Teachers Day – Time to clean up the system!

By Jaya Shankar VS

In some 100 countries around the world, the Teachers Day is an occasion to thank and appreciate the vital and lasting contribution that teachers make to our lives, to education in general and to development of the society at large. It is also a day to spread the awareness about the importance of teachers in one’s life, and to garner support for them so that the future generations will continue to be guided by the inimitable qualities of a teacher. Today, it is equally important to identify the challenges in providing education, and work towards in cleaning up the system.

Teachers Day in India and World Teachers Day
India celebrates Teachers Day on September 05 every year on the birth anniversary of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the second President of India, and a renowned academic philosopher and an illustrious statesman. When he served as the President of India between 1962 and 1967, his students and friends wanted to celebrate his birthday in a grand way every year. However, as a mark of respect for his passion for teaching and academics, Dr. Radhakrishnan insisted that it would be a privilege to him if his birthday was observed as Teachers Day. Thus, the Teachers Day was born.

The UNESCO observes the World Teaches' Day annually on October 5 since 1994. This is an occasion to commemorate teachers’ organisations worldwide. According to the UN body, World Teachers' Day commemorates the anniversary of the signing in 1966 of the UNESCO/ILO Recommendation Concerning the Status of Teachers. It is an occasion to celebrate the essential role of teachers in providing quality education at all levels.

How it is celebrated!
In most countries, schools and colleges remain open on Teachers Day. However, unlike other working days, this day is marked with celebrations to honour the teachers, a day of thanks and remembrance and even fun filled activities for teachers! At some schools in India, the teachers are given a day off from teaching while the senior students take up the responsibility of teaching as a token of appreciation for their teachers.

Dr.S.Radhakrishnan, one man, many roles
Born on September 5, 1888, Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was a professor, an academician, a philosopher and perhaps one of India's most acclaimed scholars of comparative religion and philosophy. During his lifetime, he served his country in various capacities as the first Vice President of independent India between 1952 and 1962, and the second President of India between 1962 and 1967. Dr. Radhakrishnan represented India at UNESCO and served as the Ambassador of India to the Soviet Union between 1949 and 1952.

Academically, Dr. S. Radhakrishnan held various positions including King George V Chair of Mental and Moral Science at the University of Calcutta in 1921 and Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford University between 1936 and 1952. He had also served as the Vice Chancellor of the Andhra University, and of the Hindu Banaras University. Besides, he was elected a fellow of the All Souls College.

Dr. Radhakrishnan was a prolific writer. During his lifetime, he had written many articles for journals of repute like The Quest, Journal of Philosophy and the International Journal of Ethics and also completed his first book "The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore." His second book titled "The Reign of Religion in Contemporary Philosophy" was published in 1920.

The British government honoured Dr. S. Radhakrishnan with the British ‘knighthood’ in 1931 for his services rendered in the field of education. However, for obvious reasons Dr. S. Radhakrishnan did not use the title in his personal life. In 1954, the Indian government honoured him with the Bharat Ratna and the Order of Merit in 1963. In 1938, Dr. S. Radhakrishnan was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy.

A multi-faceted personality, Dr. S. Radhakrishnan’s love for teaching and education was evident from his illustrious career and the yeomen service he rendered in the field of education. He was a man who possessed a rare blend of deep love for Hindu religion and philosophy and an open mind towards other religions and philosophies as well. This rarity in him was by itself responsible for bringing out the uniqueness of Hindu religion and Indian philosophy in the best way understandable to the western audiences. And his love and dedication towards his profession reflected in the utmost respect and love his students had for him. Truly, India couldn’t have any better day to celebrate Teachers Day than on the birthday of one of India’s most respected men of all times.

Education, teachers and teaching in India: the challenges
One of the primary challenges that the country faces today is providing education for all. This is no easy task considering the whopping figures of illiteracy rates in India. According to UN figures, 42 million children between the ages of 6 and 14 are not in school in India. And the national literacy rate of girls over seven years is 54%, compared to 75% for boys.

Besides infrastructure problems, gender discrimination, poverty, the teacher training facilities for not only the general stream of teachers catering to the normal students but also training for special teachers who cares for and teaches the ‘challenged’ category children is inadequate in the country. Even while at schools the services of teachers are not best utilised! The services of government teachers in India are being misused for census, elections and disaster relief duties during which time their services to their respective schools are denied and children deprived of valuable hours and education. These issues should be effectively addressed. Equally important is the need to devise quality education and teaching standards in all schools.

The recent government’s promise to enact the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill, which seeks to make education a fundamental right of every child in the age group of six to 14 years, needs to be amended to also include children between 0-6 years of age. It is a globally accepted fact, based on research, that the early years are the most critical years for lifelong development, both from neurological and biological standpoints. And experts feel that the neglect in providing basic education during the early years can often result in irreversible reduction in the full development of the brain’s potential. The bill in its present avatar overlooks this vital point and hence needs to be amended before it is enacted into law.

Teachers, spare the rod!
While India celebrates Teachers Day on the birth anniversary of a man who spent his entire lifetime lifting the education system to new higher levels of grade and reputation, today the indifferent and ‘un-teacher’ like attitude of a few teachers in some of the country’s schools has not only sullied the hard earned reputation of teachers in India but also the spirit of celebrating the Teachers Day. Take for instance the widespread corporal punishment in the country! According to a 2007 joint study by UNICEF, Save the Children and the Government of India, 65% of school-going children have faced corporal punishment. And the National Report on child abuse by the Ministry of Women and Child Development in 2007 says that two out of three school children are physically abused in Indian schools.

It is disheartening to learn that there are a few sections in the Indian Penal Code that does not hold a teacher/guardian responsible for a moderate and reasonable corporal punishment done in good faith for benefit of child under 12 years, unless it causes death or grievous injury. The Working Group of National Commission of Protection of Child Rights representing the best sections involved in education and teachers in the country has voiced their support to amend these sections. And it is high time the government wakes up to introduce the amendments, and clean up the system!

Parents and students should share the responsibility
Perhaps the best way to say thank you to the teachers on Teachers Day is to share their responsibility and dreams of making the education and teaching in India on par with the best international standards! And for this to happen, the onus is not only on teachers and an effective educational policy and system but equally on parents and students as well. It is the duty of the parents to keep a close look on the students’ progress and issues at school and studies, and extend their cooperation and support to the school authorities and teachers. The students, on their part, should adopt a sense of responsibility and respect towards their teachers. Often there is a history of provocation from the student community that irks the teachers to resort to unfair practices! Hence, constant and healthy interaction with teachers will only help the students to become more responsible and better citizens and help clean up the system and uphold the spirit of Teachers Day celebrations.

Wooing the Next Generation of Indian Academics

By M H Ahssan

Can campuses be cloned? That's a question the Indian higher education community is grappling with as the government opens up additional locations of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). Supporters say the global reputation of the institutions will guarantee quality students, faculty and education. But critics argue that there aren't enough faculty members to staff these new institutes, and contend that creating inferior schools will damage the brand equity of the successful IITs and IIMs.

