A ground zero reality which communists, socialists and assorted lefties, who despite the collapse of communism worldwide continue to dominate India’s academy, refuse to acknowledge is that there is a steady exodus of pupils out of government schools, especially public primary-secondaries run by state and local governments.
The reality which education bureaucrats and ideologically obstinate academics […]
A curious anomaly of indian primary-secondary education is the literally heavy burden that even tiny children have to bear because they are obliged to lug a heavy load of text and notebooks to and from schools every day. In Maharashtra following several PIL (public interest litigation) writ petitions filed against the state government for failure […]
The southern state of Karnataka which hosts the country’s largest number of medical colleges (51), is set to introduce a 15 percent reserved quota for non-resident Indian (NRI) students — following the example of private medical colleges — in its 17 government medical colleges. Thus far, government medical colleges only admitted meritorious students from the […]
A slew of public notices, rules and regulations issued by the Delhi-based University Grants Commission (UGC) — the apex higher education supervisory organisation — relating to open and distance learning (ODL) have raised the hackles of the 13 government and seven deemed (private) universities in Tamil Nadu (pop.72 million), which offer distance education programmes.
With general election 2019 round the corner, chief minister and undisputed supremo of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) party Mamata Banerjee who harbours national ambitions, is pulling out all stops to woo the electorate of West Bengal to consolidate her support base.
West Bengal’s quota in the Lok Sabha — the lower house of Parliament in […]
“School readiness blah blah blah, school readiness, but I think schools should first be made ready to welcome every child.” Uma Mahadevan, principal secretary, women and child welfare, Karnataka government, on twitter (December 16)
“Do we need another Education Policy? The problem with education is not prescription. It is with application. How about a monitorable action […]
“Not reading specific ideas or text can be a layman’s way of dealing with contrarian thoughts. The academic style of demolishing an idea is by presenting a more logical and robust theory or idea.”
Dilip Mandal, senior journalist, on Delhi University’s proposal to drop three books written by Dalit activist Kancha Ilaiah from its MA syllabus […]
In the western seaboard state of Maharashtra — India’s most industrialised state — the tuition fees of government and private aided schools are prescribed annually by the state government. In 2011, against the backdrop of parents complaining against arbitrary fee hikes by the state’s private unaided schools, the state government enacted the Maharashtra Educational Institutions […]
After an interregnum of six years, the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE, estb.1962) — the country’s largest pan-India school examination board — issued revised affiliation and regulatory byelaws for its 20,299 affiliated schools in October.
Revision of the board’s byelaws (first notified in 1988 and revised in 2012) was ordered by its parent Union […]
On November 5, a Karnataka state government order has notified ten of the country’s 29 major languages for the purposes of qualifying as linguistic minority-promoted primary schools. They are Urdu, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, Tulu, Lamani, Hindi, Konkani and Gujarati.
For the country’s 320,000 privately promoted schools, the religious or linguistic minority tag confers several advantages. […]
Linguistically proud dravidian governments which have ruled the south-eastern seaboard state of Tamil Nadu (pop. 72 million) since the mid-1960s, after the disastrous attempt of the then almighty Congress party to impose “Hindi imperialism” on the southern states proved a dismal failure, have continued since then to insist on Tamil being the compulsory first language, […]
Born 20 years ago in 1998, the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) is the only Indian National Congress breakaway party to experience steady political success. It has twice formed governments in West Bengal (pop. 91 million) and its supremo Mamata Banerjee has been a Union cabinet minister three times in her political career of 25 […]
A year after it produced its SDG 4.7 review report titled Rethinking Schooling at the 39th session of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) held in Paris, the Delhi-based Unesco-Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP) released a policy brief document of the review report on October 16. […]
The vintage mumbai university (MU, estb.1857) has been at the receiving end of a fusillade from the Bombay high court for “abdicating” its responsibility of conducting independent law examinations and suo motu introducing a proposed 60:40 evaluation pattern in affiliated law colleges from the current academic year. Hearing writ petitions filed by students and law […]
Popularly known as the rte quota, the compulsory admission of children from poor neighbourhood households into private non-minority day schools under s. 12 (1) (c) of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 has always been a sore point in Karnataka. Under this provision, private unaided schools — other than […]
Against the backdrop of an estimated 31 million youth registered as unemployed in official employment agencies across the country and the BJP/NDA government at the Centre having abandoned all claims to generating 12 million new jobs per year, students in the country’s 39,000 colleges and 900 universities are becoming increasingly militant. The eastern seaboard state […]
Three years after the jayalalithaa-led all india Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) government of Tamil Nadu promulgated India’s first code of regulations for play schools (aka pre-primaries/preschools), and also drafted an activity-oriented syllabus for children in the 1.5-3.5 years age group, the incumbent E. Palaniswamy-led AIADMK government released a new draft syllabus for the state’s […]
“Teacher education programmes should underline active engagement in public life, and dispositions and sensibilities for living in plural societies with a commitment to social cohesion and solidarity.”
