Education in India

Education in India Podcast with Subir Shukla of IGNUS-ERG

In the first episode of the Education in India podcast, Subir Shukla, Principal Co-ordinator at IGNUS-ERG, talks about a wide range of topics relating to education in India. Subir has worked for over 25 years in school education in India in the areas of quality improvement, curriculum and textbook development and teacher training, amongst many other things. 

• Listen to the audio podcast (~77 minutes), or
• Download the podcast (~18MB; MP3) and listen to it at your convenience.

To download the podcast, right-click on the download link and select "Save Link/Target As".

I will also try to transcribe the audio and link to the text when it is available. You can read the full transcript of the interview.

This chat with Subir covers some of the important projects and programmes in education in India over the past 20-30 years. The topics covered in this podcast are outlined below. The time location of each broad topic within the audio podcast is mentioned below, for those who may want to jump to a specific point in the podcast.

• 00:00:40 - Subir tells us a bit about his background and the work he has done in education. 

• 00:01:30 - Why and how he chose to work in the area of education?
  • His days at Eklavya, an outfit set up by Kishore Bharti and the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme.
  • His time at the National Book Trust, setting up the National Centre for Children's Literature.

• 00:08:10 - His time as the Chief Consultant to the Govt of India on Quality Improvement and Teacher Training under the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP).
  • The thinking behind starting the DPEP in 1994 and the goals of the DPEP.
  • The survey of learning levels in India by the NCERT in 1994.
  • How the survey showed that learning levels were very low in Kerala in 1994, even lower than Bihar and how this led Kerala to drastically change their philosophy, systems and processes of teaching and learning, which is one of the reasons why the learning levels in Kerala are high today. 
  • The achievement of the DPEP.

• 00:22:15 - The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA).
  • The thinking behind launching SSA, after the DPEP.

• 00:24:28 - Teacher Training
  • What is good teaching?
  • His role in developing ADEPTS - Advancement of Educational Performance through Teacher Support - Teacher performance standards for the MHRD in 2006-07.
  • The role of the Centre and the States in teacher training.

• 00:28:12 - How the philosophy of teaching and learning has changed in India over the years
  • Three broad stages: content-driven, objectives-driven, and process-driven teaching and learning.
  • How and when the shift from content-driven, to objectives-driven, and then to process-driven teaching and learning occured in India.
  • Minimum Levels of Learning (MLL).
  • Continuos and Comprehensive Evaluation - CCE.
  • The thinking behind removing detention of students under the RTE Act.

• 00:47:06 - The National Curricular Framework 2005 (NCF)
  • The thinking behind creating the National Curricular Framework in 2005.
  • The use of NCF by the States as a framework.
  • Why the States don't want to use NCERT's textbooks.

• 00:54:31 - Age-appropriate curricula vs overambitious curricula
  • Why children are often being compelled to learn things they can't really understand at their age.

• 00:57:26 - National level surveys of learning levels in India
  • NCERT's surveys of learning and achievement levels.

• 00:58:35 - The value of Pratham's Annual Survey of Education Reports (ASER)
  • Why the ASER reports have limited value.
  • Two negative effects of the ASER reports.

•  01:04:20 - Teacher Accountability
  • Teachers themselves should be enabled to monitor the learning levels in their classes.
  • Why are only teachers being held accountable, but no one else higher up in the education system?
  • The need for top-down accountability rather than bottom-up accountability.

• 01:08:35 - The relevance of PISA tests in India
  • Why PISA tests may not be relevant for India at this time.
  • The lack of a national vision in India for what kind of quality we want in our secondary school students, and what they ought to know by the time they leave school.
  • The need to develop a vision for secondary school students and put it out in the public domain for debate - IGNUS-ERG is working on this.

