Education News

Model partnership

Like the IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) and IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management) and the 952 Kendriya Vidyalaya schools countrywide, it’s one of the few government initiatives in education that has clicked. Conceptualised and promoted by the late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi (1944-1991) in 1985 to provide the brightest and best rural children the equivalent of top-grade public (i.e. private, exclusive) secondary school education, the number of India’s showpiece 573 CBSE-affiliated Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNVs) with an aggregate enrollment of 158,000 class VI-XII children and 11,000 teachers is set to double during the Eleventh Plan period (2007-12).

"The JNV experiment has proved so successful that we would like to promote another 500 schools in rural India during the next five years," A.K. Rath, the newly appointed secretary of the department of school education and literacy of the Union ministry of human resource development told this correspondent while giving away Intel’s ‘Best Integration of Technology in Education Awards 2007’ to students, teachers and schools of the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti (which manages the JNVs) in New Delhi on February 18.

Speaking on the occasion, Rath also outlined the Centre’s ambitious plans to scale up the country’s secondary school infrastructure to accommodate the large number of children who are readying to enter secondary education following the implementation of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan programme which makes it mandatory for the State (Central and state governments) to provide compulsory education to all children in the six-14 age group. According to Rath, a secondary school will be made available within a radius of 7 km across India by 2012.

Although JNVs which provide free-of-charge co-ed secondary education to carefully selected rural children have established a reputation for all-round excellence, perhaps their most notable achievement has been to integrate ICT (information communication techno-logies) into classroom education. Working with several blue chip IT companies including Intel, Microsoft, Wipro etc, JNV schools are perhaps more IT savvy than most top-rank private schools (the computer-student ratio has reached 1:12 across its schools and 95 percent of JNV teachers are computer literate). "The introduction in 1999 of the annual Integration of Technology in Education Awards by Intel Education specifically for JNVs was an excellent idea. It has motivated students and teachers to become computer literate and integrate ICT in teaching-learning," says H.N.S. Rao, former deputy commissioner of the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti and the driver of this Intel-JNV initiative.

Likewise O. N. Singh, commissioner of the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti, acknowledges that the IT industry and Intel Education in particular, have played a major role in the miraculous transformation of rural JNVs into the country’s most ICT-savvy secondaries. "Intel and several other IT companies have played a major role in making our schools IT literate, developing our curriculum and training our 10,000-plus teachers and non-teaching staff," says Singh. Buoyed by the success of this public-private partnership, JNVs are becoming actively involved with government and private schools in their neighbourhoods to pass on their ICT in education experience to the latter.

This initiative too has the complete endorsement of Intel Education. "Intel views improvement in learning outcomes as per the JNV model a basic challenge of education in which all — government, schools and industry — are partners," says Anshul Sonak, head of Intel Education (South Asia), who adds that the company’s basic IT literacy programme has already benefited 16,000 children in 13 states and Union territories across India.

Quite evidently this is a public-private partnership that’s working.

Autar Nehru (Delhi)

Sikshana shows the way

The Karnataka state government’s seven-year-old languishing School Adoption Programme received a new lease of life following the Bangalore-based non-government organisation Sikshana Foundation (estb. 2001) announcing the ‘adoption’ of 125 government upper primary schools in Kanakapura district (56 km from Bangalore) on February 11. Under a concordat signed with the state government, Sikshana which had already adopted 38 primaries in the district will also provide remedial education to upper primary students.

"In the 38 primaries we adopted five years ago, we have demonstrated that with a little help government schools can provide high quality education. In these 38 government primary schools student learning outcomes have dramatically improved. Now we intend to offer our services to all the upper primaries in Kanakapura district," says E.S. Ramamurthy, founder trustee of Sikshana.

Following the February 11 agreement between the state government and Sikshana Foundation, the latter has become the largest ‘adopter’ of government schools in Karnataka. Since the School Adoption Programme was launched with much fanfare in 2001, only 9,000 of Karnataka’s 44,476 government schools have attracted sponsors, with most of them making one-time contributions for infrastructure upgradation and providing little or nil academic/teacher training inputs. On the other hand, the Sikshana adoption model offers on-going curriculum development and teacher training support to schools taken under its wing.

To their credit, educrats in the state government who have taken the spate of transfers, postings and other disruptions in Karnataka (pop. 57 million) — which since 2004 has endured three short-lived governments and is currently under President’s rule — in their stride, acknowledge that government schools bedevilled by contradictory policy directives need help. Therefore enthused by the success Sikshana has had in improving learning outcomes in its 38 adopted government primaries, they have relaunched the adoption scheme stipulating that henceforth corporates/NGOs adopting or sponsoring government schools have to agree to a long-term — three to five years — association with the adopted school.

