest supporters)— wrote to the chief minister condemning the violence. “We have been noticing with a great deal of anxiety that, instead of trying to resolve the peaceful democratic protests of teachers of this state through sane dialogue and debate, the administration has been resorting to undemocratic means of quashing these protests by the use of police brutality,” said the letter signed by ten artistes and intellectuals. In West Bengal, which suffered continuous de-industrialisation during 34 years of Communist Party of India-Marxist rule before TMC was voted to power in 2011, employment options are very limited. Not only has the TMC not been able to promote industry in West Bengal, Banerjee has made a bad situation worse by failing to implement…

more
Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more

EoDB cruel joke

The finger prints of the country’s neta-babu brotherhood are all over the tragic death by suicide of Coffee Day tycoon V.G. Siddharatha on July 29. In a suicide note, Siddharatha wrote that all his efforts to pay off an insistent venture capital firm by liquidating his assets had been thwarted by officials of the country’s notoriously venal and extortionist income tax department. Anyone who has done business in post-independence India will have no difficulty in believing that accusation. From post-mortem media and other investigations, it’s clear that the IT department had frozen a sum of Rs.3,000 crore that Siddharatha had raised by selling his equity in the well-known IT firm Mindtree Services, to pay off the VC firm and a tax demand of Rs.650 crore raised by the IT department. However instead of facilitating this sale, the brain-dead babus of the department blocked it “to protect the revenue”, killing a golden goose which would have yielded continuous revenue. Your editor who has experience of the insolence of the IT department has no hesitation in believing Siddhartha’s dying declaration. Way back in the 1990s, your editor somewhat naively produced an expensive pilot talk show video for the consideration of Doordarshan. Inevitably the Rs.2.50 lakh pilot video didn’t merit even a one line rejection letter. But the unkindest cut was that an ITO (income tax officer) refused to allow the cost of producing the video as a deductible expense and froze my bank account. Fortunately the heroic efforts of my accountant Ashok Rao to file an appeal and get a hearing within 15 days saved me from Siddhartha’s fate. Years later when your serial entrepreneur editor having failed to raise any domestic funding to get EducationWorld off the ground, fortuitously raised it abroad, it took the Foreign Investment Promotion Board — chaired by P. Chidambaram now in a soup of his own making — 12 months to grant its mandatory permission for the investment amount to be credited to the holding company’s account. Ease of Doing Business in India? Don’t make me laugh, it hurts too much.

Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more

Over-hyped institution

Perhaps contemporary India’s most over-hyped institution is its loudly proclaimed independent judiciary. Despite the plain truth that it is the world’s most archaic and slowest judicial system, there’s no shortage of delusional nationalists ready to sing its praises. Yet the plain facts are that currently there are 33 million cases pending in the country’s too-few courtrooms in which the judges to citizenry ratio is a woeful 19 per million citizens cf. 56 in South Korea, 70 in the US and 144 in China. Way back in 1987 the Law Commission had recommended that India’s judge-citizen ratio should be increased to 50 per million. But that recommendation is yet to be implemented. This pathetic shortage of judges and judicial officers is compounded by a shortage of police personnel. In India the police-people ratio is 1:720. In the US the ratio is 1:436 , Spain 1:198, South Africa 1:347. To add to the misery of the citizenry most policemen are recruited on considerations of kith and kinship with the powerful neta-babu brotherhood, rather than on merit, with the result they are unable to solve even the simplest of cases. The ineptitude of the country’s police and judiciary is dramatically highlighted by the recent acquittal of six cow vigilantes accused of lynching Pehlu Khan, a cattle trader in Alwar (Rajasthan) in broad daylight on April 5, 2017. This despite video footage clearly depicting this outrageous crime and a sting operation footage of a television news channel showing the accused admitting to the horrific murder. Notwithstanding the fact that the judicial system generates revenue for the Central government — 21st century India is one of the few countries worldwide which imposes court fees on civil suits — the provision made in the Union Budget 2019-20 of Rs.27.86 lakh crore for the National Mission for Justice Delivery and Legal Reforms is a mere Rs.292.26 crore. Overwhelming!

Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more

Socialism fallout

It’s a time of reckoning for the leadership of the Congress party. The seeds of corruption which blossomed into the toxic undergrowth that now threatens to strangle this 134-year-old political party, were sown soon after independence under the leadership of the country’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru — the over-indulged son of a wealthy Allahabad lawyer. Instead of building on the time-tested free enterprise and trade culture of the subcontinent, Nehru inspired by Soviet propaganda, led the newly-independent nation down the socialist path. Inevitably, with sweeping discretionary powers invested in the country’s politicians and bureaucrats, the fence soon began eating the crop, torpedoing the grand Soviet-style five-year plans elaborately written by Nehru’s heirs. Worse, abuse of office, corruption and extortion of money for official favours became a way of life in socialist post-independence India. But as is becoming clear, some exposés were the mere tip of the vast corruption ice-berg solidified by the Nehru-Indira Gandhi dynasty which has ruled Congress and the country for over 55 years. And while thousands of the nomenklatura have disappeared into the woodwork with their ill-gotten gains, nemesis has caught up with the leaders of this now moth-eaten political party which was roundly trounced in the general elections of 2014 and 2019. Currently over a dozen Congress leaders are charged with grave corruption offences. Among them: former Union finance minister P. Chidambaram, party president and vice-president Sonia and Rahul Gandhi (National Herald case), Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath, former Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar, former civil aviation minister Praful Patel. These cardboard caesars misused the discretionary powers invested in them under the socialist economic development model. The saving grace of post-independence India ruined by Nehruvian socialism is that although they grind slowly, the wheels of justice grind surely.

Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more

Peninsular history

There are histories of India, and then occasionally we have histories of south India. K.A. Nilakanta Sastri’s pioneering A History of South India (1955), which soon established itself as a classic, demonstrated the possibility of studying south India as a distinct historical unit encompassing the Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam linguistic regions. Even though his narrative was essentially in terms of dynastic changes, it made conspicuous the absence of the south from histories of India. Rajmohan Gandhi has undertaken a difficult task in writing a full-length history of modern south India, from the end of the 17th century to the present, bringing the story up to August 2018 when M. Karunanidhi passed away. Gandhi commences his account with the beginnings of Portuguese presence on the Malabar coast towards the end of the 1490s. The scene shifts to the Coromandel coast where the Portuguese were joined by the Dutch. By the early 17th century, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) had established control over all sea routes between Europe and Asia via the Cape of Good Hope, putting an end to Portuguese monopoly over the route. Already in the first decade of the 17th century, VOC had set up three factories on the Coromandel coast to obtain supplies of cloth for its intra-Asian trade. These included Pulicat (1610), at the northern extremity of present-day Tamil Nadu, which became the administrative centre of their enclaves in the area till the end of the century. During the course of the 17th century, the English and the French too had acquired toe-holds on the coast, with Madras and neighbouring Pondicherry becoming the respective headquarters of their operations in the South. The first half of the 18th century was dominated by a prolonged conflict between the two for supremacy, with the English East India Company (EIC) emerging triumphant by the end of the 1750s. Anglo-French rivalry entered a critical phase from the mid-1740s onwards, and the ensuing Carnatic Wars engulfed a large part of south India as the Anglo-French conflict overlapped with violent struggles to control the territories subject to Hyderabad and to Arcot, in which the English and the French supported and encouraged a series of rival candidates. Figuring out the complicated moves of the Carnatic Wars has been a nightmare for many an undergraduate student. In recounting this story, Gandhi frequently cites contemporary observers, thus avoiding the dreary style of textbooks. From the late 1760s down to the end of the century EIC’s expansionist drive in south India was fiercely resisted by the kingdom of Mysore under Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan. The history of this combat is well-known. The book is rather cautious in its appraisal of Tipu, perhaps in light of the recent political controversy over his legacy. Besides, one wonders whether despite his bravery and numerous successes on the battlefield, Tipu had a thorough understanding of advances in modern warfare. Gandhi quotes a perceptive remark by Wilks. “He fell (at Srirangapatna) in the defence of his capital; but he fell,…

