Education News

Persistent poisonous texts

• Islam was promoted forcibly, by threats and the use of weapons. Muslim rulers followed a policy of religious intolerance and tortured the followers of other religions, especially Hindus. It was due to this that the seeds of communalism were sowed in the country and our national, political and social unity suffered a setback (class XII history, text II) • Historical proofs regarding Ram Janmbhoomi and the Ramayan clearly indicate that it is the Ayodhya of Ram where Babri Masjid exists. It was the birthplace of Ram (class XII history, text II)

• Mir Baqi, holding a key post under Emperor Babar, demolished the Hindu temple at Ayodhya and built a mosque in its place. The mosque was known as Babri Masjid (class IX textbook, Medieval history of India)

Confident pronouncements such as these, found in the upper, intermediate and primary level textbooks of government approved and aided schools affiliated to the Uttar Pradesh State Examinations Board have drawn the ire of the Deeni Talim Council of Uttar Pradesh, an organisation which runs 6,000 schools in the state with an aggregate enrollment of 600,000 pupils. From a study of 31 books the council has culled these and other examples to highlight, what the council general secretary, Masoodul Hasan Usmani, describes as "objectionable content" with potential to damage the secular fabric of the country.

Government-aided school in UP: old regime texts

Siraj Hussain principal secretary, language department in the state government laments that the trend is not limited to the UP board alone. The 20,000 Vidya Bharati schools run by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad are imparting education that is not in tune with the country’s secular ethos. Many scholars believe these historical distortions have nefarious communal designs behind them. But the government is yet to wake up to the seriousness of the issue.

"The curriculums devised by both the Vidya Bharati schools and madrasas promote communalism and hatred of other religions. Their books lack scientific temper and propagate superstition. For example wars between Mughals and Rajputs in history books are presented in communal shades. But when these texts also find a way into government schools, it is a cause for serious worry," says Vibhuti Narain Rai president of Saanjhi Duniya, an NGO that recently reviewed books taught in madrasas and Vidya Bharati schools.

The Deeni Talim Council’s points of reference, compiled in a 50-page report titled An evaluation of the Textbooks taught by the Basic Shiksha Parishads in Government Schools from the viewpoint of National Unity released on July 24 during a seminar on education and secularism, also found an echo in the state’s legislative assembly when it convened for the monsoon session. The Congress, which raised the issue, accused such texts of creating a negative attitude towards minorities.

According to Congress legislative party leader Pramod Tiwari, such texts violate Articles 14, 15 and 19 of the Constitution and promote religious intolerance. He highlighted the irony that such textbooks are still in use in a state whose Samajwadi party chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav has earned the sobriquet maulana, for his minority friendly ways.

In response to these accusations, the state government’s parliamentary affairs minister Mohammed Azam Khan concedes the seriousness of the issue but pleads helplessness about taking quick action. "The seriousness of the issue cannot be denied. We have made several corrections to primary level textbooks and now need to extend it to the higher classes. But it cannot be hurried. Education being a concurrent subject we need some assistance from the Central government," he says.

Meanwhile despite a minority-friendly Samajwadi party-led government ruling in Lucknow, students in India’s most populous state are forced to memorise and reproduce blatantly anti-minority untruths in examination answer sheets. Little wonder that perhaps unwittingly, communal hostilities are on the rise in the Hindi heartland states.

Vidya Pandit (Lucknow)

Study fees lessons

Coterminously with the run-up to the annual melee that has become a defining feature of admi-ssions into Delhi University (DU), another issue has grabbed the headlines in the national capital this year: glaring disparities in the study fees levied by the 80 plus colleges affiliated with the university. Several colleges charge higher fees for identical undergraduate programmes even though all DU affiliated colleges are directly funded by the University Grants Commission (UGC).

St. Stephen’s College students: embarassingly modest fees

It’s a telling commentary on the extent to which post-independence India’s privileged middle class (only 7 percent of those in the age group 18-24 avail tertiary education) has been pampered with heavily subsidised higher education that DU students take umbrage against the varying fees levied by colleges under the DU umbrella quite oblivious of the reality that all higher education is massively subsidised by the Central and state governments. "It is atrocious that despite being controlled by the same umbrella organisation — and imparting the same quality of teaching — students have to pay almost double at ‘expensive’ colleges. Why this discrepancy? Why can’t all colleges follow a uniform fee structure?" queries Sandeep Anand a former DUSU (Delhi University Students Union) official.