Periscope 6 - MHRD on PISA Results, Inequity in education, Finland's schools

• The education establishment reacts to the PISA results for Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh. [Indian Express]
  

  Rattled over the dismal performance of Indian schools on a reputed international ranking system, the Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry has asked the National Council of Education Research & Training (NCERT) to probe reasons for this poor show and submit a report to Minister Kapil Sibal.
  There was a random selection of schools from the two states for PISA with a large number of government and rural area schools in the sample size, sources said. This was also a factor to be considered in view of the nature of PISA questions, officials pointed out.
  

  The MHRD officials (in a Freudian slip?) suggest that the results are bad because a large number of government and rural schools were included in the sample! The Indian Express reporter smartly checked with Dr. Ratna Dhamija, the PISA Co-ordinator at ACER India, the organisation that conducted the test, and she busted that theory.

  “It is important for you to know that the schools who participated in the PISA 2009+ were randomly selected by the PISA consortium and were selected from all eligible educational institutions of the two states where 15-year-old students were studying,” said Dr Ratna Dhamija, manager India, Australian Council for Educational Research (India) that helped in conducting PISA for India, in an emailed response to this newspaper.

• Lant Pritchett analyses the PISA results in Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh and says "They confirm the worst of what anyone has been saying about the levels of learning in India elementary education."

• Teach for India Fellow, Rahul Panda bemoans our tolerance and forbearance with the poor quality of elementary education

How has the free, compulsory and nearly meaningless (if not entirely useless) education provided in government schools failed to stir the collective conscience? Perhaps because the establishment has done just about enough to string people along. The midday meal scheme is, to put it mildly, a devious masterstroke. For (the government may argue) what use is teaching a kid who doesn’t even get two square meals a day? Fair point, I concede. But a counter to that would be: what use is feeding a kid once a day without teaching him anything and eventually leaving him to fend for himself with little education and no skills to find meaningful employment? A classic case of feed a fish or teach to fish. In the case of government schools however, even the quality of the fish is suspect.  .....

Why does this not  fail to incite the youth’s ire? It is because educational inequity has always been a subliminal issue. And that could be attributed to the fact that its effect cannot be readily quantified.  .....

The scale of the problem of educational inequity in the country is too immense to wrap one’s wits around. To say the least, and at the risk of sounding tedious, it’s a no brainer that it has now become imperative for the country’s top bananas (if I may be allowed that expression) to come forth to try and solve it. We need more people teaching in classrooms than the ill-informed yet enthusiastic crowd that spilled onto the streets during the anti-graft campaign. And even then we’d fall short by a huge margin

The country's top bananas are unlikely to react unless the educational inequality is made a burning political issue. They know there is no simple solution, but don't want to grapple with the problem head on and take tough decisions. So they have resorted to stringing people along by passing flawed legislation like the Right to Education Act, to give people the feeling that they are doing something that nobody had done for 60 years to address the growing inequality of opportunity in education in India.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta put it bluntly by saying,

Nobody in the political system realises that the historical window of opportunity for putting in lasting changes is very small. In our case, it is 10 to 15 years given our demography. If we don’t lay the foundation for wealth and prosperity in the next 15 years, then the India story is gone forever. You will then grow old, before you grow rich.

• Coincidentally, an article in The Atlantic looks at why Finland's schools are successful and points to their focus on addressing inequity.

Decades ago, when the Finnish school system was badly in need of reform, the goal of the program that Finland instituted, resulting in so much success today, was never excellence. It was equity.

Since the 1980s, the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. Education has been seen first and foremost not as a way to produce star performers, but as an instrument to even out social inequality.

There is an interesting quote in The Atlantic story attributed to Pasi Sahlberg, director of the Finnish Ministry of Education's Center for International Mobility and author of the new book Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?. In response to the question he encounters in America - How can you improve teaching if you have no accountability for bad teachers or merit pay for good teachers, he says

As for accountability of teachers and administrators, Sahlberg shrugs. "There's no word for accountability in Finnish," he later told an audience at the Teachers College of Columbia University. "Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted."