more
Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more

Hinterland story

Author of The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey that won the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar in 2015 and The Adivasi Will Not Dance (2017) — a collection of short stories banned by the Jharkhand government which also dismissed him from the state medical service in 2017 — Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s latest oeuvre is My Father’s Garden. A work of fiction, it tells the story of a young medical practitioner who narrates his life story as he negotiates love and sexuality, the burdens of memory and family expectations. The book is organised into three sections — lover, friend and father — unified by the common narrator. The first part explores the narrator’s love life as a homosexual student in a medical school in Jamshedpur. After briefly attending an ordinary degree college in Lucknow, the narrator through his father’s connections, is able to find a berth in the medical school that turns out to be a liberating experience. He finds love with Samir, an ambitious college junior, a companion “hard to find… and one to die for,” according to the narrator who himself found “pleasure in self-abasement”. Through the story, the protagonist is torn between love for, and obedience to his father and a deep sense of guilt as a homosexual, who can never be the son his parents wanted. The next section ‘friends’ is set in Pakur, a village on the eastern fringe of Jharkhand. The protagonist is posted in a secure government job in Pakur, and strikes up a friendship with Bada Babu — a “rotund, buffoonish head clerk,” at the Sadar Hospital. Typical of rural India, it is an ill-equipped hospital without even “a functional X-ray machine”. In this small town, the daktar babu rents a home in Madhyapara, a mid-town locality. Daktar babu’s existence is unexciting and the work routine, but the narrative meticulously captures the clout enjoyed by Bada Babu who becomes his self-appointed mentor. As a squatter, he had ‘inherited’ this house and the government job from his mausaji who had adopted him and had died in harness. The charm of this novel is that it realistically evokes small-town life in the backward, rural hinterlands of tribal India heavily influenced by local politics. The friendship between Bada Babu and the narrator is strange. The author leaves open the question of whether Bada Babu is exploiting daktar babu’s political connections or wants to show him off to his cronies as a close friend who visits his home regularly for meals on Saturday afternoons. But a day after Holi, this community is evicted. The narrator is shocked by the police action of bulldozing the entire settlement, turning it to rubble and dust. Yet the exercise provides him an insight into the realities of vote-bank politics, MLA neta-giri, and underhand deals and commissions, as also new middle class mobility in small town India. This section ends with disillusionment and winding up what had been a useful friendship while it lasted. The last section from which the book takes its…

more
Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more
Going beyond multidisciplinary education

