Education News

Murky imbroglio

In what could be regarded as Union human resource development minister Arjun Singh’s finest hour in Indian politics, Parliament passed the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Bill, 2006 on December 14 in the Lok Sabha and four days later in the Rajya Sabha. The Act provides for reservation of 27 percent seats for OBCs (other backward classes) in over 100 Central government sponsored higher education institutions.

With this legislation total capacity reservation in Central institutions has risen to 49 percent, from 22 percent for SCs (scheduled castes — 15 percent) and STs (scheduled tribes — 7 percent). Capacity expansion under the new Act will be implemented over three years beginning this academic year in July/August as per the recommendation of the Oversight Committee chaired by senior Congress leader and former Karnataka CM, Veerappa Moily. The price tag: Rs.17,000 crore. However as per the Moily Committee’s formula, the existing capacity for general category (i.e merit) students won’t be affected as new capacity will be added to accommodate OBCs.

The septuagenarian Arjun Singh, who had been struggling to retain his portfolio following dismal performance as education minister has with this master stroke bolstered his own and perhaps the Congress party’s electoral future. On December 18, perhaps for the first time after he set the ball rolling for OBC reservations last May, the nation got to hear his views while he responded to a five-and-a-half hour debate in Parliament. "India is an ancient civilization and a modern nation of 60 years. In between these two are 2,000 years of history. We have to proceed with caution if we are to set right all the wrongs of history. This Bill is one small effort and not the end of the matter," he said, receiving obvious support from the UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh.

Moreover responding to opposition criticism to the Bill exempting minority-promoted higher education institutions from its purview, Singh said that doing so would require a prior constitutional amendment. He also made plain his intention to bring private unaided colleges and deemed universities under the new legislation through an ordinance and force them to reserve 27 percent capacity for OBCs.

The ordinance, if it comes through, will compel all higher educational institutions in the country to reserve 27 percent of seats for OBC students from this academic year (2007-2008). Not doing so, he says will give rise to "a suspicion in the public mind that the delay in policy formulation was engineered to permit private institutions to make windfall profits at least for one academic year."

Meanwhile the passage of the Bill through Parliament hasn’t fazed students of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), who were in the vanguard of anti-reservation protests last May. On the day the Bill was passed by the Rajya Sabha, AIIMS students commenced a relay hunger strike, which will continue until the reservation case comes up for hearing in the Supreme Court in early January. "The Jessica Lall verdict has given the Indian middle class new hope that 546 members of Parliament are not the final authority. We’re confident about taking on the Central government in court where we’ll prove this legislation has been enacted by politicians for their own interests rather than of society," says Dr. Anil Sharma, spokesperson of the Resident Doctors Association of AIIMS.

Against the backdrop of this murky imbroglio, there’s a growing national audience for educationists who advocate liberalisation and deregulation of the higher education sector. "There’s no alternative to augmenting capacity and decontrolling higher education. Under the present licence-permit-quota regime it’s very difficult to promote education institutions in this country. But if controls are removed it won’t take more than a decade for India’s education sector to sustain itself and altogether eliminate the issue of reserved quotas in education," reasons Krishan Khanna, founding chairman of iWatch, a Mumbai-based citizens advocacy group.

But one of the lessons of industry liberalisation and deregulation is that it has marginalised politicians who thrive in licence raj conditions. Perhaps the political class as a whole is determined not to repeat this ‘mistake’ in the education sector.

Autar Nehru (Delhi)

Dumbing down fear

Swearing by social justice and equity in education for all, the Tamil Nadu state government has proposed a uniform syllabus for all schools functioning under the Directorate of School Education from the next academic year 2007-08. According to a government spokes-person, this proposal will banish current disparities between schools affiliated to several examination boards, rectify the imbalance in the quality of education dispensed in rural and urban areas and standardise examinations for classes I-X. To this end the government has constituted the Dr. Muthukumaran Committee to hold public hearings across the state and elicit the views of stakeholders in education.

Inevitably the government’s school standardisation proposal has received a mixed response from teachers and students and has kickstarted a heated debate about the advisability of imposing a uniform syllabus in a state which boasts a multiplicity of examination boards. Currently there are 29,586 primary, 8,017 middle and 2,918 high schools, classified as government and aided schools which are affiliated with the Tamil Nadu State Board School Leaving Certificate Examination Board. In addition 41 schools are affiliated with the Anglo Indian School Leaving Certificate Examination Board, 2,053 unaided high schools with the Directorate of Matriculation Schools Examination Board, and a few with the Oriental School Leaving Certificate (OSLC) Examination Board. Significantly schools affiliated with the pan-India Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and CISCE (Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations) are exempt from this essentially levelling down directive.