 

Conference Announcement: School Choice National Conference 2011

Catalysing Education for All: Intention, Innovation, and Implementation

2011 SCHOOL CHOICE NATIONAL CONFERENCE

Wednesday, 21 December 2011, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi

The Centre for Civil Society and the School Choice Campaign invite you to the third annual School Choice National Conference which will bring together top-level academics, policy makers and education experts to discuss, debate and formulate innovative policy ideas to achieve quality education for all. The conference starts at 9am and closes with cocktails.

CONFERENCE AGENDA

• Implementation of RTE: One year after
• Public Private Partnership: Building sustainable models
• Secondary Education: Renewed objectives
• Disruptive innovation in education: Looking to technology

REGISTER NOW! at www.schoolchoice.in/scnc2011/

Registration fee:

• Rs 1,500 (US$ 30) per person
• Rs 750 (US$ 15) per person for NGO leaders, research scholars and school principals
• Free registration for students
• Registration closes on 12 Dec 2011.
• Registration fee of Rs 5,000 (US$ 100) per person is applicable after December 12th

This is the third annual conference. Check out the proceedings of the 2010 and the 2009 conferences. I attended the earlier conferences and I will be attending this year too. I had written up a post in 2009 on the 2009 conference based on my notes. The past conferences have been highly informative and insightful and based on the speaker list, this year's conference promises to be so too.

Anil Swarup, the Director General, (Labour Welfare) in the Ministry of Labour & Employment, Government of India, who has been driving the RSBY project and Prof. Sugata Mitra of Hole-in-the-Wall fame are amongst the speakers.

I had earlier looked at the possibility of an RSBY model for school education.

 

Progress Report on the Implementation of the Right to Education Act

The Right To Education is now justiciable in India with the coming into effect of the Right To Education Action on April 1, 2010. If the State does not do all that it must do as per the Act, within the stipulated timeframe, any citizen can take the State to court. The justiciability of the RTE Act will be tested sooner than later after March 2013. It will be interesting to see when, where and on what grounds the first such cases are filed and how the State responds to the cases.

A clear picture of the current status of implementation of the Right To Education Act as well as the timeframe for implementation of the various provisions of the RTE Act is now available thanks to a question raised in the Rajya Sabha by the MP, H.K. Dua.

Rajya sabha Question No. 568, Answered on November 25th, 2011

568  SHRI H.K. DUA: Will the Minister of HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT be pleased to state:-

(a) the progress on the implementation of the Right to Education (RTE) Act providing for universal education up to 14 years of age, State-wise;
(b) the States that have not notified the rules for implementation of the law;
(c) the steps Government is going to take in this connection so that these States fall in the line with the rest of the country; and
(d) how long will it take for complete implementation of the Act?

ANSWER:
MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT  (DR. D. PURANDESWARI)

(a) The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 has come into force with effect from April 1, 2010. The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) Framework of Implementation and norms for interventions have been revised to correspond with the provisions of the RTE Act. This includes interventions, inter alia for

1. opening new primary and upper primary schools as per the neighbourhood norms notified by State Governments in the RTE Rules,
2. support for residential schools for children in areas which are sparsely populated, or hilly or densely forested with difficult terrain, and for urban deprived homeless and street children in difficult circumstances,
3. special training for admission of out-of-school children in age appropriate classes,
4. additional teachers as per norms specified in the RTE Act,
5. two sets of uniforms for all girls, and children belonging to SC/ST/BPL families,
6. strengthening of academic support through block and cluster resource centres, schools, etc.

Since RTE Act came into force, 50,672 new schools, 4.98 lakh additional classrooms, 6.31 lakh teachers, etc have been sanctioned to States and UTs under SSA. The fund sharing pattern between the Central and State Governments has also been revised to a sharing ratio which is more favourable to States Governments.