Going beyond multidisciplinary education

– Prof. Ranjan Bose is director of the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi The draft National Education Policy (NEP) 2019 prepared by a nine-member committee chaired by eminent space scientist, Dr. K. Kasturirangan, which is under consideration of the Union human resource development ministry, accords high importance to multidisciplinary education in undergraduate colleges. In fact, the committee has recommended that the duration of the currently three-year bachelor’s programmes in sciences and commerce be extended to four years with the first year devoted to the study of liberal arts subjects. This recommendation is as welcome as it is overdue because premature streaming and specialisation has almost destroyed the higher education system. It’s now well-known that of the 15 million graduates entering the country’s jobs market every year, 75 percent lack the general knowledge, soft skills and even technical know-how to execute the core tasks of their job profiles. A McKinsey report of 2008 indicates that only 25 percent of Indian engineers are employable by respectable foreign and Indian multinational companies. But although the draft NEP report recommends a switch to multidisciplinary college education, the quality of graduates certified by India’s higher education institutions is so poor that NEP 2019 in its final form should opt for interdisciplinary rather than multidisciplinary undergrad education. In a multidisciplinary approach, each discipline contributes a piece of the jigsaw resulting in an addition of parts. Interdisciplinary education, on the other hand, integrates the domain knowledge of several disciplines, pedagogies and knowledge creation processes, and problem-solving methodologies to produce a multiplicative effect. The foundation of interdisciplinary education is based on the core proposition that students can create their own understanding and knowledge of the world by integrating new experiences with alternate ideas through theoretical exploration and practical exposure. It enables students to break away from traditional learning paths and to break out of the silos of knowledge absorption and creation. To encourage a broader paradigm of learning, education institutions need to provide enabling facilities and platforms for students to learn skills and subjects beyond their regular study programmes. Class projects should involve students and faculty from diverse disciplines. Experts from different walks of life should regularly interact with students to promote freedom of enquiry and broaden their mindsets. College campuses need to be transformed into tinkering labs of ideas from various domains. Such liberal environments will also motivate students to work in teams and learn to respect and discuss alternative viewpoints. The promotion of interdisciplinary learning provides educators and faculty with a wide canvas to design innovative and stimulating assignments and projects. For instance, a class project could require students to build a mobile phone app to monitor and remotely control soil-moisture levels. Such interdisciplinary projects would add depth and encourage students from different faculties to work in mutually supportive teams. Moreover, study programmes can be designed to enlarge interdisciplinary learning. For example, a course on algorithms in computational biology. Such broad projects and assignments could result in designing an entire gamut of interdisciplinary study programmes…

more
Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more

Tamil Nadu – Engineering degree bust

Rising disenchantment with engineering qualifications has prompted a surge in demand for admission into arts, science and commerce study programmes in Tamil Nadu’s 634 arts, science and commerce colleges affiliated with nine universities across the state. This year’s admission season (May-July) witnessed a huge rush of applicants for undergraduate commerce, computer science, mathematics, English, physics, chemistry and visual communications (in that order) study programmes. Responding to this rush, on August 15, the state’s AIADMK government increased capacity in 45 government arts and science colleges by 4,500 seats and extended the admission process to August 31. It also sanctioned 69 new undergrad and 12 postgrad courses in arts, science and commerce (ASC) colleges. Monitors of the higher education system connect the surge in demand for ASC courses with the steeply falling demand for engineering degree programmes. At the close of the admission season for the academic year 2019-20, there were no takers for 52 percent of the government quota of 167,652 engineering seats in 527 engineering colleges statewide. Only six of the 16 engineering colleges of Chennai’s premier Anna University were able to fill 90 percent-plus of their intake capacity. Only the Top 100 private engineering colleges have filled their government and management quota seats. “The major attraction of engineering education all these years was that it guaranteed decent employment at good salaries. However, the slowdown of the IT industry especially during the past seven years, has punctured this dream. The prohibitive cost of engineering education combined with poor job prospects has driven school-leavers to arts, science and commerce colleges which charge a third of engineering tuition fees and prepare students for careers in diverse fields including banking, civil services and other government jobs,” says Dr. Ajeet Kumar Lal Mohan, secretary of the Association of Self-financing Arts, Science and Management Colleges of Tamil Nadu. With falling enrolment and poor admission intake threatening the survival of dozens of Tamil Nadu’s 497 private engineering colleges, the Delhi-based All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) — the apex regulatory body for licensing technical education institutions countrywide — has permitted private engineering colleges to introduce ASC programmes from the academic year 2020-21. However, permission is conditional upon their fulfilling AICTE’s faculty and infrastructure norms and obtaining approvals from the state government and affiliating universities. But academics in engineering and ASC colleges are vehemently opposed to this arrangement. They argue that it was AICTE which recklessly licensed private engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu for over a decade, causing a demand-supply disequilibrium crisis in engineering education. “Engineering colleges that cannot attract a sufficient number of students, should give up their affiliation with Anna University and transform into ASC colleges, instead of being allowed to run both disciplines concurrently. The proposed arrangement will lead to misuse of resources and fraudulent practices. Engineering colleges which have failed to provide quality education to students should not be allowed to offer ASC programmes and churn out equally sub-standard ASC graduates. Moreover, since most engineering colleges have invested heavily in infrastructure, their…

