Education News

Private schools blindspot

If the 1990s was the decade of the environmental agenda, the first decade of the 21st century is proving to be the era of education with right to education waiting to be incorporated in the Constitution after 58 years of independence. The much touted Right to Education Bill, 2005 which was scheduled to be enacted by Parliament in the current winter session has been deferred to the budget session on the plea that the PMO (prime minister’s office) is studying financial implications of the Bill. However, some educationists believe this is a delaying tactic of finance ministry officials struggling to limit the fiscal deficit within the boundaries of the Union budget 2005-06.

CCS Shah: choice restriction charge

Critics of the Bill say that instead of being proactive and protective, it is redressal oriented. "The Bill must unleash and facilitate reforms and not settle just as a law. It should allow future amendments that will come with experience," says Dr. R. Govinda of the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA).

"I’m afraid we’ll be creating a money consuming monster without matching outcomes. The fact is unorganised schools have mushroomed because of failure of government schools to deliver. The Bill will only aid in creating government monopoly of education and proscribe private education," adds Madhav Chavan, founder of the Mumbai-based NGO Pratham and member, National Advisory Council.

According to Shah, national literacy rose 13 percent in the decade 1991-2001, despite a decrease in government education expenditure, because of the role played by private schools. Under the provisions of the Bill thousands of private schools will have to wind up as the three-year period provided to adhere to norms and standards is too short and financially beyond the reach of most of them.

However, government spokesperson dismiss such apprehensions. "The Bill is a still evolving document with rules to be drawn up. Several details have been left to the states to provide flexibility to meet local conditions and needs," says Amit Kaushik, director of elementary education and literacy in the Union ministry of human resource development.

"The challenge is to create capacity to achieve the goal of universal education without pushing private schools out. We need new ideas and new people, and government schools should be subjected to same standards and regulations as others," says Govinda of NIEPA.

Moreover in this debate the role of industry is least touched upon. Sensing an opportunity, the Delhi-based Education Promotion Society of India (EPSI) is busy bringing various industrial chambers of commerce together on the issue of education and is pressing for liberalisation of higher education. "There is justification for government domination of primary and secondary education but higher education should be privatised. We need to answer why 70 percent BA graduates are languishing in deserts of unemployment. Industry is the larger beneficiary of education, so why is the government bypassing it?" wonders Krishan Khanna of EPSI.

CCS prefers the grant of education vouchers, which will empower students to choose schools of their choice and end the rich-poor divide in education. CCS’ contention is that on an average government spends more per student than private schools. "Therefore why not handover the money in the form of a voucher to students to choose their own schools," argues Shah.

While all stakeholders including the government agree on the need to reform the education system, the debate this Bill has initiated has aroused great apprehensions. Hence the delay.

Autar Nehru (Delhi)

New syllabus rumblings

Despite the "deeply suspect" manner in which it was introduced — sans debate and discussion — the newly launched school syllabus designed by the Delhi-based National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) for classes I-XII promises to "reduce stress and make learning fun for the students". Prepared as per the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) guidelines, the newly-minted syllabus will come into effect in three phases and will be applicable to classes I, III, VI, IX and XI from 2006 and for other classes in 2007-2008.

According to NCERT’s director and former professor of education at Delhi University, Krishna Kumar, the objective of the new syllabus is to make study stress-free and interesting for students. "The new syllabus will inject fun and creativity into pedagogy by making it interactive and enriching especially in maths, social sciences and the science subjects," says Kumar.

The syllabus cleared by a 15-member Parliamentary Monitoring Committee in a record 48 hours — has been crafted in such a way that it can be covered by teachers in 140 periods for primary and upper primary students and for higher secondary students in 180 periods. Earlier, say its framers, the syllabus was too vast to be fully covered in 200 periods of 40 minutes each.

"The compactness of the new syllabus will give students more time for classroom discussions and debates which will make learning more meaningful and enriching," opines Shyama Chona, principal of Delhi Public School, R.K. Puram. The leaner syllabus also focuses on learning outside the classroom especially for primary and upper primary students while class I and II learners will be prescribed additional workbooks. Cartoons, comic strips and illustrations will be used as integral tools to make learning more "visual and fun".

