Education News

End of sudden death era

The abolition of Indian academia’s high stress, ‘sudden death’ final examination system — universally condemned by educationists but mysteriously durable — seems imminent at last. The Union ministry of human resource development has forwarded a proposal to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the Council for Indian School Certificate Examination (CISCE) and the 30 state examination boards to abolish the terminal and final examination system and replace it with a weekly or monthly grading system.

Exam in session: severe stress time

Working in a fast-forward mode, CBSE and NCERT have already fleshed out their examination reform proposals and according to CBSE chairman Ashok Ganguly, the board’s plan to reduce exam stress will be unveiled shortly. However, the new system will assume concrete shape only by May-end when representatives of boards of secondary education converge for an all-India convention. NCERT, which is addressing the issue through a national focus group on examination reform, hopes, according to its chief Krishna Kumar, to formally involve the University Grants Commission (UGC) as well as university academics in its plan formulation exercise.

"Examination stress within the student community is a real cause for worry. We need to and are taking a critical look at it. It’s more common than most people realise and is an issue that needs to be addressed urgently," says B.S. Baswan, secretary, secondary and higher education in the Union HRD ministry.

Seized of the issue, NCERT and the pan-India examination boards in particular are simultaneously examining other ideas, especially in relation to class X and XII boards. Suggestions under consideration include proposals to allow the use of calculators during exams; giving students a second chance to clear the boards in the form of supplementary exams; providing a support system to students by way of extra question reading time and giving greater weightage to internal assessments. ‘Partial achievement’ of students will be recognised as well, allowing them to stagger clearance of exams in installments rather than in one fell swoop.

With over 10 million students writing school-leaving final exams every year, exam stress is a phenomenon that has assumed larger-than-life dimensions in India. According to a study conducted by the Delhi-based Hindustan Times, north India’s leading daily, nearly 70 percent of Indian students after class VIII experience severe academic stress, especially during exam time with nearly 10 percent having contemplated suicide at some point during their academic years. In addition, there were seven suicides and nine attempted suicides in and around Delhi during this year till March-end.

However opinion in favour of replacing highly competitive final exams by continuous grading is not unanimous. Says Anubha Sawney, mother of two school-going teenage daughters: "Competitive exams are what give Indian students an edge over their peers around the world. It develops the killer instinct and hones them for life’s challenges. Why blunt this edge?"

But such arguments ignore the danger implicit in an exam system where performance on a particular day or week is accepted as the determinant of academic excellence. Logic favours continuous testing to assess consistent performance — a logic accepted in most developed countries. The reluctance in Indian academia to abolish the archaic, sudden death final exam system is connected with apprehensions about the fate of the flourishing ‘examinations industry’ and associated rackets, rather than logical considerations.

Neeta Lal (Delhi)

Literacy flurry

The Union HRD ministry has infused new life into the decaying national literacy mission initiated by the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1998. Suddenly mandarins of the ministry have woken to the importance of achieving 75 percent adult literacy percentage (cf 65 percent currently) by the year 2007. After a gap of seven long years the council of the National Literacy Mission Authority (NLMA) is re-addressing the issue of educational backwardness in 150 districts in the country — the overwhelming majority of which are in the cowbelt states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and Rajasthan. "A special time bound literacy drive will be started in these 150 districts on September 8 on the occasion of International Literacy Day," says an HRD ministry spokesman.

To meet the goals of the campaign, the council has mooted convergence of several education programmes including Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA) and the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS). It also favours roping in Nehru Yuvak Kendras and the National Service Scheme of the ministry of youth affairs and sports besides the Khadi and Village Industries Commission and ministry of health and family welfare for this purpose.

While welcoming this sudden awakening, educationists are expressing skepticism about its success. Based on earlier experience wherein the funds for the mission were under-utilised by impleme-nting agencies and state governments for the first three years and those of SSA for the first two years, they believe that the Centre and especially state governments lack the will and intent to realise Education for All goals. "India is a signatory to the Dakar Framework (Education for All by 2015). Now even if we achieve 75 percent literacy by 2007, we’ll be way off the target of education for all. As per the framework, every child should be in school or have completed class VIII by 2015. This goal seems very remote," says Delhi-based Kailash Satyarthi, president of Global Campaign, Education for All.

According to Satyarthi, knowledge dissemination which is a prerequisite of social transformation and equality should be addressed more seriously and token measures won’t suffice in a society where over 300 million people are uneducated. Making education a fundamental right, affixing accountability and instituting a watch-dog in the form of a national education mission headed by a Supreme Court judge is the starting point to galvanise the education scenario in the country. "Welfarism has not worked. We need a judicial mechanism to enforce the fundamental right to education. Official statistics are cooked up and I have myself come across shocking instances in UP, MP and other places where in the name of enrollment, fictitious names are added to school registers to siphon off funds. Unless there is accountability and a reliable monitoring mechanism, these problems will continue," he says.

