Strange but true. In Indian education there’s almost universal tolerance of plagiarism, cheating and fraud with school leaders and academics across the education spectrum inclined to turn a blind eye to blatant knock-offs and theft of intellectual property.
If not, how does one explain the curious phenomenon of highly-respected school promoters and principals lining up to receive fraudulent awards from educationtoday.co, a slapdash online education magazine published by Anil Sharma, a former employee of this publication? Not only is the website a weak but clear imitation of our own www.educationworld.in, this worthy also publishes an annual print magazine titled EducationToday.co Special Edition on India’s School Merit Awards (sic) which shamelessly plagiarises the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings instituted in 2007.
Despite all the evaluation parameters for assessing schools being identical with the self-devised EW parameters, and the evaluation process of a jury/panel being conspicuously opaque, judging by the photographs published by this pirated publication, there’s evidently no shortage of celebrated pre-primary and K-12 school promoters and principals ready to line up and receive the tainted Education Today awards.
If the leaders of the country’s best private schools are so blind to brazen plagiarism and moral wrong-doing, one wonders what values they are passing on to their students? Little wonder that India is routinely ranked among the world’s most corrupt nations in the annual surveys of the Berlin-based Transparency International.