Extra-curricular writing is the favourite pastime of Bangalore-based Karun Divij Balachandar (16). On January 13, his debut 65-page novel The Teenager’s Guide to the Universe (Notion Press, Chennai) which explores the mysteries surrounding the cosmos, was released at the CIE (UK)-affiliated Trio World Academy, Bangalore where he is a class XI student. Renowned astronomer and […]
There’s growing disaffection within the communities of promoters, principals, teachers and parents of primary-secondary schools affiliated with the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) — India’s largest national school-leaving (classes X and XII) examinations board which has 18,006 affiliated schools with an estimated 30 million students countrywide.
In recent months, a spate of circulars and […]
Technology is advancing so rapidly in the US that we will experience radical changes in societies worldwide during our lifetimes. Already computers, sensors, artificial intelligence and genomics are reshaping our daily lives and entire industries.
In this era of accelerating change, many assumptions that we relied upon in the past will no longer apply. Technology is creating […]
The seventh annual EW ECE conference attracted over 300 professionals and educationists from across the country who discussed best practices and deliberated on focusing government and public attention to the importance of providing pre-primary education to India’s 164 million children in the 0-5 age group – Summiya Yasmeen
Staged at Bangalore’s smart ITC Gardenia Hotel on […]
Teacher education in the 21st century: Are you ready for the new National Education Policy’
According to James Heckman, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for economics in 2000, the rate of return on investing in preschool education is higher than investing in education or training at any other time in a person’s life. In 2007, […]
PANEL DISCUSSION
Designing low-cost/affordable models for ECCE
The first panel discussion of the EducationWorld Early Childhood National Conference 2017 chaired by EW managing editor Summiya Yasmeen, featured a galaxy of experts in pre-primary education invited from across the country. The high-powered panel, which debated ‘Designing low-cost/affordable models for ECCE,’ comprised Nilesh Nimkar (NN), founder of the Quality […]
PANEL DISCUSSION
Should the RTE Act include preschool education?
This panel comprised five knowledgeable and pre-eminent ECCE (early childhood care and education) professionals from across India — Swati Popat Vats (SPV), founder-president of the Early Childhood Association of India; Lina Ashar (LA), founder-director of the Kangaroo Kids chain of 116 owned and franchised preschools and K-12 schools; […]
OPEN DEBATE
Exposing youngest children to new technologies: Boon or bane?
In a departure from usual conference/symposia practice of select experts and speakers on the dais dispensing wisdom to delegates, the seventh EducationWorld Early Childhood Education National Conference 2017 allocated considerable time for delegates from the floor to express themselves and share their knowledge and classroom experiences […]
The Delhi-based NIIT Ltd (estb.1981), a global leader in ICT skills and talent development, inaugurated its biggest Big Data talent training base at Guiyang City, China on January 9. It will conduct IT (information technology) and Big Data training for university graduates, working professionals and government employees in Guizhou province. The centre will also help […]
The UK college owned by FTSE 100 company Pearson Llc is aiming to be a “boutique university” that is limited in size, with plans to help the wider company implement its “strategic direction” in education rather than compete directly with universities. Roxanne Stockwell, principal of Pearson College London, spoke to Times Higher Education after the […]
Kolkata’s showpiece presidency University — established in 1817 as the Hindoo College by a group of 20 eminent scholars led by the legendary social reformer Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833) — initiated its big bang bicentenary celebrations on January 5 with seminars in India, Britain and the US. Banners displaying quotations of distinguished Presidency alumni […]
Sweden (pop.10 million) is often cited as one of the world’s leading higher education nations. It invested 3.2 percent of its GDP in research and development (R&D) in 2014, one of the highest proportions in the world. Unsurprisingly, it’s among the countries with the largest cohort of researchers (1 percent) relative to its total population. […]
Four years after the supreme Court passed orders directing India’s 29 state governments and seven Union Territories to ensure that all 1.20 million government schools countrywide are equipped with toilets, and two years after prime minister Narendra Modi launched the BJP/NDA government’s Swachh Bharat Swachh Vidyalaya (national clean school) campaign on October 2, 2014 with […]
The Egyptian president’s senior education adviser believes Egypt is in a good position for a world in which nations compete through “innovation and ideas” rather than commodities.