Student leaders are inclined to blame the University Grants Commission for failing to standardise a common fee structure. But UGC officials dismiss such criticism as irrational. "Our mandate is to provide needs based funding for scholarships, infrastructure and maintenance to colleges. Issues like common fee structures within a university are outside our purview," says a UGC spokesperson who requested anonymity.

Ironically DUSU leaders seem to be unaware that DU has mandated a tuition fee common to all affiliated colleges — a pathetic Rs.180 or Rs.15 per month, unchanged since 1950. Severely hamstrung by this absurdly low-tuition fee, college managements have had to augment revenue by levying additional charges under assorted sub-heads like development fund, admission, sports and athletic and infrastructure development fees. Even so it’s common knowledge that student fees contribute hardly 10 percent (against the global norm of 30 percent) of annual college revenues.

Comments Kanika Khandelwal convenor of admissions at LSR: "I don’t see what the hue and cry is about. Each college has differing infrastructure, sports and cultural facilities, development and maintenance costs. This decides the overall fee payable per student. When new courses are added, colleges need to generate additional funds. Therefore how can all colleges charge uniform fee when their expenses differ widely?"

Moreover college managements argue that though the UGC funds them (grants usually range between Rs.80 lakh-1 crore per annum per college), the commission’s grants are grossly inadequate to cover expenses. Comments S.R. Arora, principal of Hansraj College: "The commission’s grants barely cover staff salaries. Infrastructure maintenance and upgradation, library upkeep and sports expenses are not even considered by UGC."

Against this backdrop academics hitherto fearful of student agitations against fee increases are beginning to speak up. Comments D. Jagannathan, principal of the Dyal Singh College: "Private schools charge tuition fees which are many multiples of Delhi colleges. Rather than fussing over trivia, students ought to focus on how to contribute towards the upgradation of their institutions. In Dyal Singh College we raised Rs. 4 lakh by levying a development fund fee which has helped us to add new classrooms, a seminar hall and a computer lab. For this, each student willingly paid Rs.100."

Around the world even as the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of Education for All by 2015 movement gathers momentum, informed opinion is veering around to the viewpoint that while elementary education is a public good, higher education is more a private benefit. Hence state subsidisation of the latter at the expense of the former, is indefensible. While elimination of all subsidies for higher education is perhaps too tall an order, in the interests of justice and fairplay India’s 9.28 million university and college students need to start learning to pay larger amounts for their privileged education.

Neeta Lal (Delhi)

Delhi U’s latest scandal

In Delhi University’s common entrance examination (CEE) for 1,110 engineering seats in Delhi College of Engineering (DCE) and Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, at least 21 candidates who made it into top 100 of the merit list are suspected beneficiaries of a scam being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation. The Delhi high court has also stepped in the breach and demanded a report from the university.

P.B. Sharma, the principal of DCE, stumbled upon the scam when a random check of mark sheets indicated that four groups of students shared identical marks in the CEE whose results were declared on June 15. Earlier on May 30, 55,000 students had written the examination conducted in more than 100 centres across the city. A preliminary CBI enquiry indicates that selected candidates were taken to a house in the Rohini area before the exam and shown the question paper and given model answers. Unsurprisingly most of the 21 suspect CEE toppers wrote their exam papers in Rohini area centres.

The Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) believes that Delhi University officials are complicit in the scam. "Examination fraud has been going on in the university for some time and efforts have always been made to hush it up. But something so audacious could not have happened without the involvement of some fairly senior people in the controller of examinations office," alleges A.N. Misra, president of DUTA.

Quite obviously there is cause for suspecting mischief. A candidate who secured 13th position in the DU merit list is ranked 221,262 in the All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) conducted by CBSE. Four others in the DU 13th rank slot not only scored identical aggregates but also identical marks in physics, chemistry and mathematics. Ditto candidates who secured 25th, 36th and 56th positions in the university’s merit list. The 11 candidates who secured 56th position aggregating 516 marks each, scored equal marks in physics (186), chemistry (139) and maths (191). "As per the theory of probability, 250,471 separate combinations can add up to an aggregate of 516. Therefore the probability of 11 students aggregating 516 marks in exactly the same way is 0.000003992. Equally improbable is the statistical chance of five students securing the 13th rank with equal marks in PCM (physics, chemistry and maths)," says Mishra.

Interestingly, each of the suspect 21 candidates secured very poor rankings in the AIEEE conducted by CBSE. Two candidates who were ranked 25th and 36th in CEE could manage to secure only the 330,151st and 371,434th positions in AIEEE.

