Education News

Rigid admission prescription

In what is widely interpreted as a sharp setback to the thriving business of play schools which rigorously prepare tiny tots for admission into kindergarten and nursery schools, on October 17, the Delhi high court banned admission interviews of toddlers as well as their parents.

The court accepted the recommendations of a five member committee (appointed by it four weeks earlier) headed by CBSE chairman Ashok Ganguly and directed schools in the capital to implement them on a trial basis for one year. The most striking recommendation of the committee is a common admission calendar for all schools beginning with sale and submission of admission forms from December 1-20. By January 31 the list of selected children will have to be ready followed by payment of fees and completion of admission formalities (February 1-20). The second list, if any, will have to be posted by February 26 so that classes can start from April 1.

"This is a major victory for the children of Delhi; at least their trauma will cease now," says Ashok Aggarwal senior advocate and convener of Social Jurist, an advocacy group that started this long drawn court battle by filing a PIL (public interest litigation) in 2004 petitioning the court for a ban on interviews of pre-school children.

The five-member committee, which apart from Ashok Ganguly, included T.V. Kunnunkal, a former CBSE chairman; Dr. Ved Vyas, former principal of Modern School; Dr. Anil Wilson, principal St. Stephen’s College, and Dr. Shyama Chona, principal, Delhi Public School, R K Puram as member convener, has devised a 100 point scale to determine admissions. With all interviews or interaction banned by the court, admission of children into nursery or kindergarten schools will be governed by several criteria. Children residing in the neighbourhood of schools (upto 3 km) get 20 points which correspo-ndingly reduces to 0 for those residing at a distance of 10 km. Similarly, having a sibling in the school will credit 20 points and being the child of an alumnus, girl child, and child with special needs will be given a weightage of five points each.

Another criterion will be parental qualification, which for both parents is 20 (10 points each) if they are postgraduates with credits decreasing commensurately. Parents with less than class X education get zero points. Schools have been given 20 points to award according to their requirements which have to be made public through prior advertisement. In case there’s a tie, draw of lots has been recommended as the way out.

Predictably this rigid prescription which minimises the autonomy of pre-primary schools — most of which are private sector initiatives — has riled their promoters/ managements. "The high court order amounts to snuffing out the autonomy of schools because they are deprived of all discretion in selecting pupils. Why should this be when the government doesn’t pay a single penny to them?" queries T.R. Gupta, patron of the Action Committee of Unaided Schools and until recently its founder-president.

However, notwithstanding the sharp reaction from the private nursery schools lobby, the neighbourhood school policy championed by Social Jurist has emerged the clear winner. Moreover proponents of the ban on interviews are convinced that the donations racket has been leashed. "Since parents won’t come into contact with school managements, this will definitely hit donations and weed out the unfair practice of ‘cherry picking’ by upscale nursery schools," says Aggarwal.

But with the Supreme Court having pronounced several judgements upholding the fundamental right of all citizens to "establish and administer education institutions of their choice", private pre-primary school manage-ments are readying to move the Supreme Court against the high court directive. "The report’s recommen-dations are being studied by our action committee and we will be meeting to chalk out future strategy," is all that an indifferent Usha Ram, chairperson of the National Progressive School Conference (NPSC), an umbrella organisation of private schools in the national capital region, could tell EW after her initial outburst against the order in the local media.

But as usual in all the hullabaloo, the question of why demand exceeds supply of seats in the best pre-primaries has been glossed over. Little, if anything is being done to address this basic problem.

Autar Nehru (Delhi)

New mafia

Ironically education is a dangerous vocation in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state (166 million), run by chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, a former wrestler and school teacher. In this everything-goes Hindi heartland state where 1.46 lakh children are out of school, teacher-pupil ratio is a dismal 1:77, teacher attendance in schools offering mid-day meals to students has shot up because teachers siphon off the provisions after marking absent children present, and where despite receipts of the largest chunk of funds (Rs.58.86 crore during the past two financial years) under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) less than half has been spent, such ironies are normal.

Against this backdrop the chilling daylight murder of a basic education officer (BSA) Vinod Kumar Verma on October 14 in Shravasti district, some 150 km from Lucknow, has been shrugged off as just another chapter in the state’s sordid saga of shenanigans practiced in the guise of education.

