Milestone events of 2009

Undoubtedly the watershed event of the tumultuous year that was 2009 was the return to power in New Delhi of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA-2) government. Belying all poll predictions that anti-incumbency and a bad year for agriculture which had provoked a rash of farmers’ suicides countrywide would result in a hung Parliament, the Congress party improved its seats tally from 145 (2004-09) to 206 in the new Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) at the expense of the BJP and the communist parties whose tallies dropped from 138 and 59 to 116 and 21 respectively.

Inevitably and typically, the pressing issue of reform of India’s moribund education system — the prerequisite of a square deal for the world’s largest child population — was conspicuously absent from the cacophonous debate in the run-up to the general election held countrywide between April 16-May 13. Quite clearly provision of upgraded contemporary education to India’s 450 million children below 18 years of age, is not a high priority issue with any of India’s major political parties.

Yet the silver lining of the historic 15th general election is the appointment of legal eagle and Congress party heavyweight Kapil Sibal as the Union minister of human resource development. After a decade of politicisation and stagnation under the most incompetent and uncaring Union HRD ministers in post-independence Indian history, Shastri Bhavan, New Delhi (the nerve centre of the HRD ministry) desperately needed a pragmatic can-do incumbent. And to the relief of the populace and electorate, Sibal was the first UPA-2 minister off the blocks presenting a detailed 100-day plan of action to revive India’s rapidly obsolescing school and tertiary education systems on May 25.

And true to his word, since then Sibal has made a flurry of ministerial announcements and statements of intent to reform Indian education. In the K-12 sector a slew of initiatives were announced to revitalise and de-stress school education, including making the sudden-death class X board exam optional in the 10,000 plus schools affiliated with the ministry-controlled Central Board of Secondary Examination (CBSE); replacing marks with a grading system, and decreeing an accreditation policy for primary-secon-dary schools. And most importantly, after seven years of being tossed around various ministries, the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Bill 2009 was passed by Parliament in August.

In the higher education sector, the  HRD minister has promised to table the long-delayed Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations, Maintenance of Quality and Prevention of Commercialisation) Bill; establish an autonomous authority for higher education and research based on recommendations of the Yashpal Committee and National Knowledge Commission; and set up a Distance Education Council.

However after passage of the historic RTE Bill by Parliament in August and initiating modest CBSE school reforms, the education reforms bandwagon has lost momentum. Nevertheless the year 2009 has been memorable inasmuch as education has traversed a considerable distance from the periphery to near centre of the national development agenda.

In the following pages, EducationWorld’s assistant editor Summiya Yasmeen summarises the education milestone events of 2009.

Puducherry India’s most educated state

January 17. The Educational Development Index (EDI) 2007-08 of the National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA), Delhi has ranked Puducherry (pop. 0.5 million) India’s most educationally advanced state with an EDI score of 0.808 (out of a maximum 1), pushing Kerala (0.791) to second spot from its traditional top position.

These states are followed by Lakshadweep (0.788), Delhi (0.780) and Tamil Nadu (0.771). Compiled annually, EDI measures the primary and upper primary education attainments of India’s 28 states and seven Union territories. Bihar (0.406), Arunachal Pradesh (0.485), West Bengal (0.488), Jharkhand (0.491), and Assam (0.515) are the most laggard states in terms of primary education provision (see EW news report February 2009 p.12).

UP most risky state to bear children

January 16. According to State of the World’s Children 2009 report of the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), released in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh (pop.166 million) is the most dangerous state in India to bear children with a maternal mortality rate of 1:42 (cf. Kerala’s 1:500). This statistic implies that UP ‘contributes’ one-third of all the maternal childbirth deaths in India.

In neo-natal mortality (child deaths within the first 28 days of birth), UP with 46 children dying per 1,000 live births, ranks third nationally after Orissa (52) and Madhya Pradesh (51). The authors of SWC 2009 have taken pains to stress that 80 percent  of neo-natal deaths can be prevented by vaccination and/or good hygiene. Moreover the report highlights that 75 percent of pregnant women in UP deliver their children at home (see EW February 2009 p.12).

Pune University celebrates diamond jubilee

February 10. The University of Pune (UoP), identified by the University Grants Commission (UGC) as one of the country’s top five universities with potential for excellence, launched its diamond jubilee (60 years) celebrations. One of the country’s largest universities, UoP has 520 colleges and 300 institutes spread across Pune, Ahmednagar and Nashik districts, affiliated with it. Together, these institutions have a student enrolment of 650,000, including 14,000 from a dozen countries around the world. The varsity’s diamond jubilee celebrations were inaugurated by Rajesh Tope, Maharashtra’s minister for higher and technical education (see EW March 2009 p.12).