"The Karnataka state government has three objectives — to increase student enrollment in government schools, improve classroom attendance and upgrade the quality of education dispensed. To help us achieve these goals we welcome assistance of NGOs and other private organisations, including corporates. Under the existing School Adoption Programme, private organisations adopting government schools have funded infrastructure upgradation valued at about Rs.200 crore in 9,000 government schools. But under our new Nurture programme they must also undertake to assist in the improvement of learning outcomes in adopted schools. The Nurture scheme will help the ‘nurturer’ develop a deeper partnership with the adopted school to transform it into a centre of excellence," says T.M. Vijay Bhaskar, secretary, department of primary and secondary education in the Karnataka state government.

Certainly government schools in this southern state whose flourishing and globally renowned IT industry is experiencing a grave shortage of skilled professionals and personnel, need all the help they can get. A survey report of the Karnataka School Quality Assessment Organisation (KSQAO) published in July 2006 tested 2.1 million students in classes II, V and VII in Kannada, mathematics, science and social science. According to the survey report, class II children displayed the highest compe-tency with 67 percent passing its test, while only 49 percent and 48 percent of class V and VII students exhibited the required competence levels.

This dismal conclusion of the KSQAO survey is supported by the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2007, released recently by the Mumbai-based NGO Pratham. According to ASER 2007, a mere 7.4 percent of children enrolled in classes III-V in Karnataka could read a sentence in English, while only 44.5 percent of children in classes III-V know how to do simple subtraction sums and only 57.2 percent of class III-V children could read and comprehend a class I level text in their own mother tongue.

However while the state government’s proposal to encourage NGOs and corporates to adopt government schools is a step in the right direction, educationists advise discretion in selecting ‘adopter’ NGOs and coporates. "Only those NGOs and corporates with proven track records in education should be encouraged and incentivised to adopt government schools. Although the Nurture scheme is a long overdue initiative, the government must devise a proper procedure to select sponsor NGOs and corporates for this scheme which has the potential to revolutionise teaching-learning in government schools, particularly those in rural Karnataka," says Prof. M.S. Thimmappa, former vice-chancellor of Bangalore University and a well known educationist.

Meanwhile although education NGOs such as Sikshana among others have proved their bona fides about giving the state’s languishing government schools a leg up, the ball is now in the court of Karnataka’s flourishing IT and other corporates — the prime ‘consumers’ of educated youth — to pay more than mere lip service to the School Adoption Programme.

Mekhala Roy (Bangalore)

Questionable judicial enthusiasm

A judgement delivered on January 30 by the Bombay high court has sent shock waves through the student and academic communities in Maharashtra. The court directed the state government to close down 20 institutions of higher education because they aren’t recognised by the Delhi-based All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). This court order against 20 colleges offering engineering and management study programmes has left over 2,000 students in the lurch.

While delivering the judgement, a division bench comprising Justices Bilal Nazki and Sharad Bobade also asked the state government to initiate prosecution proceedings against the managements of these institutions for running "bogus colleges". The high court had admitted a PIL (public interest litigation) petition filed by social activist Dinesh Kamath in 2005 in which he had raised the issue of mushrooming technical institutes operating without AICTE or any other approval, which he alleged were duping students by providing indifferent tuition and questionable certification.

The January 30 judgement of the high court is the denouement of a process that began late last year when AICTE issued a notice dated September 21 on its official website, drawing public attention to 169 institutions countrywide which were "offering unapproved courses" in engineering and business management. Of them 104 claimed to have signed collaborations with foreign universities and colleges "without seeking prior sanction".

At the first hearing of Kamath’s petition, the Bombay high court had instructed the state government to constitute a committee of educationists to examine the antecedents and credentials of institutions of higher education in the state. Subsequently associate advocate general Ashutosh Kumbhakoni told the court that the government-appointed committee had issued notices to 112 "bogus institutes" to make their representations in September 2007. The committee appointed by the court found that 64 of these institutions had the approval of AICTE but 14 had not responded to state government notices. Another six were found to be affiliated to Sikkim, Annamalai and Allgappa universities.

Following the deputy advocate general’s submissions, the court directed the state government to forthwith close the 14 unresponsive institutions. Similar action was directed against the six institutions affiliated to the Sikkim, Annamalai and Allgappa universities on the ground that they were "operating in Maharashtra without the state government’s permission". Another 13 new colleges which have sought permission from the AICTE to start functioning have been directed not to admit students unless they obtain AICTE recognition.

