“Mother tongue… the term snacks of some kind of purity test. Bureaucrats ask for it in forms, ministers extol its virtues. It’s really complex-ridden linguistic gatekeeping disguised as heritage preservation. Retire the phrase, not because it’s silly because it’s inaccurate. Call it ‘comfort language(s)’ instead.”
Editorial titled ‘Don’t bother with mother tongues’ (The Economic Times, June […]
As classrooms reopened on june 2, available data indicates that there’s a rush for admission into government schools rather than private K-12 institutions. By June 17, Tamil Nadu’s 37,211 government schools and 12,631 government-aided schools had recorded 3.12 lakh new enrolments. Projections indicate that the number could rise […]
Barely ten months after the brutal rape and murder of a 31-year-old postgraduate trainee doctor at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, Kolkata, yet another education institution gang rape atrocity — this time of a first‑year law student of South Calcutta Law College, allegedly by […]
Officials of the enforcement Directorate (ED) conducted raids at multiple locations across Bengaluru on June 25 and 26 while investigating an alleged ‘seat blocking’ admissions scam in the state’s 254 private engineering colleges. Among the locations raided were campuses of the city’s top-ranked BMS College of […]
Talliki vandanam (‘salutations to mother’), a new scheme launched by Andhra Pradesh’s Telugu Desam Party (TDP) which was returned to power with an overwhelming majority in the legislative assembly election of 2024 to boost K-12 enrolments statewide, has provoked a major controversy.
NEP 2020 formally released five years ago: uncelebrated milestone
For academia, july 29 is — or should be — an important milestone. It marks completion of five years since the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 was officially approved and promulgated by the BJP/NDA government at the Centre. However very few, if […]
“Wishing Exam Warriors great success in all the opportunities that lie ahead!To those who feel slightly dejected at their scores, I want to tell them: one exam can never define you. Your journey is much bigger and your strengths go far beyond the mark sheet. Stay confident, stay curious because great things await!”
As campaigning for west Bengal’s legislative assembly election scheduled for early 2026 heats up, prime minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah extensively toured the state in May severely criticising the ruling Trinamool Congress and chief minister Mamata Banerjee now in her third consecutive term in office. […]
The stand-off between tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin and the BJP government at the Centre on the issue of the latter withholding a sum of Rs.2,150 crore due to the state under the Samagra Shiksha Scheme (SSS) will have to be resolved by the Supreme […]
Pre-primary education is the only sector not subject to government controls and regulation. Although the country’s 1.34 million pre-primary Anganwadi Centres (AWCs), promoted by the Central government under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS, 1975) to provide nutrition to new borns and lactating mothers and also provide basic education, […]
CBSE secretary Himanshu Gupta (centre): slew of initiatives
Since himanshu gupta (ias), an alum of IIT-Delhi and former director of education of Delhi state under the Aam Aadmi Party government which had made school education a top priority during its two terms in office (2014-2024), was appointed Secretary of the Central […]
Marathi medium students: steadily declining number
In all states of the indian union ill-advisedly reorganised on the basis of linguistic majoritarianism in 1956, imposition of the dominant language as the medium of instruction in schools is high on the agenda of political parties, with none of them bothering about developing and contemporising […]
An april 3 supreme court judgement scrapping the appointment of 25,735 secondary and higher-secondary teachers appointed by the state government in 2016, has inflicted a massive blow to the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) government of West Bengal (pop.109 million). An apex court bench comprising Chief Justice […]
“Has the pervasive control of universities helped the cause of higher education? No Indian university ranks in the top 100 universities of the world (prepared by QS). The highest ranked Indian university is IIT, Bombay that took the 118th rank. In a reply in Parliament, the government disclosed that as on October 21, 2024, the […]
In a not unexpected setback to the state government, on April 4, President Draupadi Murmu ( on advice of the Union government) declined to give her assent to the Tamil Nadu Admission to Undergraduate Medical Degree Courses Bill, 2022. The Bill sought to exempt higher secondary school […]
Every April, it has become an annual ritual for parents and child rights organisations to protest tuition fee hikes of independent (‘unaided’) private schools for the academic year beginning June. On April 18, responding to a complaint of the Samruddha Bharat Foundation (SBF), a Bengaluru-based sociopolitical […]
Delhi chief minister Rekha Gupta & education minister Ashish Sood (centre right)
Within India’s rapidly expanding and influential middle class — whose number is estimated by PRICE Report at 432 million — which shuns the country’s 1 million (state) government primary-secondary schools defined by ramshackle infrastructure, chronic teacher absenteeism and abysmal […]
Despite the country’s establishment — politicians, bureaucrats, academics — paying loud lip service to India’s demographic dividend i.e, the world’s largest child and youth population whose number is estimated at 500 million, there’s no evidence of their taking the extra step to encash this dividend. Annual national expenditure […]
The financial burden of fulfilling its five 2023 legislative assembly election guarantees — 200 units of free power for every applicant household, 10 kg rice per person in below poverty line (BPL) households, free-of-charge travel for women in government buses, Rs.2,000 per month for women heads of family […]
Kota test prep students: suicides factory reputation
Another attempt to regulate India’s Rs.60,000 crore per year test prep aka coaching industry is likely to run aground. The Rajasthan Coaching Centres (Control and Regulation) Bill, 2025 — the first comprehensive legislation countrywide to regulate test prep institutions, some of whom have attained […]
Tamil Nadu’s 24 state government universities are experiencing a deepening financial crisis adversely impacting academic standards and institutional stability. Years of underfunding, financial mismanagement, and bureaucratic interference have made it difficult for them to “sustain even basic operations”.
