Kudos for your cover story (‘RTE shadow over India’s most admired schools’, EW October). The danger to India’s vintage private schools can’t be exaggerated. There is every likelihood of “predatory” school inspectors descending like locusts on private, independent schools and wiping out their traditions built over centuries.
EducationWorld deserves commend-ation for alerting us to this danger. Keep up the good work!
Janaki Sriraman
Chennai
Wrong priority
Thank you for the detailed cover story on the implications of the RTE Act 2009 (EW October). There has been consid-erable misinterpretation and confusion about the impact of this historic legis-lation. Since it’s incontrovertible that children of the poor especially the rural poor, need better quality K-XII educa-tion, the priority of the government and HRD ministry should be drastic improvement of teaching-learning standards in the country’s 1.09 million government schools.
Instead, the focus of the RTE Act seems to be on transferring the burden of educating underprivileged poor children to private schools. This is very wrong as it will destroy the private school system without improving government schools.
Adil Mirza
Hyderabad
Decimation prescription
Your special report on student counseling (EW October) threw considerable light on the lack of a counseling culture in Indian education institutions. As the authors write, there is a direct connection between the rising incidence of student suicides and lack of counseling services.
Expectedly, private schools are in the forefront of the movement to introduce counseling facilities for students. In crowded government schools devoid of the most basic amenities and suffer-ing chronic teacher absenteeism, it will be ages before counseling services are offered to students.
Yet as recounted in your eye-opening cover story in the same issue, the Central government and HRD minister Kapil Sibal want to confer greater powers of supervision and control upon government inspectors and bureaucrats. This is a prescription for decimation of Indian education. I hope your lead stories will knock some sense into the HRD ministry which seems bent upon reducing private schools to the level of dysfunctional government schools which even the poorest of the poor are fleeing in droves.
Sarita Mathur
Delhi
Telling comment
Thank you for the brilliant editorial on the absence of a tools usage culture in Indian society (EW October). Most people even in 21st century India tend to accept the sight of under-fed and over-worked workers scratching about on farms and building sites with minimal, obsolete tools or even their bare hands, as normative.
This is a telling comment on the lack of compassion and empathy which is the rule in shining India which has pretensions about securing a permanent seat on the UN Security Council! Needless to say, state government and municipal workers tend to be least equipped with productivity enhancing tools. Your well written editorial aptly highlights this issue.
Suresh Iyer
Bangalore
Maintain status quo!
I refer to your postscript item ‘Die hard habits’ (EW October). To enable Delhi to host a spectacular Commonwealth Games and boost the national capital’s image, some harsh but absolutely needed measures were taken in the name of security. On many arterial roads there were no street hawkers, paanwalas and public vehicles such as tempos.
This should be made a permanent scenario on the capital’s roads. Religious places that are illegally constructed should be demolished. Parking lots for public vehicles must be built and beggars rehabilitated. Stray animals such as dogs, monkeys and cows must not be visible on roads and in colonies.
It should also be ensured that all streetlights work. Let us light up Delhi like Diwali forever. Doing so will reduce thefts and street crimes. Measures that have been implemented because of the CWG should not cease to exist once the games are over.
M. Kumar
Delhi
Words of appreciation
I read educationworld regularly and must congratulate you and your team on a job well done. In a world where rabid materialism has knocked down human values and the voice of the lowliest and the lost has been choked, you have been speaking up for them. Your pro-children editorial on the last Union budget (EW April) was excellent. Instead of widening the circle of an individual’s self-interest to embrace the globe, globalisation has narrowed it so much that there is no room in the circle for the individual or family.
Moreover your brief editorials and postscripts are at times masterpieces. Their central message shows your concern for truth and the suffering millions across the country. Your editorial on Kashmir (EW August) tells the dark truth so succinctly and boldly. I will be surprised if you don’t receive a sackful of flak!
Keep up the good work!
Homi Dastur
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
Mumbai
Cottons lament
As an ardent and passionate well wisher of ‘Cottons’ (i.e Bishop Cotton Boys and Bishop Cotton Girls schools, Bangalore), I am deeply pained by the conspicuous absence of these two vintage schools in the list of the top 10 Most Respected Schools of India in the EW-C fore Survey of Schools 2010 (EW September).
The survey based on ‘enlightened public perception’ vindicates my strong stand on the issue of accountable and transparent administration in private schools. It is ironical that the Union human resource development ministry, which has been rich in rhetoric about implementation of the RTE Act, did not read into the rumblings at Cottons which made headline news. For beneath the rumblings were the core values that the Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal is so desperately seeking to establish in school education.
Having been groomed in the best traditions of the Indian Army of placing the country first, I dared to fight for accountability and transparency in Bishop Cotton Boys against all odds. And rather than succumb to an incompetent and corrupt management, I resigned with dignity. I am positive the steep fall in rankings of the Bishop Cotton schools will awaken the HRD ministry to use it as a case study of probity in K-12 education.
Needless to say the traditions of Cottons are too strong to succumb before these ironies of fate. Both these schools will rise again in public esteem to take their rightful place among the comity of schools.
Congratulations to you and your team for the pioneering work in school education. If the survey can be done state wise, it will help schools in smaller towns to lay down benchmarks for their own excellence.
Col. (Retd) John Ellis
Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh
Curious ranking drop
With reference to the EW-C fore Survey of Schools 2010 (EW September), Johnson Grammar School, Hyderabad is shown to have slipped in its ranking since your last survey in 2009. I would like to bring the following facts to your notice.
• EducationWorld did not ask us for any information during the current year or visit us.
• Johnson Grammar School has continued to prove itself in different ways during 2009-10, some of which I detail below:
• In academics, the school posted strong results in the ICSE class X examinations
• In terms of sports, our best athletes won national, district and state-level honours
• In co-curricular activities, our students have secured excellent results
• A group of our students participated in an exchange programme with German students and the school benefited in cross-cultural understanding by hosting the visitors
• Johnson Grammar School is also recognised for its IB diploma programme and its first batch graduated in July 2010 with excellent results
• A team of our students was selected to be Jurors at the Giffoni Film Festival for Children and Young People in Giffoni, Italy held in July 2010
• Our alumni include extremely competent men and women who are placed in prestigious organisations in India and around the world
In the circumstances, I wonder why the ranking of our school in your league table has dropped.
Gita Iyengar
Principal, Johnson Grammar School
Hyderabad