more
Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more

Delhi – Ambitious initiatives

The sustained effort of EducationWorld (estb.1999) to “build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda” seems to be bearing fruit. Although education and human capital development was given step-motherly treatment in the first term of the BJP/NDA government at the Centre (2014-19), in its second term the BJP-led NDA coalition seems to be more serious about developing the country’s abundant human capital. Under the newly appointed author-essayist Union HRD minister Dr. Ramesh Pokhriyal, the ministry has quickly finalised and released EQUIP (Education Quality Upgradation and Inclusion Programme) — a five-year plan for upgrading higher education. The plan has been prepared by a group of 80 experts split into ten focus groups chaired by former revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia. According to a HRD ministry statement issued by the government’s Press Information Bureau, “the ten Expert Groups drawn from senior academicians, administrators and industrialists have suggested more than 50 initiatives that would (sic) transform the higher education sector completely”. Among the initiatives: doubling GER (gross enrollment ratio) in higher education; to position at least 50 institutions among world’s Top 1,000 universities; governance reforms for well-administered campuses; accreditation of all higher ed institutions; promoting research and innovation ecosystems for placing India among Top 3 countries worldwide in knowledge creation; doubling the employability of graduates; harnessing new technologies for expanding reach and improving pedagogy; promoting India as a study destination, and “quantum increase in investment in higher education”. Within 60 days of releasing the EQUIP five-year plan for revamping higher education, on August 28 Pokhriyal announced the launch of a national mission to improve learning outcomes in elementary education (class I-VIII). Under this initiative, a massive in-service teacher training programme named the National Initiative for School Heads and Teachers Holistic Advancement (NISHTHA) was formally launched in New Delhi on August 21 by Pokhriyal. In addition to a dedicated website, a NISHTHA mobile app was also launched at the event. Billed as the world’s largest teacher training programme, NISHTHA will upskill 4.2 million elementary teachers of government schools across the country. Pokhriyal describes the NISHTHA initiative as unprecedented in as much as standardised teacher training modules will be developed by the Centre for all states and Union territories. However, states can contextualise the training modules by inserting local material and resource persons. “It is the prime minister’s dream that the quality of our teachers should be such that they should command worldwide respect. This mass teacher training programme is a step in that direction,” says Pokhriyal. Although NISHTHA is as overdue as it is welcome — the 484-page National Education Policy 2019 draft submitted by the Kasturirangan Committee to the HRD ministry late last year and released by the ministry on May 30, devotes an entire chapter to upskilling teachers who “form the very heart of the education process” and commented that “teacher education is severely lacking and indeed in a crisis at the current time”. However, Geetanjali Kumar, a renowned Delhi-based teacher trainer and counselor, cautions…