New research, however, suggests that the government's approach may be the right one after all. According to a paper titled, "Will They Return? The Willingness of Potential Faculty to Return to India and the Key Factors Affecting Their Decisions," Indians living in the U.S. are willing to come back to their home country. Indeed, the survey of nearly 1,000 Indians currently or previously engaged in studies at American graduate schools found that only 8% strongly preferred to remain in the U.S. While private sector jobs and entrepreneurship were the top choices for a career upon returning to India, teaching and research were not too far behind. Moreover, within the academic sector, 73% of respondents named the IITs and IIMs as the most attractive options.

"The IITs and IIMs educate only a tiny fraction of India's graduates," says David Finegold, a co-author of the study and dean of the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "With the huge expansion underway in Indian higher education and the increased demand from the growing number of young people, even a doubling of the number of IITs and IIMs will not reduce their selectivity." Finegold authored the study with Rutgers doctoral student Anne-Laure Winkler and B. Venkatesh Kumar, a professor at the School of Labour and Management Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Science in Mumbai. Kumar is spending the 2010-2011 academic year at Penn State University's College of Education as a Hubert Humphrey Fellow studying ways to rejuvenate higher education in India.

Quality Is the Key
The paper points out that India needs to recruit at least one million new faculty members for its colleges and universities if it is to meet the government's ambitious target of offering a higher education to 20% of the country's young people by 2020. "The most promising way to fill this [faculty] gap is to recruit back many of the over 100,000 Indians who are studying in the U.S. each year to obtain a graduate degree and the many others who are studying in other nations, or who have completed their degrees and begun academic careers abroad," the researchers write.

The men and women surveyed named high-quality teaching and cutting edge research as the top factors for pursuing graduate education in the U.S. Only 7% made the move out of desire for a job and plans to settle in the country permanently. Family concerns scored high among respondents' reasons for wanting to return to India, as did a desire to give back. But the results also indicate that, for Indians, America may be losing its charms as an immigrant's paradise. "It's the poor job market in the U.S., both in academics and elsewhere, over the past few years, along with tight visa restrictions, combined with the growing attractiveness of India and recognition of the opportunities there," Kumar notes.

In India, the real issue is not the number of institutes (though that, too, is a problem given the size of the young population). India has around 21,000 higher education institutions, compared to 6,700 in the U.S. and 4,000 in China. "The key is to maintain or even increase the quality of existing and new institutions," according to Finegold. "Our study suggests two ways to do this: recruit top Indian Ph.D.s -- both newly-minted and experienced -- from abroad, and increase the time and support that these faculty have for research to complement their teaching."

But there is a gap between that prescription and reality. For the returning Indians surveyed, opportunities in the corporate sector were the most attractive. Bringing up the rear was politics, with teaching and the public sector doing almost as poorly. By contrast, a job that combined teaching and research had many takers.

"The respondents in our survey preferred jobs in the private sector," Finegold states. "In all countries, the motivations of individuals for choosing different careers vary. Those primarily motivated by financial rewards are unlikely to choose an academic career. But there are many compensating advantages to being a faculty member in a research university: control over one's time, the intrinsic rewards of the chance to work on topics of most personal interest and create new knowledge, and the opportunity to interact with bright young people and colleagues. In some top Indian universities and institutes, there may also be lifestyle advantages -- free or subsidized housing on campus and no commute. The key to attracting folks back will be creating attractive higher education environments."
The older IITs and the IIMs seem to have done that already, but the newer ones have a long haul ahead. One factor in their favor is the survey indicates that the schools are competing against other institutes, rather than India's private colleges. Only 15% of respondents interested in a higher education career named private colleges as an attractive option. (There are a few exceptions like the Indian School of Business, which comes with a different pedigree.)

"It's not surprising," Kumar says of the low interest in work at private colleges. "Many of these institutions have become degree mills, with no or very little focus on quality education. Many have serious problems -- lack of quality faculty, no infrastructure and poor quality student intake. They often have very poor governance structures. These institutions are very often run by education barons, whose main aim is profiteering. Due to lack of an adequate regulatory framework, these institutions have come to be established, creating very poor quality degree-holders, many of whom are unemployable. Unless we strengthen regulatory mechanisms, this will continue to be an issue of concern."

Spreading the Word
There is of course a limit to the number of IITs and IIMs the government can set up. A proposal that the schools be privatized was greeted with widespread protest and has become a nonstarter. So even if the U.S. Ph.D.s return to India, will there be place for them in academics? "India has seen a huge emphasis on investment in education in recent years," Kumar notes. "There has been both institutional expansion and also increased funding for higher education." The environment is improving and there is now a greater focus on research, he adds. "There has also been a substantial increase in faculty salaries, though they are still low compared to the salaries that faculty receive elsewhere in the world."
But the government must also play a greater role in wooing these potential faculty members. The survey identified "removing red tape, reducing perceived corruption, and expanding research opportunities for faculty" as key factors.

"If the Indian government, colleges, and universities wish to recruit Indians who have studied abroad to return for faculty posts in India, it is vital that they understand the most effective ways to communicate with this group," the researchers write. "The good news is that most Indians based in the U.S. are fairly well informed about developments in India's education system, with close to 75% indicating that they follow changes underway in India very closely to somewhat closely. Their two primary means of obtaining information are personal networks (50%) and newspapers (45%), with less reliance on list-servers and blogs. This suggests that, in addition to newspaper ads, using a snowball approach that leverages faculty and alumni connections through social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn may yield the best results."

The government may need to move swiftly with its marketing efforts, as many other countries have realized the faculty problem and are swinging into action. Finegold and Kumar hope to teach officials a thing or two as well. Says Kumar: "Our intention next year is to make this a comparative survey."

Pre-Marital Sex: What Kids Must Know

By Swapna Majumdar

It took Sweden 50 years to do it. In India, it might take even longer to include sexuality education in the school curricula, if the ongoing debate is any indication. Indian parliamentarians have just recommended that sex education for the young be banned, and indeed several states in the country have already done so. But, as a new Indo-Swedish collaborative study points out, the longer there is resistance to equipping adolescents with information associated with puberty and sexual and reproductive health (SRH), the greater are the chances of an increase in premarital sexual curiosity and its associated health risks.

The study found growing evidence from across the country that a significant proportion of young boys and girls had become sexually active before marriage. According to research conducted by MAMTA, a Delhi-based NGO working on SRH, and the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education (RFSU), there has been an increase in the percentage of unmarried young Indians becoming sexually active in the past five years. The study, which focused on urban and rural areas of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka over a five year period beginning 2003, found that in 2004, 5.8 per cent unmarried young people had sexual intercourse. This figure increased to 7.4 per cent in 2006 and 7.5 per cent in 2008. More unmarried males (9.3 per cent in 2004 and 10.2 per cent in 2008) reported having a sexual experience compared to unmarried females (0.5 per cent in 2004 and 3.2 per cent in 2008).

What is worrying was that very often they did not use protection, either because of lack of information or lack of access to the means to gain it. "Considering the sensitivity of the subject and the taboos associated with it, it was important to adopt an approach that would be culturally acceptable. On the other hand, we also needed to measure their knowledge, attitude and practice on sexual health to be able to design strategies to address their needs. This is why we sought the support of RFSU, as it has expertise on SRH and sexuality education," said Dr Sunil Mehra, Executive Director, MAMTA.

