Bharat Rakshak

The council’s decision does not need to be ratified by the cabinet. But the Indian Institutes of Technology will have to take security clearance from the home ministry before appointing a selected person, a standard procedure before recruiting a foreign national for a government job on contract.

So far, the Indian Citizenship Act had been the main bottleneck in appointing a foreigner as a regular director in any institute of national importance. The law says only Indian nationals can be considered for permanent posts.

A global study of learning standards in 74 countries has ranked India all but at the bottom, sounding a wake-up call for the country’s education system. China came out on top.

It was the first time that India participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), coordinated by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). India’s participation was in a pilot project, confined to schools from Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh.....

.....For literacy, Himachal Pradesh ranked 4 and Tamil Nadu 11 in the National Family Health Survey released in 2007.

Yet, in the PISA study, Tamil Nadu ranked 72 and Himachal Pradesh 73, just ahead of Kyrgyzstan in mathematics and overall reading skills. The eastern Chinese metropolis of Shanghai topped the PISA rankings in all three categories—overall reading skills, mathematical and scientific literacy.

My vague impression is that Indians tend to make more sophisticated marketers than Chinese do. One American consultant said that the typical Chinese factory owner's idea of marketing is: "Real cheap! You buy now!" But it's important for Indians not to fall for their own marketing. India needs less spin and more China-like grim determination if it's going to improve its fundamental institutions.

By the way, all the talk in the press about Indian benefiting from a "demographic dividend" of a rapidly growing population is respectable Davos Man craziness at its craziest.

More generally, India conforms to the Davos model of elite advancement while not talking about the masses because we, uh, don't want to hurt their feelings. In contrast, Dengist China conforms more to old-fashioned nationalism -- the kind of thing that worked in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Germany, and, perhaps most of all, in pre-1846 England and in pre-1960s USA.

A report released Tuesday by an educational advocacy group founded by retired general and former Bush administration Secretary of State Colin Powell finds that almost half of all public high school students in the US’ fifty largest cities fail to graduate.
The report states that only 52 percent of public high school students in these cities graduate after four years, while the national average is 70 percent. Some 1.2 million public high school students drop out every year, according to researchers.
The report finds that, overall, 17 of the public school systems in 50 major cities have graduation rates of 50 percent or lower, and the average graduation rate of all 50 systems is 58 percent. The findings are based on federal Department of Education statistics for the 2003-2004 school year.
The study, sponsored by America’s Promise Alliance and prepared by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, also shows a staggering difference between the drop-out rates in major urban school districts and those in adjoining and more affluent suburban districts. Overall, high school graduation rates are 15 percentage points lower in urban schools as compared to those in the suburbs. In twelve cities, the disparities exceed 25 percentage points.
In some cases, the gap between the cities, with their large concentrations of working class and poor residents, and the suburbs is even greater. The widest discrepancies cited in the report are in Baltimore, Maryland, where only 34.6 percent of public high school students graduate, and its suburbs, where 81.5 percent acquire diplomas after four years, and in Columbus, Ohio, with a graduation rate of 40.9 percent as compared to 82.9 percent in the suburbs.
The city-suburb split is also immense in such metropolitan centers as New York (47.4 percent vs. 82.9 percent), Cleveland (42.2 percent vs. 78.1 percent), Philadelphia (49.2 percent vs. 82.4 percent), Chicago (55.7 percent vs. 84.1 percent), Los Angeles (57.1 percent vs. 77.9 percent), and Atlanta (46.1 percent vs. 61.8 percent).
A separate chart showing the graduation rates for the principal school districts in the 50 largest US cities points to the virtual collapse of public education in major urban centers.
Detroit, by many calculations the poorest US city, graduates less than 25 percent (24.9 percent) of its public high school students. Indianapolis Public Schools graduate 30.5 percent of their students, and the figures for the Cleveland Municipal City School District and the Baltimore City Public School System are 34.1 percent and 34.6 percent respectively.
Powell founded America’s Promise Alliance, which is chaired by his wife, Alma, and is described as a joint effort of nonprofit groups, corporations, charities, community leaders, faith-based organizations and individuals. The former Secretary of State said of the study, “When more than 1 million students a year drop out of high school, it’s more than a problem, it’s a catastrophe.”

^^^

Read the report still. A lot of things on why behaviors in India are illogical fall into place when looking at the scores on reading. And I doubt that elite private schools will perform earth shakingly better (math yes, reading no).