While the high court order has been a bitter lesson to parents and students who had applied for admission into engineering colleges and B-schools without due diligence, a growing minority of educationists are beginning to question the over-importance accorded to AICTE by the court.

According to a McKinsey Global Institute-NASSCOM (National Association of Software Services Companies) study conducted in 2005, 75 percent of graduates of India’s 1,346 engineering colleges are unemployable in Indian industry. And most of the colleges which certified them are duly approved by AICTE. Nor is it a secret that while AICTE has approved the great majority of India’s 958 B-schools, it hasn’t accorded the benefit of its all-important recognition to the Rs.250 crore (capital cost) Hyderabad-based Indian School of Business (ISB). Since it admitted its first batch of students in 2001, ISB has risen in global estimation to the extent that recently the London-based Financial Times ranked it among the world’s top 20 B-schools.

Fortunately ISB, Hyderabad doesn’t fall within the jurisdiction of their lordships of the Bombay high court.

Gaver Chatterjee (Mumbai)

Murder of a headmaster

Although it’s well known that in communist (CPI-M) ruled West Bengal the great majority of the state’s 42,793 rural primary schools are woefully deficient in infrastructure such as blackboards, desks, benches, toilets, teachers, the general belief is that they are oases of peace and quiet. This complacency was shaken on February 22 when Karamchand Singh (45), headmaster of Manchkandna Primary School in Manchkandna village, West Midnapore district, 250 km from Kolkata, was yanked out of class by four armed men who shot him dead in front of the terrified children. "We don’t want to create trouble for you all. We just want your teacher," the murderers considerately informed the children.

The reportedly growing number of EducationWorld readers are no doubt aware of the extent to which Marxist-ruled West Bengal’s education system across the spectrum has been politicised (see special report ‘Red shadow over West Bengal academia’, EW February). The Manchkandna incident reconfirms this because Singh was a CPI-M — Communist Party of India (Marxist) — leader and member of the party’s local district committee. His assassins were reportedly members of a rival leftist party, curiously also known as CPI (M) — Communist Party of India (Maoist). The CPI (Maoist) is at odds with the ruling Left Front government led by the CPI-M.

Asked to explain the broad daylight murder, police superintendent R. Raja Sekharan declined to comment. Nor has the incident attracted comment from West Bengal’s school education minister Partha Dey or the commissars at 6, Alimuddin Street, headquarters of the ruling CPI-M. From faraway New Delhi, the Union home ministry issued a statement noting that the "number of Maoist affected blocks" in West Bengal has risen from four in 2003 to 12 last year. "Political parties must strengthen their cadre base in Maoist affected areas so that potential youth there can be weaned away from the path of Maoist ideology," intoned a ministry spokesperson. According to him the Centre has come to the conclusion that Naxalites aka Maoists operate in a "vacuum created by inadequacy of administrative and political institutions".

As this issue of EducationWorld goes to press, a police press release states that the authorities have arrested a CPI (Maoist) state secretary, merely known as Somen, near Kolkata. Somen is described as a "60-something nondescript man with a next-door neighbour image".

Meanwhile academics in West Bengal and Kolkata in particular, are wringing their hands in despair over continuous and unchecked politici-sation of education in this CPI-M-ruled state. The consequence isn’t merely inefficient teaching and a drastic fall in standards of school education in the rural hinterland, but also the threat of violence which is adversely affecting classroom attendance. With the state’s bloated bureaucracy reluctant to act bravely, and ideologically blinkered politicians unmindful of education, tens of thousands of hapless children in Midnapore district are being deprived of education. Meanwhile, the tax-paying silent majority sulks in stupefied silence.

Sujoy Gupta (Kolkata)

Ungraceful exit

A British Council, Delhi death sentence pronounced on December 6 to close down its library in Thiruvananthapuram with effect from February 29, has shocked the small minority of 6,500 paid-up members (annual membership: Rs.500 per year) in the administrative capital of the Marxist-ruled western seaboard state of Kerala (pop. 31 million).

"We are closing this library because a significant investment in premises would be required to maintain existing standards and also as part of the council’s global policy," says Anjoo Mohun, communication head, British Council (India). "The council is changing the nature of its work in the region and instead of the library, it plans to stage Education UK seminars to provide information to students wishing to study in Britain."