Two bullets were pumped into Verma’s heart at point blank range while he was on a routine review of schools under construction. A rare upright government official, Verma had assumed this posting in the district, where only 19.27 percent of the population is literate, two weeks earlier. But following a rapid review of government schools in the district, he had suspended two dozen teachers for chronic absenteeism.

On the day of his murder, Verma was inspecting a Block Resource Centre primary school in Gilola village. Appalled by the quality of substandard material being used and the tardy pace of work, he told the school’s teacher A.D. Dwivedi that the Rs.14 lakh due to him would not be released. An infuriated Dwivedi whipped out a revolver and shot him down.

School construction under SSA is the joint responsibility of village pradhans and headmaster or any teacher of the school authorised by the BSA. This has spawned a new mafia — of teachers turned contractors. Dwivedi was a member of this new fraternity which has been given the task of constructing 2,850 primary and 4,000 upper primary schools during the current year. During subsequent investigations, police found two cases of murder and one of kidnapping registered against Dwivedi. Which is perhaps why he enjoyed immense political clout and was also the president of the Shravasti District Primary Teachers Association.

The first reaction to the murder came from the state’s minister for basic education Kiran Pal Singh who described it as "shocking" and directed the police to take strict action against the guilty. However following widespread publicity of Dwivedi’s dubious antecendents, the UP Primary Teachers Association was quick to distance itself from the episode. The association’s president A.P. Tiwari offered a rather strange explanation as to why Dwivedi had risen to the position of president of the district teachers association. "He was elected unanimously, so what can we say? Besides, it was not as if he had gone to jail for any of the crimes he had been accused of. However while we condemn his action, we are also pledged to agitate only by peaceful methods," Tiwari told your correspondent.

The school construction policy promulgated by the state government has led to pradhans and teachers cornering hefty commissions for awarding construction contracts. It has also caused friction among teachers anxious to grab the opportunity to supervise building and construction activities. Unsurprisingly a growing number of teachers are more interested in construction than in teaching.

"Teacher involvement was solicited for quality control. That purpose has been totally defeated as poor quality construction means more money goes into teachers’ pockets. The funds are transferred to the bank account of the village education committee which for all purposes is a defunct body. The pradhan is authorised to operate the account and there is hardly any accountability. There is an immediate need to change the policy of involving teachers in construction work. The Rural Engineering Services or any other agency should be entrusted with the task," says Om Prakash Sharma, legislative council member and head of the teachers’ group in the House.

Sanjay Mohan, the state’s director of secondary education highlights another alarming development. "Teachers and education officers go to work carrying arms and ammunition on the ground that during exam invigilation they need protection and self defence. I can’t cite definite numbers but over a thousand teachers, education officials and school managers bear weapons in school premises," says Mohan.

On October 17, education officers from across the state converged on the capital to demonstrate against the murder. "We will disassociate ourselves from the local government elections as well as the chief minister’s distribution of cheques under the Kanya Vidhya Dhan programme unless the culprit is arrested within 48 hours," says senior official Meena Sharma. Four days of slogans shouting and sit-ins later, the agitation was called off after basic education minister Kiran Pal Singh visited the agitators and promised a job to Verma’s kin. He also promised that education officers who have a threat perception will be provided security cover. The same day (October 20), the killer teacher surrendered in the court of the judicial magistrate in Shravasti.

At best, it’s a temporary reprieve. It’ll take much more to cleanse the augean stables of UP’s crumbling education system.

Vidya Pandit (Lucknow)

Reservation concordat

With a 27 percent additional reserved quota (i.e in addition to the existing 22.5 percent quota reserved for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes) for OBCs (other backward castes) in Central government sponsored institutions of higher education (IITs, IIMs, JNU etc) a fait accompli, backward castes champion Union minister for human resource development Arjun Singh has turned his attention to carving out a similar reserved quota for OBCs in private unaided higher education institutes, especially colleges of professional (medicine, engineering, business management etc) education and deemed (i.e private sector) universities. But following the huge controversy generated by Singh’s ex cathedra announcement of quotas in Central government institutions in April, this time around a show of consultations with state governments is being made.