However, there’s renewed hope among education activists with HRD ministry officials reportedly having started work on a draft bill for making education a fundamental right under the Constitution. People are banking on prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh’s reportedly keen interest in universalising education. These factors are believed to have prompted HRD minister Arjun Singh to revive the NLMA council. "Parliamen-tarians will play an important role in education in the future as we have received representations from every part of the country asking for upgradation of education," says Vayalyar Ravi, chairman of the standing committee on HRD in the Rajya Sabha.

This coalition of push factors has also prompted the HRD ministry to constitute a standing committee on women studies to be headed by Dr. Vina Muzumdar, chairperson of the Delhi-based Centre for Women’s Development Studies following widespread concern within the academic community about the erosion of women’s studies in the university system, albeit without informing or taking prior consent of those included in the committee. "I came to know about it through the media. We are yet to meet and draw up an agenda for action," says Prof. Imrara Qadir of Jawaharlal Nehru University, who adds that an agenda is likely to be drawn up at a national conference in May.

Certainly there is a flurry of activity in Shastri Bhavan, Delhi which houses the Union HRD ministry. But whether the resuscitation of dormant programmes and hasty initiation of new projects is the right strategy is a moot point.

Autar Nehru (Delhi)

Deemed varsities under fire

Deemed universities offering technical education in Tamil Nadu are at the receiving end of heavy fire from private engineering college managements and the state government. They are being charged with resorting to an unregulated admission spree in total violation of norms stipulated by the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE).

On March 17, the Madras high court admitted a writ petition of G.G. Ravi, promoter-director of the GGR College of Engineering, Perumangai in Vellore district alleging that Tamil Nadu’s seven deemed universities offering technical education are admitting 1,000-1,500 students annually in violation of norms fixed by AICTE, thereby depriving the state’s 254 privately promoted engineering colleges of students. Admitting the petition, the court directed the Delhi-based University Grants Commission (UGC) to hear the petitioner’s case against unlimited admissions in deemed universities. Moreover on April 6, the state education minister C.V. Shanmugam made it clear that the state government is opposed to the deemed varsity concept and urged UGC not to grant deemed university status to private institutions denied a no-objection certificate by the state government.

The standoff between private college managements and deemed universities is nothing new to Tamil Nadu especially after the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Islamic Academy Case (2003) which complicated the engineering education scenario in the state. There are 13 deemed universities in Tamil Nadu, of which seven offer technical education. These are self financing institutions, governed by the UGC Act 1956 and are not subject to the dictates of admissions and fee fixation committees (headed by retired high court judges) set up in each state under the apex court’s ruling in the Islamic Academy Case.

Sethuraman: serious aberrations

According to Sethuraman, though the guidelines for deemed status in the UGC Act are laudable, their implementation by the government of India and UGC requires re-examination. Indiscriminate conferment of deemed university status in the past five years to 36 institutions across the country has caused serious concern about the quality of higher education. "Notifications requiring introduction of postgraduate programmes and research, appointment of senior staff, obtaining recognition from the Medical Council of India are being ignored by some deemed universities. Moreover granting of deemed university status to institutions where admissions have been stopped by AICTE is a serious aberration. Since higher education is in the concurrent list, the opinion of the state governments must be obtained before processing an application for deemed university status," says Sethuraman.

While deploring the shenanigans of private colleges who have wangled deemed university status by hook or by crook (especially the latter) educationists in the state warn against targeting all deemed universities for the misdeeds of a few driven by pure commerce. Prestigious institutions like the National Institute of Technology in Trichy; Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal and National Institute of Technology, Suratkal among others have lived up to their deemed university status and have benefited from non-interference from state government education departments. "Unfortunately, some recently started deemed universities in Tamil Nadu are operational only to make a profit. The solution is inspection of deemed universities annually by AICTE and UGC teams for three or four years after grant of deemed status to ensure that they keep their promises and punishing them for non-adherence to UGC and AICTE norms," recommends D. Victor, former director of collegiate education, Tamil Nadu and currently director, Academy for Quality and Excellence in Higher Education, Chennai.

Quite clearly, UGC and AICTE (the latter has been headless for almost six months following the surprise refusal of the UPA government to renew the term of former chairman R. Natarajan who retired in 2004) are to blame for the excesses of deemed universities. Moreover monitors of the education scene in Tamil Nadu are unanimous that the Union HRD ministry needs to assume a proactive role in brokering an arrangement between UGC, AICTE, state governments and associations of private colleges to end the constant bickering over seat sharing in the state and the trouble caused to students by differing entrance exams forced on them. But this is likely to happen only after the Supreme Court’s clarification judgement of the Islamic Academy Case which is due any day now, is delivered.