(b) to (d) So far, 27 States have notified the State Rules under the RTE Act, including five Union Territories which have adopted the Central RTE Rules. These States are:

1. Andhra Pradesh
2. Arunachal Pradesh
3. Assam
4. Bihar
5. Chhattisgarh
6. Haryana
7. Himachal Pradesh
8. Jharkhand
9. Kerala
10. Orissa
11. Madhya Pradesh
12. Maharashtra
13. Manipur
14. Meghalaya
15. Mizoram
16. Nagaland
17. Punjab
18. Rajasthan
19. Sikkim
20. Tripura
21. Tamil Nadu
22. Uttar Pradesh
23. Daman and Diu
24. Chandigarh
25. Dadra and Nagar Haveli
26. Andaman and Nicobar Island, and
27. Lakshadweep.

The States of Karnataka, Gujarat, West Bengal, Goa, Delhi, Puducherry, Uttarakhand have not yet notified the RTE Rules, and these States have been reminded to expedite the notification of the State RTE Rules.

The RTE Act mandates the following timeframe for implementation of its provisions:

Activity	Timeframe
Establishment of neighbourhood schools	3 years (by 31st March, 2013)
Provision of school infrastructure All weather school buildings One-classroom-one-teacher Head Teacher-cum-Office room Library Toilets, drinking water Barrier free access Playground, fencing, boundary walls	3 years (by 31st March, 2013)
Provision of teachers as per prescribed Pupil Teacher Ratio	3 years (by 31st March, 2013)
Training of untrained teachers	5 years (by 31st March 2015)
Quality interventions and other provisions	With immediate effect

There are a whole host of issues that will crop up for the Government to address by March 31st, 2013.

• What will the State do if it has not been able to set up the necessary schools, and hire the necessary qualified teachers to provide an education to every single child in the country? In particular, in densely populated urban areas where there is very little land available for constructing new schools, how will the State construct new schools with playgrounds and buildings of the size specified in the RTE Act?
• What will the State do with all the private, unaided schools, that do not measure up to the standards set out in the RTE Act for buildings and playgrounds by March 2013? Will all such schools be de-recognised and forced to close down? How will the Government protect the interests of the parents who are currently sending their children to such private unaided schools?
• How will the State respond to those Government schools that are not able to measure up to the standards of the RTE Act by March 2013?

If things don't work out as envisaged, we will need a Plan B. We need to anticipate potential problems and begin thinking right now about possible ways of addressing them rather than starting to think about it 3 years from now when we may be mired in litigation, or stuck with lack of funding, structural issues in implementation and myriad other problems.

The Standing Committee on Human Resource Development, headed by Rajya Sabha MP, Oscar Fernandes, has invited suggestions on "Implementation of the Right To Education Act". Comments and suggestions may be emailed to [email protected] by December 5, 2011.

Note: For a good overview of how Parliamentary Standing Committees work in India and the role they play, listen to this talk by Chaksu Roy of PRS Legislative Research at the recently held Takshashila Shala in Chennai.

 

 

Choosing the right school board and school for your child

Citizen Matters lists the criteria to consider in selecting a school in Bangalore. Their list includes the following:

• Commute distance and time
• Academic standards
• School fees
• Students-to-teacher ratio
• Good teachers
• School management
• Corporal punishment
• Parent participation
• When to admit

In another article, Citizen Matters addresses the issue of selecting the right school board for your child if you are in Bangalore and provides a comparison table of the alphabet soup of ICSE, CBSE, IGCSE, IB, SSLC/PUC and the NIOS.

There is also a wiki on schools in Bangalore put together by some folks, listing crowd-sourced information on various schools

Details about the Azim Premji University

I met my friend KS Viswanathan, the head of new initiatives at the Azim Premji Foundation (APF) a couple of days ago in Bangalore and asked him for some details about the Azim Premji University (APU). This is what I learnt from an informal chat with him.