Seema Sarohe, assistant professor of education, University of Delhi on the role of teacher education programmes (Economic and Political Weekly, October 6)
Last month two significant and keenly anticipated elections for control of the Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) and Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) produced contrasting results which are being interpreted as forerunners of General Election 2019 scheduled for next summer.
The 135,000 (44 percent turnout) members of DUSU who voted on September 12, returned candidates […]
In maharashtra — india’s most industrialised state (pop.114 million) — 25,000 college and university teachers have been on an indefinite ‘cease-work’ strike since September 25. They are protesting poor pay scales and a huge number of teacher vacancies in the state’s government- funded higher education institutions.
The Maharashtra Federation of University & College Teachers Organisation (MFUCTO) […]
The political power and influence of the students’ community in the eastern seaboard state of West Bengal (pop.91 million) has been historically acknowledged right from the heyday of the anarchic Naxalite movement of the 1970s — often romanticised as the golden age of student politics in Bengal. Moreover in Bengal, Gandhian non-violence made minimal impact […]
Despite a stringent law against ragging in Tamil Nadu (pop.72 million) and a slew of directives issued by the Supreme Court to state governments and educational institutions countrywide to curb the practice of ragging, this pernicious campus initiation ritual has not been eradicated. Persistent fear, threat of violence and abuse continue to stalk school-leavers entering […]
In the public perception, Bangalore (pop.12 million, renamed Bengaluru in 2014 in a fit of foolish sub-nationalism which has jeopardised its international brand as India’s Silicon Valley) is the garden city of India. Ex facie, the statistics are impressive. The charm of this once clean green city which attracted a bevy of the world’s top-ranked […]
“Honest politics needs intelligent debate. One of the clearest signs of fascist politics is attacks on universities and expertise — the support systems of discussion and the sources of knowledge and facts.”
Jason Stanley, professor at Yale University (The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 2)
“I think some day, and soon, I’ll go back to teaching. This […]
Ever since the aam aadmi (Common Man’s) Party (AAP) — a political formation born out of Gandhian social activist Anna Hazare’s abortive anti-corruption crusade of 2012 — swept the Delhi state legislative assembly election of 2015, unexpectedly trouncing the BJP fresh from its triumph in General Election 2014, it has always been in the thick […]
The state government’s online Centralised Admission Process (CAP), introduced a decade ago to streamline admissions into class XI/first year junior colleges (FYJCs) aka Plus Two, ended in chaos and confusion after a Nagpur bench of the Bombay high court stayed the allocation of religious and linguistic minority quota seats to the merit quota. The court […]
The undisputed supremo and leader of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC), which ended 34 years of uninterrupted, disastrous communist rule over West Bengal in 2011, chief minister Mamata Banerjee is all set to emerge as a national kingmaker in the aftermath of General Election 2019, now less than a year away.
Tamil nadu’s once highly reputed 22 state government universities are steadily losing their sheen because of scams, corruption and serious graft that are constantly being exposed by the media.