Delhi University’s so-called airtight computerised examination system has quite evidently been punctured by unscrupulous elements inside and outside the establishment. The CBI enquiry may limit some of the damage but the episode has shattered the faith of thousands of aspirants in entrance examinations. Top-level complicity is suspected because it was only after three weeks that DU acted on DCE principal P.B. Sharma’s complaint. "To check malpractices in this examination, it is necessary to streamline the process and ensure persons of unimpeachable integrity are involved in conducting them. They have to be made leak proof," says Dr. B.L. Pandit, who served as a member on NCERT’s focus group on examination reform in the just concluded national curriculum framework review.

The latest rumour doing the rounds of Delhi University is that a ring of organised conspirators within the varsity administration sold the papers at Rs.4 lakh per set. That’s quite a steep price for a student to pay to enter DCE. But the price society pays is steeper. Work it out for yourself.

Autar Nehru (Delhi)

Unsafe as usual

One year ago after the unprecedented tragedy in the obscure town of Kumbakonam (Tamil Nadu), where a fire in the Sri Krishna Saraswathi English Medium School incinerated 93 children, child safety remains a neglected issue. Within supposedly better-administered private schools as well as in the nation’s 900,000 government schools, laws relating to child safety are practised more in the breach than observance.

Exactly a year after the Kumbakonam tragedy on July 16, in Mumbai nine-year-old Pratik Khanolkar, a student of the elite Ram Ratna Vidya Mandir Residential School, run by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), drowned in the school’s swimming pool.

Located on the sprawling training cum residential complex of the RSS — the well-known Hindu militant cultural organisation — in Thane on the outskirts of Mumbai, the ten-year school has 390 residential students on its rolls who pay Rs.2 lakh each per year. While the exact circumstances under which the young primary school child drowned are unclear, it has been established that over 50 of the school’s children were taken for a swim in the school’s pool at around 4.30 p.m on the day of the accident with only one instructor and one security guard on duty.

The sequence of events following the drowning turned out be even more bizarre. Pratik’s parents told the press that they received a call from the school only at 7.30 p.m to say that their son had been "seriously hurt" and was at Thane’s Kasturi Hospital, located a few kilometres from the school. The parents further claim that when they reached the hospital nobody from the school was present and that they were directed to their dead son’s body to find him still clad in his swimming trunks, a claim which the school authorities have vehemently refuted. Subhash Chandra Sood the school’s principal maintains he was present at the hospital.

Following a post mortem the Khanolkars are determined to press charges against the school. "I want the police to investigate how my son died. We want justice. Those responsible for our son’s death should be punished," says the distraught father. Meanwhile though the police is yet undecided on what action to take against the institution, the swimming instructor, Rajesh Gawli, was arrested and later released on bail. "We admit that this is a lapse on the part of our swimming instructor, but it was an accident. We assure you that we will punish whoever is found guilty of negligence," the principal told the press on the day following the little boy’s death.

Following the huge public outcry after the Kumbakonam inferno, there was a general expectation that school managements would pay greater attention to safety issues and procedures. But the Ram Ratna Vidya Mandir School’s casual attitudes to this tragic accident which was given wide exposure in Mumbai, indicates that it’s business as usual.

Meanwhile within India’s commercial capital a broad consensus is emerging in favour of PTAs (parent-teacher associations) becoming more actively involved with safety issues in education institutions. Quite obviously education is too important to be left entirely to educationists.

Gaver Chatterjee (Mumbai)

Contradictory contribution

Under the almost decade long rule of a BJP government led by its controversial chief minister Narendra Modi, the western seaboard state of Gujarat (pop. 50 million) has been regularly making national news for all the wrong reasons. In 2002 the suspicious Godhra train incident was followed by the horrible Gujarat riots under Modi’s watch. Since then despite Modi winning a new term in office in 2003, the state government has not quite recovered its balance or reputation.

Modi: exaggerated claims

While recommending linkages between industry and the state government to reverse this negative trend, the report highlights setbacks in education and health. Moreover under pressure from the RSS the Modi government has reversed its plan to teach English from class I as proposed by the chief minister and education minister Anandi Patel.

Perhaps the only silver lining to the clouds over Gujarat is that the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan (BVB) has received permission to set up an Indian Institute of Education (IIE) in Vadodara to train teachers for English medium secondary and higher secondary schools mushrooming across the state despite official discouragement. "We badly need quality teachers for our English medium schools, and I would suggest that the state government also promote an institute on the lines of the one proposed by us to churn out qualified teachers for primary schools imparting education in the English medium," says Dr. M.P. Chhaya director of BVB.