According to Maria Andersson, International Director, RFSU, even though people as young as 16 years were sexually active in Sweden and premarital sex was not considered taboo there, it is a proven fact that increased sexual knowledge had prevented unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) there. She believed that even though the two countries had different cultural beliefs, with Sweden being a more open society than India, there was no reason to think that the same approach would not work in India. "Good sexuality education enabled people to find joy in their sexuality and gave each individual an opportunity to make decisions about his or her own body. Our strategy is to support and encourage young people to make their own decisions and not let anyone else, including friends, group pressure or expectations, influence them. Providing relevant facts was important, but it was not enough. We also support responsible behavior that includes using contraceptives and allowing them to discuss and reflect on the importance of this knowledge that contraceptive use should not be the responsibility of women alone, a strategy easily adaptable to Indian conditions," she contended.

Building on RFSU's experience that investing adequate and quality time in understanding the gaps was critical before implementing any strategy, 32 villages in Bawal Block of Rewari district in Haryana, 31 villages in Pindra Block of Varanasi district in Uttar Pradesh and four urban slums in Kormangala in Bangalore, Karnataka, were chosen to identify the key areas of health needs associated with puberty. They included menstruation, personal hygiene and contraception, a less talked about issue.

At the same time, it was decided to study the impact of imparting adolescent education to 5,000 school children in four schools - two of girls and two of boys, in urban Rewari and rural Bawal - to assess whether this changed their perceptions on premarital sex, unwanted pregnancies, STIs, HIV-AIDS, sexual abuse and equity in decision making powers of girls and boys.

"Unlike in India, in Sweden sexuality education is compulsory in schools and has been since 1955. The right to sexual and reproductive health services and sexuality education is the key to ensuring gender equality. RFSU sees openness on sexuality as the point of entry of health promotion and the prevention of sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS. This is why the strategy for India was also to break the culture of silence and let young people open up on these sensitive subjects," pointed out Andersson.

After spending time with young people, their parents, teachers and community leaders, MAMTA found that in addition to interventions like training peer educators, it would be more useful to adapt RFSU's concept of youth clinics where information on SRH could be accessed without fear or embarrassment. Thus was born youth information centres (YIC).

Since young people, particularly girls, were more vulnerable to STIs, YICs facilitated information sharing; and also worked closely with community and religious leaders and sensitized Panchayati Raj Institution (PRI) members on issues of education and school retention. The most important outcome of this strategy were attitudinal changes.

In all the intervention areas, age at marriage was delayed among young people. The percentage of girls that married below the legal age of marriage fell from 61.2 per cent in 2004 to 45.2 per cent in 2008. For boys, the corresponding figures were 79.5 per cent and 76.2 per cent, respectively.

By 2008, the perception that education was important for girls led to 38.5 per cent young men whose sisters had dropped out of school, to argue that they could share some household chores with their sisters and help them get more time for studies. Nearly 26.9 per cent young men felt that they could convince their parents to allow their sisters to continue studies as external candidates.

Using RFSU's technical expertise in gender sensitization, the sexuality education curriculum under the adolescent education programme (AEP) was developed for students of Classes VIII, IX and X based on an assessment of their knowledge and needs. At the end of three years, a comparison was made between students of Class 10 who had been through the sexuality education curriculum and Class 11 students of the same school who had not experienced it. Irrespective of the location of the school, boys and girls who had been through the programme were able to identify and reject common misconceptions about nocturnal emissions, masturbation and myths related to HIV transmission. Girls in Class X were able to understand that the oral pill did not protect them from STIs and HIV, while a significant number of urban and rural girls said they would decline to have sex without a condom and oppose sexual abuse.

The evidence clearly is that increased sexuality knowledge decreases risky behavior and boosts gender equality. MAMTA is now hoping that its research findings will influence policy makers in India to formulate a more rational and relevant national policy on sexuality education.

Special Focus: Why My Domestic Help Would Rather Send Her Kid To A Private School Than Public School?

My domestic help Ruksana has a seven-year-old daughter and a four year-old son. She enrolled them in a private school in the neighbourhood instead of the government primary school. Reason: No proper food, education and facilities. 

At the government school she could benefit from the Right to Education (RTE) Act which guarantees eight years of free, quality education to all children aged six to fourteen years. Instead, she shells out nearly Rs 800 a month for fees plus a good chunk on miscellaneous – books, uniforms, school activities, etc.

'Policy Paralysis In AICTE, Model Curriculam Is In Limbo'

By Dr. Shelly Ahmed (Star Guest Writer)

The policy paralysis at the top of the All India Council for Technical Education is manifested in different ways at all levels.

The present pitiable position of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) of is its own making. The AICTE, pre-Independent India’s recommendatory body, was in its 42nd year — in 1987 — vested with statutory powers through an Act of Parliament. The parliamentary wisdom hoped that the AICTE would discharge its statutory role of maintaining the standards and coordinated development of technical education in the country. 

Teacher's Day: Noble Profession Or Sorriest Of Trades?

By M H Ahssan / INN Bureau

It is not by simply increasing the number of schools and colleges that education can be promoted. Teachers form the pivot of the education system all over the world. From time immemorial, they have been engaged in a war on ignorance, prejudice and greed. They are the exemplars and role models in a society torn asunder by factions and superstition.

They are the ones who inspire youth to achieve and rise to higher levels of thinking. It is fitting and proper that September 5 (Dr. S. Radhakrishnan’s birthday) every year is observed as Teachers’ Day.

Poor Schools For India’s Poor?

As enrolments in schools rise, it is time for India to invest in quality public education. My work requires me to interact with some of the most dispossessed and impoverished communities in the country, and I consistently find that even as poor households battle hunger, debt, unemployment and social humiliation, most still send their children to school. They do this at enormous personal cost, and with great hope for what the schools have to offer. Rich or poor, most Indian parents now aspire to educate their children. An encouraging 96 percent of children aged 6-14 years are enrolled in schools today.

 But sadly, schools betray these aspirations, as the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2012 suggests. The report gathers compelling and disturbing evidence of abysmal learning outcomes in a majority of schools across India. More than half the children in Class V cannot read a Class II textbook, and three-quarters of children in Class III cannot read a Class I textbook.

 The wake-up call, which emerges from ASER 2012, is that the levels of reading and arithmetic in our schools are not only poor but also declining in many states. The situation is one of a “deepening crisis” in education, as Madhav Chavan, the author of the report notes. Only three states — Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Kerala — have high learning levels on the ASER scale. Except Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, where levels are low but not falling, other big states contribute heavily to the overall declining learning levels.

 The Right to Education Act (RTE) initially eliminated all forms of student evaluation, and laid down — for good reasons — that children will not be held back for poor performance. But this well-intentioned provision may have thrown out the baby with the bathwater, because it further reduced the accountability of the system for scholastic performance. Fortunately, this is now remedied because continuous and comprehensive evaluation is now a part of the law.

 What RTE promises is a publicly funded school in the neighbourhood of every child in the country. But as the ASER survey reminds us, the biggest challenge to the public education system is not only to expand the reach of government schools, but to improve their quality. RTE tends to equate quality education with the qualifications of teachers. It mandates formal training for every teacher, assuming that this will improve the quality of education. It fails to acknowledge that teachers will teach well in environments where they are valued, supported with imaginative teaching materials, their skills continuously upgraded, and robust systems of monitoring and accountability established.