more
Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more

Maharashtra – Rising anti-quotas wave

Introduced in the constitution of India (1950) as affirmative action by the State in favour of specific historically oppressed castes and tribes persecuted and ostracised for several millennia under the Hindu varna caste system, reservation of seats in higher education institutions and government employment is being demanded — and conceded — by populist politicians to almost every caste and community with real or imaginary histories of oppression and persecution. In recent months, Maharashtra — India’s most industrialised state — has witnessed a spate of agitations and protest hunger strikes against “excessive” reserved quotas being conceded by the state’s ruling BJP/Shiv Sena government. In August, after 13 protest meetings were staged in Mumbai, Solapur and Nagpur, the Maharashtra government announced (August 21) a panel to review reservations and recommend ways and means to create additional capacity for non-quota (merit) students. Until late last year, reserved quotas in government colleges and higher ed institutions were capped at 52 percent. But on November 29, the state government announced a 16 percent quota for Maharashtra’s socially and educationally backward caste (SEBC) Maratha community. Moreover, on January 9 this year, the BJP/NDA government at the Centre proclaimed 10 percent reservation for economically weaker section (EWS)students of non-backward, i.e, upper castes. Although on June 27, the Bombay high court reduced the SEBC Maratha community’s quota to 12 percent, at 74 percent, the state’s overall reservations are way beyond the ceiling of 50 percent mandated by the Supreme Court in its landmark verdict in Indira Sawhey & Ors vs. Union of India (1992). Aspirational middle class school-leavers who top the state government’s annual Common Entrance Exam (CET) which determines entry into institutions of professional education (engineering, medicine), are hardest hit by reserved quotas. The worst hit are merit students aspiring for highly subsidised medical education in the mere 14 government medical colleges in Maharashtra (pop.114 million). For the academic year 2019-20, only 875 seats in government medical colleges were allotted to students from unreserved castes and communities, out of a total of 4,080. In the posgraduate courses only 170 (of 1,700) seats were allocated for meritorious students who don’t qualify for caste and community quotas. In this connection it’s pertinent to note that 4.13 million school-leavers wrote the Maharashtra CET in May this year. Although Maharashtra also hosts 36 private medical colleges, bagging a seat in a government medical college is a matter of vital importance to millions of youth aspiring for medical practitioner qualifications. Tuition fees in government medical colleges are heavily subsidised. For instance, the tuition fee payable by undergraduate and graduate students in Maharashtra’s 14 government medical colleges is Rs.75,000-95,000 per annum cf. Rs.6-14 lakh per year in private medical colleges. Unsurprisingly, parents of students with high scores in MCET, who are shut out of government medical colleges because they don’t fall within reserved categories, are up in arms against runaway quotas. Save Merit Save Nation (SMSN), a non-political movement spearheaded by parents of open-category students, was launched after quotas in the state crossed…

more
Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more

Massification danger

Thanks for your cover story ‘Unsung contribution of India’s private chain schools’ (EW August). The country’s top K-12 education chains need to be commended for providing standardised, acceptable quality education at affordable prices to India’s growing middle class, especially in small-town India. However, on the downside they have massified school education and popularised one-size-fits-all curriculums and pedagogies. In the long run, this could result in factory-style production of school-leavers. Sarah Samuel Bangalore Timely warning Your cover story ‘Unsung contribution of India’s private chain schools’ (EW August) is a timely warning to middle class parents. As you have rightly argued, government regulation of tuition fees of private unaided schools is going to backfire sooner or later.With inflation steadily rising, school managements are unable to cope with increasing operational costs, especially rising salaries of teachers. The parents community needs to understand that schools cannot be operated as non-profit enterprises. When a private individual invests in an enterprise, she expects reasonable return on investment and if any private enterprise including schools, is not generating returns, the promoters will shut down the venture. In the unfortunate event of a large number of private schools shutting shop, middle class parents will have no alternative but to enroll their children in dysfunctional government schools. It’s in the interest of students that parents work constructively with school managements to resolve tuition fee issues rather than invite government intervention. Meera Kutty Bangalore Uncaring elite I am in full agreement with views expressed in your editorial ‘Why desperate citizens are fleeing India’ (EW July). While the majority of those emplaning to foreign shores are students, there are also many migrants from the lower socio-economic strata desperate to escape India’s grinding poverty. They are easy prey of conniving middlemen and human traffickers who sell them dreams of a better life in foreign countries. But many blue collar migrants who make it to foreign countries are subjected to inhuman working conditions and transform into modern-day slaves. It’s truly a shame that the country’s ruling elite doesn’t care about creating better living conditions for India’s poor and dispossessed, and particularly about providing high-quality school education for all children so they don’t have to flee their native land. Garima Kaur Chandigarh Regressive Wage Code Act I wish to draw your attention to the Wage Code Bill 2019, which despite prolonged protests was passed by both Houses of Parliament on August 2 and is now law. While universalising minimum wages, the Bill has stipulated floor minimum wages at the national and zonal levels which will increase unemployment. Moreover, the code has diluted gender justice laws by removing some critical provisions relating to post-recruitment rights of women employees. It lacks social vision and has failed to fully implement the parliamentary standing committee’s recommendations such as increasing penalties, defining hours of work, expending gender-equity rights, etc. By leaving out the criteria for determination of wages, hours of work, etc, the code has given wide scope for possibilities of differential wage and hours of work and overtime.…