• The APU will be an institution of excellence in the area of education to develop outstanding education thinkers & leaders, and also serve as a think tank for long-term education change and sustainable development. Akin to the IITs, AIIMS, IIMs and the NLSUI respectively focussed on Science & Technology, Medicine, Management and Law, the APU will in effect be an IIE focussed on Education.
• The APU's vision is to promote, conceptualize and create a paradigm shift through development of outstanding leadership, research, knowledge and ideas for education and allied development sectors.
• The objectives of the APU include
  • Creating Intellectual Capital: through research based theory and outstanding, creative and socially committed leaders and thinkers. Expand the frontiers of knowledge in education and allied disciplines
  • Practice informed by sound theory: Serve as a national education resource center and present an alternative authentic voice for educational and social change
  • Demonstrating models for effective development of teachers and education leaders
• The APU has been set up through a section 25 company and will be autonomous and self-funded with no dependency on funds from the Karnataka Government.
• The Azim Premji University Ordinance 2009, was passed by the Karnataka Government in November 2009.
• The APU is being set up on 50 acres of land in Sarjapur, near Bangalore. The land is being provided by the section 25 company, which is acquiring it directly from the owners.
• It will be a fully residential university.
• The APU will not be aiming to recover all its expenditure from tuition fees. Any budgetary gap between income and expenditure will be bridged by funds provided by Section 25 company being established by Azim Premji.
• The first students will join the university in 2011. The APU will start by offering masters level courses and eventually also run a Ph.D. program.
• Apart from the classroom lectures, the students at the APU will be required to do field work in schools as an integral part of their learning.
• The APU, in addition to developing education professionals and contributing to research will work towards strengthening the educational space by:
  • Increasing the public debate on alternative approaches towards educational excellence
  • Creating possibilities and opportunities to promote innovation and piloting of new ideas/approaches
  • Supporting state and central governments to move towards a quality education revolution
  • Serving as a resource centre for the country in the areas of education and development
  • Emerging as a centre of excellence in education policy and implementation

No-objection Certificate from state governments required for private, unaided schools seeking CBSE affiliation?

Does a private, unaided school seeking affiliation to CBSE require a no-objection certificate from the state government of the state in which the private unaided school is situated? The Delhi High Court has ruled that a no-objection certificate from the state government is a must and that decision is currently on appeal in the Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court upholds it, state governments will have a means to control the growth of private, unaided CBSE schools in their respective states, which would not be good at all. Things like this could happen in any state.

Here's the background to the case currently before the Supreme Court. There was a Delhi High Court ruling on September 08, 2005, in a case involving a private, unaided school (run by Tushar Welfare Society), seeking affiliation to the CBSE, which had applied to the Uttar Pradesh State Government for a no-objection certificate, to which the state government never responded. The CBSE had declined affiliation to the school on the grounds that it had not submitted the no-objection certificate from the state government, which it claimed was a requirement according to the bye-laws of the CBSE. The school obviously couldn't submit the no-objection certificate because the state government was dragging its feet for some reason. The school filed a writ petition in the Delhi High Court arguing that the CBSE's constitution stipulated that a no-objection certificate was required only for state-funded schools and the bye-laws could not extend that to private, unaided schools, and over-ride the CBSE's constitution. Justice Vikramajit Sen of the Delhi High Court agreed and ruled in favour of the private, unaided school and asked the CBSE to recognise the school even without the no-objection certificate, if it satisfied all other conditions.

Justice Vikramajit Sen also made a few other interesting observations in his ruling (of September 08, 2005), which are excerpted below (emphasis is mine). These observations were criticised by two other judges of the Delhi High Court when this matter went on appeal (see below).