Scholastic outcomes are poorer in government schools, compared to private ones. But as Chavan admits, “Private school education is not great and the socio-economic educational background of children’s families, parental aspirations and additional support for learning contribute majorly to their better performance. Yet, the fact remains that the learning gap between government and private school students is widening. This widening gap may make the private schools look better, but in an absolute sense it is important to note that as of 2012 less than 40 percent of Class V children in private schools could solve problems in division.”

 Parents are despairing of the public school system, and opt for lower-end private schools. The report estimates that 35 percent of children enrolled in schools study in private institutions. If the current trend sustains, more than half our children would be paying for their education by 2020.

 The solution is not to accept privatisation of education. Children studying in government schools will be the poorest, and if the quality of education continues to decline, it will confine the poor to the boundaries of socio-economic barriers established by their birth. The country needs to invest significantly more in government schools, in the salaries, and training of government teachers. India needs to show that it believes in securing equal chances for all children, regardless of the accident of where they are born. This is possible only with a dynamic and effective public school system.

Poor Schools For India’s Poor?

As enrolments in schools rise, it is time for India to invest in quality public education.

My work requires me to interact with some of the most dispossessed and impoverished communities in the country, and I consistently find that even as poor households battle hunger, debt, unemployment and social humiliation, most still send their children to school. They do this at enormous personal cost, and with great hope for what the schools have to offer. Rich or poor, most Indian parents now aspire to educate their children. An encouraging 96 percent of children aged 6-14 years are enrolled in schools today.

 But sadly, schools betray these aspirations, as the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2012 suggests. The report gathers compelling and disturbing evidence of abysmal learning outcomes in a majority of schools across India. More than half the children in Class V cannot read a Class II textbook, and three-quarters of children in Class III cannot read a Class I textbook.

 The wake-up call, which emerges from ASER 2012, is that the levels of reading and arithmetic in our schools are not only poor but also declining in many states. The situation is one of a “deepening crisis” in education, as Madhav Chavan, the author of the report notes. Only three states — Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Kerala — have high learning levels on the ASER scale. Except Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, where levels are low but not falling, other big states contribute heavily to the overall declining learning levels.

 The Right to Education Act (RTE) initially eliminated all forms of student evaluation, and laid down — for good reasons — that children will not be held back for poor performance. But this well-intentioned provision may have thrown out the baby with the bathwater, because it further reduced the accountability of the system for scholastic performance. Fortunately, this is now remedied because continuous and comprehensive evaluation is now a part of the law.

 What RTE promises is a publicly funded school in the neighbourhood of every child in the country. But as the ASER survey reminds us, the biggest challenge to the public education system is not only to expand the reach of government schools, but to improve their quality. RTE tends to equate quality education with the qualifications of teachers. It mandates formal training for every teacher, assuming that this will improve the quality of education. It fails to acknowledge that teachers will teach well in environments where they are valued, supported with imaginative teaching materials, their skills continuously upgraded, and robust systems of monitoring and accountability established.

 Scholastic outcomes are poorer in government schools, compared to private ones. But as Chavan admits, “Private school education is not great and the socio-economic educational background of children’s families, parental aspirations and additional support for learning contribute majorly to their better performance. Yet, the fact remains that the learning gap between government and private school students is widening. This widening gap may make the private schools look better, but in an absolute sense it is important to note that as of 2012 less than 40 percent of Class V children in private schools could solve problems in division.”

 Parents are despairing of the public school system, and opt for lower-end private schools. The report estimates that 35 percent of children enrolled in schools study in private institutions. If the current trend sustains, more than half our children would be paying for their education by 2020.

 The solution is not to accept privatisation of education. Children studying in government schools will be the poorest, and if the quality of education continues to decline, it will confine the poor to the boundaries of socio-economic barriers established by their birth. The country needs to invest significantly more in government schools, in the salaries, and training of government teachers. India needs to show that it believes in securing equal chances for all children, regardless of the accident of where they are born. This is possible only with a dynamic and effective public school system.

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRIME MINISTER OF INDIA

Dear Dr Manmohan Singh,

I write this letter on behalf of all those students who are being cheated each day, their dreams shattered, their aspirations curtailed their careers and lives ruined. On behalf of all those parents, who have invested all their savings, mortgaged homes, sold properties to ensure best possible education for their children? I write on behalf of the aspiring youth, the demographic dividend of India. 

“I am what I am because of education” you had said. You have often thanked your family that ensured right education for you, right up to college . Like most of us, you were born into a family of modest means, in a far away village of Gah (now in Pakistan), a village with no electricity, school, hospital or drinking water, you believed that your education would take you far. You invested in yourself and the system enabled your dreams to come true. 

Imagine Mr Prime Minister – the college you had attended, which promised a Master's degree, was fake? Imagine, it was one of those degree/diploma mills that came into being to exploit vulnerable students. Sir, if that was the case, your successes at the Cambridge, the Oxford, the UN etc., would have been a pipe dream. 

YOU WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN THE PRIME MINISTER OF INDIA. 

And we would have never known about you. Sir, in the days when you studied, there was an honest system that protected you. Not any more.

Sir, today, fake degrees are up for sale, openly and publicly.  Students, gullible, vulnerable and ignorant are losing on their careers, their lives. Just from one institute alone -students have been protesting – in Indore, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune and closer home at Gurgaon.  Students are left to approach courts, because the governance failed them. A country which protects a Rs.1000 financial investment vide a legal document called Prospectus and a regulator like SEBI, is unable to protect a student who invested Rs. 5 to 25 lakhs and spent two to five years of their life.

We have cheats and fraudsters having a free run – fully confident of the inability of the administration.  Question them and they openly call UGC and AICTE as full of bribe seeking corrupt officials, and refuse to seek any recognition. The fact that you were also the UGC chairman in 1991 when they chose not to seek recognition speaks out. The entire education system has been condemned to ignominy. The few honest officers at UGC and AICTE are left to defend themselves, as the leadership dithers, yet again.

Sir, what have you given back to the education system that made you? What have you done to protect that vulnerable student, the parent?  What have you done to ensure that dreams and aspirations of millions of young India are not ruined by a few rampaging institutes?  Many of your parliamentary colleagues with heavy investments in education prefer and ensure a status quo. 

The result - fake, unrecognised, profiteering, greedy institutes thrive, in every nook and corner of India.  

We have a judicial system that lacks empathy to larger issues and drags cases for years together. An administration that is more efficient when acting against student interests. Look at the adeptness with which DOT implemented a court order that we have only heard but not seen. Sir, we have a system that wears and tires us out, challenges our stamina, mocks us and laughs at us.

Isn’t it time for the administration to act? File FIRs in different police stations against institutions that cheat, that promise grossly illegal degrees? Let loose the law enforcement, arrest them, file multiple cases in each place where they have any base. Ensure judicial expediency to avoid delays, from giving contradicting judgments. I know that education is a state subject, but can you have some firmness at least in the congress ruled states?  Can you make life difficult for all those who ruin the careers and lives of students? 

Sir, the student community is looking to you. They are being bullied, harassed, ruined. They are fighting those that are powerful, rich, and with establishment on their side. You have achieved all your dreams because you believed in education. If you cannot ensure honest education to the young aspiring India, it is time you give up that responsibility to someone who understands what education means to this generation.

Sir, stand up for the aspiring youth of India, or give up and walk away. 

Jai Hind!