At a high-level meeting of state education ministers held on October 19 in New Delhi to discuss the proposed Central legislation on additional reservation for OBCs in private unaided colleges, the Karnataka state government represented by higher education minister D.H. Shankarmurthy threw a spanner in the works. While the imperious HRD minister quite clearly wants to enact legislation to make the managements of privately promoted unaided colleges fall in line, the Karnataka government’s stand is that any further reservation in unaided colleges and deemed universities should be negotiated by state governments.

Moreover at the meeting Shankarmurthy cited the success of the Karnataka state government in doing its bit for OBC students. Seats in all higher education institutions in Karnataka are equally distributed among candidates from various backward castes: scheduled castes (15 percent), scheduled tribes (7.5 percent) and other backward classes (22 percent) further divided into categories 1, 2A, 2B, 3A and 3B in accordance with Government Order No. SWL 251 BCA 94 dated January 31, 1995. An additional 15 percent and 5 percent of institutional capacity is reserved in favour of rural candidates and students from Kannada medium schools with 1 percent of seats also set aside for children of Jammu & Kashmir migrants. In effect the total reservation of seats in all higher education institutions including private unaided colleges in Karnataka aggregates 66.5 percent — far higher than the 49.5 percent (22.5 percent for SC/ ST and 27 percent OBC) reservation legislated by the Central government.

An explanatory press note dated October 18 issued by the higher education ministry explains that last year the state government successfully negotiated a concordat with the Consortium of Medical, Engineering and Dental Colleges-Karnataka (Comed-K) which is incorporated in the Special Provisions — Karnataka Professional Educational Institutions (Regulation of Admission and Determination of Fee) Act 2006 which provides for 50 percent reservation for SC/ ST/ OBC by way of government quota. "The Supreme Court has given its approval to the provisions of the consensual agreement," states the note. Moreover the other quotas for rural, Kannada medium and Kashmiri migrants have also been accepted by Comed-K.

Shankarmurthy says that "sensitive matters" like reservations and fees cannot be solved by confrontation. "The Centre should not get into a confrontation with unaided colleges by forcing reservations upon them. In Karnataka, we have successfully negotiated reservation for SC/ ST and OBCs in all colleges. If Karnataka can do it, why not others? I believe rather than confrontation, we should adopt persuasion and negotiation," he says.

Meanwhile private educationists though surprised by the state government’s stand, are happy with the outcome. "We are pleased to note that the state’s higher education minister is speaking against imposition of reservations upon private unaided colleges. We are quite satisfied with the consensual agreement of last year which includes a discretionary management/NRI quota with no fee ceiling. If the agreement continues in force we will consider doing away with our separate entrance test next year to reduce the burden on students. We are doing our bit for underprivileged students by offering scholarships and fee reductions to financially weak candidates," says Dr. S. Kumar, executive secretary of Comed-K.

Quite clearly, where there’s a will...

Srinidhi Raghavendra (Bangalore)

Bold declarations

During the academic year 2005-06, 32,000 students dropped out from Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s 1,242 primary schools. According to the Maharashtra state government’s education department, the percentage of children opting out is 25-30 percent between classes I-IV and nearly 45 percent between classes IV-VII. Reacting to fierce criticism from educationists and tax payers, the corporation seems to be shaking itself out of its characteristic lethargy and has announced a number of remedial measures to reduce dropout percentages. If these plans materialise a better deal may be in store for the 461,604 children studying in Mumbai’s BMC schools.

Under the BMC’s school revival plan, the corporation’s education committee will invite proposals from private trusts and NGOs to run kindergarten-class X English-medium schools on behalf of BMC in vacant municipal buildings. The private trusts and NGOs will run the schools under a charter from the corporation. "They will provide quality English medium education free of cost and shall be given full management responsibility of the charter schools, including appointment of qualified teachers and a student enrollment drive," says a BMC spokesperson.

But while inviting private sector and NGO participation, BMC spokes-persons are silent about whether the Rs.900-1,100 spent per month per child by the corporation will be paid to the charter school managements. This core issue is reportedly under negotiation. "We could work wonders with half that amount per child," says an education NGO professional.

Meanwhile BMC’s deputy municipal commissioner S.S. Shinde who assumed his new posting in June, says he is shocked at the mismanagement in Mumbai’s BMC schools. "There is a lot of waste of manpower and material in civic schools," he said recently. "This must stop and we must make optimum use of resources to transform the outlook of people towards our schools."

