In the final leg of campaigning for the 16th General Election to be held from April 7-May 12, the issue of education provision and reform is conspicuously missing from the public discourse
UNSURPRISINGLY AND IN keeping with post-independence India’s myopic political tradition, education of the world’s largest child and youth population — 600 million Indians are […]
In the run-up to General Election 2014, on November 13 last year Child Rights and You (CRY), the well-known Mumbai-based NGO, released a Child Rights Manifesto as part of its ‘Vote for Child Rights’ election advocacy campaign. The manifesto calls upon all political parties to accord top priority to child welfare and education in their […]
As this issue of EW goes to press, only the Congress, CPI-M and Trinamool Congress Party (TMC) have officially released their manifestos for General Election 2014. The BJP and Aam Aadmi Party manifestos are expected to be out only in the first week of this month. The promises and pledges made in relation to education […]
Staged against the backdrop of a National ECCE policy having received Union cabinet approval in September last year, the objective of the 4th EW ECE Global Conference was to provide a national platform for international and indigenous experts to share their knowledge and best practices with pre-primary educators from across India. Summiya Yasmeen
I WOULD LIKE TO BEGIN WITH thanking EducationWorld for the opportunity to share some of my experiences and views relating to early childhood care and education (ECCE), particularly in the UK and other parts of the world. As ECCE practitioners, we are clearly facing times of challenge, but also of opportunity because we can positively […]
EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE AND education (ECCE) is a step child of Indian education, indifferently nurtured by the Union ministries of women and child development, human resource development and finance.
Of the country’s 158 million children aged below six, 75.7 million i.e. 48 percent are reported to be covered under the Central government’s Integrated Child Development Services […]
Against the backdrop of the Union government having made early childhood education subject to official regulation for the first time by formulating a National Early Childhood Care and Education (NECCE) policy which received cabinet approval on September 20 last year, the first panel discussion of the EW ECE Global Conference 2014 focused on the subject […]
The second panel discussion of the EW ECE Global Conference 2014 on the subject ‘Best practices in ECCE – What Indian preschools need to learn and adapt’ was lively and engaging. The panel chaired by Summiya Yasmeen (SY), managing editor of EducationWorld, included Sapna Chauhan (SC), founder of Amiown preschools, Delhi; Prriety Gosalia (PG), co-founder and CEO of Leapbridge International preschools […]
The annual EducationWorld India School Rankings Awards Nite dinner staged in New Delhi’s The LaLit Hotel on September 14 to felicitate India’s top-ranked day, boarding and international schools, received unprecedented response from 400 principals, trustees, and teachers of the country’s most respected schools. In a filled-to-capacity chandeliered auditorium, EducationWorld felicitated and celebrated India’s Top 10, […]
A globally respected educationist upon whom EW is proud to confer a Lifetime Achievement in Education Leadership award is Sumer Singh, principal of The Daly College and Daly College Business School, Indore. An alumnus of The Doon School, Dehradun, St. Stephen’s College, Delhi and the DAV […]
Augustine & Grace Pinto,Founders, Ryan International Group of Institutions
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Born in Mangalore, Karnataka — one of nine children of a farmer of modest means — Dr. Augustine Pinto schooled in St. Aloysius High, Mangalore and Loyola College, Chennai, from where he graduated in 1969 with a degree in economics. […]
Achyuta Samanta, Founder-Director of KIIT University & Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences
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Born in a remote village (Kalarabank) in Cuttack district as one of six children of a shopfloor employee in a steel plant, Samanta and his siblings experienced grinding poverty after their father died in a train accident in 1970. “It […]
Officially released on May 13, the Khoj (search) study is the outcome of interviews with 1,482 teachers and 18 principals of 100 schools across four cities (Delhi, Chandigarh, Pune and Chennai). Its objective was to assess on-the-ground impact of the continuous and comprehensive evaluation (CCE) system, implemented in 14,358 schools affiliated with the Delhi-based Central Board of […]
In July 2009, then Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal announced a series of populist school reforms to reduce the burden of academic stress which students are reportedly suffering countrywide. One of them was to replace the periodic and particularly ‘sudden death’ final examination with continuous and comprehensive evaluation (CCE). This suggestion was accepted with unusual […]
Four years after the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation schema was adopted with surprising alacrity by the Central Board of Secondary Education and introduced in all 14,358 CBSE-affiliated schools, the CCE experiment is floundering in a sea of confusion with school principals and teachers struggling to switch from the traditional examination system. Summiya Yasmeen reports
Although widely acclaimed as a country with a mathematics heritage stretching back to Aryabhatta and Ramanujan, there’s been a steady decline of students opting for maths higher education in post-independence India. Even the mathematical skills of 230 million children in primary-secondary education are in steep decline. Hemalatha Raghupathi reports
The temple town of Kumbakonam (pop.140,113) in Thanjavur district […]
The story of how maths genius Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920) was discovered by the world is one of the most engaging accounts in the history of mathematics. In 1913, Ramanujan wrote a ten-page letter containing 120 theorems to eminent English mathematician G.H. Hardy of Trinity College, Cambridge (UK). Hardy took hours to analyse […]
India hosts several world-class institutions for mathematics education and research. They include the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; the IITs; Indian Statistical Institute, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai among others which offer high quality undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral education.
Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Bangalore (estb. 1963): B.Math (3 years) degree programme, M.Math (2 years).
The Union Budget presented to Parliament lacks clear thrust and direction. It’s replete with obfuscations and populist giveaways and glosses over inadequate funding for infrastructure and India’s abundant human capital. It’s unlikely to deliver growth, inclusivity or sustainable development. Dilip Thakore reports
Preceded with great expectations and hype with television news anchors edgy with excitement, the Union […]
“To do what was required, the FM slashed expenditure allocations of the past even if it meant reduced capital expenditures — and used the extra resources to ramp up subsidies and schemes favoured by the high command.” Laveesh Bhandari, founder-director of Indicus Analytics
“Finance minister P. Chidambaram’s budget for 2013-14 will be remembered not only for its […]
In the Union Budget 2013-14 presented to Parliament and the nation on February 28, Union finance minister P. Chidambaram provided Rs.79,451 crore (“misreported” in the printed budget speech as Rs.65,867 crore), a 19 percent increase over the previous year as the Central government’s contribution to primary, secondary and higher education. Though 19 percent higher than […]
Over the past three years, the Mumbai-based Teach For India programme, whose objective is to eliminate educational iniquity in India by cherry-picking outstanding graduates and professionals to teach in low-income schools, has placed 506 fellows in 164 municipal and private budget schools in five cities. Matthew Schneeberger reports
Prasid Sreeprakash (25) is from a middle class family […]
Prasid Sreeprakash (25), an alumnus of Government Engineering College, Trichur and IIM-Indore, is a second-year TFI fellow who teaches class IV students at Varsha Nagar BMC School, Vikhroli, Mumbai.
On choosing TFI over a corporate career…
A corporate job did not excite me. I wanted to work to solve some of the social problems in India, most […]
Matthew Schneeberger interviewed Shaheen Mistri, CEO of Teach For India (TFI), which has placed 506 teacher fellows in 164 low-income schools in Mumbai and Pune. Mistri is also founder of the Akanksha Foundation, which runs 40 after-school centres and 13 free-of-charge schools in Pune and Mumbai.
How satisfied are you with the growth and development of TFI […]
In her final thesis year at Princeton University in 1989, Wendy Kopp conceptualised the Teach For America (TFA) model which essentially involved recruiting high-achieving university graduates to teach in low-income schools for at least two years — a stint she rightly believed would transform them into lifelong champions of school education. Starting with an initial […]
Founded in 1857 and one of the first three universities to be established in the British presidencies, this once highly-reputed varsity with a roll-call of illustrious alumni including Lokmanya Tilak and Dr. Ambedkar, is facing an unprecedented meltdown, with its academic reputation at its nadir. Summiya Yasmeen & Praveer Sinha report
Praveer Sinha interviewed Dr. Rajan M. Welukar, vice chancellor of the University of Mumbai (MU) at his office in the Fort campus. Excerpts:
Mumbai University’s academic reputation has been sliding over the years with acute shortage of faculty, question paper leaks and errors in marks cards becoming normative. To what factors do you attribute MU’s decline?
