Unsung heroes

Congratulations for your 14th anniversary. The EducationWorld team must be commended for relentlessly highlighting the challenges and problems confronting India’s education system.

I enjoyed reading your anniversary cover story ‘51 New Millennium Edupreneurs’ (EW November). The selection of education entrepreneurs and their brief profiles was well done. Their passion for education and  struggles they overcame to realise their dream of providing quality education and services to the public is inspiring. They are truly the unsung — and unwarrantedly maligned — heroes of Indian education.  

Shakti Subramanian

Chennai

Missing NGOs

Congratulations on the 14th anniversary of EducationWorld. Your cover story profiling 51 new millennium education entrepreneurs was interesting and enlightening. I want to especially congratulate Dr. Achyuta Samanta, Dr. P. Narayana, Chenraj Roychand and Deepak Madhok for their extraordinary contributions to Indian education. The reality is that education is being increasingly privatised in India with the majority of middle and lower middle class children enrolled in private schools, many of which offer education at affordable tuition fees. 

It would have been ideal if the cover story had also included the excellent work being done by education NGOs such as Teach for India and Pratham. Organisations dealing with grassroots education issues in remote areas of the country also need to be featured and appreciated publicly. Nevertheless, kudos to the 51 new millennium edupreneurs for delivering quality education and services despite government constraints and political pressure.

Varun Sachdev

Mumbai

Laudable initiatives

Your 14th anniversary cover story ‘51 New Millennium Edupreneurs’ is informative and inspiring (EW November). As you rightly note, it’s laudable that despite government red tape and harassment, edupreneurs “driven by a combination of enlightened self-interest and altruism” are stepping forward to promote quality schools and higher education institutions. They’ve done an excellent job of expanding capacity in school and higher education.

With the cash-strapped Central and state governments unable to invest money and resources in education, it’s up to the private sector to fill the lacuna. It’s commendable how India’s edupreneurs have responded to market demand and promoted schools and colleges to suit all budgets. They must be encouraged and their projects facilitated so that quality education is available to children across the country.

Anil Deshpande

Mumbai

Private education bias

Your Pro-Private sector bias is unashamedly reflected in the anniversary cover story ‘51 New Millennium Edupreneurs’ (EW November). As a regular reader of EducationWorld, though I admire some of your stories exposing the rot in the Indian education system, your praise for entrepreneurs who are pursuing monetary goals through the business of education is embarrassingly over the top. Some of the entrepreneurs you have profiled charge annual tuition fees of Rs.4 lakh upwards for admission into their schools and colleges. They are not even remotely interested in spreading the light of education to the majority of the country’s deprived children and youth.

For your information, the success and prosperity of all developed countries has been built on the foundation of excellent public education systems. The increasing privatisation of Indian education is a dangerous development as it excludes the children of the poor and marginalised from accessing quality education.

Arundhati Banerjee

Kolkata

Absurd requirement

Many Congratulations on completing 14 years of uninterrupted publishing. I enjoyed reading your anniversary essays, especially Dr. Geeta Kingdon’s ‘Teacher training stumbling block’. The lack of well-trained and qualified teachers is a big problem not only in public, but also private schools.

The B.Ed curriculum is at least 20 years out of date and there’s a mushrooming growth of fly-by-night training colleges which are awarding useless degrees to under-qualified candidates. In fact, many postgraduates without B.Ed qualifications but well-versed in their subjects are better equipped to teach in schools. Given the low credibility of B.Ed degrees, it’s absurd that state governments mandate it as a compulsory qualification for teaching in government and private schools.

Janaki Sharma

Delhi

Threatening initiative

The Central Government ordinance permitting foreign universities to establish campuses in India (EW October cover story), is yet another gimmick of the UPA government on the eve of the 2014 general election. Instead of focusing on improving and reforming public institutions of higher education, the government is looking to outsource education.

At a time when prestigious institutions such as the IITs, IIMs and Central/state universities are reeling under faculty shortages, inviting foreign institutions to set shop in India will accentuate the problem and lead to faculty poaching. Currently foreign education institutions are permitted to operate in India through twinning arrangements and research collaborations with the prior approval of the University Grants Commission.

The government must focus on strengthening Indian higher education through international partnerships rather than threatening them by allowing foreign universities to set up campuses in India.

Ashish Sengupta

Kolkata