Himachal Pradesh-India and Tamil Nadu-India did not meet PISA standards for student sampling. Due to
irregularities in the student sample numbers, it was established after the testing that these economies sampled
from student lists that were often incomplete: not all 15-year-olds within the school were listed. It was not
possible to determine whether any bias existed in the obtained sample. Caution should be exercised when using
the data from Himachal Pradesh-India or Tamil Nadu-India and when interpreting the reported analyses.

Those an-chors are not idiots. They are paid to tell lies on behalf of the CON party . We all know that. You are talking like OECD is idiot free region .

The “debate” in India today is defined as more than half a dozen people of varying political and intellectual leanings shouting at you and at each other. Then there is the ubiquitous anchor, who adds to and usually ups the ante in order to achieve maximum cacophony.

Indian students rank 2nd last in global test
Hemali Chhapia, TNN | Jan 15, 2012, 02.24AM IST


MUMBAI: Across the world, India is seen as an education powerhouse - based largely on the reputation of a few islands of academic excellence such as the IITs. But scratch the glossy surface of our education system and the picture turns seriously bleak.

Fifteen-year-old Indians who were put, for the first time, on a global stage stood second to last, only beating Kyrgyzstan when tested on their reading, math and science abilities.

India ranked second last among the 73 countries that participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), conducted annually to evaluate education systems worldwide by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) Secretariat. The survey is based on two-hour tests that half a million students are put through.

China's Shanghai province, which participated in PISA for the first time, scored the highest in reading. It also topped the charts in mathematics and science.

"More than one-quarter of Shanghai's 15 year olds demonstrated advanced mathematical thinking skills to solve complex problems, compared to an OECD average of just 3%," noted the analysis.

The states of Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh, showpieces for education and development, were selected by the central government to participate in PISA, but their test results were damning.

15-yr-old Indians 200 points behind global topper

Tamil Nadu and Himachal, showpieces of India's education and development, fared miserably at the Programme for International Student Asssment, conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Secretariat.

An analysis of the performance of the two states showed:

In math, considered India's strong point, they finished second and third to last, beating only Kyrgyzstan

When the Indian students were asked to read English text, again Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh were better than only Kyrgyzstan. Girls were better than boys

The science results were the worst. Himachal Pradesh stood last, this time behind Kyrgyzstan. Tamil Nadu was slightly better and finished third from the bottom

The average 15-year-old Indian is over 200 points behind the global topper. Comparing scores, experts estimate that an Indian eighth grader is at the level of a South Korean third grader in math abilities or a second-year student from Shanghai when it comes to reading skills.

The report said: "In Himachal, 11% of students are estimated to have a proficiency in reading literacy that is at or above the baseline level needed to participate effectively and productively in life. It follows that 89% of students in Himachal are estimated to be below that baseline level."

Clearly, India will have to ramp up its efforts and get serious about what goes on in its schools. "Better educational outcomes are a strong predictor for future economic growth," OECD secretary-general Angel Gurria told The Times of India.

"While national income and educational achievement are still related, PISA shows that two countries with similar levels of prosperity can produce very different results. This shows that an image of a world divided neatly into rich and well-educated countries and poor and badly-educated countries is now out of date."

In case of scientific literacy levels in TN, students were estimated to have a mean score that was below the means of all OECD countries, but better than Himachal. Experts are unsure if selecting these two states was a good idea.

Shaheen Mistry, CEO of Teach For India programme, said, "I am glad that now there is data that lets people know how far we still have to go."

St. Xavier’s frees students from subject straitjacket
A STAFF REPORTER

Here’s to the future St. Xavier’s College graduate: first-class major in physics with chemistry, history and film studies.

Beginning the next academic session, Bengal’s first autonomous college will blur the lines between science and humanities, allowing undergraduate students to pick any combination of subjects in the prospectus.

Yes, you read it right, any combination.

“We will not have honours and pass subjects, we will replace that with major and electives. Students can choose any elective they want to,” Father Felix Raj, the principal of the college, told Metro.

The freedom to straddle disciplines is meant to open the floodgates for customised courses that don’t restrict students to the straitjacket of combinations like math, physics and chemistry or economics, political science and sociology.

So, quirky though it may sound, a student majoring in English can opt for biology as an elective and a chemistry major can widen his or her horizons with history for an elective subject.

The rules require a majoring student to take 16 departmental courses as part of the major subject and six extra-departmental courses, which are all electives. “The degree will be granted on the basis of one’s performance in all the subjects, though the credits for departmental courses will be more than those for the elective subjects,” Felix Raj said.

