Page 20 - EW July 2022

Education News

In particular, establishment of international schools THEY SAID IT
affiliated with offshore examination boards such as In-
ternational Baccalaureate (IB), Geneva/The Hague and “The RSS has done this at their shakhas
Cambridge Assessment International Education (CAIE), for years now, catching hold of children at
UK, in Hyderabad (pop.10 million), the admin capital of a very young age, implanting in them the
Telangana (pop.38.5 million). During the past ten years, story of a narrow ‘Akhand Bharat’, killing
over 20 greenfield international schools with globally their scientific temperament and replacing it
benchmarked infrastructure, expat headmasters and
highly-qualified teachers have become operational in with extreme edicts — an action plan entirely
this city of nawabs and pearls. based on the idea that young brains are more
Among the new international schools that have malleable...”
set up shop in Hyderabad in recent years are Indus Priyank Kharge, Karnataka Congress legislator, on the
International, Sancta Maria, Jain International, textbooks revision controversy in the state (The News
Silver Oaks and Oakridge International, all highly Minute, June 11)
ranked in the annual EducationWorld India School
Rankings league tables. Moreover the city, which has “Today the Republican-controlled Supreme
transformed into a bustling hub of the 21st century ICT Court has achieved their dark, extreme goal
(information communication technologies) industry, of ripping away a woman's right to make her
has also attracted the own reproductive health decisions.”
attention of global
private school chains. Nancy Patricia Pelosi, speaker of the US House of
Representatives on the Supreme Court overturning
In November 2019, women’s abortion rights (Times of India, June 25)
the UK-based Cognita
Group which owns/
manages 90 primary- “In any place around the world, it is very
secondary schools in important that people be allowed to express
eight countries around themselves freely, journalists be allowed to
the world, planted its express themselves freely and without the
first flag on Indian threat of any harassment.”
soil in Hyderabad by Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for United Nations
acquiring the CAIE and Secretary General Antonio Guterres, on the arrest
IB-affiliated Chirec Ratna Reddy of Alt-News co-founder and journalist Mohammed
International School Zubair in India (Scroll.in, June 29)
(estb.1989). Last January, the UK-based International
Schools Partnership, which owns/manages over 50 “The savage execution of Kanhaiya Lal in
schools in 13 countries with an aggregate 45,000 Udaipur will deepen the darkest forebodings
students, invested in Sancta Maria International School,
Hyderabad. about India’s future. It is important to name
cademics in Hyderabad attribute the spurt in num- this gruesome act for what it is, without
Aber of high-end international schools mushrooming aestheticizing it. It was an execution and not
in the city of pearls to a combination of factors. Among a murder.”
them: Hyderabad’s swift rise as a ICT industry and re- Pratap Bhanu Mehta, public intellectual, on the
lated businesses hub with several transnational and do- beheading of Lal by Islamic radicals (Indian Express,
mestic majors including Amazon, Apple, Google, Face- June 30)
book and TCS, Infosys and Wipro having established
large offices, and the conducive climate created by the “A major failure of the government’s energy
TRS government for foreign investors who include Ikea, policy is the decline in India’s domestic crude
Accenture and Walmart. In turn, these corporates have oil production. In 2021-22, the production
recruited thousands of highly-qualified and well-paid IT of crude oil from domestic wells fell to 28.4
and business professionals from abroad and across the
country who want the best education for their children, million tonnes. Shockingly that’s even lower
and are ready to pay for it. than the production of crude oil in 1994-95
“International schools are increasingly being pre- (32.2 million tonnes).”
ferred over family-managed private schools because Minhaz Merchant, journalist, columnist and biographer
they offer globally respected syllabuses and cur- (BusinessWorld, July 2)

20 EDUCATIONWORLD JULY 2022