With the West Bengal legislative elections scheduled for May 2021 fast approaching, the state’s ruling Trinamool Congress party (TMC) has reportedly drawn up a multi-pronged strategy to take on its principal challenger, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), ruling at the Centre, which has emerged as the second-largest party in the state, eclipsing […]
The state’s tri-party Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition government comprising the Shiv Sena, Indian National Congress (INC) and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), suffered a major setback on September 9 with the Supreme Court staying the state government’s Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBC) Act, 2018. The Act […]
The academic year for higher education institutions which should have begun in July/ August is scheduled to begin from November 1 this year, according to latest UGC guidelines issued on September 22. The two national higher education regulators — University Grants Commission (UGC) and All India Council for Technical […]
“In the year after the pandemic schools will have to revisit, in some part at least, the instruction undertaken during the pandemic months and allow their students some leeway to accommodate the gaps that may have crept in… The idea is not to treat them with kid gloves…. rather focus on allowing children to regroup […]
Postponed twice for fear of spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, the IIT-JEE (Joint Entrance Examination) for admission into the IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) and top-ranked engineering colleges countrywide was held from September 1-6, even as the aggregate number of coronavirus positive cases in India crossed 4 million.
Although the All India ADMK (AIADMK) ruling party is an ally of the BJP/NDA government at the Centre, the three languages learning formula for all school-going children proposed in the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has been rejected outright by the state government and indeed by all political formations in Tamil […]
Faculty of an estimated 62 engineering colleges in the Mumbai metropolitan region have not received their salaries since end-March when the BJP/NDA government at the Centre decreed a national lockdown of industry, business and all education institutions. According to data collected from 48 engineering colleges by the Bombay University and College Teachers’ […]
The unlock 4.0 guidelines announced by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs on August 29 which extended the long period (since mid-March) of the closure of all education institutions until September 30, has opened a small window for their early reopening. According to education insiders in the national capital, the Union cabinet […]
“I always say it is intellectually lazy for people to advocate herd immunity, because basically it is giving up. It is saying we do not want to work hard on this, we know it is a problem, let us just let everybody get sick and lots of people die. I don’t think that should be […]
The third National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 approved by the Union Cabinet headed by prime minister Narendra Modi after four years of preparation on July 29, replacing the 34-year-old National Policy on Education legislated in 1986 by prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, has elicited mixed reactions across the country.
Responding to insistent demand, an ordinance providing a 7.5 percent reserved quota in Tamil Nadu’s 41 government and private medical colleges for students of state government higher secondary schools who top the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for admission into the country’s 542 medical colleges, was issued on July 14
With Karnataka’s 49,855 government schools shuttered for five months following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the state’s education ministry issued an order on July 25 directing the Karnataka Text Book Society (KTBS) to reduce the prescribed state board syllabus for the academic year 2020-21, which began in June, by 30 percent.
There is growing opposition within Maharashtra’s students and parents communities against a UGC (University Grants Commission) July 6 order directing universities to conduct final year exams of affiliated colleges for the academic year 2019- 20 by end-September. With Maharashtra recording the highest number of Covid-19 positive cases in India — 441,000 and […]
On the day (August 5) when the United Nations confirmed that the education of more than 1.5 billion children in 160 countries including India, has been severely disrupted and endangered by the Covid-19 pandemic and that in developing countries, an estimated 50 million may drop out of education permanently, India’s pre-pandemic affirmative action initiative […]
“On one hand, a porous lockdown makes sure that the virus will still exist and as you said, it is still waiting to hit you when you will unlock. So you have not solved that problem. But you have definitely decimated the economy. You flattened the wrong curve. It is not the infection curve, it […]
The Madras High Court has passed strictures against the AIADMK-led state government for restraining private schools and colleges from collecting tuition fees from parents, as this has led to non-payment of salaries to teachers and non-teaching staff. A government order issued on April 20 under the Disaster Management Act, 2005, had directed […]
An out-of-the-blue statewide ban imposed by the Karnataka government on online teaching-learning in pre-primaries and lower primary (up to class V) schools on June 15, provoked mass outrage within middle class parents and teachers’ communities and resulted in a writ petition filed in the Karnataka high court by several private schools grouped […]
The coronavirus aka covid-19 pandemic has swooped down on the country’s 375,000 private unaided (independent) schools and estimated 400,000 budget private schools (BPS) like a totally unexpected black swan calamity. With the economy in total lockdown for 68 days and a large number of employees and workmen in MSMEs (micro, small and medium) firms and […]
Maharashtra’s teachers’ community has become the unsuspecting casualty of the state’s messy post Covid-19 lockdown education system. Scores of preschool to higher secondary private school teachers have lost their jobs with school managements citing financial inability to make even partial payment of salaries because parents haven’t paid children’s school fees for the past four months.
While all of India and the world was fighting the Covid-19 pandemic, the east coast state of West Bengal (pop. 91 million) which has reported a modest 5,772 Covid positive cases and 335 fatalities (June 1) was hit by a double whammy. Supercyclone Amphan with wind speeds of 155-165 km per hour ravaged the state […]
“With the existing digital divide, expanding online education will push the digital havenots to the periphery of the education system, thereby increasing inequity in educational outcomes.”
