“What does the scientific community expect to see in a Union Budget? The current level of expenditure in S&T is hopelessly inadequate if India is to compete at the international level in knowledge generation. So, the scientific community expects to see a significant increase in the outlay for research.”
Dhrubajyoti Mukherjee, president, The Breakthrough Science Society […]
Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai)
In end-february, tamil nadu’s Federation of Private School Associations (FePSA) issued a statement warning that its member schools will not admit free-of-charge children as mandated by the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009, for the academic year 2023-24, unless the DMK-run state government clears its dues of the previous two years.
Under the RTE […]
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)
The west bengal board of Primary Education recently declared results of the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET), held on December 11, 2022 at 1,460 exam centres across the state. Teachers are being hired for 11,000 vacant posts in 67,699 state government and aided primary schools. TET 2022 was held under tight police vigilance. That’s […]
Summiya Yasmeen (Bengaluru)
With state legislative Assembly elections scheduled for May-June, the ruling BJP government is pulling out all the stops to mend its damaged reputation vis-a-vis education. The BJP government’s record in education — which unlike most north Indian states is an important electoral issue in Karnataka — has drawn widespread adverse comment.
For instance, in […]
Autar Nehru (Delhi)
The second edition of the State of Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) Report 2022, released on February 24, indicates that India’s journey towards universalisation of FLN is likely to be arduous, but possible.
While the impact of pandemic school closures and resultant learning loss of two years for children has contributed to the disappointing […]
“Like in cricket, a batter focuses on the ball thrown to him ignoring shouts for fours and sixes from the crowd, students should also concentrate on their work. Do not be suppressed by pressures. Stay focused.”
Prime minister Narendra Modi’s advice to students at his annual ‘thoughts on examination’ interactive session (January 27)
“The President doesn’t […]
The war between Tamil Nadu’s DMK government and the BJP government at the Centre on education issues is intensifying. On several issues including NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test), a central exam for admission into medical colleges; CUET (Common University Entrance Test) for admission into all Central government universities; three-languages learning in K-12 education and […]
For Karnataka’s beleaguered ruling BJP government fighting a spate of corruption scandals ahead of looming legislative assembly elections to be held in May, the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022, released in the national capital on January 18 and authored by the highly-respected Pratham Education Foundation, contains bad news. The first household child-testing report […]
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)
According to the recently released Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022 of the highly respected Pratham Education Foundation, which assessed the learning outcomes of 11,994 children in rural primaries in 18 districts of West Bengal, although classroom attendance has risen to 92.2 percent from a low of 72.9 percent in 2021, learning […]
Autar Nehru (Delhi)
With the university grants Commission (UGC) — the apex-level body that regulates higher education countrywide — releasing its draft UGC (Setting up and Operation of Campuses of Foreign Higher Educational Institutions in India) Regulations, 2023 on January 5, India moved closer to permitting foreign higher education institutions (FHEIs) to establish campuses on Indian […]
Kingshuk Nag (Hyderabad)
With the telangana legislative assembly election scheduled to be held by end December and General Election 2024 obliged to be called the following summer, all political parties led by the erstwhile Telangana Rashtra Samiti, renamed Bharatiya Rashtra Samiti (BRS) on December 14 by chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR), have gone into election […]
-Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai)
Tamil pride suffered a huge blow in the closing months of last year when the Union ministry of education’s Performance Grading Index (PGI) 2020-21, released on November 3, 2022, demoted the state’s primary-secondary school system to Level III.
According to the ministry’s department of school education and literacy website, PGI, introduced in 2017-18, “measures […]
-Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)
Even as west Bengal’s monumental teachers’ recruitment scandal in which cash mountains of Rs.100 crore were discovered in the palatial home of actress Arpita Mukherjee, mistress of education minister Partha Chatterjee, is being investigated by the CBI and Enforcement Directorate (ED), the West Bengal Board of Primary Education (WBBPE) held a fresh Teachers’ […]
-Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru)
With state legislative assembly elections less than six months away, the auguries are not good for the state’s BJP government. The party’s strategy to arouse sub-nationalist Kannada pride by reviving a border dispute with Maharashtra has backfired with the BJP government at the Centre refusing to intervene in the dispute between two BJP-ruled […]
The glacial pace at which the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, formulated after an interregnum of 34 years — during which the world entered the digital age — is being implemented has belatedly galvanised the BJP/NDA government at the Centre into action, especially in higher education.
And the man chosen by the BJP top brass to […]
What is the most appropriate age for infants to be inducted into the formal education system? A 13-member committee constituted to formulate a state education policy (SEP), chaired by Justice D. Murugesan, a former chief justice of Delhi high court, is reportedly ready to prescribe a common age for admission into pre-primary learning.
Despite the Right […]
Even as west bengal’s humongous teacher recruitment scam in which bribes aggravating Rs.400-500 crore changed hands is being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the West Bengal Board of Primary Education (WBBPE) has scheduled a new Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) on December 11. This year, 690,931 candidates will write the 150-minutes exam at […]
With the tempo for state legislative assembly elections scheduled for next May building up, Karnataka’s ruling BJP government is pulling out all stops to ensure that it is returned to power in this southern state which is critical for the BJP high command — now in its second term at the Centre — to make […]
Maharashtra — india’s most industrialised state which accounts for almost 25 percent of the country’s annual industrial production — has experienced huge political upheavals in recent times. On June 30, the Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party and Congress coalition government which had assumed office in 2019 was toppled in a coup engineered by the BJP […]
In a landmark 3-2 majority judgement delivered on November 7, the Supreme Court of India upheld the 103rd Constitutional Amendment, 2019, under which the BJP government at the Centre introduced additional 10 percent reservation in public higher education institutions (HEIs) and government jobs for economically weaker sections (EWS) from the general category.