While the move to introduce a uniform syllabus has been welcomed by teachers and educationists who swear by the state board syllabus, it is opposed by the managements of private schools affiliated with other boards — particularly the Matriculation Board — who pride themselves on their superior syllabus and higher teaching-learning standards. According to them, even though Matriculation schools revert to the state board syllabus in higher secondary (classes XI and XII) they prefer the status quo. "While we support equity in education, a uniform syllabus is acceptable only if it meets national standards. The Matriculation syllabus has been recently upgraded and a lot of importance is given to practical work in the curriculum, which the state board syllabus lacks. We would not like to lower our education standards to the state board level. If we deprive our children of proven quality education, they will find it difficult to compete in the emerging global market," says V.R. Vijaya, principal, Alpha Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Chennai.

Yet on a larger canvas the cavalier insouciance with which all governments elected to power in Tamil Nadu tinker with the education system, is causing considerable concern within the parent and academic communities. Last month (December) the recently elected DMK government scrapped the common entrance test (CET) for professional education, lightened the syllabus content of higher secondary (Plus Two) classes a month earlier (November) and reduced the minimum pass marks for theory papers. According to a government spokesperson, these decisions will benefit rural students and create a level playing field for them. According to growing academic opinion, this is tantamount to dumbing down school education.

Experienced educationists in Chennai argue that even if the government proposal becomes law, rural students will find it difficult to compete with urban students because they don’t have access to modern infrastructure and good teachers. Instead they suggest a whole new paradigm for the development of rural and government schools in general. "Government should encourage individualisation of curriculums so that students pursue courses for which they have aptitude. There should be a common core curriculum for all school boards in the three R’s. But beyond that they should be free to devise their own additional curricula for which they can hold separate exams. Individual students pursuing a particular subject should get a mention in their marksheets. This will act as an incentive for schools to develop their capabilities instead of limiting themselves to the prescribed syllabus. In the rural areas there is a wide spectrum of intelligence and kinesthetic capabilities beyond the three R’s that urban students lack. This should be developed through specialised curriculums devised by rural schools aware of ground conditions," says Prof. Rajaganesan, former head of the department of education at the University of Madras.

Clearly, the Tamil Nadu government needs to heed the counsel of experienced educationists and even invite industry opinion. The political obsession with providing a level playing field for rural students — obviously driven by electoral considerations — should not blind it to the long term danger of dumbing down school education. The best way to help rural students would be to pump in more resources to upgrade infrastructure and improve teaching-learning processes in government schools. A uniform syllabus for all schools will only lower standards and in course of time Tamil Nadu, currently India’s industrial hotspot, will lose its competitive advantage.

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)

Parochial posturing

Fifty years after the boundaries of newly independent India’s states were re-drawn in 1956 to accommodate linguistic sub-nationalism, notwithstanding the emergence of English as the global language of industry and trade, state level politicians continue to stoke linguistic passions for electoral advantage.

Following the lead of political leaders in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu who insist that all residents within their geographical boundaries learn — and learn in — Kannada and Tamil, Maharashtra’s minister of state for primary and secondary education, Hasan Mushrif announced in the state legislative council on December 14 that learning Marathi will be made compulsory in approximately 700 CBSE and CISCE schools in Maharashtra from the academic year beginning July this year. "We will direct all schools to make Marathi compulsory from classes I-X," he told the council.

Mushrif was provoked into making this commitment while replying to supplementaries raised by Anil Parab of the parochial right wing party, the Shiv Sena and Jeetendra Awhad of the Nationalist Congress Party led by Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, who is a dominant force in Maharashtra politics. According to Awhad, a growing number of schools affiliated to the state government’s secondary school board (SSC) are switching affiliation to the Delhi-based pan-India CBSE and CISCE boards to avoid teaching Marathi. "At this rate, Marathi will disappear from urban areas in the state," said Awhad. His demand for government intervention to rectify this situation was backed by Ulhas Pawar of the Congress who claims that the Supreme Court has ruled teaching of the local language is mandatory in all schools without exception.

While Marathi is already a compulsory subject from classes I-X in more than 1,200 schools affiliated with the SSC board, it is an optional subject in most CISCE and CBSE schools, although a majority of them have made Marathi compulsory for students in classes V-VIII (higher primary). However English medium CBSE and CISCE affiliated schools routinely exempt even higher primary students from learning state languages on various grounds. Some schools also grant exemption to international students allowing them to learn French or some other foreign language instead. In practice CBSE and more so CISCE, have little time or patience with linguistic chauvinism which necessitates reliance on shoddy textbooks written by dubious, politically connected authors. This makes local politicians see red.