more
Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more

J&K special status: Some traction better than status quo

Although the bjp/nda 2.0 government’s swift and decisive August 5 initiative of abrogating Articles 370 and 35 (a) of the Constitution which had accorded the Muslim-majority state of Jammu & Kashmir special status among the 29 states of the Indian Union, and simultaneous bifurcation of J&K and its Ladakh district into separate Union territories, is not the best solution for free India’s 70-year-old Kashmir separatist problem, it represents some movement from the increasingly tiresome status quo ante position. The special status of J&K which implicitly acknowledged that it was disputed territory between India and Pakistan has cost us dearly. With the two countries having fought two and a half wars over J&K, India has had to maintain massive annual defence budgets with high opportunity costs in public education and human capital development. Therefore, the status of J&K was an onerous burden begging for backward or forward resolution. In several earlier essays on this page, your editors had advocated trifurcation of J&K into the Kashmir Valley, and the districts of Jammu and Ladakh, and discharge of the promise made by India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, of holding a plebiscite under UN supervision to determine the will — accession to India or Pakistan or azadi — of the Muslim majority in the Valley and Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK). We believe that inclusion of the tiny and peripheral Kashmir Valley in the Indian Union of states should be a privilege rather than compulsion. The foolish people of the Valley in the grip of regressive clerics and politicians hell-bent on using them as canon-fodder to serve their selfish interests, should (if they so desire) be left to fend for themselves. And if they vote to merge with the failed theocratic state of Pakistan, let them stew in a juice of their own making. In his questionable wisdom, Nehru — a Hindu Kashmiri — hatched an elaborate plot with Sheikh Abdullah to replace the ruling Dogra dynasty of Kashmir with the Abdullah dynasty. To sanctify this agreement, Article 370 which allowed Kashmir its own constitution, flag and prime minister (Abdullah) was inserted into the Constitution of India. Moreover, under the concordat with Abdullah, Article 35 (a) prohibited non-Kashmiris from purchasing property in the state, or working for the state government except by invitation, to preserve its Muslim identity. This prolonged period of J&K in purgatory has been ended by the new BJP/NDA government led by prime minister Narendra Modi revoking Articles 370 and 35 (a). Although this is not the preferable solution, it represents some traction on the long frozen status of the Kashmir impasse. It’s an audacious gamble to free the Muslim majority of the Valley from the inept rule of the Abdullah and Mufti Mohammed dynasties which essentially worked for their personal enrichment and aggrandisement, rather than for the people of the Valley or the state. It’s a big gamble with a small chance of paying off. Also read: Priorities of BJP/NDA Government 2.0

Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more
Ban digital streaming of pornography