7. The Constitution of the CBSE requires the concurrence of the State Government concerned if in those cases where an Institution receiving 'regular maintenance or grant-in-aid from a State' applies for affiliation to the CBSE. There is sufficient reason for this stipulation since the State which is disbursing grant-in-aid to an Institution must retain the power to decide inter alia whether such Institutions should prepare the students for appearing for examinations conducted by the State itself or jointly by the State Education Boards as well as Central Boards such as the CBSE. Equally, Institutions which do not take aid from the State must have the freedom to choose whether they will prepare its students to appear in a Central or State Board examinations. If Central Boards are increasingly preferred over State Board, one of the consequences would be that High Courts throughout the country would not be burdened with several Writ Petitions dealing with the grant of equivalence of educational qualifications. It is widely experienced that one State does not automatically grant recognition to educational qualifications obtained from another State and educational standard vary drastically. The most effective solution is to be found in students appearing in one of the Central Board examinations such as conducted by the CBSE. The difficulties and problems that are endemic in varying and deferring standards of State Education Boards would automatically be obviated.

8. In this analysis, therefore, the CBSE is adopting a retrogate practice and stand in insisting that State clearances should be taken even by School which are private and unaided. In the present times, control and interference of the State is consciously being minimised. It would be a progressive step if educational institutions maintain themselves and regulate their affairs without drawing upon the State funds for which there invariably are many other suppliants. Where the parents of students are unable to afford the fees of private institutions, State schools should be available, as they presently are. No further regulation of education is called for. It is this ethos which has been expressed in the Constitution of the CBSE itself. All institutions which fall in the category of being private and unaided need not therefore obtain the concurrence and prior approval of a State Government for applying for affiliation to the CBSE. This is also what the Constitution of the CBSE itself envisages. The Bye-laws of the CBSE which require the concurrence and/or approval of the State Government are clearly ultra vires, and are, therefore, struck down. Private institution which obtain affiliation to the CBSE or any other Central Board need not have any connection with the State in which it is located, apart from it following and adhering to local laws including labour legislation.

The CBSE then appealed the decision in the Delhi High Court, which was heard by the Chief Justice Markandeya Katju and Justice Madan Lokur who delivered a judgement on December 09, 2005 which set aside the judgement of September 08, 2005 of Justice Vikaramajit Sen and dismissed the original writ petition filed by Tushar Welfare Society. Some excerpts from the December 09, judgement make interesting reading.

15. In para 3 of the counter affidavit it is stated that the CBSE is discharging the function of conducting examinations, prescribing educational courses and generally maintaining standards of school education and advising the Government of India when called upon to do so on matters pertaining to school education. The CBSE frames its own rules and is governed by them and it has not been created under any statute. The CBSE is an autonomous and independent body, and no part of its expenses for running the organization is borne by the Government. It gets no aid, grant or subsidy from the Government and is not a State under Article 12 of the Constitution.

This is an interesting point, which I had not been aware of. According to the CBSE web site, "CBSE is a self-financing body which meets the recurring and non-recurring expenditure without any grant–in–aid either from the Central Govt. or from any other source. All the financial requirements of the Board are met from the annual examination charges, affiliation fee, PMT examination etc."

But the CBSE web site also states that the "The Education Secretary, MHRD, Govt. of India is the Controlling Authority of the Board. If the Board does not, within a reasonable time, take action, to the satisfaction of the Controlling Authority, the Controlling Authority may, after considering any explanation furnished or representation made by the Board, issue such directions, consistent with this Resolution, as he may think fit, and the Board shall comply with such directions." So its autonomy is questionable.

17. Thus it is evident that although the CBSE was initially created by the Central Government by the Resolution dated 01.07.1929, subsequently the appellant was registered as a society registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860. Hence after its registration on 02.01.1935 it ceased to be a limb of the Central Government and became an independent and distinct legal entity.

24. In Para 06 of the impugned judgment the learned Single Judge has observed :- So far as regulations or bye-laws vis-a-vis a statute are concerned it is firmly entrenched in our jurisprudence that a delegate would exceed the jurisdiction and the powers vested in it if it were to go beyond the provisions of the Statute which has created it.