Lacklustre interim budget

February 16. On the eve of India’s 15th general election, the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre presented an interim vote-on-account (budget) for fiscal 2009-10. The lacklustre Rs.953,231 budget presented to Parliament by the then Union external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee, raised the Central govern-ment’s education outlay for 2009-10 by a modest 12.5 percent to Rs.41,978.21 crore, over the revised estimated expenditure of Rs.34,000 crore in fiscal 2008-09.

Signalling a shift in government priority to secondary education, while maintaining the status quo in the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (primary educa-tion) outlay (Rs.13,100 crore), Mukherjee made an allocation of Rs.1,143 crore towards a new Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyaan (higher primary) scheme.

However the timorous 12.5 percent higher allocation for education in the interim budget indicated that the UPA government if returned to power, had no intention of honouring its pledge to raise the national education outlay to 6 percent of GDP, promised in its much-trumpeted CMP (common minimum programme) broadcast of 2004 (see EW March 2009 p.12).

Student violence in IIT-Kgp

March 22. The tragic death of Rohit Kumar, a third year electrical engineering student of the Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur (estb. 1951), triggered unprecedented violence on the placid campus of the institute, resignation of its director, and dealt a heavy blow to the global reputation of this internationally-respected engineering university.

According to IIT-Kgp student spokespersons, on March 21, Kumar, a student with an epilepsy history, was attended as an outpatient for a severe headache at the institute’s seven-bed B.C. Roy Technology Hospital. Since neither a doctor nor nursing attendant was on call, some students hired an ambulance and raced to Kolkata — a 120 km distance. However Kumar died en route.

Despite the 1,200 hectare IIT-Kgp campus hosting a population of 9,200 students, faculty and staff, elementary medical facilities were unavailable locally and nor was there an ambulance. When news of Kumar’s death reached the campus, students’ anger hit explosion point and a horde stormed and ransacked the bungalow of director Dr. Damodar Acharya, and successfully demanded his resignation.

The IIT-Kgp management has ordered a retired Supreme Court judge to probe the entire episode that led to Acharya’s resignation (see EW report April 2009 p.16)

Kapil Sibal appointed HRD minister

May 22. Following the return to power in Delhi of the Congress-led UPA-2 government in the general election of May, legal luminary Kapil Sibal was appointed Union human resource development minister. At a crowded press conference in Delhi, the new incumbent of Shastri Bhavan anno-unced a 10-point agenda for radical reform of primary-secondary educa-tion and 24 proposals for recasting higher education, raising hopes as well as eye-brows. “What the economy underwent in 1991, education will in 2009,” promised Sibal.

In school education he announced intent to make the school-leaving class X board exam optional; enact the long pending Right to Education Bill; devise a framework for public-private partnerships; explore the possibility of setting up an indepen-dent accreditation agency for schools and constitute a central board for upgrading the primary-secondary education dispensed in the country’s 30,000 madrasa schools. In higher education, passage of the Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations, Maintenance of Quality and Prevention of Commer-cialisation) Bill and establishment of a Distance Education Council topped his declared agenda (see cover story EW July 2009)

Maharashtra’s reservation card

June 8. Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil, Maharashtra’s education minister, announced a state government inten-tion to reserve 90 percent of capacity in the state’s 630 junior (Plus Two) colleges for students completing their class X school-leaving exams from schools affiliated with the SSC (Secondary School Certificate) examination board of the state government. In effect this meant that of the total number of 157,500 seats on offer in state government aided junior colleges at the start of every academic year, only 15,750 seats would become available to top-graded CISCE and CBSE affiliated school students. Agai-nst this, an estimated 30,720 students in Maharashtra write the CBSE and CISCE boards’ class X exams every year.

Unsurprisingly this out-of-the-blue announcement shocked parents of students, if not students themselves, enroled in Maharashtra’s 262 upscale schools affiliated with the Delhi-based CISCE and CBSE examination boards (see EW July 2009 p.12).

