Education News

Root cause neglect

The imbroglio over the issue of evolving a system for admission of tiny tots aged between three and five into Delhi’s much-too-few nursery schools, shows no signs of being resolved. On November 19, the Delhi high court overruled its own earlier judgement which had endorsed a 100-point formula governing nursery admissions (residential proximity, sibling presence, single parentage, disadvan-taged socio-economic status etc) recommended by a four-member expert committee headed by Prof. Ashok Ganguly, chairman of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).

In its latest ruling the court accepted fresh guidelines proposed by the state government under which school managements will formulate their own criteria for admission, subject to their being well-defined, equitable, non-discriminatory and unambiguous. However, these admission criteria need to be approved by the state government’s directorate of education before implementation.

This rider has caused considerable heartburn among school managements. "Where is the autonomy in this proviso? It’s an open invitation to bureaucratic corruption and arm twisting which hardly reduces government control. Even the proposed monitoring cells will be laden with government officials hell-bent on fault finding," says S.K. Bhattacharya, convener of the Action Committee for Unaided Schools (ACUS), Delhi. Rakesh Khanna, counsel for ACUS, blames the government for "granting nursery schools autonomy with one hand and taking it away with the other."

As per the new admission policy guidelines announced by the education department, within three years every school has to operationalise a pre-primary (nursery) class for children having completed four years of age, the minimum age for entry into class I. In effect this means there will be only one year of pre-primary education in schools, against three (nursery, LKG and UKG) currently. For admission into pre-school the age limit has been fixed at three years.

The new admission policy calls for total transparency and bans child interviews, though interaction with parents to verify written details is permissible. By November 30 all nursery/pre-schools will have to notify the total number of seats on their websites or notice boards; seats reserved for economically weaker sections if the school had been granted land at concessional rates; date, place, mode of distribution/receipt of registration forms; infrastructure and faculty details; fees structure; past academic performance; sports and co-curricular activities.

A standardised registration form will be used by all pre-schools and distributed between December 15-31. These have to be returned by applicant parents before January 7 and the admission committees (comprising two parent representatives, headmistress of the primary school and principal) will have to finalise admissions by February 1. Thereafter, by February 28 the first and second (waiting) lists will have to be publicly displayed by all schools. School managements have been advised to adopt parameters like proximity to school, background of the child (positive discrimination in favour of poor children), siblings, transfer case, single parent etc. A discretionary quota of 20 percent has been given to managements. A monitoring cell has been established by the directorate in each district to look into complaints with powers to regularly inspect schools.

Although ex facie this elaborate process seems workable, educationists believe the case-by-case system of approvals of over 2,000 pre-schools, which are currently operational in Delhi, will make it unworkable given the inordinate delays in government offices (though the high court has asked the state government to give clearance to every school within four weeks).

"This elaborate procedure and time-table is unrealistic, and at best will add an unnecessary burden to the already stressed out school system in the capital," predicts Neelima Gulati, executive member of the Ryan International Schools.

Surprisingly, the high court’s order didn’t dwell on the fundamental demand-supply problem which is the root cause of the need to devise elaborate court-mandated schema for nursery admissions. If the demand-supply imbalance is corrected, i.e the promotion of nurseries in each neighbourhood is encouraged, there wouldn’t be any need of elaborate admission criteria.

Autar Nehru (Delhi)

Mid-day meal woes

Following the judgement of the Supreme Court in People’s Union for Civil Liberties vs. Union of India & Ors (Writ Petition (Civil) No. 196 of 2001), in which the Supreme Court of India decreed that all state governments must "implement the mid-day meal scheme by providing every child in government and government assisted primary schools with a prepared mid-day meal with a minimum content of 300 calories and 8-12 grams of protein each day for a minimum of 200 days," it took the state government of Uttar Pradesh (pop. 180 million) three full years to extend the scheme to cover the 27 million children enrolled in primary schools in this Hindi heartland state. But ever since it was fully implemented in September 2004, reports of children falling ill after consuming the mid-day meal have kept trickling in.