25.There is no disputing the proposition which the learned Single Judge has referred to in the above observation. However, with due respect to the learned Judge what has not been taken into consideration by him is that there was no statute which created the CBSE but only a Resolution of the Central Government dated 01.07.1929. That Resolution is only an executive order and not a statute. Subsequently, the CBSE became a registered society under the Societies Registration Act, 1860 on 02.01.1935. Hence from 02.01.1935, the society is no longer a limb of the Central Government, but is a distinct legal entity like a company registered under the Companies Act, 1956. Hence from 02.01.1935 the CBSE is no longer governed by the Resolution of the Central Government dated 01.07.1929. It is this vital point which has been over looked by the learned Single Judge and hence in our opinion, the said judgment cannot be sustained.

26. The learned Single Judge in para 8 of the impugned judgment has further observed:- In this analysis, therefore, the CBSE is adopting a retrograde practice and stand in insisting that State clearances should be taken even by Schools which are private and unaided. In the present times, control and interference of the State is consciously being minimized. It would be a progressive step if educational institutions maintain themselves and regulate their affairs without drawing upon the State funds for which there invariably are many other suppliants. Where the parents of students are unable to afford the fees of private institutions, State schools should be available, as they presently are. No further regulation of education is called for. It is this ethos which has been expressed in the Constitution of the CBSE itself. All institution which fall in the category of being private and unaided need not therefore, obtain the concurrence and prior approval of a State Government for applying for affiliation to the CBSE.

27.With profound respect to the learned Single Judge, we are of the view that using language like "retrograde practice" and remarks like "in the present times, control and interference of the State is consciously being minimized", are wholly irrelevant and misplaced. The court has to decide a case on legal principles and not on its own notions of what is "retrograde" and what is "progressive".

34. In our opinion, it is entirely for the Board to lay down the rules for grant of affiliation. This is a policy matter, and it is not proper for this Court to interfere in this.

45. The bye-law 3(i) which requires a No Objection Certificate from the State Government before grant of affiliation to a school is a policy decision of the CBSE, and it is well settled that in policy matters this court should not ordinarily interfere.

The Independent Schools Federation of India has appealed in the Supreme Court on April 13, 2006 against the Delhi High Court judgement of December 09, 2005. The Hindu (April 16, 2006) reported on this appeal.

The Supreme Court has issued notice to the Central Board of Secondary Education on a special leave petition challenging a Delhi High Court order, which said it was mandatory for a school seeking CBSE affiliation to obtain a no-objection certificate" (NoC) from the State Government concerned. A Bench consisting of Justices K.G. Balakrishanan and P.P. Naolekar issued the notice on Thursday.

The petitioner, Independent Schools Federation of India, contended that the by-law, making it mandatory for schools seeking affiliation to the CBSE to get the NoC, was violative of the government resolution by which the board was constituted. As per this resolution, affiliation could not be denied to an unaided school if it failed to secure the NoC.

The petitioner said it represented hundreds of unaided public schools seeking affiliation to the CBSE in the interest of the children of government servants with transferable jobs, who might otherwise have to contend with different syllabi and different courses being followed in various States.

The petitioner cited clause 9 of the July 1, 1929 Central Government resolution, which laid down that the State Government's concurrence was mandatory if a school was getting grant-in-aid from it. This clause was not applicable to unaided public schools, which were not getting any grant-in-aid from the State.

Note the mention of the terms "public schools" and "children of government servants with transferable jobs" in the report above. What is meant by "public schools"? How are they different from private, unaided schools on which the Delhi High Court had ruled earlier?

While The Hindu had reported on the September 08, 2005 ruling by the Delhi High Court, I could not find any report on the Delhi High Court order on December 09, 2005 overturning the September ruling of the Delhi High Court. The Hindu's latest report (April 16, 2005) on the appeal in the Supreme Court makes no mention of the overturning of the September ruling on December 09, 2005, except to say it was being challenged in the Supreme Court. Not very good reporting by The Hindu, I must say. I had to dig around for the various rulings to piece together the puzzle.