M H Ahssan
Editor in Chief
India News Network

RAISING THE QUALITY BAR IN HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM

By Dr.Shelly Ahmed (Guest Writer)

We need more quality in the already existing institutions, not more institutions. The base of higher education has expanded enormously in India since Independence. Yet we are far behind the United States and China in Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in this sector. In 1950, India had 700 colleges and 16 universities.

These numbers have now leaped to 33,000 colleges and 700 universities in 2011, if the statistics by University Grants Commission’s publication Higher Education at a Glance—2012 is to be believed. The Report on “Restructuring and Rejuvenation of Higher Education” by noted educationist Prof Yashpal suggests that there is a need to establish another 1,500 universities in the country to achieve the target of 30% GER (i.e., enrolment of 30 per cent of students who have finished twelve years of education in undergraduate courses.)

Why Do Indians Do 'The Ostrich' When It Comes To Sex-Ed?

By now, many of you would have seen the trending video created by East India Comedy – a satirical spoof highlighting the disconnect between sex education in Indian schools and its students, who are growing in a rapidly evolving world in which both information and misinformation are readily available. 

Legal Education: Many Challenges Ahead

INN analyses the state of legal education in India and the road ahead to bring law schools in line with changing needs.

India has the largest legal profession in the world (1.3 million attorneys). The corporate legal market in India is worth a billion dollars, half of which is shared by foreign law firms. The top 100 Indian companies spent approximately 600 million dollars last year as legal fees. Our legal market is growing very fast and we urgently need competent law graduates. The establishment of national law universities in India has changed the face of legal education in the country. 

These universities attract the best brains of the country. We have few islands of excellence. The students of these law schools have done exceedingly well in the international moot court competitions which shows legal education in India is reaching a golden age. Law has again become the most sought after course. 
    
What should one really expect from a legal professional in today's globalized world? It is generally said that today’s law student should have at least the following skills: ability of intensive research; analytical ability; ability of client counselling; advocacy skill; documentation and conveyancing skill; negotiation skill; court craftsmanship, and procedural skill and a skill for human relations. 
    
We need to integrate these skills into our legal education. Our students must possess wide range of "competencies" beyond a simple mastery of law and legal doctrines. Are our Law Schools, particularly the Law Departments of traditional universities and the 950 law colleges of the country, successful in imparting these desired skills in their students is the greatest challenge? Few so-called national law schools or islands of excellence cannot bring about a radical change and therefore we need to improve our law colleges. 
    
Our teaching methods have to change to adjust to the new and fast-changing world, otherwise our students will never acquire muchneeded skills. Many a time, learning is a very boring experience at law schools. We must incorporate humor to make the learning exercise more fun and thereby trick the students into learning more. Use of software applications, late evening classes, innovative credit system, offering of courses in music, painting, biotechnology, foreign languages, sports etc. will not only lead to true integration of knowledge but also help in retaining interest of highly talented students. 
    
Just as businesses and law firms can no longer take a strictly local or even regional perspective in terms of competition, neither can law schools. The legal education of today requires emphasis on trans-national fields, such as public international law, regional law, international trade and finance, environmental and climate change law, new transnational fields such as Internet law, procurement, and transitional justice, international criminal law and law and development are to be included. 
    
We also need to create a proper and authentic rating system for law schools and bring in accreditation standards comparable to United States, bring changes in financing of legal education as the cost of legal education in the elite national law schools is very high, take immediate measures to attract and retain talented faculty and offer them salary and perks at par with IITs, invest in curriculum development to make it comparable with the leading law schools of the West, bring changes in the examination system to test knowledge rather than memory, and we must take steps to enhance research at law schools as most of the law schools continue to be UG centric. 
    
Finally, legal education should now become "justice education" and while to meet the challenges of market and new world order, the focus today is more to the corporate sector, our law schools should not be completely hijacked by the corporates. We have a duty to produce good and competent trial lawyers, social litigation advocates and properly trained judges. 
    
The creation of new breed of lawyer depends itself on the creation of a new teacher. All curricular revision ought to be guided by one basic criterion viz. whether current doctrine and practice in particular areas of law serve to promote basic democratic values and 
needs of time. 
    
An additional focus of our strategy should be to make our programs more attractive to foreign students to meet and increase the demand for a globalized Law education. We must start general nine-months specialized LL.M. programs. To meet the market demand and to differentiate our offerings from those of other top law schools, we should also develop an Executive LL.M. Program for students who wish to seek an Anglo-American training in law and business while continuing their work commitments as seniors or executives in their firms and companies. 

‍‍‍Teachers Are 'Real Architect' Of Children’s Future

On the special occasions like Teacher’s Day we say all sorts of noble words about the vocation of teaching, and some teachers are awarded by the State, the fact is that as a society we are not very serious about the role of teachers as the messengers of emancipatory education.

To begin with, let us dare to be “impractical” and imagine what the vocation of teaching ought to be. Well, we might find amid ourselves a spectrum of “knowledgeable” people — experts and specialists. 

But then, a teacher is not just a subject expert. She teaches not merely quantum physics or medieval history; she does something more. She walks with her students as a co-traveller; she touches their souls; and as a catalyst, she helps the young learner to understand his/her uniqueness and innate possibilities. She is not a machine that merely repeats the dictates of the official curriculum; nor is she an agent of surveillance — disciplining, punishing, hierarchising and normalising her students through the ritualisation of examinations and grading. 

Instead, she is creative and reflexive; and it is through the nuanced art of relatedness that she activates the learner’s faith that he is unique, he need not be like someone else, he must look at the process of his inner flowering, and the artificially constructed binary of “success” and “failure” must be abandoned.

There is another important thing a teacher ought to take care of. She must realise that there are limits to teaching and sermonising; and she is not supposed to fill the mind of the learner with a heavy baggage of bookish knowledge. 

Instead, her primary task is to help the learner to sharpen the power of observation, the ability to think and reflect, the aesthetic sensibility, and above all, the spiritual urge to experience the glimpses of the Infinite. In other words, once these faculties are developed, one becomes a life-long learner — beyond degrees and diplomas. 

In fact, teaching as an act of communion, and studentship as a project of the integral development of the physical, vital, intellectual and psychic states of being, can create the ground for emancipatory education. And emancipatory education is not a mere act of “skill learning”; nor is it pure intellectualism with academic specialisation.

On the other hand, on September 5, the Teachers Day is celebrated to honour the memory of India's first Vice President and to commemorate the importance of teachers in our lives. It is supposed to be a special day for the appreciation of teachers who are the real fountain head of a strong nation.

Indian culture had always treated them as most important pillars. Even Lord Krishna, Rama or any kings during medieval period who ruled the country had taken lessons under a Guru and this speaks a lot about the importance of a teacher.

The teachers have a very difficult task and play the role of torchbearers, work with dedication even in adverse conditions to make the young generation prosper in all respects. It is time for the political executive and the teachers to have a serious introspection about the role of teachers then and now and see what kind of reforms needed to be brought in the system to ensure that the core values of education and the healthy relationship between the teachers and the taught is restored.

As a matter of fact, emancipatory education is the willingness to live meaningfully, creatively and gracefully. It is the ability to identify and debunk diverse ideologies and practices of domination and seduction — say, the cult of narcissistic personalities that reduces democracy to a ritualistic act of “electing” one’s masters, the doctrine of militaristic nationalism that manufactures the mass psychology of fear and hatred, or the neoliberal idea that to be “smart” is to be a hyper-competitive consumer driven by the promises of instant gratification through the ceaseless consumption of all sorts of material and symbolic goods. 