Not only will students be free to choose the electives, they do not have to study the entire subject. For instance, math as elective will give a student the option of picking between the algebra and calculus papers instead of being forced to study all the papers.

“We want students to enjoy their studies and, at the same time, not ignore their pass subjects, as is the tendency under the present system,” the principal said.

Universities like Cambridge also allow students to combine a variety of subjects and even give them time to understand what suits them. Xavier’s won’t parrot that model.

Students at Xavier’s would need to choose their areas of specialisation at the very beginning, unlike Cambridge where students can start out with a variety of courses before choosing what to specialise in.

At MIT, it is mandatory for science students to take humanities and social science courses.

So what if a humanities student decides to opt for a pure science subject as elective despite not studying science at the plus-two level?

St. Xavier’s has planned a student-support system within the curriculum, under which teachers can offer tutorials to students who are weak in particular subjects. “If a student struggles with a particular subject after two months of studying, there will be the option of tutorials,” Felix Raj said.

The proposed curriculum also aims to rationalise students’ workload by making it more practical.

Internships are being made mandatory for all students. They will also have to complete a project each in the third year that will carry 100 marks.

The revamped curriculum will also allow students to accumulate credits and take sabbaticals between semesters. So a student, with prior permission from the college, can clear all the credits in the first year, then take a break and come back to complete the course.

What it means is that a student can complete graduation in up to 10 years if he or she wishes to study in a staggered manner.

Has Xavier’s stolen a march over Presidency with this innovation?

The head of Karnataka’s premier technical education umbrella institution, Visvesvaraya Technical University (VTU), failed in seven of the ten semesters of his undergraduate degree course in mechanical engineering.

He finally managed to pass the course, but only after many attempts, adding up to a total of 25 marks sheets. He now heads a university which has 200 engineering colleges functioning under it. And the High Court is looking at his claims that he passed in first class. The stack of marks statements of his shows that he passed only 3 semesters of the 10 without failing in any subject, making repeated attempts to pass some of the papers in the rest of the semesters. He could pass two subjects of the seventh semester only after he passed the 9th and 10th semesters.

The simple fact of the matter is that China will always excel over India.

As I noted in the other thread:

"First of all, the average IQ of India is only 81.

Second, on studies of Indians in Africa, Indians don't score much higher than blacks:

http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushto ... ensIVb.pdf

Third, in just one decade, India has already burned through the very shallow right side of its bell curve:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 19826.html


I know that white people like to Romanticize Indians because they've met a few smart ones (i.e. a non-representative sample from the far right of the Indian bell curve) but for those of us who've been to India it's pretty easy to see that Indians aren't much brighter than blacks and are similar to blacks in many of their behaviors."

"The IQ structures of the two giga-countries, China and India, demand more intense study, in part because the future history of the world will hinge in no small part on their endowments of human capital. The demography of India is especially complex due to its caste system, which resembles Jim Crow on steroids and acid. By discouraging intermarriage, caste has subdivided the Indian people into an incredible number of micro-races. In India, according to the dean of population genetics, L.L. Cavalli-Sforza, "The total number of endogamous communities today is around 43,000..." We know that some of those communities - such as the Zoroastrian Parsees of Bombay - are exceptionally intelligent.

But we can't say with any confidence what is the long run IQ potential of Indians overall. Their current IQ score (81) is low, especially compared to China (100), the other country with hundreds of millions of poor peasants. Yet, keep in mind just how narrow life in rural India was for so long. In 1952, on the fifth anniversary of independence, the Indian government commissioned a survey to find out if the average Indian villager had heard yet that the British had gone. The study was quietly cancelled when early results showed that the average villager had never heard that the British had ever arrived!"

This 25% quota for poor is another farce by the UPA on India. It is the governments responsibility to provide quality education to the children of the country, why should private players foot the bill while they keep absconding from their job. Someone should file a stronger case with the SC. The private schools in this event should at least get tax exemption, i mean what is their incentive. I am not propagating cut throat capitalism in the education sector, but the education ministry's job cannot be done by hardworking people who have invested their money in schools.

1. Article 21A casts an obligation on the State to provide

free and compulsory education to children of the age of

6 to 14 years and not on unaided non-minority and

minority educational institutions.


2. Rights of children to free and compulsory education

guaranteed under Article 21A and RTE Act can be

enforced against the schools defined under Section 2(n)

of the Act, except unaided minority and non-minority

schools not receiving any kind of aid or grants to meet

their expenses from the appropriate governments or

local authorities.