Not broke, don’t fix
Your cover story ‘IIMs: Hostile takeover bid 2.0’ (EW August) exposes the real intentions of the BJP government. Through the proposed IIM Bill 2015, the Union HRD ministry wants to rigidly control the country’s 13 IIMs. This is a regressive step and will result in the institutes being governed by non-academic bureaucrats rather than academic professionals.
The BJP was voted to power on the promise of liberalisation and deregulation of all sectors of the economy, including education. The IIM Bill 2015 contradicts this election promise. Also, it’s puzzling why the government wants to repair and fix the IIMs — islands of excellence in a sea of academic mediocrity — when they aren’t broke. Instead, greater focus and attention should be paid to upgrading the country’s Central and state government universities which are rapidly going downhill.
Manoj Kumar
Delhi
NPE 2015: ridiculous limit
The Recommendations made by the editors of EducationWorld on the 13 themes of school education shortlisted under the proposed New Education Policy 2015 are excellent, and address the pain points of Indian education (‘NEP 2015: EW Recommendations’, EW August).
As you have rightly reiterated, the first step towards reform is doubling public expenditure on education from 3 to 6 percent of GDP, and involving private sector educationists and NGOs in upgrading government schools.
Though the government’s idea to involve public participation in preparing NEP 2015 is laudable, it hasn’t adequately publicised this initiative. That is why it has received only 12,000 suggestions from the public on its website. The village and block education committee meetings also seemed to have happened only on paper. Moreover, it’s ridiculous to limit constructive recommendations to a mere 500 characters.
Deepti Subramaniam
Chennai
Unwarranted omission
Re the EW-Learningpoint India School Academic Rankings 2015 (EW August), there seems to be complete omission of Ryan International Schools which performed well in the CBSE class XII exam. Based on the criteria mentioned in the magazine, some of our schools could have easily featured in the Top 100 list, but have unfortunately been left out. For instance, 315 students of Ryan International School, Sector 25, Rohini, Delhi, wrote the class XII CBSE exam, of whom 95 scored over 90 percent-plus (five-subjects-average).
Please make this addition to your listing.
Neti Srinivasan
COO, Ryan International Group of Institutions, Mumbai
The omission is inadvertent. Because of the non-cooperation of CBSE, learningpoint.net was able to access the class XII results of only 5,433 (out of 9,000) CBSE schools — Editor
Expand focus
The education initiatives of entrepreneurs in small towns are most welcome (‘Entrepreneurs empowering small town India’, EW July). The Central and state governments have failed in providing quality education options and solving the social problems of citizens in tier II/III cities and villages.
However, edupreneurs can’t meet the entire demand for quality K-12 education in small-town India. Therefore state governments must necessarily focus on providing good schools and colleges, and creating employment in small towns to prevent social and political unrest.
Mahesh Kapasi
Delhi
Great national loss
The death of former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam is a huge loss to the nation. During his many years in public service, Dr. Kalam had endeared himself to the country’s children and youth, and his words of advice and wisdom will be much missed. I have fond memories of a summer morning of May 2003 when as a young student, I was fortunate to participate in an interactive session with Dr. Kalam at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
With his death, the nation has not only lost a great scientist but also a great voice of reason. To commemorate his death, the Central and several state governments have proposed to rename various educational programmes after Dr. Kalam. All this will prove to be only a superficial tribute to the People’s President, if the current BJP-led NDA government doesn’t distance itself from irrational viewpoints of its sangh parivar affiliates.
Swati Roy
Noida