But on October 22, after 50 children of a government primary school in Maharajpur (Kanpur), and a day later 156 children from two schools in Moradabad were taken seriously ill, the state government led by its recently (May 2007) elected chief minister Ms. Mayawati has been prompted to suggest remedial action. Mayawati has proposed large-scale changes to the Central government which funds 75 percent of the mid-day meal (MDM) scheme. "I have suggested to the prime minister to provide pre-cooked food to children," she told the media on October 24. But her suggestion to supply pre-cooked, frozen food and fresh fruits to children doesn’t take into account that she rules a state which faces a daily shortfall of 2,250 MW of electricity.

Reacting unfavourably to this proposal, the Union ministry of human resource development was quick to denounce it, citing a report from the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN), Hyderabad and also a rejection of this remedy by ten state govern-ments. According to the ministry, the nutritional value of pre-cooked food is doubtful. Moreover since pre-cooked/ packaged food can be easily taken out of school premises, there’s the danger of poor children taking food packages home for parents or siblings. Other objections are loss of employment for thousands of cooks employed by schools as also losses to self-help groups supplying food. Concerns about pilferage and storage have also been raised. Mayawati’s second suggestion that the Centre provide cooking oil (which is currently purchased in the market), is likely to prove more acceptable.

Yet the state’s MDM woes run much deeper. A report released last month by UP’s Lok Ayukt Justice N.K. Mehrotra on the status of MDM in ten schools in the state’s eastern region, highlighted shortfalls in adhering to even the basic requirements of the scheme. Thus in all the surveyed schools, panchayat level committees to oversee implementation were conspicuously absent. Moreover, when lapses were reported no action was taken against erring officials. The report also highlighted instances of siphoning of foodgrains by fudging attendance registers, which had more student names than those actually enrolled. In other instances, the same child was found enrolled in more than one school.

Moreover another report by Arundhati Dhuru, advisor to the Supreme Court on the Right to Food, states that in 75 percent of schools surveyed, the quality of the MDM was poor. The report, which surveyed 34,359 children across schools in 216 villages spread over 28 districts, found that in 57 percent of the schools, children were not provided adequate quantity of food. Non-provision of conversion costs (recurrent costs other than foodgrain), ingredients for meals and the salaries of kitchen staff by gram pradhans, unhygienic cooking conditions and non-compliance with the weekly menu were cited as other shortcomings.

Yet despite the poor status of implementation, the state government has announced the MDM scheme will roll on to cover 360 of the state’s 1,458 madrasas. However given the record of the MDM, this initiative taken with a sharp eye on the Muslim vote bank, might backfire. For the shortchanged children of India’s most populous state, it will simply be another chapter of neglect.

Vidya Pandit (Lucknow)

Renewed language chauvinism

A comprehensive restructuring of school education is on the cards in the southern state of Tamil Nadu (pop: 62 million), with the state government all set to banish disparities between schools affiliated to different examination boards and providing uniform, equitable education for all. A nine-member committee headed by S. Muthukumaran, former vice-chancellor of Bharathidasan University in Tiruchirapalli, constituted by the state government in September 2006 to examine ways and means to evolve a uniform syllabus, has submitted its report recommending a common syllabus for all schools affiliated to the Tamil Nadu School Education Board.

Some of the major recommendations include: formation of an integrated Tamil Nadu School Education Board; dividing the state into six zones, each under the jurisdiction of a joint director of education; making Tamil the medium of instruction in all schools with English continuing to be taught as a subject; imparting education to other linguistic minorities in their mother tongues; making it mandatory for all schools to offer kindergarten education; granting functional autonomy to schools in choosing their own textbooks from among the approved texts for classes I-IX; strengthening the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan programme and making teacher training mandatory.

Inevitably, the Muthukumaran Committee’s recommendations have received mixed response from teachers and educationists in the state which is served by four examination boards with differing numbers of schools affiliated with them. Currently 29,586 primary, 8,017 middle and 2,918 high schools, classified as government and aided are affiliated with the Tamil Nadu School Leaving Certificate Examination Board; 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. Right now all these schools follow different syllabi up to high school (class X) and adopt the common state board syllabus for Plus Two (classes XI-XII). Schools affiliated with the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and CISCE (Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations) were exempted from the purview of the committee.