Tamil Nadu’s 18,000 private unaided and 16,500 budget private schools (BPS) are experiencing an unprecedented financial crunch. Because of the Covid-19 lockdown — education institutions in the state have been shuttered for over 80 days — they have not been able to collect fees from parents. A majority of them are set to default in […]
Although the 68 day-national lockdown prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic has hit the entire education sector hard, it has perhaps hit pre-primaries, aka preschools, hardest. In Karnataka, 185 standalone preschools are reportedly up for sale.
Pre-primaries have been particularly impacted by the national lockdown ordered by the Central government on March 25, because the popular perception […]
Over 1,000,000 final year students of universities across Maharashtra are exhibiting signs of panic about whether their final pre-graduation exams will be held at all this year. If cancelled, those opting to write their final year exams may have to take a forced gap year with all further higher education plans in India and abroad […]
As India gradually unlocks from the 68-day national lockdown which began on March 25, the Covid-19 spike continues to climb steeply. Nevertheless, two national school boards — CBSE and CISCE — scheduled their pending school-leaving board exams for classes X and XII for the first fortnight of July. Now all eyes are on guidelines and […]
“I don’t want people to say ‘Oh, environmentalists are celebrating this lockdown.’ We are not. This is not the solution. But whatever the new normal is post-Covid-19, we have to make sure we take this breath of fresh air and think about the serious efforts we need to deal with pollution in Delhi.”
Private unaided aka independent, schools across Maharashtra are up in arms against a directive of the state’s Shiv Sena-led tri-party Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government to waive school fees for the first quarter of the academic year 2020-21, because of the loss of income of the parents community following the nationwide lockdown of industry and […]
Widespread protests by school managements and an online petition demanding public support for private school
teachers which attracted over 26,700 signatures, has compelled the state government to amend a March 30 circular of the department of public instruction (DPI) to private schools to desist from collecting pupils’ tuition fees “until further orders”. Under a second DPI circular […]
With the Covid-19 pandemic and national lockdown forcing the mass closure of education institutions, several state governments have issued circulars directing private school managements not to collect tuition fees during the lockdown period. These circulars have jeopardized the financial stability of the country’s 375,000 private independent (unaided) K-12 schools, especially the estimated 400,000 budget private […]
In March, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee was riding a wave of popularity for her deft management of the Covid-19 pandemic sweeping the country, which has provoked a national lockdown of business and leisure activity from March 25 to May 16. On April 28, West Bengal reported a mere 649 Covid positive cases, 105 […]
The rapid countrywide spread of the Coronavirus pandemic and subsequent national lockdown of all education institutions from Kg-Ph D has disrupted the academic year 2019-20 which was drawing to a close for 1.5 million schools (including CBSE, CISCE) Final assessments as well as various entrance examinations conducted by the NTA (National Testing Agency) have been postponed. […]
“Education must deal with the deeper anxieties of the young in order to retain its own sanctity and credibility. The hatred that found open expression for some days in north-east Delhi has put a question mark on the capacity of the system of education to nurture the core values a democratic order demands.”
The upside of the global rampage of the Coronavirus, aka Covid-19 pandemic, which at the time of writing (April 2) has infected 1 million people worldwide and caused 53,238 deaths — and 2,567 and 72 respectively in India — is that it has vastly improved the business prospects of India’s hitherto struggling edtech companies. Although an estimated 380 ed tech companies […]
Although neither chief minister Mamata Banerjee nor any leader of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) has publicly articulated it, the top brass of West Bengal’s ruling party — a breakaway of the now disintegrated Congress party which led India to independence from British rule 72 years ago — is viewing the Coronavirus aka Covid-19 threat sweeping the country, […]
With all 62,303 k-12 schools in Tamil Nadu (pop.72 million) shut down since March 16, prior to the national lockdown decreed by the Central government on March 25 due to the danger posed by the Coronavirus pandemic, the state government has announced promotion of 7 million classes I-IX children to the next grade without their having to write […]
Maharashtra’s five-months-old three-party (Shiv Sena, Congress and Nationalist Congress) Maha Vikas Aaghadi (MVA) government is under fire for having pressed ahead to complete the school-leaving exams of the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MSBSHSE) until March 21, despite
the state government itself having issued ‘work from home’ orders to industry and ordering shutdown of all […]
Last December after final year students of the Central government-funded Delhi University (DU) wrote their fifth semester exam, the results, under normal circumstances, would have been declared in end January (2020). But owing to a combination of unforeseen circumstances — the national lockdown on March 25 following the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic, and a prolonged university teachers strike that began on December […]
The breakout of the global Coronavirus, aka COVID-19, pandemic has brought education systems around the world to a grinding halt with lockdowns and stay-at-home orders prompting mass closure of education institutions. In India, since the March 25 mandatory nationwide lockdown, all teaching, assessment and evaluation work in education institutions has been adversely impacted and in most cases deferred. All major examinations, including public entrance exams such as […]
“India’s learning outcomes remain stubbornly low. Quality concerns around education are seldom viewed as a political priority. But these concerns cannot be ignored for much longer, especially in light of India’s human capital crisis, reflected in unemployment statistics.”
Rohan Sandhu of the Harvard Kennedy School on why India needs a new education paradigm (Business Line, February […]
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