Tarek Shawki, chairman of the presidential advisory council for education and scientific research, says Egypt is in the process of asking questions about what’s the most appropriate education model […]
A January 17 order of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) — aka the Greater Bangalore Municipal Corporation — has generated shockwaves within communities of this hi-tech city’s estimated 4,000 preschools and young parents. The order written only in Kannada — the state’s official language — directs all preschools in Bangalore to relocate to designated […]
Children need to develop relationships-building skills future workers need such as being able to motivate, collaborate, persevere and navigate through a buffet of freelance opportunities
In all the discussions, debates and deliberations on the need to enhance learning outcomes in America’s classrooms and improve performance on playing fields, I am yet to hear anyone talk about […]
“We live in a country where 76 percent of our children will drop out before class X… Building India is only possible if we fix our education system. And fixing education is only possible if we ensure that India’s top graduates choose to teach, perhaps before joining the corporate world. ”
Anu Aga, chairperson of Teach […]
The state government has awarded 178 computer laptops to meritorious students who excelled in their class X and XII board examinations of 2016 conducted by the Meghalaya state, Delhi-based CISCE (Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations) and CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education).
Addressing media personnel in Shillong on January 20, Ampareen Lyngdoh, the state’s […]
EducationWorld felicitated and celebrated Indias top preschools in 16 cities — as per the outcome of the EW India Preschool Rankings 2016 conducted by C fore — at an awards ceremony at the ITC Gardenia, Bangalore. Staged coterminously with EW Early Childhood Education National Conference 2017, the awards ceremony attracted promoters, principals and teachers of […]
Health is Wealth, a 250-word essay with a ringing endorsement of prime minister Narendra Modi’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Movement), has won Sangli (Maharashtra)-based teenager Ashish Jadhav #1 rank in version 9.0 of the Tata Build India (TBI) Essay Competition 2014-15 (Marathi language category). Ashish was among 11 national language (including English) winners to […]
An Era of Darkness by Shashi Tharoor; Aleph Book Company; Rs.699; Pages 294
In Britain and in India as evidenced by the success of television series such as Downton Abbey and latterly The Crown, there’s a rose-tinted nostalgia about the glory days of the British empire which ruled a quarter of the world, and particularly about the British Raj in […]
Summiya Yasmeen interviewed Christopher Jolly, the London-based founder of Jolly Learning Pvt. Ltd (estb.1987) which has pioneered Jolly Phonics, a child-centred approach to teaching English through synthetic phonics, and Jolly Grammar. The company sells over 2 million publications each year in over 100 countries. Excerpts:
What were the reasons which prompted you to promote Jolly Learning?
