EducationWorld July 15

Thirty-four years of uninterrupted communist rule (1977-2011) over the fertile wetlands of West Bengal which in the 19th and early 20th century led the Indian cultural and education renaissance, has so devastated the state, that this once thriving region, the hub of the East India Company, has been reduced to an industrial wasteland. The only […]

Rohan Bhat, Chairman, Children’s Academy Group of Schools, Mumbai

Where would you place education on your national list of priorities?
Foremost. The progress of a nation can’t be swifter than its progress in education.

How best to upgrade government schools?
Government schools across India suffer from lack of accountability. The best option to improve them is through […]

The Prince ” The Secret Story Of The World™s Most Intriguing Royal by William Simpson Harper Collins; Price: Rs.670; Pages 480
The Al Saud dynasty which rules the kingdom of Saudi Arabia ” the world™s largest producer of crude oil and petroleum which greatly enhanced its power and wealth (per capita income: $52,800 PPP per […]

In the not-so-good old days when I was a boy, very few of us had the opportunity to participate in organised sports before high school. Improvised or pick-up games were the norm. But it was on those less-than-ideal playing fields, with beat up balls and no clear boundary markings, that I learned lessons that served […]

A proposal in the Union Budget 2015-16 to establish a Student Financial Aid Authority to administer and monitor scholarships and education loans, offers the prospect of revitalising the country™s malfunctioning high-interest education loans system    Summiya Yasmeen

Gurgaon-based Meghana Sathyanarayan, communications officer of CottonConnect, a UK-based NGO, is grateful to two public sector banks for fulfilling her […]

In addition to producing revenue for universities and economic benefits for host nations, the growing cohort of international students is widely thought to be playing a key role in globalisation as they interact with home students on campus. But statistics shared at the recent annual conference of Nafsa, the Association of International Educators, suggest that […]

œNo role models, says Zvezdelina Atanassova when asked why education is not valued in Lozenets. In this Roma (gypsy) neighbourhood in Stara Zagora, a town of 138,000 in south-eastern Bulgaria, she is a rarity: a Roma, a woman and a student. Girls here rarely study beyond primary school. Boys drop out at age 15, as […]

Musing on the enticements offered to researchers considering relocation by leading universities in the oil-rich Gulf, Pierre Zalloua asks: œHow can we compete? As dean of graduate studies and research at the Lebanese American University (LAU), Dr. Zalloua knows finding the answer to that question will be challenging in a country plagued by political instability […]

France is justly proud of some aspects of its education system. At prestigious public sector high schools such as Henri IV, an ancient establishment in the centre of Paris, pupils emerge with rigorous, well-trained minds, thanks to a broad-based final exam, the baccalaureat. The country boasts five of the top 15 European business schools.  Yet, […]

Two big obstacles confront the reform-minded Italian government, headed by Matteo Renzi: a mistrust of competition and selection, and fear of change that may worsen existing problems, like nepotism. Both impulses are threatening a plan to upgrade Italian education.

The country’s current school results are mixed. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) organised by the […]

At a ˜boot camp™ for parents-to-be in New York, course leaders guide their students through baby maintenance for beginners: what goes in, what comes out, and how to keep them warm and clean. The students have the same questions and worries as expectant parents the world over. But there™s one difference: at this particular boot […]

Holistic education is a mantra to which almost all educators subscribe, mostly by way of lip service. The popular sentiment, voiced by most principals even if not by parents and supporters such as the Holistic Educators Organisation in Oregon, USA, is that this education philosophy enables children to discover themselves and develop social, emotional, intellectual […]

After completing my B.Sc degree next year I want to sign up for a bachelor™s degree programme in library and information science (B.LISc). What are the job opportunities?
Geeta Kerkar, Pune
A B.LISc degree will open up a wide range of career options. You™ll become eligible to work in government and public libraries, universities and […]

With the tempo of mergers, acquisitions and takeovers revving up in India Inc, the demand for specialist corporate lawyers is unprecedented   Indra Gidwani