"For all new schools even if affiliated to central boards we will insist on compulsory Marathi learning before we give them a no-objection certificate. As for existing schools we will write to them to make Marathi compulsory," says Mushrif.

While such linguistic subnationalism is likely to win applause from the state’s flourishing Marathi textbooks publishing industry, there are many legal minefields to be crossed before this brave statement of intent can be implemented. For one, the Supreme Court has ruled that minority institutions (including linguistic and religious minority institutions) have a fundamental right to "establish and administer" themselves. It is arguable that choosing or formulating syllabi and curriculums fall within the ambit of administration.

Moreover managements of the country’s estimated 10,000 CBSE and CISCE schools have set their sights of preparing their students for the emerging global markets and have no patience with the parochialism of state governments. School principals say that inclusion of Marathi into school curriculums will require the state government to persuade the central boards in Delhi, and they can implement the proposal only if the CBSE and CISCE boards endorse it. "It is impossible for us to make Marathi a mandatory subject as the school is affiliated to a different board devising its own syllabus. This is forceful imposition," says M.P. Sharma, principal of the CISCE affiliated G.D. Somani School in south Mumbai.

Meanwhile perhaps unknown to Mushrif and parochial politicians, public enthusiasm for learning Marathi and regional languages is waning as a rapidly growing number of people become aware that English learning and fluency is the passport to upward social mobility. As many as 520 Marathi medium schools across the state closed down in 2005-06 for want of students, or because under parental pressure the schools switched to teaching in the English medium.

In academic circles the Congress-led state government’s enthusiasm for Marathi is being interpreted as posturing ahead of Mumbai’s municipal elections scheduled for February rather than a well-thought out plan with clear-cut goals. In short, it’s unlikely to be implemented.

Gaver Chatterjee (Mumbai)

Murder most foul

The brutal murder of Patna University’s Prof. Papiya Ghosh and her elderly maidservant at her home in Patna on December 3, has shocked the academic community in Bihar. A brave and popular singleton, Prof. Ghosh taught history to postgrad students at Patna University.

In a state where college education is in a shambles and elite private tutors hire armed bodyguards as they teach batches of 200-500 students to rake in big bucks, the brutal murder of this popular academic has come as a huge blow to the already demoralised academy. That a serious academic could be killed in such a barbaric manner in one of the most upscale residential localities of the state capital has conveyed a chilling message: the state is still at the mercy of anti-social goons and criminals and the role of the police is merely to reconstruct crimes without much hope of successful arrest and prosecution of perpetrators.

Yet the silver lining to this cruelly-executed murder is that public protests in Patna continued for over a fortnight with widespread condemnation of the heinous crime pouring in from all over the country. The police was quick to describe the murders as robbery-related and arrested four local youth on December 15. Goods stolen from the professor’s modest home were recovered following intensive investigation driven by a sustained campaign by local media.

Born in 1953 the late professor was the daughter of an IAS officer and had received her school education in Patna. One of her sisters is also an IAS officer and currently posted as officer on special duty with Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee. A graduate of Patna Women’s College, Ghosh pressed on to pursue her Masters and Ph D in history at Delhi University. Thereafter against the advice of all, she returned to teach history at her alma mater, Patna Women’s College. It proved to be a fateful decision.

Although the police insist that the motive of the crime is common robbery, the local media is rife with stories of how she was threatened by some politicians and the land mafia to part with her house which is in a prestigious neighbourhood. In 2004 Ghosh had filed a complaint with the police in this connection. After that she never received any fresh threats. Nevertheless the opposition Lalu Prasad-led Rashtriya Janata Dal party has demanded a CBI probe with the state government insisting that the local police has already solved the case. Yet there is considerable disquiet — indeed fear — in the city that a murder most foul was committed in broad daylight in the upscale Patliputra colony.

Yet this much-lamented murder and the intense speculation it has aroused is indicative of the reality that despite good intentions, the new Nitish Kumar-led state government which was voted to power in 2005, has a long way to go before restoring citizens’ faith in the police and law and order machinery.

Meanwhile the state government’s effort to attract high quality teachers into the promised new Bihar has suffered a severe setback.