And a teacher ought to be seen as the carrier of this sort of emancipatory education that inspires the young learner to question sexism, racism, casteism, ecologically destructive developmentalism, hollow consumerism, and the life-killing practice of “productivity” that transforms potentially creative beings into mere “resources”, or spiritually impoverished and alienated robotic performers.

Yet, the irony is that we do not desire to create an environment that promotes emancipatory education, and nurtures the true spirit of the vocation of teaching. Look at the state of an average school in the country. 

With rote learning, poor teacher-taught ratio, pathetic infrastructure, chaotic classrooms and demotivated teachers, it is not possible to expect even the slightest trace of intellectually stimulating and ethically churning education. It is sad that ours is a society that refuses to acknowledge the worth of good schoolteachers.

Moreover, because of nepotism, corruption and trivialisation of BEd degrees, there is massive devaluation of the vocation. 

Likewise, while the triumphant political class has caused severe damage to some of our leading public universities, and fancy institutes of technology and management see education primarily as a training for supplying the workforce for the techno-corporate empire, teachers are becoming mere “service providers” or docile conformists. Here is a society hypnotised by the power of bureaucracy, the assertion of techno-managers and the glitz of celebrities. Not surprisingly then, it fails to realise that a society that has lost its teachers is dead.

However, those who love the vocation of teaching and continue to see its immense possibilities should not give up. 

After all, ours is also a society that saw the likes of Gijubhai Badheka, Rabindranath Tagore and Jiddu Krishnamurti who inspired us, and made us believe that a teacher, far from being a cog in the bureaucratic machine, carries the lamp of truth, and walks with her students as wanderers and seekers to make sense of the world they live in, and free it from what belittles man. We must celebrate this pedagogy of hope.

Teachers Day should not end with some celebrations. Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan saw education as the most important tool to metamorphose our society into an inclusive one. The question now is whether our present education system is inclusive. Are teachers playing the role of Shilpis (sculptors) and making children strong enough mentally to face any situation in life?

The role of a teacher is multifarious one. "Teaching is an ongoing process, which like mercury never settles at a particular place but keeps flowing with everlasting grandeur." They should be sharp, enlightened, updated, innovative, perseverant and ever ready to learn new things and unlearn old ones so that they produce the best of human resources, who are not only employable but should have enough resilience to absorb highs and lows of life. Does such a situation prevail in our country? 

Under Gurukul system, the Gurus (teachers) used to lay emphasis on practical education, developing observation skills of a student and above all there used to be a system of questioning, discussion and debate. A week student was always attached to a bright student so that the bright student would help the weak student.

But now it is other way round. The weak students are segregated from so-called cream and made to sit in a separate section which leads to negative impact on them as they are stamped as weak students. All this is part of commercialisation of education.

The system of listening to what teacher says, copy what is written on black board, learn by rote the so-called important questions is resulting in a situation where students are committing suicide if one gets 85 per cent marks instead of 90 per cent.

There are also cases where students are committing suicide, thinking that they may not get good marks. The political executive of the country and the teachers should ponder over such issues and bring major reforms to restore the values of education and importance of teacher that was seen in the olden times. The governments too should free the teachers from doing other works like door-to-door enumeration work or drafting them for election related work. #KhabarLive #hydnews

India's Education Sector: Moving Toward a Digital Future

The typical Indian classroom was once characterized by students sitting through hour-long teacher monologues. Now, technology is making life easier for both students and educators. Schools are increasingly adopting digital teaching solutions to engage with a generation of pupils well-versed with the likes of PlayStations and iPads, and trying to make the classroom environment more inclusive and participatory.

Take Smartclass from Educomp Solutions, one of the first Indian companies in this space. Smartclass is essentially a digital content library of curriculum-mapped, multimedia-rich, 3D content. It also enables teachers to quickly assess how much of a particular lesson students have been able to assimilate during the class. Once a topic is covered, the teacher gives the class a set of questions on a large screen. Each student then answers via a personal answering device or the smart assessment system. The teacher gets the scores right away and based on that, she repeats parts of the lesson that the students don't appear to have grasped.

"Technology makes the teaching-learning process very easy and interesting," says Harish Arora, a chemistry teacher at the Bal Bharti Public School in New Delhi who has been using Smartclass since 2004. "For instance, [earlier] it would easily take me one full lecture to just draw an electromagnetic cell on the blackboard. Though I could explain the cell structure, there was no way I could have managed to show them how it really functions. This is where technology comes to our aid -- now I can show the students a 3D model of the cell and how it functions. Instead of wasting precious time drawing the diagram on the blackboard, I can invest it in building the conceptual clarity of my students."

According to Abhinav Dhar, director for K-12 at Educomp Solutions, more than 12,000 schools across 560 districts in India have adopted Smartclass. More importantly, the number is growing at almost 20 schools a day. On average, in each of these schools eight classrooms are using Smartclass.

"When we launched Smartclass in 2004 as the first-ever digital classroom program, it was an uphill task convincing schools to adopt it," Dhar notes. "These schools had not witnessed any change in a century.... It is a completely different scenario now. Private schools across India today see [technology] as an imperative. A digital classroom is set to become the bare-minimum teaching accessory in schools, just like a blackboard is today."

Dhar recalls that one major roadblock for Educomp's proposition in the early days was on the price front. At US$4,000 (at the exchange rate of Rs. 50 to a U.S. dollar) per classroom, schools found the product very expensive. To get over this hurdle, Educomp quickly decided to make the initial investment and gave the schools an option to pay over a period of three to five years. The strategy worked. Enthused by the market response, in January Educomp launched an upgraded version -- the Smartclass Class
Transformation System -- with more features, including simulations, mind maps, worksheets, web links, a diagram maker, graphic organizers and assessment tools.

HUGE POTENTIAL
According to the "Indian Education Sector Outlook -- Insights on Schooling Segment," a report released by New Delhi--based research and consultancy firm Technopak Advisors in May, the total number of schools in India stands at 1.3 million. Of these, private schools account for 20%. Educomp's Dhar points out that only around 10% of the private schools have tapped the potential of multimedia classroom teaching whereas in government schools, it has barely made any inroads.

"The current market size for digitized school products in private schools is around US$500 million," says Enayet Kabir, associate director for education at Technopak. "This is expected to grow at a CAGR [compound annual growth rate] of 20% to reach the over US$2 billion mark by 2020. However, the market potential then might get as big as S$4 billion [i.e. if the total population of private schools that could adopt multimedia actually adopt it.] Apart from this, the current market size for ICT [information and communications technology] in government schools is US$750 million. We expect this to grow five times by 2020 due to the current low level of penetration in government schools."

Kabir lists Educomp Solutions, Everonn Education, NIIT, Core Education & Technologies, IL&FS and Compucom as dominant players in this sector. New entrants include HCL Infosystems, Learn Next, Tata Interactive Systems, Mexus Education, S. Chand Harcourt (India) and iDiscoveri Education. Except for S. Chand Harcourt, which is a joint venture between S. Chand and US-based Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, all the others are Indian firms.