When I […]
2012 was another much-ado-about-nothing year for Indian education. With the beleaguered Congress-led UPA-II government floundering in a sea of corruption scandals and both houses of Parliament routinely disrupted as a bankrupt BJP-led opposition blocked all legislative business, the policy paralysis in New Delhi which plunged economic growth to a nine-year-low of 5.3 percent in 2012, […]
Educational Development Index 2010-11 highlights that the country’s most industrially advanced states are placed well below the salt in elementary education development. It also confirms that the BIMARU states (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) remain the nation’s education backwaters. Summiya Yasmeen reports
The Educational Development Index (EDI) 2010-11 — released by the Delhi-based National University […]
A new genre of highly qualified education entrepreneurs are combining sports evangelism with enlightened capitalism, and are pulling out all stops to sell the concept of professionally delivered sports and fitness training to the country’s 1.30 million, particularly 80,000 private schools. Summiya Yasmeen reports
Although dressed up as India’s best ever Olympic games performance by frenzied media […]
Informed academics and medical practitioners are unanimous that a clean-up of the malodorous augean stables of the medical profession must begin with comprehensive disinfestation of the Medical Council of India, from which the contagion has filtered into the bloodstream of medical education and practice. Summiya Yasmeen & Swati Roy report
Introduced in the Rajya Sabha on december 22 last year, the National Commission of Human Resources for Health Bill (NCHRH), 2011 proposes to subsume the Medical Council of India, Dental Council of India and Pharmacy Council into a National Commission of Human Resources for Health. It provides for trifurcation of regulatory functions of the commission […]
Early last month, the Central Advisory Board of Education unanimously adopted the National Policy on ICT in School Education (NPISE). For cruelly neglected Indian primary, secondary and higher education, ICT offers a magical opportunity to rapidly create 21st century learning environments. Vimal Joshi & Summiya Yasmeen report
Although India’s spectacular — by the yardsticks of the country’s […]
As testified by several national and international reports and surveys of child rights organisations and development agencies, India has arguably the worst child neglect and abuse record worldwide. Rutaksha Rawat investigates
• January 18. Two-year-old Falak was admitted into the trauma centre of AIIMS, New Delhi. Abandoned by her sex worker mother, she was battered, beaten and left for […]
There is little awareness within the Central, state and local governments or within Indian society, that India is a signatory to several international child rights and protection treaties, which are practised more in the breach than observance. They include:
United Nations Millennium Declaration (2000). Signed by 189 heads of state, the United Nations Millennium Declaration sets out […]
In gab fests on television and deluge of analyses in the print media following presentation of the Union Budget 2012-13 on March 16, education — particularly the pathetically inadequate provision for schooling the world’s largest child and youth population — was rarely discussed. Summiya Yasmeen investigates
Despite not a single memorable invention or process contributing to improvement of […]
Education is a subject of national importance and the finance minister has presented a very balanced budget on education. Union Budget 2012-13 has supported industry’s long-time demand to improve the provision and standards of education in the country. An increase in allocation for RTE-SSA and RMSA reiterates the government’s commitment to education. Over 70 percent […]
Even as the elation of the 19th Commonwealth Games 2010 staged in Delhi subsides, this is an opportune time for educationists, principals and teachers to give a massive boost to sports education in India’s schools and colleges. Summiya Yasmeen reports
The litany of disasters — reminiscent of failed basket-case pre-Green Revolution India rather than contemporary post-liberalisation India, […]
Since the Congress-led UPA-II coalition government was voted back to power in Delhi with an unexpected larger majority a year ago, the most hyper-active ministry of government has been the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry. Within the past 12 months since he moved into Shastri Bhavan, New Delhi as HRD minister, former legal eagle Kapil Sibal has […]
Now that the sounds of trumpets, hosannas and celebrations have muted, and academics and education experts have read the fine print of this historic and overdue legislation, they are discovering all kinds of contradictions, infirmities and obfuscations in the RTE Act. EW solicited the opinions of school principals on the impact and implications of the […]
Food 4 Thought Foundation collaborated with Cyient Foundation, the CSR arm of Cyient Ltd. (a global Intelligent Engineering services company), Monocept Consulting and Emesco Books .....Read More
In a significant move aimed at improving the educational system, the Odisha government has announced that the minimum age for enrolling in Class-1 will be .....Read More