The latest scandal rocking the state’s floundering academy is a major scam in answer scripts re-evaluation at the Chennai-based Anna University (AU), the state’s premier engineering and […]
As admissions for 2018-19 close for professional education programmes, the southern state of Karnataka (pop. 67 million), which steered the nationwide private engineering colleges building boom of the 1990s, is confronted with the prospect of huge vacancies in these institutions. When the final round of counselling was completed on August 29, of the 68,404 seats […]
“Intellectualism was never associated with Indian politicians, but never before have there been such blatant attempts to de-intellectualise the country as now.” Anand Teltumbde in ‘The New Normal in Modi’s New India’ (Economic & Political Weekly, August 4)
“Why do we hesitate to spend on them? Why do we constantly look for ways to reduce the […]
Strident protests and threats of prolonged litigation by Maharashtras powerful coaching classes and test prep schools lobby have torpedoed the state governments Private Coaching Classes Regulatory Bill which had been readied for enactment in the monsoon session (July 14-August 30) of the state legislative assembly. The states BJP-Shiv Sena coalition government was determined to enact […]
By ending 34 years ofuninterrupted misrule of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM)-led Left Front government in West Bengal (pop. 91 million) in 2011, and winning a second term for the Trinamool Congress (TMC) with a landslide mandate in the 2016 assembly election, chief minister Mamata Banerjee has not only established herself in West Bengal […]
Reckless negligence andflouting of safety norms by schools and colleges continue to take a grim toll of childrens lives in Tamil Nadu. Although a plethora of safety guidelines have been issued by the Central and state governments following a horrifying fire at the private aided Sri Krishna Saraswathi English Medium School, Kumbakonam in 2004 in […]
The politics of language in education is back on the agenda in the southern state of Karnataka (pop.67 million). On July 5, in his maiden budget speech, Karnataka chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, also finance minister, announced the two-month-old Janata Dal (Secular)-Congress coalition governments decision of introducing English medium education in 1,000 government schools, starting from […]
Since children lack both the political resource of ‘voice and the consumer resource of ‘choice, they are ignored by the state, ill-used by the market, and made invisible by society.Manabi Majumdar, professor, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata (www.thewire.in, July 2)
The IT industry has created bonded labour for years together, making money through labour […]
According to all indications, its finally curtains for the University Grants Commission (UGC, estb.1956), a Soviet-style over-arching control-and-command body (fashioned after the British University Committee, UK, shut down in 1989). For 62 of Indias 70 years as an independent nation, UGC has presided over its higher education system monitoring and accrediting the countrys higher education […]
Following heavy criticism from the media (especially EducationWorld) and the tragic suicide of 17-year-old Anitha, an aspiring medical student who topped the class XII state board exam but failed to clear NEET (National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test) for admission into medical colleges countrywide, the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) government led by chief minister […]
Three decades after introduction of the awards-winning Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNVs) across the country, Tamil Nadu (pop.72.1 million) remains the only state that does not host a single one. JNVs are classes VI-XII co-ed, rural, residential schools affiliated with the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and administered by the Noida-based Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti […]
The tragic suicide of 17-year-old Anitha, an aspiring medical student from a Dalit family in rural Tamil Nadu (pop.72.1 million) on September 1, has sent shockwaves across the country and sparked huge protests by several political parties, college students and activists in the state. Anitha’s tragedy was that she averaged 98 percent in the class […]
After a record breaking 104 days, the general strike in the Darjeeling hills district of West Bengal by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) which is demanding a separate state of Gorkhaland to be carved out of West Bengal, was called off on September 27, following an appeal by Union home minister Rajnath Singh. Singh said […]
- Mita Mukherjee Nearly 25 lakh persons working as pre-primary facilitators and caregivers in the country will be offered training to equip them with the .....Read More
Businessmen Elon Musk has established a new Montessori preschool ‘Ad Astra’ in Bastrop, Texas, a one-of-its-kind, endorsing his and US President-elect Donald Trump’s views on .....Read More
