Dr. P.C. Thomas, founder-principal of the state-of-the-art Good Shepherd International School (GSIS), Ooty, was the genial host of the 48th annual conference of the Association of Schools for the Indian School Certificate (AIISC). The three-day conference (November 23-25) held in the verdant 90-acre Mt. Palada campus of GSIS was a slickly choreographed faculty-student event which showcased the institutional management skills of this hill station’s largest fully residential school, and mightily impressed 700 principals of the country’s top-rung schools affiliated to the Delhi-based Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE). 

“We have been associated with the CISCE board since we admitted our first batch of students in 1977. During the past 28 years a substantial share of the credit for GSIS having transformed into the largest and most-respected primary-secondary school in the Nilgiris needs to be given to the council for the excellent syllabus, curriculum and teacher training support it has given us. Therefore it was a privilege to host this year’s AIISC conference, which gave us the opportunity to exchange notes and discuss new pedagogies at a time when school education is experiencing radical changes around the world,” says Thomas who was awarded a doctorate in education management by the Pacific Columbia University, USA.

Starting his academic career as a teacher in Sainik School, Bijapur, Thomas served as principal of several reputed schools including Cordite Factory School, Aruvankadu (Tamil Nadu) and Breeks Memorial, Ooty. In 1977 he purchased and refurbished the crumbling Baroda Summer Palace from his Ooty-based family’s savings to promote GSIS with 54 students of both sexes. Since then GSIS has grown in strength and currently boasts an enrollment of 1,200 students including 400 from over 40 countries such as UK, Italy, Australia, Bhutan, Kuwait, Malaysia, etc.

Sited amid the scenic Nilgiri ranges, GSIS now comprises two campuses: the erstwhile Baroda Summer Palace located on the original 20-acre wooded space overlooking Ooty lake which hosts kindergarten-class V students and the sprawling 90-acre state-of-the-art campus completed in 1999 atop Mt. Palada for classes VI-XII.

Certainly no expense or effort has been spared to build its impressive infrastructure facilities. Among them: a half Olympic size six-lane indoor heated swimming pool maintained at a constant temperature of 270 C; an Olympic size athletics stadium with an eight-lane 400-metre synthetic track and facilities for all indoor and outdoor sports including football, basketball, volleyball, tennis, badminton, squash, rifle shooting and horse riding. Residential facilities include 30-strong centrally heated separate dormitories for boys and girls, with one bathroom unit for three pupils.

Thomas is strongly committed to making GSIS into a globally competitive institution. “The way to achieve this is to upgrade teachers’ skills, so that they are able to teach international syllabuses and curriculums. Two years ago we introduced the IGCSE curriculum as an option for class X students and the IBO diploma for classes XI-XII. Within the next two years our teachers will be ready to teach the IGCSE ‘A’ level curriculum,” he says.

Quite obviously, Thomas takes the word ‘international’ in GSIS seriously.

Srinidhi Raghavendra (Bangalore)

AIS chairperson

Against the backdrop of massive government intervention in the education sector — and for the first time targetting India’s globally respected independent schools in the draft Right to Education Bill, 2005 — the managements of 16 of India’s top bracket schools affiliated with foreign examination boards such as CIE (Cambridge International Examinations), IBO (International Baccalaureate Organisation, Geneva) and AP (Advanced Placement, USA) among others have constituted the Association of International Schools (India) to safeguard and represent the collective interests of internationally affiliated schools which are attracting students from around the world. According to a news report in the Economic Times (December 24) there are an estimated 70 international schools in India with 10,000 international students (excluding children of NRIs and expatriates) studying in these capital-intensive institutions offering state-of-the-art infrastructure and impressively low teacher-pupil ratios.

“Although AIS is a representative organisation of internationally affiliated schools, its broader aim is to raise school education standards in general across the country. We intend to do this by disseminating new pedagogies and international best practices in academics, sports, the arts and holistic education,” says Anu Monga principal of the highly-respected Bangalore International School (BIS) (estb. 1969), who has been elected the first chairperson of AIS.

A psychology postgraduate of Delhi University, Monga taught in several top-rung schools in India including the Kodaikanal International Residential School prior to being appointed principal of the rebuilt and relocated BIS in 2002. The first school in Bangalore affiliated with a foreign examination board, the co-ed, partially residential BIS which has 300 students on its rolls instructed by 60 teachers, is currently affiliated with the CIE, IB, AP and CISCE (India) examination boards. “In the fullness of time, membership of AIS will become open to any school which benchmarks itself internationally and the association will offer member schools curriculum development, education leadership and inclusive education programmes,” she says.