The major recommendation of the Muthukumaran Committee that Tamil should be the medium of instruction in all schools, has outraged educationists and managements of unaided schools — particularly of those affiliated with the Anglo Indian, Matriculation and OSLC boards in which English has been the medium of instruction for the past half century. "If the state government accepts this regressive (language) recommendation of the committee, students from Tamil Nadu will have to pay a heavy price in terms of sacrificing the global employability they enjoy currently. The proposal to standardise secondary education — which in effect means leveling down the standards of Anglo Indian and Matriculation board affiliated schools — will create inequa-lity between students of Tamil Nadu and other parts of the country," warns Anna George, principal, AMM Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Chennai (affiliated with the Matriculation board).

However, proponents of Tamil (or the mother tongue) as the best medium of instruction in schools and those swearing by the advantages of a uniform syllabus for all schools, are determined to see that the Muthukumaran Committee recommendations are implemented. "The main objective of the government is to provide equity in education and make education accessible to children of the common man. If the elite middle class is opposed to Tamil as a medium of instruction they can enroll their children in CBSE or CISCE affiliated schools. This committee has made important recommendations about reducing the heavy load on children at the primary level, eliminating rote learning, developing thinking and self-learning skills and motivating children to search for further knowledge, which can be best done in the mother tongue," argues S.S. Rajagopalan, educationist and member of the Muthukumaran Committee.

The resurrection of the medium of instruction issue has surprised educationists, teachers and parents in the state, given that it seemed to have been put to rest by the Madras high court’s judgement in the Tamil Nadu and English Schools Association Case (1999). A three-judge bench had ruled that under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights "parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children" and that a government order dated January 13, 1999 making Tamil or mother tongue the medium of instruction in nursery and elementary schools was violative of the rights of minorities conferred by Article 30 (1) of the Constitution.

For the moment the managements of schools affiliated with the Anglo Indian, Matriculation and OSLC boards are content to wait and watch the outcome of the Muthukumaran Committee report tabled in the state assembly in the hope that it won’t be translated into law. If it is, they are well aware that they have the option to move the courts which are likely to strike down such regressive, sub-nationalist and levelling down legislation, as they have done before.

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)

Overdue rationalism

The Maharashtra state government, which thus far had been insistent on reserving additional quotas in institutions of higher education for sons-of-the-soil or Maharashtrians, seems to have experienced a change of heart on this contentious issue. Sources in the higher and technical education department have made it known to the press and the public that the government is on the verge of clearing a Self Financed Universities (Establishment and Regulation) Bill, which will allow private education entrepreneurs to establish universities within state boundaries without reservation for any category of students including SC, ST and OBC (scheduled caste, scheduled tribes and other backward castes). The Bill is expected to be tabled in the upper house in the ongoing session of the legislative assembly.

According to the draft, private varsities promoted in the state will not only be exempt from reservation, but will be allowed to determine their own fee structures without needing to consult the Shikshan Shukla Samiti — a regulatory body — which has to clear the fee structure of professional colleges in the state. If the Bill is passed it will spell good news for the higher education sector in the state, which in the past few years lost two top education institutes because the state government insisted on a percentage of seats being reserved for sons-of-the-soil.

In 2002, IIM-Ahmedabad which was looking at setting up a 25-acre campus in Mumbai abandoned its plans when the government reportedly demanded a percentage of seats for locals. Ditto the Indian School of Business which shifted to Hyderabad when the then ruling BJP-Shiv Sena government demanded a 10 percent quota in the student body and faculty for Maharashtrians.

However, during the past five years, wiser counsel seems to have prevailed. While minister of higher and technical education Dilip Walse Patil refused to comment on the Bill, the general opinion in the Congress-led state government’s ministry of higher education seems to be that the state cannot afford to lose private investment in higher education due to persistent quota demands.

News of this development has been greeted with enthusiasm by institutions of higher education in the state. Comments Chandra Ganesh, director of the Science Centre for Youth Development and Research at SNDT University: "This is a positive development. All government institutions are obliged to reserve 49.5 percent of their capacity for SC, ST and OBC categories. Therefore there are more than enough seats reserved for these categories. If the encouragement given to the private sector to establish and self administer universities is successfully implemented, it will expand capacity and help improve standards of education in the state by infusing a dose of competition. Simultaneously it will encourage edupreneurs to set up high quality institutions in Maharashtra."

