Spread over 125 acres on the outskirts of the garden city of Bangalore and constructed at a project cost of over Rs.50 crore, The International School, Bangalore (TISB, estb. 1999) got off to a flying start in establishing its reputation as a genuine international school. Currently TISB (annual fees: Rs.3 lakh for day scholars and Rs.4 lakh for boarders), promoted by the Bangalore-based education entrepreneur Dr. K.P. Gopalkrishna, also the chairman-promoter of the garden city’s five academically front-rank National Public Schools, boasts 244 foreign students from 16 countries.

But seven years on with a plethora of five-star international schools, which have mushroomed on the peripheries of Bangalore and across the country providing stiff competition for students and particularly faculty, cracks are beginning to show on the gleaming façade of this pioneer K-XII international co-ed school.

Ab initio the unique selling proposition of TISB was that it imported a (white) British academic with a reassuring home counties accent as headmaster of the school, perhaps the first such import in post-independence India. This high-cost strategy paid off spectacularly with a flood of new and old rich parents anxious to provide their children world class, globally accepted education signing on pronto. But given that the self-made Gopalkrishna’s authoritarian style of management is somewhat to the right of BJP strongman Narendra Modi, the first British principal John Macfarlane, resigned within a year. Following a global search, in 2000, Hector S. MacDonald was appointed India’s highest paid headmaster ($110,000 per year plus housing and other perks) of TISB. Although MacDonald stuck it out for his contractual term of five years, he declined to renew his contract. Since then another English academic, the low-profile Dr. Matthew Sullivan has been appointed principal and is reportedly already chaffing at the bit.

It’s well-known in academic circles that the root cause of all the faculty-level coming and going within TISB is that Gopalkrishna and his daughter Bindu Hari who as vice-principal is dean of academics, control all operations of the school with an iron fist without bothering about the pretence of the velvet glove. The consequence has been a steady and accelerating flight of teachers notwithstanding the high pay (Rs.30,000 per month onwards) and enabling infrastructure of TISB. During the past year, 18 teachers have fled the school, many of them to the neighbouring five-star Indus International School (est. 2003).

With all international and upscale schools experiencing an acute shortage of teachers, unless there is a mindset sea-change at the top, hard days are in store for the country’s pioneer international school.

Comprador comeuppance

Post-liberalisation India’s arrogant comprador managers with five-figure dollar remuneration packages who exhibit scarcely concealed contempt for lesser indigenous mortals, had it coming to them. The Indian affiliates of the US-based fizzy drink giants Pepsico and Coca Cola corporations which have taken a massive hit following the disclosure by the Delhi-based NGO Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) that pesticide content levels in their colas are 50 percent higher than officially permitted in water, are manned by precisely such Hari Sadhu (of the famous Naukri.com television ad) types.

According to a research study conducted by Carma International described as a global media analysis firm by the Economic Times (August 25), three-fourths of all media reports were uncharitable towards the two cola giants after the CSE disclosure. According to the study which analysed 629 media reports in the television and print media between August 3-16, while government and CSE officials received 231 and 95 ‘mentions’ in the media, cola company managers averaged a mere 37.

Of course the cola companies have a case. In under-policed, self-proclaimed socialist India fashioned by grasping politicians and bureaucrats and purblind central planners, pesticide content levels in ground-water and the nation’s aquifers are several thousand times the prescribed norm and all fruits, veggies and milk are loaded with pesticide content far greater than found in colas. Ironically it was the print medium hitherto beneath the contempt of the smug compradors of the cola companies, which in the interests of justice and fair play carried the can for Pepsi and Coke, highlighting that they were more sinned against than sinning. So maybe next time much-too-busy Pepsi and Coke managers will take that call or respond to letters from newspapers and magazines, including bleats from this tiny organ.

Time for worry beads

There’s trouble at the top in the Delhi-based CISCE (Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations) which has 1,502 of India’s top private schools — including Doon, Mayo (Ajmer), St. Paul’s (Darjeeling), Bishop Cotton (Bangalore and Shimla) — affiliated with it. Rita Wilson, deputy secretary of the council who was holding charge as chief executive of CISCE following the suspension of Francis Fanthome, MP on corruption charges in May 2005, has resigned.

Given that Xavier Pinto who for many years served as deputy secretary-general retired prior to Fanthome’s suspension, there is a leadership vacuum in India’s most preferred English medium school examinations board. With the chances of Fanthome’s return to office fading — an enquiry conducted by Justice (Retd) Michael Saldahna of the Karnataka high court shows few signs of early conclusion — Wilson’s peremptory resignation has prompted headmasters in affiliated blue-chip schools to reach for their worry beads.

For the past year, syllabus and examination reforms in CISCE have been on hold following the failure of the board of governors of the council to take a decision about Fanthome’s status and his future in CISCE. Although Wilson says she has resigned to return to academia, council insiders say her resignation was precipitated by the board’s prevarication about confirming her as secretary-general. 

Meanwhile even as Justice Saldahna’s inquiry proceeds at snail’s pace, with offshore examination boards such as CIE (UK) and IBO (Geneva) having entered the affiliations race, worry beads are being fingered in CISCE as well, now that there is no obvious successor to Fanthome.