Your cover story ‘Few takers for grudging invitation’ (EW October) has accurately anal-ysed why foreign university managements are not jumping with joy, following the HRD ministry’s ordinance allowing foreign education institutions to establish campuses in India. The slothful bureaucracy, corruption, and archaic rules and regulations are so cumber-some to navigate that the best-intentioned foreign varsities would get cold feet. Moreover the many scams and scandals plaguing the UPA-II government have dented India’s image in the global community. Foreign universities — the global Top 400 in particular — have built prestigious reputations over several decades and wouldn’t want to risk losing them over an Indian misadventure.

If the government is serious about its foreign institutions initiative, it must first liberalise the higher education regulatory system, set out acceptable conditions and establish a single-window clearance cell. These measures will infuse confidence in foreign univer-sities. An ordinance full of dire warnings won’t persuade them to invest in India.
Deepak Sharma
Delhi  

Wrong target

The dress code for university students proposed by the Tamil Nadu government is ridiculous (Education News ‘Trivial pursuits’, EW October). Students in colleges and universities are adults and perfectly capable of making choices about their attire; imposition of a dress code is unnecessary interference and violation of their personal freedoms. At a time when the higher education system in the country is at its nadir, academics, politicians and policy makers are wasting time in this absurd debate instead of contemporising syllabuses and pedagogies, which should be their priorities.

I agree with the author that in Tamil Nadu, the talibanisation of college campuses is being prompted by “socially backward politicians-turned educationists” who have appointed themselves guardians of public morality. Curiously these people have nothing to say about the more than “indecent” — in fact obscene — attire of Tamil film heroines who caper about in clothes leaving noth-ing to the imagination. If these arbiters of public morality want to seriously curb gender crimes and safeguard Indian culture and society, they should target the Tamil film industry which portrays women as objects of lust and promotes molestation and sexual crimes.
Sujata Ramaswamy
Chennai

Invaluable contributions

Congratulations for organising the EW India School Rankings Awards Nite 2013 in Delhi (Pictorial Essay, EW October). It’s a wonderful initiative to acknowledge and honour the excellent work being done by schools and educationists across the country.

I was especially impressed by your lifetime achievement in education leadership award recipients — Sumer Singh, Augustine and Grace Pinto, and Achyuta Samanta. Their citations reveal the invaluable contributions they have made towards quality school and higher education in the country. Indeed these people are the true heroes of Indian education. Keep up the good work!
Ramakant Deshpande
Mumbai

Surprising scores

In the EducationWorld India School Rankings 2013 (EW September), Delhi Public School (DPS), Bokaro Steel City, has been ranked #3 in the state of Jharkhand and #109 nationally. This is indeed very surprising as our school has been ranked all-India #1 on the parameter of ‘academic reputation’ for the past three years.

Browsing through the parameters we discovered several other anomalies. We have been awarded 59 points on the parameter ‘teacher welfare and devel-opment’. This is surprising since our service rules are on a par with Central government rules, and salaries are higher than of Central government teachers. Our teachers are provided with facilities such as residence, medical, CPF, TA, gratuity, LTC, free education for two children etc. Moreover we regularly send our teachers to partici-pate in national and international workshops.

On the ‘internationalism’ parameter we got just 59 points. For your information we have been conferred the British Council International School Award (2011-2014), and we collaborate with many schools in the UK, Australia, Germany and China for student and teacher exchange programmes.

In the light of the above mentioned facts, we feel the survey’s results are not justified.

Please review our ranking in the context of the above information. 
Dr. Hemlata S. Mohan
DPS, Bokaro Steel City
Bokaro

The scores were awarded by 828 sample respondents in eastern India including principals, parents, teachers and educationists, not by EducationWorld — Editor

First objective rankings

Congratulations for your EducationWorld India School Rankings 2013 issue (EW September)! It is wonderful that for the first time ever in the history of Indian education, objective rankings of CISCE-affiliated schools according to the actual academic performance of their students, were published.

Such rankings based on actual performance in board exams — routinely compiled and made public every year in OECD countries — provide parents valuable information about the relative quality of schools in their cities and towns on the academic parameter. It is commendable that EducationWorld has become the pioneer in bringing greater transparency into school quality analysis in India.
Dr. Geeta Gandhi Kingdon
Chief Operating Officer
City Montessori School
Gomti Nagar, Lucknow