Yash Pal Report submitted

June 24. The Yash Pal committee’s report titled Renovation and Rejuve-nation of Higher Education, submitted to Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal, recommended severe dilution — if not abolition — of all apex-level regulatory bodies of higher education in India. The higher education regulatory organisations recommended for winding up include the University Grants Commi-ssion (estb. 1956), All India Council for Technical Education (1987), National Council for Teacher Education (1994), Distance Education Council, Indian Council for Agricultural Research, Bar Council of India, Rehabilitation Council of India, Medical Council of India, among others. The committee proposed these organisations be superseded by “an all-encompassing National Commis-sion for Higher Education & Research”.

The 94-page report also recomm-ended that empowered, autonomous universities be made responsible for academic content, quality and delivery; establishment of multi-disciplinary universities with “rich undergraduate programmes” allowing curricular mobility, and inclusion of vocational and teacher education within the purview of universities. Yet the recommendation of the committee which attracted most attention was the proposal to crack down on private aka deemed universities, whose number has mysteriously ballooned from 55 in 2005 to 127 in 2008 (see EW report August 2009 p.14)

Union Budget 2009-10 neglects education

July 6. Presenting the Union Budget 2009-10 to Parliament, while outlining the Congress-led UPA-2 government’s proposal to spend a massive sum of Rs.1020,838 crore, Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee devoted barely five minutes to education. All he had to say about education in his opaque 120-minute budget speech was encapsulated in three paragraphs under ‘Female literacy’ (“to reduce by half the current level of female illiteracy in three years”); ‘Student loans to weaker sections’ to access higher education (“full interest subsidy during period of moratorium” for an estimated 500,000 students); ‘Welfare of minorities’ (“Grants-in aid to Maulana Azad Education Foundation almost doubled” — no amounts specified).

Another two paragraphs under the head ‘Education’ provided a “substantially increased” sum of Rs.900 crore to the government’s ‘Mission in Education through ICT’ scheme; Rs.495 crore for upgradation of polytechnics under the Central government’s Skills Development Mission; Rs.827 crore for establishing Central universities in hitherto unserved states; and Rs.2,113 crore for the country’s 13 IITs and 20 NITs. “The overall Plan (i.e capital expenditure) budget for higher education is proposed to be increased by over Rs.2,000 crore over the interim BE (budget estimate),” Mukherjee informed Parliament (see cover story EW August 2009).

Bombay high court quashes reservation order

July 6. Hearing a public interest litigation filed by an aggrieved parent of a CICSE school student, the Bombay high court quashed the Maharashtra state government’s order reserving 90 percent of seats in the state’s junior college for SSC students. The court said it had seen through the government’s political agenda and observed, “The govern-ment resolution has been issued only for political ambitions and to favour students belonging to the SSC board.”

A division bench of Chief Justice Swatanter Kumar and Justice S.C. Dharmadhikari said that the state government’s decision “reeks of arbitrariness and unfairness, and that the golden rule of merit-cum-preference had been flagrantly violated”.

Right to Education Bill passed

August 4. The Lok Sabha unanimously approved The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill, 2009 (earlier known as the Right to Education Bill), which promises to provide free and compulsory education to all children aged between six-14 years. The Bill, which was passed by the Rajya Sabha on July 20 and subsequently by the Lok Sabha on August 4, is awaiting presidential assent.

Apex court approves private school fees regulation

August 7. The Supreme Court rejected a petition of the Delhi-based Action Committee of Unaided Private Schools for a review of the apex court’s judgement passed in 2004, upholding the right of the Delhi state government to regulate the tuition and other fees of unaided private schools under the Delhi Education Act, 1973. Although the court’s judgement did not rule out the right of school managements to hike tuition fees, prior approval of the state government’s department of education is now mandatory (see EW September 2009 p.12).

Maharashtra’s creeping controls

August 7. The Maharashtra state government announced a 20-point programme to regulate all of the state’s 86,400 primary-secondary schools, including 262 schools affiliated with pan-India CBSE and CISCE examination boards. Under its 20-point charter, all schools will be obliged to adopt the syllabus of the state government’s Secondary School Certificate (SSC) board for classes I-V; compulsorily teach Marathi as the second language; make “any information” available to the state government; pay teachers and staff salaries prescribed by the state government, and include a government official on the staff selection panels of all private schools. If any (CBSE, CISCE and international) school fails to follow the guidelines, the government will revoke its no-objection certificate to it.