According to Monga, incremental government interference with the independent schools sector is particularly ill-timed because following the economic liberalisation and deregulation initiative of 1991, a substantial number of next generation internationally benchmarked schools have been promoted and offer the opportunity of transforming post-liberalisation India into a global education provider. “India has a large, high-potential pool of teachers who need qualitative in-service training and enabling working conditions. Secondly it is also blessed with a huge community of enthusiastic, high-performance students who need to be taught through new pedagogies to help them shift from the rote system to inquiry-based learning. These initiatives have to be led by independent schools which have demonstrated the ability to deliver quality education, rather than by government which should have a hands-off policy towards them. Instead the Central and state governments should devise ways and means to promote inter-sectoral cooperation between government and independent education institutions. I am confident that like AIS, other representative organisations of private schools and trusts are more than ready to help,” says Monga.

Excellent advice. But in the current climate when cheap populism drives deep-impact policies, politicians and failed educrats seem determined to rush in where they should fear to tread.

Dilip Thakore (Bangalore)

Cerebral artist

Artist Puja Kshatriya’s ninth solo exhibition of oils on canvas assembled under the title ‘Reality and Metaphor’ at the Museum Gallery in Mumbai in early December sold out within minutes. In her new expressionist series, Kshatriya employs the facial image, specifically the human head to examine the inner conscious of her subjects. Her heads are larger than life, the visages suffused with strong emotions. The collection addresses complex aspects of interior and external relationships. Most of the works in this series feature the same male form which emerges and re-emerges, “to connect the past with the present and reality with metaphor”.

A first rank scholar of Delhi’s College of Art, where she trained under eminent artist Rameshwar Broota, Kshatriya has lived and worked in various countries and has exhibited in Singapore, Dubai, Jakarta, London apart from Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai where she had her last solo exhibition in 2003. During her 30 year career as an artist she has won several awards including the prestigious Jury’s Award at the International Festival of Art, Dubai (1994), the Chandigarh Art Museum Award (1983), and Sahitya Kala Parishad Award, New Delhi (1986).

Her works are hung in the collection of College of Art Museum and Sahitya Kala Parishad, New Delhi; Chandigarh Art Museum, Hudco Art Collection and in private and corporate collections in New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Nagpur, Chandigarh, Singapore, New York, Los Angeles, Jakarta, Dubai, Sharjah and London.

Kshatriya has a penchant for projecting textures. “What lies beneath, is always more intriguing than what is apparent on the surface. We see textures all around us, a wall with crevices or graffiti, an old piece of wood, water splashed on a window pane, a wrinkled face, textures are everywhere. The greatest challenge is to abstract them. Textures not only create a visual impact, they also communicate powerful emotions and ideas,” she enthuses.

Form and its interaction with other elements are of primary importance to her. Art is both emotional and cerebral. “Overtly emotional work, in my opinion, risks bordering on melodrama and overstatement,” she says, explaining the virtue of treading a fine line.

For leisure, Kshatriya enjoys interior design and is interested in architecture. She is also keen to work in a three-dimensional format sometime in the future. Her advice to young artists: “Hard work is of the essence. Moreover, never be afraid to experiment and destroy, because creativity and destruction are two sides of the same coin.”

Ronita Torcato (Mumbai)

True Christian

Way back in 1961 when he was a devout church-goer and activist of the Yuva Jana Sakhyam social service league in his native Kerala, Tharailathu Koshy (T.K.) Mathew learned that to be a true Christian, an individual has to be “salt to earth adding flavour to the lives of others, a light on the mountain enlightening and inspiring others, and a seed in soil to rejuvenate growth”. An agriculture graduate of Gujarat University, Mathew began his career as a professional horticulturist on the rolls of the Tamil Nadu state government. “It so happened that I went to study agriculture science in Gujarat University and by the time I got my degree, the university had been rechristened Vallabhai Patel University. My employer, the Tamil Nadu government refused to recognise my degree and a situation was created for me to resign,” recalls Mathew.

This painful disappointment proved a blessing in disguise. In 1965 he joined Caritas India where he served for 13 long years followed by a ten-year stint at the Madras-based Association for Sarva Seva Farms. An active member of the congregation of Delhi’s Marthoma Church, after a quarter century in service organisations, Mathew set about exploring ways and means to serve the abject and underprivileged in a Christian way. “Punnosose Thomas, Y. Chackochan and myself were office bearers of the Marthoma Church and naturally met quite often. After much soul-searching we asked ourselves: How can we practise our faith according to the New Testament? Thus the idea of Deepalaya was born. Because it was education that had empowered us to stand on our own feet 3,000 km from our native Kerala, we decided to gift education to the poorest of the poor,” he says. Started in 1979 with five children and a capital of Rs.17,500, Deepalaya offers education to 12,000 poor children from 84 villages in Haryana, 74 Delhi slums, and from nine hutments of Uttaranchal, who study formally and informally in its various schools and centres.

