The abysmal performance of the 299,085 class XII students who wrote the Maharashtra state government’s Common Entrance Test (CET) held at 786 centres in 35 districts statewide on May 12, has brought the deteriorating standards of higher education in Maharashtra (pop.112 million) into sharp focus. CET is an annual exam written by class XII school leavers with toppers given the right to enter medical, pharmacy and engin-eering colleges of their choice. This year the performance of the 299,085 school-leavers was worse than ever before — only 12.76 percent cleared the test as against 15.23 percent last year, and 18 percent in 2009.
Academics in India’s most industrial state are shocked that higher secondary education in schools affiliated with the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (44.48 percent of students who wrote CET this year were from higher secondaries affiliated with the state board) is going from bad to worse. Despite being ranked third among the top ten states in terms of per capita income (Rs.74,027 in 2010) and boasting the country’s most developed industrial and financial services infrastructure, Maharashtra is ranked 13th on the Composite Educat-ional Development Index (2007-08) of the Delhi-based National University of Educational Planning and Administration.
Now the dismal CET performance of class XII students in the state confirms its sliding school education standards. “There was no major change in the exam pattern,” says Anil Jadhav, an officer of the state government’s directorate of technical education. “But since we were aware that most students learn by rote, we decided to tweak the questions this year to test their logical abilities which are obviously under-developed. Hence the poor pass percentage.”
The poor comprehension and reasoning faculties of higher secondary students is attributed to the rising number of poor quality teachers which has adversely affected the quality of students. The consensus of opinion is that teaching has become unattractive as a long-term career with job opportunities in competing sectors being far more inviting.
Moreover, the steep fall in school education standards in the country’s premier industrial state is confirmed by the small percentage of school-leaving and junior college students who crossed the threshold for admission into the state’s 165 medical and 556 engineering colleges. Of the 192,000 students who wrote the Maharashtra Health and Technology Common Entrance Test (MHT-CET) 2011, only 23,147 (12 percent) were found eligible for counseling. Last year 26,905 qualified for these courses. The eligible students will contest for over 7,000 seats in medical (MBBS), dental (BDS), ayurveda (BAMS), Unani, homeopathy, occupational therapy, physiotherapy and nursing colleges statewide.
Dr. Bharat Bhushan, dean (academics) and professor, environmental planning, and director, Centre for Environment and Development of the Yahswantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration, Pune which trains top officials of the state government in management and administrative pract-ices, ascribes the poor performance of school leavers in CET exams to the widening disconnect between Plus Two/junior college education and the incremental sophistication of professional education. “Higher secondary students cannot meet the requirements of engineering and medical colleges because their syllabuses and curriculums are way behind the requirements of institutions of professional education. This gap needs to be bridged by way of add-on subjects in Plus Two curriculums and bridge courses to prepare students for CET. This widening gap between school and profes-sional education needs to be narrowed,” says Bhushan.
But given the continuous slide in K-12 education standards, this isn’t likely to happen in a hurry.
Mickee Menon (Mumbai)
Belated quality awareness
More than a year after it became operational on April 1, 2010, the historic Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE), which makes it mandatory for the state (i.e Central, state and/or local governments) to provide “free and compulsory education” to all children aged six-14 years, the government of Maharashtra is yet to notify the Rules under the Act. On July 13, the state cabinet once again deferred notification of the Rules.
The sticking point is reportedly the 25 percent reserved quota for poor neighbourhood children in private schools mandated by s.12.(1)(c) of the Act, which has been challenged in the Supreme Court in the Society for Unaided Private Schools of Rajasthan vs. Union of India. “The case is sub judice and the court is likely to pass its judgement soon. We can only go ahead once there is a clear decision about which sections of the Act are to be implemented,” says J. Randive, under- secretary of school education, govern-ment of Maharashtra.
But even as the Centre and private schools are battling the constitutional validity of s.12 and several other provisions of the RTE Act, state government officials claim the primary objective of the Act — free and compulsory education for every child between six-14 years of age — has been attained. They cite the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2010, published by the Mumbai-based independent NGO Pratham, which shows 98 percent of primary students in Maharashtra attending the state’s 75,446 primaries. “The challenge before us is not construction of primary schools but improving the quality of education they deliver,” says Nand Kumar, former director of the state’s Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Education for All) initiative.
Nand Kumar’s somewhat belated concern about the quality of education being dispensed in Maharashtra’s primary schools — especially rural primaries, 80 percent of which are government-run — is not misplaced. ASER 2010 indicates that 28 percent of children in class III are not able to read and grasp class I texts; 30 percent in class V cannot read class II texts and 60 percent of class V children cannot manage simple division sums. “The issue is not of access but quality. With such poor quality of education, 50 percent of the population in Maharashtra will remain illiterate because children are not learning anything worthwhile in the state’s primary schools. In the circumstances, there is too much emphasis on the 25 percent quota for poor children in private schools. We need to focus on improving the quality of primary education dispensed to millions of students who are outside the ambit of this 25 percent quota,” says Usha Rane, training director at Pratham which offers supplementary and remedial education to 3 million children in 21 states countrywide.
