Your cover story ‘Lessons from the Singapore Way’ (EW July) is a real eye-opener. There’s much India can learn from the transformation of Singapore into an Asian hub of higher education. The world’s best universities and B-schools such as Digipen and INSEAD have established campuses in Singapore because their entry was facilitated by enabling government policies and guarantee of administrative, financial and academic autonomy.
In contrast the Foreign Educational Institutions Bill 2010 imposes onerous terms and conditions upon foreign universities and colleges wanting to establish campuses in India. Res-trictions on tuition fees and mandatory approval of syllabuses by UGC are strong deterrents. Not surprisingly, this grudging opening up of the Indian higher education sector has attracted little interest from foreign universities.
The Union HRD ministry and its hyperactive minister Kapil Sibal must understand that highly reputed univer-sities such as Harvard and Oxford, which enjoy complete autonomy from government in their own countries, are unlikely to kowtow to the educa-tionally ignorant Indian bureaucracy. If we are serious about attracting the best foreign universities into India, we must facilitate — not impede — their entry. Although not a holier-than-thou pure democrat, Lee Kuan Yew is a good education development role model to follow.
Shankar Dutta
Delhi
Singapore’s political CEOs
Re your cover story ‘Lessons from the Singapore Way’ (EW July), it’s not surprising that Singapore is such a welcoming destination for overseas education providers. Its leaders think and act more like corporate CEOs than politicians. Singapore’s prime minister in fact draws a salary of US$ 2 million a year, which is five times what Barack Obama takes home in the US. Half the salary of Singapore’s ministers is variable, depending on the performance rating they get from the prime minister.
Such meritocracy is productive because ministers can stay focused on the job, and not worry about opposition par-ties sniping at their heels. For decades there has been no poli-tical opposition worth the name in the city state. And it is unlikely any will come up in the forseeable future. Having successfully gifted its citizens a standard of living among the highest in the world, Singapore’s ruling party has ensured the stakes are too high for Singaporeans to want anyone else.
John Samuel
Bangalore
Indian style planning
The mess in secondary education (special report ‘Emerging crisis in secondary education’, EW July) is so typical of Indian style planning. The Central and state governments have invested heavily in elementary educa-tion without planning the logical next step i.e. secondary schools. The huge numbers of students completing primary school don’t have enough secondary schools to attend. This is just short-sighted, bad planning.
Summiya Yasmeen has rightly argued that though private investment in secondary education must be encouraged, government participation is absolutely essential. The bulk of students who drop out after class VII are those whose parents cannot afford private schooling. In the interest of equity and inclusion, the government must increase the supply of free government secondaries offering high-quality education.
Sanjana Mathur
Mumbai
Making English enjoyable
In his guest column ‘Learning English the enjoyable way’ (EW June), Eoin Geraghty had mooted a question of how we teach English in schools, or more accurately how we teach English as a second language in Indian schools. In the great globalisation race, schools in the rural areas are lame horses in the matter of teaching and learning English.
Although we have many committed and zealous teachers in government schools, they need to be familiarised with new approaches to teaching English. Teacher training colleges and institutes should provide in-service training, explaining new language learning methodologies to English teachers in primary schools. Moreover all schools should have minimum resources such as a library, notice boards, tape recorders, and televisions for effective teaching and learning of language skills. Story telling, puppetry, drama and role plays are other innovative methods to make language learning interactive and enjoyable. Congratulations for a good and informative article by Geraghty.
R. Suresh Babu
Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya
Chikkaballapura
Karnataka
Special needs incredibility
Thank you for publishing India’s first-ever ranking of pre-schools in six cities (EW May). I am pleased that Step by Step, Panchsheel has been ranked second in the national capital. It is indeed an honour. However I would like to take issue about Step by Step having been ranked sixth on the parameter of special needs education. Some schools which don’t even have a special needs section have been ranked above us.
We accord the highest priority to differently abled children, and started our special needs section way back in 1995. Currently we have 30 children in it, of whom five-six are mainstreamed every year. We are also associated with the Bharat Special Olympics and employ two occupational therapists, and six special educators.
Your survey agency C fore also ranked a school which has shut down. It should have been more authentic in its research. We would love you and your research agency personnel to visit our school which is open to the public (after school hours). Then your ratings and rankings would be more credible.