Kumar: enriching syllabus

However, expectedly, NCERT’s revised history syllabus has stirred a hornet’s nest with protests from parties of all hues including Left-leaning social scientists. The new curriculum, which aims to teach "students to think historically instead of treating history as a set of facts about the past", has led to apprehensions about "facts distortion" within a section of historians including Bipin Chandra and Irfan Habib.

Even the inclusion of two momentous political events — the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the Gujarat riots of 2002 — in class XII political science textbooks to be introduced in 2007, has irked some educationists. While right-wing academics view these "selective inclusions" as an attempt to malign the Bhartiya Janata Party’s image, others believe the study of "contemporary communalism" is essential. "It is very important for contemporary students to study these events," asserts historian Arjun Dev. "Considering there was no mention of communalism in history books, even in sections dealing with the freedom struggle, this was sorely needed."

While the historians are exercised by "facts" or the lack of them, Left politicians complain about the "lack of sufficient public debate" before finalisation of the new syllabus. "How is it possible to go through such a mammoth document in two days which was all the time given to the 15 members of the monitoring committee? We want an effective monitoring mechanism to ensure that textbooks aren’t distorted. We’ll raise the issue with the government," vows Sitaram Yechury member of the CPM politburo.

Even as politicians and academics continue to debate the pros and cons of the revised syllabus which will become immediately applicable to CBSE schools and adopted to greater and lesser degrees by state government schools countrywide, for an estimated 80,000 CBSE-affiliated school students it is a fait accompli. But hopefully it will be less onerous than its predecessors.

Neeta Lal (Delhi)

Deemed targets

The Private Professional Educational Institutions (Regulation of Admission and Fixation of Fee) Bill 2005, which the Central government intends to table in the winter session of Parliament has caused apprehension among private unaided colleges, especially deemed universities in Tamil Nadu. The Bill was drafted by the Union human resource development ministry in August this year to nullify the Supreme Court’s landmark judgements in the T.M.A Pai Foundation Case (2002), and P.A Inamdar vs State of Maharashtra (2005) which freed private unaided colleges to prescribe their own admission norms and levy reasonable tuition fees. Some of the salient features of the proposed Bill include: admission norms of private aided or unaided professional colleges or deemed universities shall be notified by an ‘appropriate authority’; deemed universities to surrender 50 percent of the sanctioned intake to government and reserve seats out of their 50 percent for students from the SC/ST and other backward classes; the admission and fee regulatory committee may determine the fees to be charged by private aided or unaided professional educational institutions affiliated to a state, Central or deemed university.

Chagrined by the restraints imposed by the Bill on the rights of private, unaided professional education institutions to establish their own admission processes based on merit and levy their own tuition fees, as mandated by the Supreme Court in the T.M.A Pai Foundation and the P.A. Inamdar judgements, managements of deemed universities in particular, which hitherto enjoyed complete freedom vis-à-vis admissions and fees, are gearing for battle. "In this new era of liberalisation and deregularisation there is absolutely no need to bring deemed universities under the provisions of the Bill as they are autonomous institutions accorded this status by UGC only after proving excellence in academics, administration and financial viability. Moreover while there is a great hue and cry about regulating private self-supporting higher education institutions there seems to be unfettered freedom for government universities and aided institutions introducing self financing courses, the fees of which match those charged by unaided private institutions although the facilities utilised are funded by government. Instead of taking the bull by its horns, the proposed Bill is trying to topple the bullock cart," says R. Sethuraman, vice chancellor, SASTRA Deemed University in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu.

In Tamil Nadu, the heated debate on the Bill has acquired political overtones with the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), a constituent of the United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre drawing up an alternative to the draft Bill which has been submitted to Union HRD minister Arjun Singh by PMK party leader M. Ramadoss. The alternative draft prepared by a panel of academics and jurists led by former vice chancellor of Anna University, M. Anandakrishnan, recommends tighter control of unaided professional education institutions.