Ban digital streaming of pornography

Even as an ever-rising number of women are entering public life and spaces once the exclusive preserves of men, in the hinterlands of our under-policed and under-governed republic, their physical safety and socio-economic advancement is under increasing threat. Surprisingly, there is almost total public apathy and shame deficit that a Thomson Reuters Foundation June 2018 survey based on interviews with 548 women’s issues global experts concluded that India is the world’s most dangerous country for women because of high risk of sexual violence and forced slave labour. More dangerous than Afghanistan and Syria ranked second and third, followed by Somalia. This burning issue, about which there is not enough indignation even among women, has been highlighted again by the horrific Unnao rape case in which a minor girl was gang-raped by a BJP member of the Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly and his henchmen. It’s a telling commentary on the country’s corrupt and incompetent law and order administration that to cover up this crime, the girl’s father was tortured to death in police custody, and recently the girl and her lawyer were involved in a near-fatal road accident. On August 14, it was widely reported that a pregnant 18-year-old girl and her boyfriend were waylaid and she was brutally gang-raped by five youths to the extent that she lost her foetus, and her despairing boyfriend hanged himself. Unsurprisingly, the survivor didn’t report this incident to the police, knowing full well that doing so would worsen her plight. Curiously there is little or no will to address and root out the prime cause of this tidal wave of sex crimes sweeping the country — ubiquitous availability of violent pornography being streamed onto the cell phones of hundreds of millions of under-employed and ill-educated citizens, and impressionable youth countrywide. The spate of sex crimes against women rising with the explosion of the Internet-enabled mobile telephony revolution, is no coincidence. Almost half a century ago in Larry Flynt vs. People (1968), justices of the US Supreme Court erred grievously in ruling that the right to publish pornography falls within the ambit of the absolute right to freedom of speech. The result is that America’s multi-billion dollar porn industry, with the invention of new digital technologies, has flooded the world with violent and degrading pornography. This has mentally unhinged people worldwide. The learned justices of the US Supreme Court should urgently review and revise this pernicious judgement which is causing global havoc. Meanwhile the government of India should forthwith issue notice to all domestic internet service providers to block pornographic content on pain of revocation of their licences. If this is not done expeditiously, there’s a clear and present danger that the world’s most unsafe country for women will become more unsafe. Also read: Protecting children from the billion dollar online porn industry

Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more

Letter from the Editor

Introduced in 2007, i.e, eight years after EducationWorld was launched on the eve of the new millennium, the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) which rank the country’s Top 1,000 primary-secondary schools divided into three main (day, boarding and international) and ten sub-categories (co-ed day, day-cum-boarding, all-boys and girls, wholly residential etc) to avoid apples and oranges type comparisons, has evolved into the world’s most comprehensive and detailed school rankings survey. The country’s Top 1,000 schools are not only ranked nationally, but also in the states, and most important for day schools, in their host cities. That’s not all. Unlike league tables published in several Western countries which rank schools on the sole criterion of academic achievement, the annual EWISR ab initio has ranked India’s Top 1,000 schools on several parameters of school excellence including teacher welfare and development, academic reputation, teacher competence (given double weightage), leadership, infrastructure, life skills, co-curricular and sports education etc. The message implicit in the annual EWISR is that there’s more to schooling than academic excellence, and the best institutions develop the multiple intelligences of their students. Moreover, unlike other media publications which constitute esoteric juries to evaluate and rank schools, the annual EWISR is the outcome of extensive field interviews with over 12,000 knowledgeable sample respondents (educationists, principals, teachers, fees-paying parents and latterly senior students) countrywide. Sample respondents in their regions (north, east, west, south) rate schools with which they are familiar on the several parameters of K-12 education excellence stated above. And the second message inherent in the annual EWISR is that principals, teachers, parents and students — all stakeholders — need to cooperate to ensure that their schools continuously advance on all parameters of school education excellence. In EducationWorld, we genuinely appreciate the valuable service that progressive school managements provide to their students to nurture and develop them into future leaders in public life, industry and the professions. Therefore, we not only proclaim their national, state and civic rankings, but also award and felicitate top-ranked schools — including government, budget private and special needs schools — at our annual EWISR Awards Nite function which over the years has evolved into arguably the world’s largest celebratory event for educationists, promoters, principals and teachers. Your editors are in full agreement with the late Nelson Mandela, that “education is the most powerful weapon for changing the world”. Therefore this year, the annual EWISR is going global. For the first time, we have commissioned special juries to rank the Top 10 schools of neighbour nations — the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. The leaders of these schools will also be awarded and celebrated at our forthcoming EWISR Awards Nite (September 28-29) and provided opportunities to network with leaders of India’s top-ranked schools. We believe education can unite the world.

Already a subscriber
Click here to log in and continue reading by entering your registered email address or subscribe now
Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

more
WordPress Lightbox Plugin