That the state has set narrow subnationalism aside to expand capacity and infuse a dose of competition in higher education, will definitely improve learning outcomes. In keeping with the spirit of the Supreme Court’s judgements in the T.M.A. Pai (2002) and the P.A. Inamdar (2005) cases, self-financed institutions need to be given the maximum autonomy. That’s the best way to create additional capacity in tertiary education.

Gaver Chatterjee (Mumbai)

Subtle punishment

The communist-led Left Front government’s half-baked policy of granting autonomy to colleges in the state has created considerable confusion in the minds of college managements and the students community. The time-honoured admissions policy of the University of Calcutta (U Cal, estb. 1857) is to reserve 95 percent of postgraduate seats for students of affiliated colleges, leaving just 5 percent for students from other universities.

Colleges affiliated to U Cal that are in the queue for autonomous status are in a dilemma, because the university has not clearly defined its admissions policy with regard to formerly affiliated colleges accorded autonomous status. Their managements are acutely worried that unless the university changes its admissions policy, graduates of newly autonomous colleges will be clubbed with applicants from other universities, and will have to vie for the handful of reserved seats in the 5 percent quota.

According to rules currently in force, although autonomous colleges under U Cal award their own degrees, their mark sheets and degree certificates must concurrently bear the stamp of U Cal. These rules flow from the state government’s revised higher education policy announced in the legislative assembly four months ago. Using unusually colourful imagery that has been the butt of sly jokes in Kolkata’s academic circles, the government endorsed the views of a seven member expert committee chaired by retired chief justice Chittatosh Mookerjee, whose recommendations dated May 3, 2007 upheld the primacy of U Cal in the following convoluted metaphor: "The tip of a javelin gains force only when it is flung with the force of the pole behind it. No spearhead has a point without the spear." Shorn of verbiage, this means that the grant of autonomous status notwithstanding, U Cal’s stranglehold over formerly affiliated colleges must remain unbroken.

Inevitably, the question being asked is: if degrees awarded by newly autonomous colleges require endorsement of the university, why shouldn’t they be on a par with degrees granted to students graduating from affiliated colleges? Colleges aspiring for autonomous status are demanding that U Cal clearly spell out the criteria for admitting their graduates into its postgraduate programmes. Either owing to inertia or straightforward wickedness, U Cal has dithered.

Embittered by the vacillation of U Cal, enthusiasm for hitherto prized college autonomy (which permits a college to frame its own syllabus/curriculum and award its own degrees) has evaporated. "This is not the right time to seek autonomy," says D. Kundu, bursar of Kolkata’s highly respected Scottish Church College (estb. 1830). Like several of his counterparts, Kundu is waiting to witness the fate of graduates of St. Xavier’s College — the first college in Kolkata to be granted autonomous status in 2006. Its first batch after the college was granted autonomy will graduate in 2009. Adds Kundu: "We will wait till 2009 to see in which category U Cal places postgra-duate applicants from that batch."

University officials admit to being in a dilemma over the locus standi of graduates of formerly affiliated autonomous colleges. "We will be doing injustice to students from our affiliated colleges if we treat them on a par with those from autonomous colleges. On the other hand it would be wrong to treat students from formerly affiliated but now autonomous colleges as outsiders. After all, their degrees will bear the stamp of U Cal," reasons Suranjan Das, pro-vice chancellor (academics) of the university.

The grant of autonomy to colleges is reward for perpetuating high standards of academic performance. But quite obviously the U Cal academic council doesn’t approve of colleges applying for autonomy or independence. Hence it seems determined to ‘punish’ the graduates of formerly affiliated but newly autonomous colleges by exiling them to the 5 percent ‘other universities’ quota. In short, the academic independence the state government grants autonomous colleges is being discouraged by U Cal because neither its dons nor state government educrats really favour academic autonomy.

Sujoy Gupta (Kolkata)