With industry and business growing steadily and a cascade of venture capital flowing into innovative start-ups while the tempo of mergers, acquisitions and takeovers is revving up, the demand for specialist corporate lawyers […]

In early May, a meeting of the Union cabinet chaired by prime minister Narendra Modi approved a set of amendments to the Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Act, 1986. The amendments permit children below age 14 to work in family-owned agriculture and other enterprises. An exception has also been made for children working as artistes […]

Extremism or fundamentalism is the bane of all religious creeds. It tarnishes almost all the major religions of the world ” Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Zionism, some in deadlier ways than others. But in India of the 21st century where the reformist Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rules at the Centre and in several […]

Tata ClassEdge, a division of Tata Industries Ltd which provides technology-enabled instructional solutions for schools countrywide, was conferred the Best Interactive Solution Provider Award at the 8th Assocham Education Summit & National Excellence Awards 2015 staged in New Delhi recently. The short-listed finalists were judged on the parameters of innovation, scalability, ability to overcome challenges […]

Jammu & Kashmir
Village education committees drive
Village Education Committee (VEC) Day was observed statewide during which VECs were formally constituted for government schools under the centrally-funded Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Education for All programme). Each VEC comprises a local panchayat representative, headmaster of the school, representative of a local self-help group, educationists, parents and other […]

œI do not see any sign in our polity that assures me of an outstanding aspect of leadership. A commitment to democracy and to all other aspects related is lacking.
L.K. Advani, BJP leader, in an interview with the Indian Express (June 18), on occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Emergency declared in 1975

It™s a telling reminder of the socio-economic backwardness of 21st century India. Despite cracking the two-tier IIT-JEE Main and Advanced exams ” widely regarded as the world™s most competitive test ” and being admitted into one of the country™s 16 elite IITs, Raju (18) and Brijesh Saroj (19), the sons of a daily wage earner […]

An uneasy calm prevails on the campus of the CBSE-affiliated Bala Vidya Mandir Senior Secondary School (BVM, estb. 1989) in Adyar, Chennai. In early June the school™s 104 teachers, parents, principal Srinivasa Raghavan and former school CEO S.S. Nathan rose in united protest against a dual fee structure introduced by the management for its 1,200 […]

With the first term of the Trinamool Congress (TMC), which ended the 34-year continuous rule of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM)-led Left Front coalition over West Bengal (pop.91 million) in the state assembly election of 2011, nearing its end, chief minister Mamata Banerjee is pulling out all stops to woo a disenchanted electorate by […]

One of the three modern presidency universities established by royal proclamation of Queen Victoria as a gift to the people of India on the occasion of suzerainty passing from the East India Company to imperial Great Britain in 1857, the University of Bombay has nurtured and shaped great scholars and statesmen. Among them: Lokmanya Bal […]

Most citizens tend to have a love-hate relationship with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). In February against all expectations, AAP not only bested but thrashed the BJP in the Delhi state assembly elections held ten months after the BJP-NDA coalition routed the Congress-led UPA coalition at the Centre, with the national electorate awarding the BJP […]

Thanks for your cover story ˜Agriculture – primary education = mass farm suicides™ (EW June). Per hectare, agricultural productivity in India is half that of China and one-sixth of California. Although we have sun, soil and water in abundance, India™s farm productivity is very low because there™s hardly any application of science and technology. India […]

The report of the debroy Committee proposing the rationalisation and restructuring of the over-centralised Indian Railways (IR), submitted to the Union government in mid-June, offers the year-old BJP/NDA government a great opportunity to radically improve the operations and productivity of the country™s logistics backbone. In fiscal 2014-15, Indian Railways hauled 1050.18 million tonnes of freight […]

Until very recently, middle class parents in non-metropolitan India aspiring to provide high-quality English-medium education to their children had to move heaven and earth to enroll them in the few vintage primary-secondaries of the nearest city, or pack them off to boarding schools in the hills ” both expensive propositions. Your editor was shipped all […]