Stagnation […]
Promoted in 1996 by the globe-girdling Chinmaya Mission, CIRS has acquired a nationwide reputation for excellent academics blended with co-curricular education steeped in Indian culture and traditions – Hemalatha Raghupathi
Nestled in the foothills of the Western Ghats and encompassing a 78-acre sylvan campus on the outskirts of the textiles city of Coimbatore (pop. 3.46 million), the […]
The appointment from February 21 of N. Chandrasekaran (NC), hitherto chief executive of Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), as chairman of Tata Sons Ltd, the apex-level holding company of the salt to software Tata Group (aggregate annual revenue: Rs.705,848 crore) — India’s largest business conglomerate — has been widely welcomed by ill-informed print and audio-visual […]
Founded in 1872 as the University of Wales, over the past 144 years AU has established a global reputation for teaching and research. In the THE World University Rankings, it is ranked among the Top 40 in the UK
Sited in the coastal town of Aberystwyth in Wales, the eponymous Aberystwyth University (AU, estb.1872) has developed […]
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is an organisation established to conduct standardised secondary and higher secondary school-leaving (classes X and XII) examinations. The rationale behind promotion of the Delhi-based CBSE was — and is — to test students of affiliated schools and certify them if they are sufficiently proficient in English (or Hindi), […]
With high premium placed on styling and placement of branded and general merchandise in retail stores and spaces, retail design is a fast-track career – Odeal D’Souza
Arguably for the first time since independence following which a licence-permit-quota regime was imposed upon the public of free India, the country is experiencing a bricks-n-mortar (as also online) […]
A constant stream of news reports from across the country highlighting rape, abduction, kidnapping and other forms of sexual assault on women citizens is indicative of a dangerous contagion spreading through Indian society. If unchecked by a series of intelligent initiatives within the education, law, order and justice systems, it has the potential to force […]
I’m a B.Sc (computer science) graduate currently working for a well-known company. I would like to write the IIT Joint Admission Test (IIT-JAM). However, I don’t have the required score in my graduation exam to secure admission into the IITs. What if I clear the eligibility test but am not eligible for the programme? I […]
Thanks for your cover story ‘Edtech game changers leapfrogging Indian education’ (EW January). There’s no doubt that new 21st-century technologies offer unique opportunities to expand access and upgrade Indian education. Moreover, problems of shortage of well-trained teachers and poor student learning outcomes can be overcome with innovative use of technology.
I was disappointed at the exclusion […]
Besides greater engagement, retention and collaboration in classrooms, VR & AR enhance learning by simulating images and enabling 360 degree immersive journeys making comprehension much easier
In the new millennium, school and college students are becoming comfortable with new technologies such as the Internet, instructional videos, distance learning powered by video technology, multi-player video games, MMOG […]
The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2016 of the Mumbai-based Pratham Education Foundation (estb.1994) — published after skipping a year — indicates that the continuous slide in primary education in rural India seems to have been halted with children’s reading and arithmetic capability improving marginally. It also reports improved infrastructure, particularly in toilets and […]
Visitors stand out at Marlboro College’s bucolic campus in the woods of Vermont, but not because they are special or even unexpected. With 190 matriculated students and just a few dozen faculty and staff, everyone knows everyone. The student-faculty ratio is 5:1, perhaps the lowest in the country. The college administration has worked hard to […]
When the BJP-Shiv Sena was swept to power in Maharashtra (pop. 114 million) — India’s most industrialised state — in October 2014, one of the alliance’s major promises was larger budgets for education and education reform. But 27 months after the BJP-led state government was sworn in, the promise remains unfulfilled.
A recent study released in […]
In a league table of education systems drawn up in 2015 by the OECD club of mainly rich countries, South Africa ranks #75 out of 76. Last November, the latest Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), a quadrennial test written by 580,000 pupils in 57 countries, had South Africa at or near the […]
Judging by the space given to education in election manifestos of the major political parties contending for the favour of the electorate in the legislative assembly elections of Uttar Pradesh — India’s most populous (215 million) state (which if it were a country would be the fifth most populous worldwide) — scheduled to begin on […]
Homa Hoodfar completed her Ph D almost 30 years ago. But it was only earlier last year, when she was locked in a cell in Iran’s Evin Prison — nicknamed Evin University owing to the number of intellectuals imprisoned there — that she first fully understood the value and history of academic freedom. “I don’t […]
Best-selling books of the 21st century Irrespective of digital advancements and the social media invasion, most of us still like to enjoy our day off exploring ... 
Centre constitutes committee to review conduct of exams by NTA In the wake of the recent controversies involving the UG NEET and UGC NET exams, the ministry of education has ... 
Bengal: Teacher crisis in Classes XI, XII in state-aided schools Mita Mukherjee Many state-aided schools in Bengal are suddenly facing a crisis of teachers in their higher secondary units (Class ... 
Mother’s apprehensions can’t be made obstacle in children’s education: Delhi HC Aug 3, A mother's anxiety for her children's well being can't be overemphasised but her apprehension of "psychological trauma" to ... 