Quite clearly, the Leftist PMK (which has six seats in the Lok Sabha) intends to use its clout at the Centre to incorporate at least some of the Anandakrishnan Committee’s restrictive recommendations into the Central government’s Bill prior to its enactment into law. Despite the reasoned judgements of the Supreme Court in the T.M.A. Pai Foundation and Inamdar cases, politicians at the Centre and the states who have failed and neglected to promote government medical and engineering colleges in sufficient numbers to meet public demand, seem hell-bent on backdoor nationalisation of privately promoted institutions of professional education. Surprisingly even educationists who should know better, don’t seem to be aware that such politically inspired legislation to regulate independent or unaided institutions are a prescription to dilute standards of education in deemed universities to levels of rundown government institutions.

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)

Distance thunder

Academics in Uttar Pradesh are reeling with shock and surprise over the arrest on November 5 of Dr. Henry Shepherd, distance education director of the Allahabad Agricultural Institute (AAI), a deemed university offering B.Tech and M.Tech courses among others, by an Ahmedabad police party deputed to Allahabad. The arrest was upon orders passed by the court of the metropolitan magistrate, Ahmedabad following the hearing of a criminal complaint filed by "harassed and exploited" students of AAI who had paid heavy fees for the institute’s distance study programmes which they discovered are not recognised by any competent authority. The magistrate has also issued a warrant for the arrest of Chandrakant Shukla, coordinator, distance education programme, who is untraceable. The case against Shepherd and five others has been filed under ss. 120 B, 406, 420, 465, 467, 468 and 114 of the Indian Penal Code.

Certified a minority educational institution by the state government, AAI was established as a department of Allahabad Christian College (currently known as Ewing Christian College) in 1910. Almost a century later, students have raised questions about the validity of its distance education study programmes. It now transpires that the institute has been running its distance programmes without approval of the University Grants Commission (UGC), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the Distance Education Council (DEC).

The matter boiled over in August when irate students took to the streets to demonstrate against the institute’s management. On August 30, after students surrounded the residence of the vice chancellor R. Lal, pelted it with stones and set fire to the B Ed faculty, the AAI administration lodged an FIR against 1,500 students and forced all hostels to be vacated. The institute was then shut down sine die. The registrar Dr. Sarvajeet Herbert accused the media of distorting and playing up the issue.

The AAI has for long been ignoring letters of the UGC and other supervisory bodies to wind up the off campus education centres it has set up as none of them have been certified by the Distance Education Council. Among the missives sent to the institute, one written by UGC Secretary C.K. Kapahi last March reads: "You are requested to close down these degree courses. If no action in this regard is taken by your institute, the deemed university status awarded to your institute may be withdrawn."

Another letter sent by UGC under secretary V.K. Jaiswal on August 23 clarified that "private franchising of higher education is not permissible and as of today, UGC has not approved study centres of any deemed university…"

However Ravi Kant, senior advisor (distance education) at the institute is of the view that the AAI does not need to get any of its courses approved. "True, according to UGC guidelines, a deemed university cannot run distance education centres, unless UGC issues a no-objection certificate under s 22 of the UGC Act. Our distance education programme was started after we received a no objection certificate from the state government. The UGC issued distance education guidelines only on August 28, 2002. The guidelines were clear that those who had been running distance education programmes prior to that date would be given post facto approval. We submitted our documents in June 2004 but since then have received no communication from the commission."

Shepherd himself sees his arrest as the larger conspiracy of targeting Christian minority institutions. "We are a mission society, dedicated to the cause of education and not here to play with the future of our students. Our students have been misled by some anti-social elements," he told the media shortly before his arrest.

Meanwhile with the institute shut down sine die, the fate of 2,000 students hangs in the balance.

Vidya Pandit (Lucknow)

Clouded conference

Like Banquo’s ghost at Macbeth’s festive table, the persona of Francis Fanthome, the long serving (since 1992) chief executive and secretary general of the Delhi-based Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) now on long leave pending investigation of corruption charges against him, hovered over the 48th annual conference of the Association of Schools for the Indian School Certificate (AIISC) held at the Good Shepherd International School (GSIS), Ooty from November 23-25. Membership of AIISC is restricted to 1,392 CISCE affiliated schools and their principals who meet annually with CISCE top brass to discuss syllabuses, curriculum changes and new initiatives prescribed by the council. The parleys held in the large state-of-the-art Good Shepherd auditorium sited on its sprawling 90-acre campus atop Mt. Palada, 10 km from Ooty, attracted over 700 heads of CISCE affiliated schools which offer the council’s Plus Two — Indian School Certificate — programme.