Arun Srivastav (Patna)

Learning blindspot

The new year (2007) is a landmark year for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA) or Education For All programme approved by unanimous acclamation by Parliament in 2001. Responding to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by the United Nations in the year 2000, Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi, the then Union minister for HRD in the BJP-led NDA, somewhat rashly committed India to attaining the MDGs targeted for 2015 by year 2010. Under this commitment universal enrollment of children in the age group six-14 is scheduled to be completed by the end of this calender year (2007).

But murmurs of concern are beginning to be heard in academic circles in Delhi because by end 2006 only 85 percent of children in the target group were enrolled in school. And with the onus to ensure compulsory elementary education under the model Right to Education Bill having been transferred to state governments most of whom give little priority to primary education, the universal primary enrollment by 2007 target seems dicey.

Meanwhile even if primary school enrollment is creeping upwards, there is accumulating evidence that teaching-learning standards — measured by learning outcomes — are stagnant, if not falling.

A recent study of the World Bank titled From Schooling Access to Learning Outcomes: An Unfinished Agenda says that with excessive focus on primary school enrollment, measures to improve learning outcomes have been relegated to the back burner. "In India half of seven-10 year olds were unable to read fluently a short paragraph of grade I… Social, fund and other community driven projects, which have typically emphasised school cons-truction, are often loosely linked to sector policies. They have frequently overlooked the need for complementary investments in school quality and do not always have adequate technical input from education experts," comments the report.

This latest World Bank reports confirm the conclusions of the Mumbai-based NGO Pratham which in its Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2005 revealed that 35 percent (i.e 62 million) children in the seven-14 age group cannot comprehend a simple paragraph of class I difficulty (see EW cover story March 2006).

Parveen Malhotra, a Delhi-based career coun-sellor also deplores the lack of attention to actual learning in classrooms which he ascribes to lack of accountability in govern-ment schools. "There isn’t a quality problem in primary education in private schools. It’s government schools that need attention. Their poor learning outcomes are very evident," he says.

With teaching standards in government primary schools in which 85 percent of India’s 200 million children in the age group six-14 are enrolled showing no signs of improvement, it’s hardly surprising enrollments are not rising. Worse, even enrolled children are dropping out of schools which offer little learning.

Dr. Arun C. Mehta, fellow of the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA) and author of the data packed Elementary Education in India — Analytical Report 2004-05 (NIEPA 2006) confirms this trend. "A large number of children are getting enrolled but on the other hand ten out of 100 children enrolled drop out in each primary grade. This is despite the SSA interventions and mid-day meals across the country. This is a serious problem which needs to be addressed," says Mehta.

Poor learning outcomes in government schools is the cause and effect of pathetic provision of infrastructure, adds Mehta. According to him in 2005, 107,842 primary schools countrywide had only a single classroom. Even in Delhi, 15 percent of government schools are without blackboards. Against this backdrop SSA makes a meagre provision per primary school of Rs.5,000 towards repairs, Rs.2,000 for development and Rs.500 per teacher for learning materials. "Learners’ achievement is considered to be one of the significant indicators of quality of education. However, there is no mechanism to collect information on learners’ achievements on a regular basis," he says.

Evidently educrats in the Union HRD ministry and education departments of the state governments are innocent of awareness that there’s more to education than rising enrollment numbers. A whole series of classroom transactions which engage the attention of children have to occur. It’s a reflection of the quality of educrats in government ministries that they are oblivious of this reality.

Ambica Gulati (Delhi)

Smooth start

The mission statement of EducationWorld (est. 1999) is to "build the pressure of public opinion to make education the No. 1 item on the national agenda." To this end and to spread the message of Equal Education for All, Education-World co-sponsored the Equal Education Odyssey of our special correspondent Srinidhi Raghavendra (riding with Kishore Patwardhan) under the aegis of Borderless Bikers, Bangalore. This historic 25,000 km motor-cycle odyssey will take him across India and South Asia. Over the next five months, Raghavendra will take the Equal Education for All message to eight Asian countries (including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, Thailand and Malaysia) and 62 major cities across Asia. In the next five issues, Education World will feature an abridged version of his blog: www.bangaloreoutings. blogspot.com. The first dispatch:

December 3, 2006. After months of preparation, D-Day dawned bright and clear. Following a quick pooja at a temple, my team mate Kishore Patwar-dhan and I proceeded to the Gandhi Statue near Cubbon Park, our point of departure. The media was there in full force and we were received by R. Chandramouli, vice president (marketing) TVS Motors and John McClure, director (marketing) of Intel Corporation.