“The main objective of the new policy is to ensure that children in Maharashtra acquaint themselves with the Marathi language... The rest of the features are specified after keeping the progress of the schools in mind (sic). We want the best for everybody,” said Vasant Purke, spokesperson of a legislators’ committee which toured several states before finalising the state government’s 20-point education policy (see EW news report September 2009 p.12).

Class X boards to become optional

August 31. Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal announced that a grading system will be introduced in all Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE)-affiliated schools, and that the class X board exams will become optional from the next academic year (2010-11). Sibal said that the “Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) supports making the class X examination optional in the CBSE system.”

Comments the ministry’s communication released after the 56th CABE meeting on August 31: “CABE unanimously endorsed the general need for reforms at all levels of education and felt that while there may be different viewpoints on the pace and process of reforms, there was unanimity on its direction in the interest of children who are India’s most precious assets.”

EW ranks India’s most respected schools

September 7. In the third annual EducationWorld survey of India’s most respected schools (2009), conducted by the Delhi-based market research and opinion polls agency C fore (Centre for forecasting and research), last year’s top three in each category (day, boarding and international) — the Shri Ram School, Delhi; Doon School, Dehradun; and Woodstock, Mussoorie — maintained their ranking at the top of the league tables.

C-fore field personnel interviewed 2,026 parents, principals, teachers and knowledgeable educationists in 15 cities across India, to rate and rank India’s 250 most high profile schools across 12 performance parameters — academic reputation, co-curricular education, sports education, competence of faculty, individual attention to students (teacher-pupil ratio), value for money, leadership/management quality, parental involvement, infrastructure provision, quality of alumni, integrity/honesty, and transparency in admission (see cover story EW September 2009).

CBSE switch to continuous grading system

September 20. The Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), India’s largest pan-India examination board, issued a circular to its 10,000 plus affiliated schools countrywide to switch to the continuous and comprehensive evaluation (CCE) system in lieu of the annual examination for the remaining terms of class IX this academic year. The board, while ordering implementation of CCE, also asked all principals and at least two teachers from every school to undergo training for implementing the scheme.

Next June/July CCE will replace the class X board exam as well. Under the new CCE system, the academic year will be divided into two terms (Apr-Sep & Oct-Mar), and each term will have two formative and one summative assessment for evaluation of scholastic areas (see EW report October 2009 p.12).

Visva-Bharati U shut down indefinitely

October 22. Visva-Bharati University (VBU), Santiniketan, established in 1901 by Bengal’s iconic Nobel Laureate philosopher-poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), was shut down indefinitely with the varsity’s teaching and non-teaching staff striking work. Debabrata Sarkar, president of the 1,225 member non-teachers’ union or Karmi Sabha, said the purpose of the “pen-down movement” was “to save Tagore’s dream of a university free of anomalies and corruption”.

The target of the union’s ire is vice chancellor Dr. Rajat Kanta Ray, whose impressive credentials include a Ph D in history from Cambridge University (UK) and authorship of eight books on modern Indian history. A pre-condition to withdrawing the strike is resignation of the vice chancellor (see EW report November p.12).

EducationWorld completes 10 years

November 7. EducationWorld — India’s pioneer education news and analysis magazine — completed ten years of uninterrupted publishing. Launched in November 1999 with the mission to “build the pressure of public opinion to make education the No.1 item on the national agenda”, EW has through its relentless coverage and critique of the Indian education system, helped move the once back-burner subject of education and development of the nation’s child and youth population to the centre of the national development debate.

To commemorate its 10th anniversary, EW felicitated and celebrated India’s Top 10 day, boarding and international schools — as per the outcome of the EW-C fore India’s Most Respected Schools Survey 2009 — at a glittering awards nite at the Taj Mahal Hotel, Delhi. Staged on October 10, the first ever awards nite attracted principals, trustees and teachers from across the country (see EW November 2009 p.80).

CAT online fiasco

November 28-December 7. The inaugural online version of the prestigious Common Admission Test (CAT) of the country’s seven Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) was aborted due to technical glitches. More than 80,000 students in 11 cities couldn’t write the first computer-based CAT, and were either refused entry into exam centres or the test was delayed, creating widespread confusion.

The US-based firm, Prometric, which was contracted by the IIMs to conduct the test failed to give a satisfactory answer for the systems crash. However despite the failure of the online system, the IIM managements have decided to persist with the computer-based test and new dates for CAT will be announced shortly.

More than 240,00 students were slated to write the CAT from November 28 to December 7, in105 centres across 32 cities.