"We are at a juncture when initiatives to universalise education are gaining momentum and internationally reputed certifications such as IB and IGCSE are becoming increasingly popular in the country. This is the right time to strengthen our relationship with the council and to focus on areas that need to be modified and upgraded in order to fully satisfy the demands of universities across the world," said Dr. P.C. Thomas, founder-principal of GSIS in his welcome address. Other items on the agenda of the three-day conference were the Right to Education Bill 2005, review of the year that was for CISCE, and election of new office bearers of AIISC.

Top table at AIISC conference: absent friend

Though the locale of the conference suggested a well-deserved mid-term break for the principals of AIISC member schools and showcasing of the state-of-the-art GSIS campus to CISCE top brass and visiting school principals, delegates were given plenty of time to interact and exchange confidences on best practices. "The heads of like-minded schools should meet at least once a year to focus on emerging issues. This conference facilitates exchange of notes and helps us find fresh motivation," observed G. Gautama principal of the Krishnamurthy School, Chennai.

Yet the subject which aroused maximum interest at the conference was the out-of-the blue suspension of Francis Fanthome under whose 13-year watch the number of CISCE schools rose from 800 in 1992 to 1,392 currently. Most heads of schools who know Fanthome personally are of the opinion that the suspended secretary who is popular with the heads of affiliated schools, was too independent for the likes of bureaucrats in the Union HRD ministry and Vivek Bharadwaj, deputy secretary in particular.

"CISCE is the examination board of independent schools which unlike CBSE, prefers to maintain its distance from government bureaucrats and babus. As our representative Fanthome also kept his distance from HRD ministry babus and didn’t genuflect before them. Therefore Bharadwaj who didn’t like this, has drawn up a list of charges which are mere procedural nit-picking. The charges totally ignore past practice in CISCE," comments the principal of one of the first affiliates of the council.

CISCE chairman Neil O’Brien who addressed the delegates on this issue took care to remain non-committal. Without mentioning Fanthome’s name even once, he said: "There is a need to restructure the council and make it more contemporary. I have never believed in personalities and personality cults. I always swear by justice and fair play and have always practised it all my life."

Quite clearly like Fanthome, CISCE is also in a state of suspended animation. An enquiry into Bharadwaj’s charges against Fanthome conducted by Justice (Retd.) Michael Saldanha is proceeding at snail’s pace even as a writ petition filed by Fanthome questioning the legality of the one-judge enquiry, is pending in the Delhi high court. Until this cloud which hung over the AIISC annual conference in Ooty clears, the morale of the CISCE-affiliated school prncipals is likely to remain depressed.

Srinidhi Raghavendra (Ooty)

First victory

Israel’s Mumbai-based consul general Daniel Zohar Zonshine has persuaded the BJP government in the western India state of Gujarat (pop. 50 million) to expunge a controversial chapter in a English medium standard IX social science textbook which contains laudatory references to Adolf Hitler. This is the beneficial outcome of a letter Zonshine wrote to the ministry of education voicing protest against "the glorification of Hitler", following the inauguration at Vadodra (aka Baroda) of a 14 panel poster and text exhibition depicting the horrors of the Holocaust on November 10. Among those at the exhibition was Benjamin Reuben, a well-known environmentalist and a prominent member of Ahmedabad’s Jewish community responsible for staging the exhibition at Vadodra, a city still recovering from the anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002 which claimed an estimated 600 lives.

Officials from the education department say that a wholly revised chapter will replace the existing one and will be written by specially selected teachers from Gujarat’s Kendriya Vidyalaya schools instead of the state’s committee of educationists which usually prepares textbooks. However, Prashant, an Ahmedabad-based NGO which led the campaign on behalf of educationists and social activists in the state is demanding the withdrawal of the book itself.