Ramani Chopra
Principal, Step by Step Nursery School Panchsheel Park
New Delhi
As reported in our cover story (p.43) Ms. Chopra was very unwelcoming to our Delhi correspondent Autar Nehru — Editor
Ranking unrankables
This has reference to your survey of ‘India’s most preferred pre-schools’ (EW May). Whether pre-schools should actually be ‘ranked’ is debatable. Classifications, rankings, polls and such measurement criteria can never reveal the ‘heart and soul’ of a school or institution. Each institution is different and has different values and ideologies. Can there be one system of ranking when there are so many intangibles involved? Moreover it needs to be asked: What is a ‘perceptual’ poll? Did your pollsters actually visit the schools listed and form a first hand opinion? Did the uniqueness of each school come to their minds, or is the survey based on hearsay?
Schools cannot be surveyed the way brands of toothpaste or hamburgers are. If people selected to be questioned have not visited or interacted with the schools in question, can they comment on their standards? All concerned parents would obviously visit a school and make a personal choice for someone as precious as their child, rather than go by perceptual rankings. Besides, schools are for children, and not only those born to people you classify as SECA parents.
A gourmet restaurant cannot be covered in the same way as fast food chains. Similarly, there are many schools that have been built up over the years on a foundation of love, passion and commitment — a unique and personal philosophy. It would have been better to leave out such schools and cover what you have referred to as “nationwide chains under the branded franchise model which have begun to mushroom countrywide”.
For many of us, children are the reason why we get up each morning and go to work. Working with them is a special calling, not a job. And running a school is a deeply personal and emotional experience, not a business.
Samina Mahmood
Head Start Montessori
Bangalore
According to your norms, the survey is based on (informed) hearsay — Editor
April Fool joke
With reference to your special report on RTE Act (EW June), the Central government has played a historic April Fool joke on April 1, 2010, by opera-tionalising the Right to Education Act.
The most reprehensible feature of the whole exercise is the unseemly haste, lack of a clear perspective, and draconian measures contemplated to implement the law, and an approach that palpably reeks of a political agenda, rather than the cause of children’s education. The government seems to be caught in a Catch-22 situation with the passing of the law. It is neither sure of its stance, nor its cue nor its modus operandi. Under the garb of a heavily loaded populist agenda and appeal, which seems to be the core of the RTE Act, the government seems to be advancing the hands of the clock much too fast.
The lethal repercussions that this law will bring in its trail can hardly be exaggerated. One fails to understand the needless meddling with the working of education institutions, without taking their representatives — owners, princi-pals, or teachers — into confidence. We’re witnessing a new brand of terrorism where the terrorists don’t wield the guns under masked faces, but purblind legislators who intimidate educators with threats of dire consequences. Coupled with this are innumerable grey areas that need to be illuminated before the RTE Act can be expected to yield the results envisioned by its drafters. This piece of legislation has no parallel in the history of civilised jurisprudence. It takes India back to the age of feudalism when such laws could be enacted with a sense of impunity. This is what has been done under the garb of senseless and ridiculous legislation.
Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal needs to be reminded that he cannot tackle illiteracy using drastic and coercive measures. Unless a consensus is worked out where every one is given full opportunity to represent their side of the picture, this kind of law is bound to create doubts and suspicions, and ultimately fail in its mission. Meanwhile private schools functioning with their own funding will be well within their rights to refer the RTE Act to the Supreme Court to seek its verdict. One fundamental right cannot transgress another fundamental right, if it is to be called a fundamental right at all. Private schools have their constitutional rights to run their institutions autonomously without anyone — even Parliament — infringing them.
Gabriel Das
Principal, Madona English School
Darbhanga (Bihar)
Double check numbers!
Congratulations for getting out of the stagnant pool of Indian education which has been muddied beyond redemption by interfering politicians and blundering bureaucrats, and reporting on the amazing transformation of Singapore economically and educat-ionally (EW July). The true measure of former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew’s contribution to the conversion of this once typically Asian port city into the world’s cleanest and greenest island republic is captured by one telling statistic indicated in your cover story — GDP per capita which has risen from US$512 in 1965 to $49,704 in 2007. And you can rest assured it is well over $55,000 per capita currently. Such a contrast with post-independence India’s economic development record!
As a regular and enthusiastic reader of EducationWorld I appreciate your insistence on using dates, numbers and data. However you need to double check dates and numbers. In your cover story under reference you have stated that the National Knowledge Commi-ssion has recommended tripling the number of India’s universities from the current 431 to 1,500 by the year 2011. Actually the commission’s deadline was 2015. Indeed, India is very short of institutions of higher education, but doomsday is not that near.
Avinash Patel
Mumbai
Mr. Patel is right. We regret this typographical error — Editor