“Young India wants jobs more than temples… For most of us, a good education was the passport out of poverty into the middle or affluent class. Now, a young person with a college degree is NINE times as likely to be unemployed as her illiterate counterpart, according to an ILO report. This indicates both the […]
The political storm generated in Parliament in Delhi by the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG) scam, in which as many as 67 students scored a perfect 720, and over 1,500 were awarded booster “grace marks”, has come as a fortuitous opportunity for Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) government […]
After the national education Policy (NEP) 2020 mandated reconfiguration of the 10+2 primary-secondary schooling system into a new 5+3+3+4 continuum formally integrating early childhood care and education (ECCE) into elementary education, several states across the country have begun the process of integrating three years […]
National council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the country’s largest publisher of K-12 textbooks, is again in the throes of a controversy following its “rationalisation-cum-revision” of class XII social science (history) textbooks, widely prescribed by schools countrywide including 29,662 upscale schools affiliated with the Central […]
“At the very least, the result pricks the bubble of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s authority. He made this election about himself: His performance, his omnipotence and omniscience, and his ideological obsessions. Modi is, for the moment, not the indomitable vehicle for History, or the deified personification of the people. Today, he is just another politician, […]
King George’s Medical University, Lucknow: heaviest penalty
Medical education in Uttar Pradesh — India’s most populous state (215 million) — is a mess. For one, the entire state covering an area of 243,286 sq. km is served by 72,757 registered medical (allopathic) practitioners, a ratio of 1:3800 doctor per 100,000 population cf. […]
West Bengal’s multi-crore teacher recruitment scam which has marred the entire third term in office (which began in 2021) of chief minister Mamata Banerjee has ballooned into a major General Election 2024 issue.
In General Election 2019, the resurgent BJP won an unprecedented 18 of West Bengal’s 42 seats […]
KAMS’ Shashi Kumar (centre right) with CM Siddaramaiah
By several metrics, the southern state of Karnataka (pop.70 million) is India’s most educationally advanced. Bengaluru, the state’s admin capital, is widely regarded as the Silicon Valley of India for hosting a large number of new genre ICT (information communication technology) companies and […]
College graduates: research drive initiative. Inset: M. Jagadesh Kumar
The Delhi-based University Grants Commission (UGC) has greenlighted direct entry of graduates with four-year Bachelor (Hons) degrees into PhD programmes. On March 13, UGC gave formal approval to the UGC (Minimum Standards and Procedure for Award of PhD Degree) Regulations, 2022, enabling graduates […]
“The protests are a product of that suffocating sense of thwarted political agency that a lot of young people feel… The students are, perhaps inchoately, attempting that work of moral repair.”
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, former president, Centre Policy Research, on pro-Palestinian student protests at US university campuses (Indian Express, April 24)
Despite a plethora of legislation including the Indian Penal Code 1860, Juvenile Justice (Care & Protection of Children) Act, 2000 and the RTE Act, 2009 expressly prohibiting corporal punishment of children, the ancient tradition of teachers inflicting physical punishment for real and imagined misbehaviour is widespread in India’s 1.60 million schools. Reports of teachers inflicting […]
Students writing KCET: out-of-syllabus questionsAn education mess in this southern state which has appropriated its description as the Silicon Valley of India, has become messier. On April 8, the Supreme Court restrained the state’s Congress government from publishing results of board exams held in March for classes V, VIII and IX students of KSEAB (Karnataka […]
A series of teacher recruitment scandals have plagued three-term West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee since 2011 when her Trinamool Congress (TMC) party famously routed the CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist)-led LDF coalition which had ruled the state continuously for 34 years.
Employment in government schools in which salaries for primary school teachers […]
A top priority of left — communist, socialist — governments worldwide, is compulsory, free-of-charge early years and primary education for children. Yet despite newly-independent India’s Congress party passing a resolution in 1956 to establish a “socialist pattern of society”, compulsory primary education wasn’t decreed until 2009 […]
One of the most enduring — and justified — criticisms of K-12 education in post-independence India is addiction to rote learning through memorisation rather than comprehension. Obstinacy of the country’s 69 school examination boards to reward students’ memorisation rather than originality, critical thinking and problem-solving skills in […]
“The 52 primers in Indian languages have paved the way for the beginning of a new civilisational renaissance.”
Dharmendra Pradhan, Union education minister, launching 52 school textbooks in Indian non-scheduled languages (Hindustan Times, March 9)
“The government will probably claim that it was simply following the law; that Kejriwal was not responding to summons. But the […]
Although politically BJP, the ruling party at the Centre, and DMK, the ruling party in Tamil Nadu (pop.77 million), are at daggers drawn, the Tamil Nadu government has signalled an intent to embrace the Prime Minister Schools for Rising India (PM-SHRI) programme, launched in September, 2022.
The popular urban perception is that rural SC (scheduled caste) and ST (scheduled tribe) children are content with their backwardness and poor-quality schools. This perception was contradicted on February 26 when a delegation of 40 class VII-VIII girl children of the Government Kanya Shiksha Parisar (GKSP), a
After a month-long flip-flop over conducting class V, VIII and IX ‘summative assessments’ aka board exams for government and private schools affiliated with the Karnataka School Examination and Assessment Board (KSEAB), the last leg of the exams was conducted on March 25-26. This after the Karnataka […]
With dates of general Election 2024 declared, the political mercury in West Bengal (pop.91 million), set for seven-phase polling from April 19 to June 1, has touched unprecedented levels. Leaders of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) and resurgent BJP are trading vitriolic diatribes, indulging in character assassination […]
Newly elected JNUSU president Dhananjay (centre) & supporters
Living up to its reputation of being a bastion of woke Left politics, a students’ coalition of organisations affiliated with mainstream Left parties — AISF (affiliated with CPI), SFI (CPI-M), AISA (Communist Party Marxist Leninist) and DSF (independent Left) backed by BAPSA (a Dalit […]
“It’s a democratic right of the farmers to protest and come and be heard in the national capital. I don’t think the border with China is fortified the way this city is fortified. The government should have learnt a lesson from the previous farmers’ agitation — consult the stakeholders. Last time it took a year-long […]
Ahead of the forthcoming lok Sabha polls scheduled for April-May, Chandrima Bhattacharya, minister of state (independent charge) for finance, tabled a Rs.3.66 lakh crore budget on February 8, announcing a slew of social welfare policies including sops for women and children.