On the eve of Republic Day on January 25, R.N. Ravi, Tamil Nadu’s Governor and […]
Sustained animosity between the BJP/NDA government at the Centre and the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress government of West Bengal (pop.91 million), now in its third term in office, is taking a toll on 10 million children enrolled in […]
“The Committee notes that in recent years, there has been a notable trend of foreign universities establishing campuses in India which is driven by India’s vast student market … However, India is yet to secure a campus from any of the leading global universities (the Ivy Leagues, New York University, Carnegie Mellon University, etc). The […]
After 34 years of industrial stagnation under communist rule (1977-2011) and during the first two terms (2011-21) of the incumbent Trinamool Congress (TMC) followed by the too prolonged national Covid pandemic shutdown, is the high-potential West Bengal economy on the mend? The Eighth Bengal Global […]
A public notice issued on February 25 by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) — India’s largest national school-leaving examinations board which has 30,700 Central government and upscale private schools affiliated with it — to the effect that it will conduct two class X school-leaving […]
Varkey (left) & Adani: game-changing CSR initiative. Inset: Francis Joseph
In what’s widely being interpreted as one-upmanship, Gautam Adani, chairman of the Adani Group of infrastructure construction and management companies (ports, airports, highways), ranked India’s second wealthiest individual (net worth $63.2 billion) and among the Top 25 globally by the US […]
“I urge parents not to compare their children with those of others and not to treat their children like podiums on stages. We have also seen that those parents who have not been very successful in their lives have nothing to say or want to tell the world about their successes and achievements, make the […]
Day by day, Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin is stepping up his war against the BJP/NDA government at the Centre. According to Stalin, the BJP leadership — especially prime minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah — is hell-bent upon imposing Hindi — the lingua franca of the socio-economically […]
Two years after against all pollsters’ opinions, the Congress party was swept to power in Karnataka with a majority of 135 in the 224-strong legislative assembly, the state government is floundering in a sea of troubles. Chief minister Siddaramaiah is under investigation for alleged involvement in a […]
“Even though just one-third of Indians who are of college-going age actually go to college — that share is about 80 percent in US and UK — 13 percent of Indians with advanced degrees remain unemployed, one of the highest shares in the world. In US, that share is 2.3 percent and in UK 2.7 […]
Widely believed to be the go-to academic of the RSS, BJP leadership at the Centre, Mamadala Jagdish Kumar, Chairman of the University Grants Committee (UGC), invested with all-important recognition and grants dispensing powers to colleges and universities countrywide, has a penchant for stirring the proverbial hornet’s nest. An alumnus of IIT-Madras […]
The 14th Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2024 published by the highly-respected Pratham Education Foundation and released on January 28 in New Delhi, has bad tidings for the southern state of Karnataka (pop.69 million).
This annual survey of primary education assesses the learning outcomes of three-16-year-old rural children in basic reading and […]
With Maharashtra (pop. 127 million) experiencing continuous political turmoil — the state has been ruled by multiple governments, including the Maha Vikas Aghadi, the BJP-backed Shiv Sena faction, and the current coalition, in the past five years — its 65,639 public/government schools are going from bad to worse.
Tamil Nadu has reaffirmed its commitment to the no-detention policy, ensuring that children in classes I-VIII in primary/elementary schools statewide are promoted to the next grade regardless of academic performance. This decision of the state government refutes the Central government’s recent amendment of the Right of Children […]
Primary children in Kolkata school: modest progress
The annual status of education report (ASER)2024, a comprehensive school education survey pertaining to 2023 conducted annually by the well-known Pratham Education Foundation, was released on January 28 in New Delhi. For the survey, a representative sample of 649,491 children aged 5-16 […]
“We have a public health system that does not deliver in times of disaster, yet more money is spent on it than any country anywhere in the world. And we have an education system that teaches our children to be ashamed of themselves — in many cases, to hate our country despite the love that […]
Banerjee (centre left) inaugurating Infosys Development Centre, Kolkata: turning tide?
With just a year to go for the state legislative assembly election of 2026, the tide may be turning for West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, whose third term in office has been marked by governance, public safety, and economic […]
Children’s day out: permission directive. Inset: Girija Devi
In mid-December, the Tamil Nadu government introduced new guidelines directing the state’s government, aided and private schools (including CISCE and CBSE) with an aggregate 3.9 million students to obtain prior clearance from government for a range of school activities — field trips, […]
The public education system in the southern state of Karnataka (pop.69 million), whose admin capital Bengaluru is the nation’s ICT (information communication technologies) epicentre and most recently voted India’s #1 hub for start-ups and unicorns, is in bad shape. The state’s 49,000 government schools, 430 […]
It’s official. the revolutionary mandate of the historic Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (aka RTE) Act, 2009 to abolish all exams for children in elementary school (classes I-VIII) has been revoked.
Mamta Jani, Founder, Ontrack Education For decades, studying abroad was the preserve of urban privilege—students from metropolitan centres with polished résumés and fluent English stepping .....Read More
According to the findings of a survey conducted by Sportz Village, a leading school sports organisation, one in four physical education classes is substituted or cancelled .....Read More