We were ceremoniously flagged off at 10.30 a.m sharp together with a cavalcade of over 50 motor cycles and drove for 40 minutes to Nelamangala where most of the bikers signed off after wishing us bon voyage.

Following a quick brunch at Kunigal, the two of us rode to Hassan (115 km), to rest for the night at Kishore’s cousin’s home. An exciting first day had got off to a smooth start.

December 4. Starting at 8.00 a.m from Hassan it took us 45 minutes to negotiate the narrow, pot-holed roads and streets choked with people, cattle, poultry and pigs, before we reached the state highway leading to Belur. Surprisingly the 34-km two-lane Hassan-Belur road is as good as any national highway and provides a great driving experience. Scenic vistas of quaint villages, azure lakes and green fields enhanced the ride.

Belur hosts a well-preserved historic temple dedicated to Chennakeshava. The Hoysala kings took over 100 years to build this temple and it is perhaps the most popular in Karnataka. We drove smoothly through Mudigere, Kottigehara and continued our ride through Charmadi Ghat, 27 km of sheer riding pleasure. One of the world’s most famous bio-diversity hotspots, a profusion of greenery greeted us. Once into the Charmadi Ghat we had 17 hairpin bends to negotiate. But our TVS Apache bikes smoothly negotiated the treacherous twists and turns.

At Mundaje (pop 5,000) students and staff of the local junior college, where my fellow biker Kishore was a student, were briefed about our odyssey and the importance of Equal Education for All mission. Next stop was Siddhavana Gurukula, a free residential school for poor meritorious students. Established in 1940 the gurukula is housed in a verdant 15 acre campus and has a large auditorium where we were feted. During a two hour interaction, we stressed the importance of self-study and continuous supplementary learning after which we proceeded to Dharmasthala to meet Sri Veerendra Hegde, chief trustee of the Sri Dharmasthala Manjunatheswara temple and managing trustee of SDM group of 13 education institutions which have an aggregate enrollment of over 10,000 kindergarten-postgraduate students. Dharmasthala is also a pilgrimage destination which attracts over one million pilgrims annually.

From Dharmasthala we rode to Mangalore via Belthangady and BC Road. It is described as a national highway but is worse than a village road.

December 5-6. We reached Mangalore and stopped for an extra day to get our bikes serviced. There is plenty to see in Mangalore, including the historic Mangaladevi temple and the famous beaches of Panambur and Ullal.

December 7. We set out from Mangalore on the coastal highway (NH-17) towards Karwar. The initial 27 km of road is a shambles without a trace of asphalt or road dividers. But this region is strewn with numerous pilgrimage centres. Notable among them are the Udupi Krishna temple and the 1,000-pillared Jain Basadi at Brahamawar.

After a brief halt on the beaches of Karwar, we crossed the border to enter India’s most famous holiday destination: Goa. Our first stop was at Balli a small village near Margao where the farmer family of Mrs. Meera Karve and son Mandar, hosted us. They had seen our website and requested us to stop by. During the next two days we roamed the famous beaches of Goa — Palolem, Colva, Miramar and Calangute.

A distinguishing characteristic of Goa, India’s most well-educated state, is the absence of abject poverty and destitution which is so common elsewhere in the country. Even the poorest rural families have proper tiled houses to live in and almost every child speaks acceptable English. The benefits of sustained focus on education are showcased in Goa.

December 9. From Goa to Pune, (Maharashtra) is a long 550 km ride. Starting at 6.30 a.m we rode continuously for five hours to reach Humrut from where we turned off to the state highway 116 towards Kolhapur. The narrow two lane road traversed through some of the most scenic terrain we had seen thus far. Therefore the 110 km ride to Kolhapur from Humrut via Phonda Ghat and Radhanagari Dam was exhilarating.

From Kolhapur to Pune it’s a straight and swift ride down the six-lane NH-4 newly built (2003-04) as part of the Golden Quadrilateral project. For the first time in the past week we throttled our bikes to over 95-105 km per hour to reach Pune by 7 p.m.

December 10-11. In Pune students of the Symbiosis Law College organised a small informal meeting at Open Space, the premises of an NGO which is working towards engineering social change within Maharashtra’s farming community — recently in the news for mass suicides. Socially conscious students barraged us with questions about the importance of quality Education for All, how it can be achieved and how our mission can help attain this goal. At the end of the session 15 students took a solemn oath that they would each teach at least one illiterate adult the three R’s — reading, writing and ’rithmetic. Our Asian odyssey has got off to a promising start!

Srinidhi Raghavendra (Pune)