This expression of intent is easier said than done. But it’s a good augury that Shinde has ordered administrative officers and superintendents of each ward to prepare extensive status reports of BMC schools in their areas of jurisdiction with details of number of teachers, students, classrooms, equipment available etc. "Currently, there are 1,220 BMC primary schools in the city offering education till class VII. Although there are only 42 municipal high schools, the BMC plans to introduce higher grades in primary schools to convert some of them into primary-cum-secondary schools so that the students can continue their education in the same schools," says Shinde.

Moreover with parents from even the poorest families pulling their children out of Marathi medium BMC schools to enroll them in fee-charging English medium private schools, the corporation has resolved to promote an additional 40-45 English medium schools with fully trained teachers. Plans to provide students with uniforms, study material, mid-day meals and an improved syllabus are being drawn up while a centralised terminal examination system for all municipal school children has been introduced.

Comments education officer N. Shitole: "Hitherto students were required to pay for their answer sheets. But unfortunately there are students in our schools who cannot even afford to buy blank sheets of paper and hence don’t write their exams. Therefore from this year, centralised terminal exams have been introduced and the education department will distribute answer booklets to students. For the first time in its history, BMC will conduct centralised terminal examinations for students from class I-X. This will bring homogeneity in our exam system."

Whether or not these plans fructify, the new intent of the corporation to put its schools in order and respond to market demand augurs well for the 461,000 poor and slum children studying in them. Parents who enroll children into the shoddiest of fee-charging schools because they tend to be better than BMC run schools, won’t be at the mercy of rapacious private school managements given to exploiting the demand-supply gap. Nevertheless such bold declarations of intent have been made before and usually between promise and performance, there’s a long shadow.

Gaver Chatterjee (Mumbai)

Fear of freedom

The University of Calcutta (UoC) administration, i.e the Senate, is worried about the speed at which the university’s examination related workload has been increasing by the year, with a growing number of its 200 affiliated colleges introducing new study programmes. There is growing apprehension within the Senate that the mounting workload is taking a toll on the university’s academic quality.

Managing UoC’s logistics is difficult simply because of its gigantic size. Over 300,000 examinees write the varsity’s BA, B.Sc, and B.Com (both honours and general) examinations every year. UoC has to engage 8,000 examiners to evaluate more than 1.5 million answer scripts twice a year.

Currently, the entire process is centralised with the university’s Controller of Examinations — whose designation is often the subject of wry humour in the university’s corridors. Not surprisingly, the controller’s department is almost unmanageably huge and correspondingly inefficient.

Consequently there’s a growing sentiment within UoC that the controller’s burden would be considerably reduced if colleges are allowed to conduct undergraduate (general) examinations. They believe that the workload could be reduced by a third through this devolution stratagem.

But surprisingly this proposal has been turned down by the representative organisation of college principals. Inevitably the cause of their negative response is political. In communist ruled West Bengal, in adherence with the tenets of Leninism which enjoins the party to capture the commanding heights, higher education institutions are rigidly controlled by commissars of the ruling Communist Party of India, Marxist (CPM) which has magically ruled West Bengal (pop.80.2 million) since 1977. Therefore college principals fear they would be subjected to pressure from "local influential individuals" (aka CPM cadres) to pass undeserving candidates. "The system proposed by the university cannot work," says K.C. Saha, general secretary of the CPM-controlled College Principals’ Council. "We will surely be forced to dole out favours to below-average students if we are to conduct the BA, B.Sc, and B.Com exams. Therefore we cannot accept this proposal."

Unsurprised by the principals’ opposition, UoC’s registrar Samir Bandyopadhyay dodges the issue and says: "The proposal is still at a preliminary stage. We will discuss the issue with all college heads before taking a decision."

Meanwhile college principals — who Saha (quoted above) claims are united in their opposition to UoC’s proposal — will explain their stand at the next Undergraduate Council meeting of the varsity. They will also discuss the proposal with the education cell of the CPM-led Left government, which oversees all major education policies of the state.

In short, in sharp contrast to most colleges across the country, which plead for academic and examination autonomy, the principals of UoC’s affiliated colleges will plead for the mirror opposite. But that’s governance communist style.

Sujoy Gupta (Kolkata)