Tagore wanted to turn work into play, while Gandhi found the spirit of play in work

Ramachandra Guha writing in the Hindustan Times (March 31, 2005) quotes the historian of education, Poromesh Acharya, who said "Tagore wanted to turn work into play, while Gandhi found the spirit of play in work." Guha adds "Where Tagore wished to make school a vehicle for learning about nature and culture, Gandhi wanted to use it to break down the barriers between mental and manual labour."

While bemoaning the lack of attention paid to reforming and improving school education, which Guha says doesn't excite our leaders, he points to the National Curriculum Framework Review initiated by the NCERT as a positive step.

The spirit of Tagore and Gandhi, so long submerged, makes a sort of comeback in an ongoing exercise of the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT).  The NCERT has initiated a National Curriculum Framework Review, a wide-ranging examination of pedagogy in the school system.  Twentyone 'focus groups' have been formed, each dealing with a specific subject, and each headed by a scholar or practitioner of distinction.  The 'standard' subjects-science, mathematics, social science, etc.-are, of course, represented, but among the more innovative themes included are art, music, dance and culture, headed by Shubha Mudgal; heritage crafts, headed by Laila Tyabji; and habitat, headed by Prof. Madhav Gadgil.

These names inspire confidence, and, indeed, the exercise as a whole seeks to privilege content over form, or, might we say, quality over ideology.  A most interesting proposal, emanating from the science focus group, is for textbooks to be written by teachers and young researchers, with senior scientists merely being called upon to review the exercise.  This is the reverse of what is now practised, where the books are written by scholars at the furthest remove from the school system itself.

School education as a subject does not excite our leaders - it is slow, patient work, without the symbolic appeal or electoral pay-offs of a 'showpiece' project such as a large temple, a larger dam or a nuclear bomb.

Still, a nation is more than the sum of its (present) politicians.  These are failures for which we are collectively culpable.  India's claims to being a democracy shall remain in question as long as so many Indian children stay out of school, and while those within are taught so little and so imperfectly. 

The education surge in China

Suhit writes about an article in the Financial Times on the economics of education in China which says,

An education revolution is sweeping through China. New students are pouring into secondary schools and universities at a phenomenal rate. The consequences for China’s economic growth will be enormous, and mostly positive.

The increase in schooling reflects not just a greater supply of school places provided by the state, but strong demand from families for education. This demand stems from the fact that the economic value of schooling in the country has risen rapidly.

In the late 1980s, the financial return on primary education for Chinese families – that is, the average increase in annual income expected for each additional year of schooling – was only around 4 per cent, about half the average rate for developing countries.

By 1999, according to Zhao Yaohui at at Peking University’s China Centre for Economic Research, the figure had more than doubled to nearly 10 per cent. Gains for higher education were far greater. The return on technical school education rose from 29 to 51 per cent, while the return on college education soared from 38 to 72 per cent. The only level of schooling for which returns did not increase was junior high school.

A key fact about China’s educational system is that access to university is based on a national examination system. Though by no means wholly equitable, this system at least gives a chance to students from poor families.

This relative equality of educational opportunity remains one of the most crucial differences between China and other developing countries with high levels of income inequality, notably India and the Latin American nations. Those countries generally have stratified education systems, in which the elites are served by expensive private schools that feed into the universities. Poorer people have to make do with ill-funded public schools that do not provide a route into higher education. This results in societies where income inequality is entrenched and social mobility is limited.

China, by contrast, has high inequality but also relatively high social mobility, because of widespread access to standardised education and the centralised university exam system. Maintaining this mobility will be a major challenge of the coming decades. But China has made a good start.

Madrassas in India

An op-ed in The Hindu (that appeared in May 2003) provides a good overview of the Madrassas in India tracing their evolution, their role in the past and the present, and challenges for the future.