The ten-page chapter titled ‘Present Currents of World History’ lauds Hitler as an exemplar who instilled the spirit of nationalism and adventure in the German people and established a strong administration. Significantly, the chapter fails to mention the genocide in which six million Jews were rounded up and sent to their deaths in concentration camps established by Hitler’s Nazi Party commandants. According to liberal and secular educationists in the state, the right wing BJP and its ideological mentors the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) are avowed admirers of fascism and Nazism, and the doctoring and rewriting of textbooks is part of a long-term BJP strategy to establish anti-minorities ideologies.

Zonshine: beneficial outcome

According to Prashant’s director, Fr. Cedric Prakash, the prescribed class IX textbook contains "a variety of historical inaccuracies and distortions, factual discrepancies, atrocious language, grammatical errors, erroneous judgements, insinuations, warped suggestions and prejudicial and biased statements against Muslims, Christians and women". "Curiously Mahatma Gandhi is unmentioned while Hitler is idolised. But the most the school textbook board is prepared to concede is that the shortcomings are mainly translation errors," says Fr. Prakash.

With the BJP-led NDA coalition government having been decisively rejected by the electorate in the general election of May 2004 and obliged to go into opposition, chief minister Modi’s writ in Gujarat is increasingly being questioned by hitherto beleaguered spokespersons of the state’s minorities. The deletion of laudatory references to Adolf Hitler from school textbooks is perhaps the first victory in a long time for Gujarat’s liberal educationists.

Ronita Torcato (Mumbai)

Vintage Vodka

The University of Calcutta — popularly called Calcutta University — is getting ready to tackle a huge and apparently insoluble problem, viz, the less than smooth conduct of its examinations and declaration of results. "There is an urgent need to revise the entire examination system to cope with the changing education scenario," admits Suranjan Das, pro vice chancellor (academic) of the university. "Introduction of study programmes in newly-emergent disciplines has also necessitated change."

Huge numbers are at the root of the problem. Incredibly, Calcutta University conducts as many as 600 undergraduate and postgraduate examinations per year. Over 300,000 students write these exams annually on estimated 2.5 million answer scripts which are evaluated by 12,000 undergraduate and (only) 600 postgraduate examiners. Unsurprisingly, every year the university is flooded with complaints of undermarking, faulty evaluation, erroneous tabulation and data entry errors in marksheets. Add to these mistakes in admission cards and registration certificates. Under a proposed new examination system, manual tabulation of data will be completely eliminated.

Hi-tech machines will be used to print question papers and other important documents in bulk. The technology employed will allow the university to change question papers at short notice, a few hours before an exam is due to begin. Complaints about leaked question papers will hopefully disappear forever.

"The reforms are aimed at making the examination system 100 percent transparent and error free," says pro vice chancellor Das. Interestingly, central to the examination system overhaul is the construction of a separate building — Das prefers to use the word "complex" — to be used exclusively for exam-related work.

A large plot on the hastings campus of Viharilal College affiliated to the university, has been identified for constructing a Rs.10 crore complex, which will house all units of the university dealing with exam-related work. "We have a plan to gradually do away with the system of allowing examiners to correct answer scripts at home. Officials can maintain round-the-clock vigil in the halls while the examiners correct answer scripts. This will minimise the chances of malpractice and undermarking," says a university official.

But while this clean-up plan sounds good, the big question is whether it will work. Will it solve the numerous problems at the very root of the tangle? Kolkata’s intellectuals don’t seem optimistic. Their point of view was recently echoed by the city’s highly respected daily The Statesman in a hard-hitting editorial. "The university has decided to turn examinations into a spectacular event marked by precision, transparency and technological wizardry… No one is questioning the system in which teachers are expected to correct an incredible number of answers within a specified time above and beyond their daily duties. So that ‘malpractice’ and failure in duty may be eliminated, the examiners will now sit in halls like the examinees, with vigilant officials standing guard over them. This could seem either disrespectful or plain mad," wrote the paper.

The Statesman opines — correctly, in the opinion of this writer — that this new proposal is vintage Marxist vodka in a new bottle and a camouflage for centralised control of the university which will prove harmful in the long term. Consequently there is distinct possibility that Calcutta University could be spending Rs.10 crore for the status quo ante.

Sujoy Gupta (Kolkata)