A recent trend is that schools in tier two and tier three cities are increasingly adopting the latest technology. Rajesh Shethia, head of sales and marketing at TataInteractive Systems, which launched Tata ClassEdge in early 2011 and has partnered up with more than 900 schools, says that "more than half of the demand for digital classrooms is from tier two and tier three cities." According to Shethia, schools in these smaller cities realize that it is difficult for their students to get as much exposure as students from tier one cities. "[So] they proactively subscribe to solutions such as ours, which richly benefit both teachers and students by simplifying the syllabus....

Even parents want the best for their wards and are not averse to paying a little extra. They see value in these initiatives by schools to modernize the way teaching is imparted today." Making some back-of-the-envelope calculations Shethia adds: "If we consider the top 100,000 private schools in India as the captive market, the potential is approximately two million classrooms of which currently just about 80,000 have been digitized."
Srikanth B. Iyer, COO of Pearson Education Services, also sees tremendous potential in the smaller cities. Pearson provides end-to-end education solutions in the K-12 segment. Its multimedia tool, DigitALly, has been adopted in more than 3,000 private schools across India since 2004. "DigitALly installations have been growing at three times the market for the past two years," Iyer says. "Currently, more than 60% of our customers are from tier two and tier three towns, such as Barpeta (in the state of Assam), Sohagpur (in Madhya Pradesh) and Balia (in Uttar Pradesh)."

In order to make its offering attractive to the schools, Pearson has devised a monthly payment model under which a school pays around US$2 per student per month. "As the price point is affordable, schools across all locations and fee structures find it viable to opt for our solution," Iyer notes. "We focus on tier two and tier three towns and cities where penetration is relatively low and desire for adoption of technology is high." HCL's Digischool program, which launched about 18 months ago, has also made a strong beginning, with a client base of more than 2,500 schools.

PARTNERING WITH STATE GOVERNMENTS
Meanwhile, state governments are also giving a boost to the adoption of technology in schools. Edureach, a divison of Educomp, has partnered with 16 state governments and more than 30 education departments and boards in the country, covering over 36,000 government schools and reaching out to more than 10.60 million students.

"Edureach leads the market with 27% of the total schools where ICT projects have been implemented," says Soumya Kanti, president of Edureach. "We are looking [to add] 3,000 more schools this fiscal year and 20,000 to 25,000 additional schools in the next five years." As of now, Edureach has created digital learning content in more than 14 regional languages for these projects.

In the northern state of Haryana, CORE Education and Technologies is implementing a US$59 million ICT project that aims to benefit 5 million students across 2,622 schools. Five of these schools will be developed as "Smart" schools. CORE is also implementing ICT projects in the states of Gujarat, Meghalaya, Punjab, Maharashtra and Nagaland. The scope of work in these projects ranges from implementation of computer-aided learning in schools, installing bio-metric devices to monitor attendance of teachers, and setting up computer hardware, software and other allied accessories and equipments.

"The task has not been an easy one," admits Anshul Sonak, president of CORE. "There are several logistical issues. Delivery of equipment to rural areas is a big challenge in itself.... There is lack of basic infrastructure -- either there are no classrooms or there are ones with no windows.... Some schools don't even have toilets. Moreover, the power availability in these areas is often poor and we have had to deploy generator sets in many schools."

But despite the challenges, educationists are optimistic. Rahul De, professor of quantitative methods and information systems area at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore (IIM-B) believes that "ICT can have a huge impact on our education system." He points out that ICT can result in increasing the reach [of education] and in keeping the costs low. "With increasing penetration of mobile phones and Internet kiosks, the potential is indeed immense," he adds.

A study conducted by De in 2009 on the economic impact of free and open source software (FOSS) in India found that it resulted in significant cost savings. "FOSS can play a huge role in education," De notes. "In the state of Kerala, it has already had a huge impact in both saving costs and providing state-of-the-art access computing to students in government schools. FOSS has a huge number of packages for school students, many of which can be ported to local languages and used in schools. It is also helping disabled students in a big way, by enabling them to access digital resources using audio-visual aids."
Edureach's Kanti adds that a study by the Centre for Multi-Disciplinary Development Research in Dharwad in Karnataka in 2006 revealed significant improvement in student enrolment and attendance, as well as a reduction of student dropouts due to ICT interventions. "Yet another study conducted by the Xavier Institute of
Management in Bhubaneswar in 2007 revealed that computer-aided education has improved the performance of children in subjects such as English, mathematics and science, which are taught through computers using multimedia-based educational content."

ALL IN A TAB
In line with this increasing interest in technology for school education, there has been a rush of education-focused tablet computers in the market. The most high-profile of these has been Aakash, which was launched by Kapil Sibal, union minister for human resource development, in October 2011. The Aakash project is part of the ministry's National Mission on Education through Information & Communication Technology (NME-ICT). It aims to eliminate digital illiteracy by distributing the Aakash tablets to students across India at subsidized rates. While the project itself has become mired in delays and controversy, it has generated a lot of awareness and interest among students around the educational tablet.

Meanwhile, DataWind, the Canada-based firm that partnered with the union government for the Aakash project, has also launched UbiSlate7, the commercial version ofAakash. "The opportunity for low-cost tablets in India is huge. In the next two years, it will exceed the size of the computer market in India i.e. 10 million units per year," says Suneet Singh Tuli, president and CEO of DataWind.

In April, technology firm HCL Infosystems launched the MyEdu Tab, which is priced at around US$230 for the K-12 version. The device comes preloaded with educational applications and also books from the National Council of Educational Research and Training, a government organization. Anand Ekambaram, senior vice-president and head of learning at HCL Infosystems, is in the process of partnering with more than 30 educational institutes across India for MyEdu Tab. "MyEdu Tab has content offline and can be accessed over the cloud. It allows students to learn at their own pace," Ekambaram notes. "With a topic revision application and a self-assessment engine, students can evaluate their skills and knowledge on their own. Teachers can upload content, which can be accessed by students and parents for tasks such as homework and progress reports on their respective devices. The parent can monitor the progress of his or her child through the cloud-based ecosystem."

Earlier this year, Micromax, a leading Indian handset manufacturer, also launched an edutainment device called Funbook. Micromax has also partnered with Pearson and Everonn to make available relevant content for students. Susha John, director and CEO at Everonn, was upbeat at the launch. "Digital learning facilitated through tablets will revolutionize the educational space," John said. "Everonn has invested in developing content and services targeted toward tablet audiences. To start with, we will offer our school curriculum-learning modules ... and at home live tuition products on the Funbook. Students can now have access to good teachers, educational content and a great learning experience anytime, anywhere."

At Pearson, Max Gabriel, senior vice-president and chief technology officer, is "focusing on K-12 content in English to begin with. We are sitting on a huge repository of existing content. Adding the right level of interactivity and richer experience will be our priority." Meanwhile, Educomp is gearing up to launch content that is device agnostic and can be run on any tablet.

But even as schools in India are going through this transformation powered by technology, one key question is how big a role technology will play in the education sector.

In an earlier interview S. Sadagopan, founder-director at the International Institute of Information Technology in Bangalore, pointed out that there are four parts to learning -- lectures, library, laboratory and life -- noting that, "Technology plays a critical role in all these." Kabir of Technopak adds another perspective. "Despite numerous studies on the impact of ICT in education, the outcomes remain difficult to measure and open to much debate. It needs to be understood that technology is only an enabler and a force multiplier and cannot be treated as a panacea. We believe that impressive gains in teaching-learning outcomes are possible only through an integrated approach rather than a piecemeal intervention."