Moreover, even though construction of new primaries may not be necessary as contended by Nand Kumar, there’s no gainsaying their infrastructure and facilities require urgent upgradation to retain children in elementary education until class VIII. According to ASER 2010, 31 percent of primaries in Maharashtra lack safe drinking water; 45 percent don’t have toilets and 55.8 percent don’t provide separate toilets for girl students. “These lacunae when coupled with indifferent teaching, teacher absenteeism and multigrade classrooms, prompt children to drop out of school,” adds Rane.
The large number of children drop-ping out of school before completing their primary education because of uninspiring schooling and teaching and unsupportive infrastructure is a national problem. According to EducationWorld estimates 40 percent (88 million) of the 220 million children in primary education drop out of school before reaching class VIII. The record of Maharashtra is better than the national average at 25 percent. Never-theless the fact that over 4 million children drop out of primary education in India’s most industrial state contributing 25 percent of the Indian economy’s industrial output, is beginning to worry industry leaders in the state which is experiencing an increasing shortage of skilled labour.
But this problem doesn’t seem to worry officials in the education ministry where it’s business as usual.
Manas Shrivastava (Mumbai)
Big fish story
The University of Pune’s ambitious attempts to plant its institutional flag abroad has come a cropper. This is evident from a notice posted on its website stating that new academic year admissions at its Ras Al Khaimah (RAK) offshore campus in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have been deferred. The reasons proffered are that the University of Pune (UoP) wants to set into motion a process for accreditation of its programmes with the Abu Dhabi government’s department of higher education and research, and conduct a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis. According to UoP insiders, this is a fig leaf excuse. The real reason is that the university’s RAK campus failed to attract any admissions for the academic year 2010-11.
Encouraged by its five-star rating, the highest awarded by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), and also because it was designated a ‘university with potential for excellence’ by the University Grants Commission, UoP (estb.1949) flagged off its RAK campus in September 2009 with executive MBA and full-time business management programmes on offer. To get its first offshore project off the ground, the university joined forces with Dubai-based local partner Edulink Consultants. Edulink’s role was to market the programme and sign up students while UoP’s responsibility was to provide academic services including faculty, curriculum, study material and conduct of examinations.
“University of Pune’s entry into the UAE, specifically in Ras Al Khaimah, will help boost the education sector in the country, and ultimately the economy by producing competent and skilled individuals,” Misho Ravic, CEO, Edulink, said on the occasion of signing the partnership agreement.
This optimism has been belied. Edulink managed to get 34 students to sign up in the inaugural year. But for mysterious reasons not a single admission application was received for the year beginning September 2010 even as the first batch is scheduled to complete the two-year full-time diploma programme this month. While Edulink failed to respond to your correspondent’s e-mails and telephone calls, Dr. C.M. Chitale, head of department of management science and the lead coordinator of this offshore project, believes the primary cause for zero admissions is the economic recession that hit UAE in 2010.
On the other hand, some UoP academics blame the top management for hasty and slapdash decision making. “RAK is an unattractive location. Students in the UAE generally prefer Dubai as a higher studies destination. The university management didn’t commission any market research on the demand-supply situation for MBA programmes, and was too reliant on Edulink’s assessment that UAE’s large population of Indians and locals would sign up in droves for an UoP MBA. But with a growing number of American and British B-schools offering innovative programmes, this expectation was over-optimistic. In retrospect, it’s quite clear neither Edulink nor UoP made any worthwhile effort to market the study programmes,” says a senior UoP don, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Interestingly, uop had originally planned to establish its first offshore campus in the Dubai International Academic City which hosts campuses of several high-profile Indian higher education institutions including Manipal University, Vellore Institute of Technology, National Law School of India and S.P. Jain Institute of Management, among others. However, its request for a licence had been rejected by Dubai’s education ministry on the ground that UoP had nothing new to offer in terms of business programmes to suit the long-term goals of the UAE government. All campuses outside RAK require accreditation from the UAE’s department of higher education and research.
Asked to comment on the charge that the curricular content had nothing extraordinary or contemporary, Raghunath Shevgaonkar, vice chancellor of UoP, maintains that the content of UoP’s business management programmes is beyond reproach. “The decision to stop the admission process for the time being is only because of a soul-searching exercise to ascertain the reasons why the RAK programme was not a success, and in no way reflects on the quality of study programmes offered there. But yes, certain issues need to be sorted out and we have invited Edulink for a discussion,” says Shevgaonkar.
Moral of the story: a big fish in a small pond isn’t necessarily ready to take on big fish in large ponds.
Huned Contractor (Pune)