Mathew has been at the helm of Deepalaya since 1991 and is instrumental in diversifying its activities, although education remains its flagship programme. Today Deepalaya — one of Delhi’s most respected NGOs — has branched into community health, gender equity, street children and empowerment of physically challenged programmes in addition to education services. “We have been recognised as ‘resource’ under the REACH India project of USAID for capacity building of six grassroots level NGOs,” he says.

The new Right to Education Bill, 2005 is posing fresh challenges to Mathew as he continues to grapple with the state government on the issue of recognition of his schools, denied under The Delhi Education Act and Rules, 1973 for years. “The Bill is not only discriminatory, it breeds corruption. I refuse to be dishonest and therefore we have a fight on our hands,” he declares.

Nevertheless Deepalaya has acquired its own momentum and will continue to deliver education as a tool for empowerment of the poor and margina-lised. The man from a sleepy village in Alleppey district who gave up smoking and breakfast and put together the savings from these for educating the poor, is an inspirational success story to be admired and emulated.

Autar Nehru (Delhi)

Medical education pioneer

Prof. Dr C.V. Bhirmanandham, an eminent cardiologist and vice chancellor of the Tamil Nadu Dr. M.G.R Medical University (estb: 1988), has drawn up an action plan to eliminate cheating and malpractice in the university’s 217 affiliated medical and paramedical colleges. Under this master plan, the university will post examination question papers online and send them to affiliated colleges just 30 minutes before exams are scheduled to begin, to eliminate the possibility of question paper leaks.

Bhirmanandham also proposes to create an online question bank, which will further ease the process of setting question papers. “The question bank for every subject will be updated every year by a panel of senior professors who will ensure that questions are neither duplicated nor redundant. Question papers will be finalised just before examination time by panelists who will merely select numbered questions from the question bank, feed them into a computer and send them to affiliated colleges which will conduct examinations simultaneously. If computers are out of order, question papers will be faxed,” he says.

A medically qualified (MBBS and MD) alumnus of Madras University (1964), and the Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, Bhirmanandham has been instrumental in revamping the medical curriculum to suit contemporary needs, setting up a digital library at the university for the benefit of students and faculty of all affiliated institutions and introducing e-journals which can be downloaded from the university website. A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed in August 2003 between the Dr. M.G.R Medical University and the National Institute of Health, USA for a joint study on HIV positive mothers to develop ways and means to decrease the risk of mother to child transmission. Another MoU was signed with the University of Washington, USA in 2004 for collaborative studies and student/ faculty exchanges.

“There is much more to be done to curb malfeasance and to ensure uniform standards of medical education throughout Tamil Nadu. For the immediate future, however, I plan to set up a medical college for women in the state with the help of Central government grants,” says Bhirmanandham.

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)

Gaming ambassador

On a recent student recruitment drive in India, Peter Cole, head of School of Information Technology and International Projects at Murdoch University, expressed optimism about increasing the flow of Indian students to the world’s smallest continent and particularly to Murdoch. “Indian students in Australia do very well. They tend to be enthusiastic, willing to work hard, and are highly competitive. Language is usually no problem and neither is settling down in a new environment,” he says.

Cole, who visited India twice last year, is a former computer scientist with over 25 years’ experience in the IT industry. Born in Exeter (UK), after working for five years in Qatar, Cole migrated together with Brenda, his Chennai-born wife, to Australia in 1984. He began his association with Murdoch University 18 years ago as a student, and later returned to teach in the varsity’s IT faculty.

While Murdoch University (estb.1973) with a student population of 12,000 is among Oz’s premier research universities and offers a wide range of undergraduate and postgrad courses, Cole is particularly enthusiastic about the bright future awaiting Indian students seeking careers in computer games technology. “Games technology is the fastest growing area in IT. People working in this field are constantly grappling with exciting and stimulating challenges. While this industry is expanding rapidly, professionals with appropriate skills are in short supply. Graduates in games technology will find excellent career opportunities in games production companies around the world. India with its large feature films industry offers tremendous opportunities for games technology graduates,” he says.

Murdoch University offers two programmes in this subject: M.Sc (IT) with specialisation in games technology and a B.Sc in games technology. “These courses are designed to provide graduates a thorough understanding of the theory, design and programming techniques required for producing gaming software. Topics covered include games theory, design and programming, advanced graphics techniques including virtual environments, artificial intelligence, multi-player and internet games programming,” explains Cole.

But Cole is quick to add that apart from courses in this “electrifying field of the future”, Murdoch offers a wide range of degree programmes. Moreover he is all praise for the hardworking Indian student. “It’s quite amazing that we’ve never had a poorly performing Indian student. There’s a world of opportunity out there for students from the subcontinent in terms of higher education and employment. We’d love to see more of them down under,” he says.

Gaver Chatterjee (Mumbai)