The Rs.20 crore self-financed teacher education institute will become functional from the next academic year (June 2006) with a first batch of 250 students. Touted as the first of its kind in the country, the autonomous residential IIE will offer a contemporary B.Ed programme for graduates as well as for Plus Two school leaving students. Admission into the institute will be through an open national level test. According to Chhaya, its main thrust will be use of new information technology tools for teaching and learning, and developing niche areas in educational research. "For historical reasons, in Gujarat we lack quality teachers in English medium schools. IIE will strive to produce competent English-fluent teachers and ensure that those who graduate from this institute will be recruited through campus interviews, with salaries of at least Rs. 2 lakh per year," says Chhaya.

Like the communist-led Left Front government which has ruled West Bengal since 1977, successive administrations in Gujarat have neglected and discouraged the teaching of English, a decision which has cost the state dearly. Unwittingly the resurrection of English language learning — anathema to the right wing RSS and other sangh parivar outfits from which the BJP draws succour and inspiration — may be Modi’s most valuable contribution to the state to date.

Minnie M (Ahmedabad)

Fudged issue

An order of the Tamil Nadu government’s education department directing all nursery and primary schools in the state without formal certification to shut shop has come as a bolt from the blue to 2,600 school managements. Though the deadline for certification of unrecognised nursery and primary school has been extended to August 31 following an appeal made by 60 petitioner schools in the Madras high court, there is widespread fear that approval/ certification will be arbitrarily denied on a mass scale.

The government order dated April 11 was issued by the directorate of elementary education in conformity with specifications of the Nursery Code of 1991 (amended in 1993) which is being strictly enforced following the horrible fire tragedy in a primary school in Kumbakonam on July 16 last year, in which 93 young children lost their lives.

As per the Nursery Code, the requirements of approval are a licence issued under the Tamil Nadu Public Buildings Licensing Act 1965 from the local tahsildar; a structural stability certificate from PWD/ chartered engineers; a sanitary certificate from the health department; a no-objection certificate from the fire and rescue department, and a corporation approved building plan in the name of the school in addition to spacious classrooms, sufficient open space, laboratory and toilet facilities. The government order warned that schools failing to comply with these norms would be closed down and over 100,000 children studying in them will be transferred to approved institutions in the locality or nearby government schools.

The sudden resurrection of the Nursery Code has drawn a cynical response from the Tamil Nadu Nursery, Primary, Matriculation and Higher Secondary School Management Association (TNNPMA) which estimates the aggregate number of unaided nursery and primary schools in the state at 25,000, of which only 5,700 have received formal approval from the education department. According to the association, though several thousand schools have closed down after the April 11 government order, the number of schools functioning without approval is several multiples of the education department’s 2,600 estimate.

"As the government did not strictly implement the Nursery Code for over a decade due to its inability to meet the rising demand for primary education, there has been a pell-mell growth of unaided nursery and primary schools in the state. If schools which haven’t secured approval before the August 31 deadline are closed down, it will adversely affect over 200,000 children studying in them and will throw thousands of teachers out of their jobs. Transferring these students to schools recognised by the government won’t solve the problem as the enrollment of these schools will increase suddenly without any additional capacity creation," says D. Christdas, general secretary of the TNNPMA, who persuaded Tamil Nadu chief minister J.Jayalalithaa to extend the deadline for securing approval to August 31.

Meanwhile, teams of government officials have started inspecting unaided nursery and primary schools to check if they qualify for approval. Though this belated tightening of approval and inspection procedures by the state government is welcomed by educationists in Tamil Nadu, they express concern that the basic issue of growing demand for low cost English medium education from the working and lower middle classes is not being acknowledged by the state government. The Tamil Nadu Elementary Education Act 1920 permits primary education solely in the Tamil medium.

This proscription of English in government schools has led to the mushrooming of private nursery and primary schools offering sub-standard English medium education at rock bottom prices. "The government did not enforce the Nursery Code strictly in the last decade even as government schools refused to meet the rising demand for English medium nursery and primary education. The time has now come for the administration to open more schools offering the type of education the people want, i.e English medium pre-school and primary education," says Chennai-based educationist S.S Rajagopalan.

The state government’s move to close down unsafe schools is widely regarded as an overdue step forward in regulating thousands of corner nursery and primary schools set up haphazardly in residential areas in violation of basic safety rules framed by the state government. In 1993 the S.V. Chittibabu Commission prepared the code for nursery and primary schools in the state. But its recommendations have been observed more in the breach. Properly implemented, the April 11 government order will serve to root out anything-goes schools and bring a measure of regulation to private pre-school and primary education in the state which cannot afford to suffer another Kumbakonam tragedy. But closing down private English medium nurseries and shepherding their students into over-crowded Tamil medium government schools is hardly the answer.

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)