While continuing with existing welfare schemes such as the […]
The annual status of education Report (ASER) 2023, published by the independent not-for-profit Pratham Education Foundation (estb.1995), assessed the learning outcomes of 1,514 teenage children aged 14-18 years from 1,193 households in Bhopal and 60 villages in Bhopal district.
ASER 2023 reports 62 percent of teens struggle with basic arithmetic tasks, such as division […]
A circular dated february 8 issued by the state government’s education ministry advising change of pre-primary to class IV school timings to 9 a.m onwards, has divided the educators and parents communities statewide. Expressing concern over the issue of children not getting adequate sleep because […]
Protesting forestry students: “right to feel wronged”
Over 700 students from three state government-run forestry colleges in Karnataka who — were on a month-long protest in their college campuses, congregated in Bengaluru to stage a protest between February 26-29. Their demand is the state government stipulates that only forestry sciences graduates will […]
The top-ranked Indian institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) has introduced a controversial mandate (January 15) requiring PhD scholars to publish a paper every semester. This policy change has sparked a backlash from students. Over 300 scholars staged a demonstration on the IIT-M campus on January 17 protesting the […]
NAAC headquarters, Bengaluru: new binary accreditation system
Most sentient higher education leaders privately lament the glacial pace at which the mandates of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 are being implemented in collegiate and university education. The Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) — the overarching umbrella organisation mandated to preside over […]
“Deeply regret the passing of Dr. Jagdish Gandhi, founder-chairman of the Lucknow-based City Montessori School, acknowledged by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest single city multi campus school with over 57,000 students. Dr Gandhi was among the first to encourage the novel EducationWorld venture and a committed supporter throughout his life. From modest beginnings […]
Released on January 17, the latest Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2023 ‘Beyond Basics’ of the highly respected Pratham Education Foundation paints a dismal picture of the pitiable condition of school education in West Bengal (pop.91 million), a state that prides itself on its intellectual prowess. In Bengal, ASER 2023 field tested […]
Responding to a query filed under the Right to Information Act, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has disclosed that 218 primary schools, including some highly reputed private primary schools in Mumbai — Anandilal Podar, Santacruz; St. Michaels, Mahim; St. Andrews Primary, Bandra; St. Aloysius, Santacruz; Alexandra Girls, Fort; Rustomjee Troopers (Dahisar), and Gloria […]
The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) published every year by the independent not-for-profit Pratham Education Foundation (estb.1995) usually field tests primary school (classes I-VIII) children in rural India to measure their real learning outcomes. An army of over 1 lakh volunteers — mainly college and university students — test the reading and […]
Against the backdrop of rising student suicides being reported from Kota, Rajasthan — the tests prep capital of India where 26 secondary students committed suicide last year, the highest ever annually — the Union ministry of education has been under pressure to rein in the unchecked growth of the Rs.58,000 crore coaching classes […]
Mumbai nursery children. Inset: Dr. Swati Popat Vats
With the national education Policy (NEP) 2020 having restructured the 10+2 school system of over half a century to the 5+3+3+4 system by tagging on three years of formal early childhood education, the BJP/Shiv Sena government has issued a circular to all schools […]
Two back-to-back incidents of children in government schools being forced to clean toilets of their schools have provoked public outrage in the state. The first incident was reported on December 18 when photographs and video clips of some students of the Morarji Desai Residential School in Malur, […]
The long-standing face-off between the state government and the state governor over the issue of appointment of vice chancellors (VCs) in 31 state government universities has transformed into a full-blown war between the Trinamool Congress (TMC) which rules West Bengal and the governor — an appointee of the ruling BJP government at the […]
Poor student enrolment in the constituent colleges of Chennai’s prestigious Anna University (AU) is causing anxiety within the management of Tamil Nadu’s show-piece state government university, one of India’s top engineering universities ranked in the 501-600 band worldwide by Times Higher Education and among the world’s Top 2,000 by US News & World […]
“We have to bring some changes in the education system of our management institutions for more effective and inclusive development of the country.”
President Droupadi Murmu urging Indian business management institutes to connect their study programmes with Indian corporates, consumers and society (Indian Express, December 7)
“You must be joking about India becoming a developed, rich […]
CBSE school-leavers writing final exam: grades inflation hurdle next
With the two national school examination boards — the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE, 28,926 affiliated schools) and Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE, 2,700 schools) — and 69 state boards scheduled to stage their school-leaving examinations within the next […]
The UGC (setting up and Operation of Campuses of Foreign Higher Educational Institutions in India) Regulations, 2023, notified on November 7 by the apex Delhi-based University Grants Commission (UGC), has evoked disappointment and skepticism within academia. Long in the works, the Regulations are unlikely to enthuse foreign universities to establish branch campuses in […]
Tara Sarna, Grade XII Student at The Sriram School, Moulsari and Founder, Youth for Youth, a student organisation for empowering youth. In an increasingly complex .....Read More
Reshma Ravishanker Intensifying their opposition against the proposal to merge nine universities with parent institutions in Karnataka, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) called for a .....Read More