This means that the Labour government in Westminster, London has abandoned the policy of indirect promotion of British higher education by running the 11 marvellously well-maintained British Council libraries in India in favour of direct sales promotional seminars, workshops and visiting exhibitions — a questionable policy initiative given that over the past half century the British Council libraries have earned the UK government and British higher education a huge reservoir of goodwill within middle class India.

Following howls of outrage from Thiruvananthapuram’s citizenry, the CPM-led UDF (United Democratic Front) government has stepped forward and promised to maintain and manage the library with effect from April 1 in the same style and manner — an assurance which draws wry smiles from the library’s mainly middle class members who are well-acquainted and uninspired by government-style institutional management.

Nevertheless the state government has persuaded the British Council to donate the library’s modest collection of 27,000 books and furniture, though not its IT and e-learning infrastructure.

Although government spokespersons are confident that Kerala, which boasts a huge technology park on the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram, can develop superior library management software to administer the library, educationists in the state capital are sceptical. Comments Dr. K. Padamkumar, lecturer in aquatic biology and fisheries, Kerala University: "The state government must actively negotiate purchase of the IT infrastructure and software of the British Council to maintain the existing quality of service offered by the library. Then it can begin to work on improving the software to transform it into the showpiece and benchmark library of the country."

Meanwhile even before the transfer of the 44-year-old British Council Library in Thiruvananthapuram is completed, and while the state government is negotiating the transfer/purchase of the council’s proprietary software, familiar problems characteristic of this Marxist-dominated state have arisen. Will the British library staff be retained? Should the membership fee be reduced? Should employees be given shorter working hours and overtime? Little wonder, paid-up subscriber members of the British Council Library, Thiruvananthapuram are convinced that after April 1, it won’t be business as usual.

Sanjay Pandey (Kottayam)

Welcome ban

Anna University — the apex university for engineering and technical education in Tamil Nadu which boasts 232 affiliated engineering colleges — has come out strongly against some college manage-ments hosting campus recruitment drives before students complete their third year of study. Generally, India’s IT and ITES (information technology enabled services) companies arrive on campuses for recruitment in May-June after students complete their third year (sixth semester) of study. However, during the past three years, with competition for grabbing the best talent hotting up, some institutions in collaboration with IT companies have advanced campus placement programmes to March-April, before the students complete their third year.

This practice has been proscribed by Anna University which has directed all its affiliated colleges to henceforth hold campus recruitment drives only in June. The proscription order was issued on January 25 following complaints from parents of final (fourth) year engineering (BE) students to the chief minister’s cell and to the Anna University vice-chancellor D. Viswanathan. Earlier the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) had also recommended that students should be recruited only after completion of their third year course of study.

"There is some merit in the complaint that students yet to complete their third year exams were being recruited even as some fourth year students had to be placed. Moreover, once students secure job offers in top-ranked IT companies, they become complacent and don’t attend classes regularly or care to study hard in the final year. The domain knowledge and soft skills of students also cannot be properly tested before completion of the third year. Hence the directive to prevent software companies from recruiting students yet to complete their third year," explains Viswanathan.

This proscription order has been welcomed by academics, college administrators and industry professionals. Though they would ideally prefer to hold campus placement programmes after the final year in the manner of the IIMs and IITs, tough competition for the best talent has prompted IT companies to look for the brightest and best in their third year of study and even advance campus placements by two months. Every year top IT firms and "mass recruiters", including Infosys, Cognizant Technologies, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro among other IT companies, are the first on college campuses trawling for the brightest students. They are followed by core technology companies, which offer better remuneration packages than "mass recruiters" and lastly by multinationals such as IBM and Microsoft who offer the best salary packages. The entire recruitment process stretches over five months.

Since all companies are now on an equal footing vis-a-vis recruitment of third year students, spokespersons of the IT industry which is already experiencing the pain of recessionary conditions in the US, are inclined to appreciate the logic of postponing the premature recruitment of third year students. "We will now be in a better position to evaluate students as they will have completed six semesters in their core discipline of study," says Bhaskar Das, vice-president of human resources at Cognizant Technologies which recruited a massive contingent of 10,395 graduates from premier institutions last year (2007).

Given that the subprime mortgages crisis is a pointer to a slowdown in the US economy, this year there’s hardly a rush of HRD managers to college campuses. IT companies’ annual intake of engineering graduates is likely to experience a sharp fall as their managements — heavily dependent on the US market — assess the outcome of recessionary winds in their most important market. Anna University’s mild ban on the early recruitment of third year engineering students may well prove to be much ado about nothing.

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)