Until then it will be muddling through as usual with the student community paying the price of the sins of omission and commission of the high and mighty.

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)

Politics of education

The education sector — primary, secondary and tertiary — in Karnataka (pop. 57 million), variously labelled as India’s most infotech savvy state, knowledge centre and the nation’s education capital, is floundering in a choppy sea of chaos and confusion. With the barely year old Congress-Janata Dal coalition government engaged in continuous internecine warfare with one eye on a possible mid-term poll, ad hoc, hasty decision-making is the rule rather than exception in the vital education ministry.

In the tertiary education sector, the standoff between the state government and private professional (engineering, medicine, business education) college managements grouped under the Comed-K (consortium of medical, engineering and dental colleges-Karnataka), umbrella is becoming intractable. Despite two Supreme Court judgements, numerous circulars, and reams of ‘explanatory’ media reports, the admission and tuition fees fixation processes of Karnataka’s privately promoted 106 engineering, 23 medical and 40 dental colleges are mired in confusion. The state government believes that under the ruling of the Supreme Court in the Islamic Academy Case ((2003) 6 SCC 697), the two committees (chaired by retired high court judges) mandated by the apex court have the right to stipulate admission quotas and fix the tuition fees payable.

Comed-K member institutions on the other hand believe that under the landmark 11-judge TMA Pai Foundation vs State of Karnataka & Ors ((2002) 8 SCC 481), unaided, financially independent colleges have the right to prescribe their own admission regulations and tuition fees provided they are transparent, rational and fair. Given that the five-judge bench in the Islamic Academy Case was constituted to ‘clarify’ rather than overrule the full-bench TMA Pai Foundation Case judgement, they argue that the judges’ committees are obliged to sympathetically scrutinise the admission and fees fixation data submitted to the committees. But in practice, allege Comed-K spokespersons, the judges’ committees seem to wholly disregard their data and have prescribed absurdly low — government mandated — tuition fees.

In particular the annual tuition fees decreed by Justice Rangavittalachar on April 8 (for 2005-06) have outraged private college managements. "The fees decreed are totally unacceptable. We can’t even run a primary school with these pathetic fees. How can you expect us to provide state-of-the art engineering education at Rs.10,000 a year?" asks Shafi Ahmed general secretary of the Karnataka Religious and Linguistic Minority Professional Colleges Association which is making common cause with Comed-K.

Meanwhile a seven-judge Supreme Court bench which is once again hearing petitions from professional education institutes in Karnataka to clarify the TMA Pai Foundation and Islamic Academic cases has come down heavily on the state government for announcing the fee structure for 2005-06 while the matter is sub judice in the apex court.

Likewise, there is evidence of state government ham-fistedness in the primary and secondary education sector as well. Last month EW wrote about state education department inspectors swooping down and seizing English textbooks from the hands and bags of government aided primary school students on the ground that English is not permitted to be taught even as a second language in classes I-V under the state government’s language policy. Following public outrage against this high-handed behaviour of education department inspectors, the state primary and secondary education minister R. Ramalinga Reddy promised to introduce English teaching in class I from the forthcoming academic year (2005-06). But in a sudden volte-face he announced that ‘public opinion’ will be consulted before changing the government’s medium of instruction policy which in effect deprives the children of the poor in government and aided schools of early English learning and fluency opportunities.

However typically the education ministry was unaware that on the previous day in anticipation of the circular, the Associated Managements of English Medium Schools, Karnataka had obtained a high court stay against government interference in the admission and fees fixation processes under the TMA Pai Foundation Case judgement. As a result the government is now open to contempt of court charges. "I don’t know of any high court order, nor was my department aware of it," says Reddy who reiterated that "schools cannot go on fleecing parents".

Given the politically churned sea of chaos which threatens to overwhelm private sector education institutions which were hitherto Karnataka’s unique selling proposition, its knowledge centre and education capital aspirations may turn out to be mere pipedreams.

Srinidhi Raghavendra (Bangalore)

Post-exams stress

On April 14, when examiners began evaluating 400,000 answer sheets of the UP board exams written by high school and intermediate students across 7,300 examination centres throughout the state, their poor emoluments (Rs.4-5 per answer sheet) were compensated by comic relief. Several answer papers contained fervent pleas for voting UP’s current chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav into power again on the ground that "he is the messiah of students". The fact that last year Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP) government introduced ‘self centres’ as examination venues which ensured a record pass percentage of 89.5 percent in board exams which in previous years had never seen more than 70 percent of students sail through, may have contributed to the enthusiasm for his return to power.