Don Huesman, managing director of Wharton's innovation group, recommends caution in considering potential investments in educational technologies. "These are very exciting times for online and distance education technologies, but there are risks facing parents, educators and policy makers in evaluating the opportunities these new technologies, and their proponents, represent."

Huesman points to the recent growth in high-quality, free, online educational courseware offered on websites like the Khan Academy and the Math Forum, as well as the work of the Open Learning Initiative in developing intelligent cognitive tutors and learning analytics. "But such technologies, available from a global network of resources, only provide value when understood, chosen and integrated into a local educational community," he says. As an illustration, Huesman offers the example of cyber kiosks, provided in recent years by foundations at no cost to rural communities in India, exacerbating the "gender divide" in many traditional communities in which young women congregating at public cyber cafes, also frequented by young men, would be considered taboo. "Interventions by governments and NGOs must be inclusive of local community concerns and aware of local political complications," Huesman notes.

The MBA Degree: Is It Really Worth For Career Prospect?

By John A. Byrne (Guest Writer)

Year after year, it’s the question asked by hundreds of thousands of people around the world: Is the MBA degree worth it?

Does it really make sense to quit a job you already have, interrupt your life for two years and assume a debt burden that can often exceed six figures for the MBA?

Many strongly believe it’s only worth the time and expense if you can get into a Top 10 business school. Others see much value in a far broader range of MBA programs. And a fairly good percentage have crunched the numbers to conclude they’re better off staying put and climbing upward in the companies that already employ them.

Bonded Labours: Born To Be Bonded?

Dearth of work is forcing lakhs of families to seasonally migrate to other states in search of their livelihood. Here their children are forced to work as bonded labourers in the brick kilns, depriving them of their childhood, while the administration turns a blind eye.

Poverty entails sacrifice. When resource availability is scarce, one has to sacrifice for others. Poor migrant labourers from the remote villages of Odisha face this predicament daily.

Kamalini Bangula, 18 dropped out of school just after she passed class 5. Marginal farmers Tapi and Tulusa Bangula, parents of Kamalini and two more children, could hardly provide two square meals to the whole family, forcing them to migrate out of the state to Hyderabad, Tirupati, Visakhapatnam and other places to work in brick kilns. Ten years back, when the family first migrated, Kamalini had no choice but to stay with her family to help with brick making. Her sacrifice however did not go in vain. Now she is paying for her younger sibling’s education, who study in class ten and three, out of her income. When the family moves out, these children would stay with their uncle (elder brother of Tapi) to continuing schooling. “Let my sister’s dream of becoming a teacher come true!” says Kamalini wishing all the success to her younger sister. This time they have taken 35,000 rupees from a middleman to work in a brick kiln in the Cuttack district of Odisha.

Hundreds of thousands of families from drought prone western part of the state seasonally migrate to other states in search of work, through a well entrenched and exploitative middlemen system, characterised by hefty advance payment and tacit bondage of labour. Dearth of work in villages forces them out. Child labour is implicit in brick kiln industries where most of these families work. This is how Urban India, that demands more bricks for its real estate boom, thrives at the cost of poor children from rural areas. Laws to ban child labour in hazardous industries and to ensure primary education to children between 6-14 years have hardly produced the desired impact. Child labour continues unabated. 

A study by International Labour Organisation (ILO) conducted with Aide Et Action India (AEAI) in 2011-12 in Balangir, Nuapada and Kalahandi districts of Odisha, finds that as many as 11 percent of the total migrants are children in the age group of 6-14, whose education has been guaranteed by the Right to Education Law, 2009. Estimates from various sources put the number of migrant workers at around 2.5 to 3 hundred thousand from the western Odisha districts alone, about 85 percent of whom migrate to other states (Source: ILO study, 2011-12). So the number of children in this age group could well be between 25,000 to 30,000. Has the state done enough to protect their right to education?

Initiatives have been taken jointly by the government and the civil societies to work out two models for the education of migrant children. One is to open seasonal hostels in the villages to house the children of migrating families when their parents are away and the other is to run work-site schools in the host states and teach children in their native language. The latter entails a strong inter-state arrangement where Odia teachers and text books are to be sent to Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, the states with the maximum influx of migrant Odia labourers. Although last year was a disaster for the state in opening such hostels, for the year 2012-13 it has allocated funds for retaining 5389 students. 

During my recent tour of the villages in Belpada block of Balangir district, I found some of the hostels doing reasonably well. But in many cases the hostels have simply not come though and several children have migrated from their villages. While in some cases they were opened quite late after several families had already migrated. Babejori village of Gudhighat panchayat under Muribahal block is a case in point. November to January is the peak season of migration. Hostels should have opened by the first week of November to retain children of migrant workers.

On the other hand, Andhra Pradesh, which has taken a giant leap in providing education to the migrant children, claims that it taught 6453 Odia migrant children in the year 2011-12. However due to a lack of proper coordination between the education departments of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, the children could not get adequate Odia text books, although Odia teachers were made available. Sridhar Mether of Aide Et Action India, the NGO that partnered with the AP government in teaching migrant children says “We need to have different type of curriculum, which is more activity based, to keep the children involved.” 

The training of the migrant teachers and the quality of education remain a grey area. A willing Commissioner-cum-Secretary of Mass Education Department of Government of Odisha Ms Usha Padhee says “I understand that current inter-state arrangement to provide education to the Odia migrant children in other states is adhoc. We have made arrangements this time for timely delivery of text books in Andhra, Tamil Nadu and other states. They are our children. We are seriously pondering on having long term plans to ensure basic education of migrant children.”

Performance of the much hyped Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme (MGNREGA) in these districts, aimed to check distress migration, can well be an example of how a well designed law can get off-track when it is implemented, if the politicians and bureaucrats lack the will. During the current financial year (April 2012 to January 2013), in Balangir district an average of 28 days of work has been provided to 61,500 families, which is one fourth of the total families having Job Cards in the district. In Nuapada district, 30 days of work has been provided to 27,600 families, which is one fourth of the total Job card holders. In financial terms, the families have got about 3600 rupees as wages under MGNREGA. The government expects to check the migration of these families by providing them with such paltry wages and that too with exorbitant delay in payment. 

On the other hand middlemen offer a sum of 35,000 rupees at a time to a single family before migration. Recently the state government has decided to provide 150 days of work under MGNREGA against the minimum limit of 100 days in these two districts. One wonders what difference it would make to the schemes performance. “Till the basic issues of providing employment in time of need and timely payment remain unaddressed, only increasing the number of days will not curb distressed migration” opines Rajkishor Mishra, the Odisha Advisor to Right to Food Commission of Supreme Court.

Brick kilns in the country are one of the biggest employers of child labour apart from cotton geneing, carpet industries, jari work, diamond polishing etc. Even though they are being educated, the children continue to work in the kilns at night. The labour department officials in AP remain tight-lipped on the issue of child labour in brick kilns. Umi Daniel, who has done pioneering work on the education of migrant children, says “One way to prevent child labour is to check the children at the source area. Strict enforcement of the anti-child labour laws in the worksites is a must to stop the menace.”