Exam writing in UP: mysterious process

Those who didn’t resort to cheating found other ways to impress evaluators. One examinee wrote a gut-wrenching tale of how his rickshaw-puller father could barely make ends meet and hence the student had no more than Rs.10 (attached) to offer the evaluator. Another answer paper contained a plea: "Sir, I have been failing the exam for the last three years. If I fail this year too my marriage would be held up. I am like your daughter. Please give me good marks." Other appeals were not so polite. "If you fail me, wait and see what happens to you. I am no ordinary student," threatened an examinee.

Such inducements and emotional blackmail by students are de rigueur in Uttar Pradesh. Lucknow’s district inspector of schools Vikas Srivastava says that evaluators have strict instructions not to respond to such pleas. "We have had cases of children pinning the death certificates of their parents to evoke sympathy. And while the human tendency to sympathise cannot be discounted, evaluators are expected to remain impartial."

Evaluators are faced with other problems as well. A high school teacher for instance is expected to correct 50 answer papers per day while an intermediate teacher needs to complete 45 in the duty hours of 10 a.m to 5 p.m. Since every question paper has around 20-30 questions, if one takes into account lunch breaks and other intervals, a teacher actually gets only 30 seconds to evaluate an answer. Moreover since only 60-70 percent of teachers turn up for evaluation duty on any given day, those who are present are forced to check 70-plus answer papers per day.

"We need stress-free conditions for error-free evaluation. In 1975 when the government implemented a centralised evaluation system they also promised adequate facilities at the centres. But here teachers are made to sit on wooden benches. There is neither electricity nor safe drinking water," complains R.P. Mishra president of the UP Secondary Teachers Association who says that the number of evaluators should be doubled and their remuneration hiked.

This ease with which students pass board exams in India’s most populous (166 million) state, has attracted students from far flung locations. Of the 2.69 million students who wrote the high school examination and the 1.06 million who wrote the intermediate exam, 400,000 were from beyond state boundaries — from Maha-rashtra, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and even from Nepal and Sri Lanka.

The mysteries of UP’s exam systems were recently discussed in the state’s legislative assembly. Senior Congress leader Jagdambika Pal wondered if there was any way to stem the rot. "What future do the really serious students have once it is known that any one can pass board exams by cheating in UP? It’s a matter of grave concern as it directly impacts the image of the state." Evaluation of answers to these questions is progressing.

Vidya Pandit (Lucknow)

Vacational education

A summer vacation internship programme in social work for college students launched last year by Pune-based volunteer agency Centre for Youth Development and Activities (CYDA, est.1999) has proved very successful and has enthused students to intern with NGOs (non-government organisations) this summer. "Because of inspiring stories and word of mouth publicity, this year we received 30 applications from students for internship," Priyanka Sharma, CYDA co-coordinator told EducationWorld. The internship is for a minimum of 30 days and a maximum of two months, beginning May 1, followed by a two-day orientation programme.

NBA’s Patkar with Pune students

This is confirmed by Rohan Joshi, a final year commerce student of Pune’s Garware College. "Working with dam displaced people in Badwani district in Madhya Pradesh and the Dhulia district in Maharashtra gave me an enlightening insight into the issue of displaced people’s right to rehabilitation," says Joshi. This 20-year-old student who completed a 45-day internship with the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) in May last year recalled participating in the bhoomi hakka satyagraha (agitation for land rights) organised by the NBA in Dhulia district. "My exposure has prompted me to pursue a postgraduate degree in social work and join the peoples’ struggle," he adds.

Likewise Martina Amolik (19), a second year student of mass communication at the New Media Institute of Mass Communication, says working with Ahmedabad-based Janpath (Footprints), an NGO crusading for the rights of saltpan workers was an eye-opening experience. "I interviewed several saltpan workers in the Rann of Kutch and I was shocked to learn that they are paid just 8 paise per kg of salt collected by them while the market price for the very same salt is Rs.8," says Amolik. According to her, a report compiled by her team has been submitted as reference material to the Ahmedabad high court by Janpath in a case filed on behalf of saltpan workers.

Comments Mathew Mattam, founder of CYDA: "College and university education neither prepares students for the hard realities of life nor does it encourage participation in the lives of the poor and disadvantaged. In today’s call centre, easy money culture there is a need to instill the idealism of the 1960-80s when Chipko, total revolution, socialist, feminist, environmental movements fired the imagination of the young. Even if a few students take up careers in alternative development and devote time to nation building, our efforts will have borne some fruit," says Mattam.

A polyglot Pune-based organisation, CYDA espouses disparate causes. Among them gender equity, concern for the marginalised, solidarity with peoples’ struggle, participation as well as transparent and democratic governance both in the organisation and in society.

Michael Gonsalves (Pune)