To appreciate the historic […]
We aim to ensure that children of poor parents become doctors and engineers even if they are not educated in English (medium). We want to ensure that no one is left behind due to the lack of knowledge of the English language. The New Education Policy of the Centre will pull the country out from […]
Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru)
India’s most well-administered state until the historic liberalisation and deregulation of the Indian economy in 1991 transformed its sleepy administrative capital of Bangalore (renamed Bengaluru in 2014) into the country’s Silicon Valley and a bustling commercial metro, Karnataka (pop.68 million) has experienced accelerated descent into pervasive corruption and misgovernance. Since last November, when […]
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)
West Bengal’s mega Rs.400-500 crore teacher recruitment scandal, which has placed education minister Partha Chatterjee and his actress mistress Arpita Mukherjee in jail cells after nearly Rs.100 crore in cash and title deeds of 12 properties were seized from the latter’s four upscale apartments in Kolkata on July 23, is still making headlines […]
Autar Nehru (Delhi)
The national curriculum Framework (NCF) 2022 was formally launched on October 20 with the presentation of the National Curriculum Framework for Foundational Stage (NCFFS) for children in the three-eight age group. NCFFS is the first of four frameworks scheduled to be launched under NCF 2022. The other three, expected to be announced soon, […]
“Skill is the currency of the century. Economic actors have a more important role than imagined. An educated and skilled workforce attracts investment, enhances productivity and is critical for moving up in the value chain. Academia and industry must collaborate for better outcomes.”
Vikas Singh, economist & columnist on reforming Indian higher education (Businessworld, September 24)
“Education […]
Nishant Saxena (Lucknow)
Academics and media pundits in lucknow, the administrative capital of Uttar Pradesh — India’s most populous (215 million) state — which is an also-ran on all socio-economic development indices, are pleasantly surprised by a spurt of positive activity in the education sector.
With children having enthusiastically returned to classes after the prolonged lockdown of […]
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)
West Bengal’s unprecedented teacher recruitment and related scandals which have blocked the appointment of much-needed teachers in the state’s 92,000 government schools for over a decade, are in the process of being unblocked.
On September 26, Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of the Calcutta high court issued a slew of orders directing the West Bengal School […]
Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru)
Ashwath Narayan:
Reeling under attacks from the opposition Congress party which has launched a highly effective ‘Pay CM — 40 percent accepted here’ poster campaign across the state to highlight rampant corruption in the state (last November the Karnataka State Contractors’ Association wrote directly to prime minister Narendra Modi complaining that government […]
Dipta Joshi (Mumbai)
Primary school teachers in Maharashtra’s 65,734 government-run zilla parishad (ZP) rural schools are simmering with anger. The state government’s education ministry has directed all teachers to display A4 size photographs of themselves in their classrooms. Additionally, Prashant Bamb, a member of the legislative assembly (MLA) of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has […]
Autar Nehru (Delhi)
Kejriwal (right) & Sisodia:
India’s political class is arguably the most obtuse of any country worldwide. Whereas politicians world over are well aware that education of children is the highest priority of parents, for post-independence India’s politicians and political parties, education of generation next is a peripheral low priority issue. Party manifestos […]
Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru)
The once well-governed southern state of Karnataka (pop.68 million) is rapidly transforming into ‘broken windows’ society. In 1982, American academics James Q. Wilson and George Kelling ideated their Broken Windows theory. They posited that if civic neglect and official corruption in any society or neighbourhood remains unpunished, an outbreak of serious crimes and […]
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)
Although there’s no denying that Christian missionaries have made a great contribution to the growth and dissemination of English-medium school and higher education, there’s rising awareness within the country’s influential middle class that priest-educators, i.e, men and women of the cloth also discharging academic roles and duties, are becoming obsolete.Bound by strict laws […]
Dipta Joshi (Mumbai)
Eight months after large-scale tampering and malpractices were reported in the Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) 2019-2020 written by 3.43 lakh aspirant school teachers, the Maharashtra State Council of Examinations (MSCE) disqualified 7,880 candidates who wrote the exam and banned them from writing any future TETs. In the list of proscribed aspirant primary school […]
Autar Nehru (Delhi)
A 2017 decision of the AAP (Aam Aadmi Party) Delhi state government to conduct online admissions of pre-primary and class I children from economically weaker sections (EWS) admitted free-of-charge into private schools under s.12 (1) (c) of the RTE Act, 2009, has generated conflict between the state government’s Directorate of Education (DoE) and […]
The BJP is a well-organised electoral juggernaut, it is ruthless in using state power to intimidate opponents… But a formidable opponent and repression often galvanize an Opposition, not make them comatose. But the Opposition is not held back by the power of the BJP. Its besetting sin is its own excruciating littleness.
-Pratap Bhanu Mehta, public […]
-Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)
West Bengal’s stop-go government school teacher recruitment process stretching back to 2015 ,which has been subject to continuous street demonstrations, court injunctions and sporadic appointments — as regularly reported by your correspondent — came to a head on July 22-23 when the Enforcement Directorate, a financial frauds investigation unit of the BJP-controlled Central […]
-Nishant Saxena (Lucknow)
On july 24, residents of Lucknow (pop.3.8 million), the administrative capital of the Hindi heartland, BJP-ruled state of Uttar Pradesh, woke up to bold face newspaper headlines and screaming television news anchors proclaiming that seven out of 18 students who attained the top score of 99.75 percent in the recently-completed class XII ISC […]
-Reshma Ravishanker
The Karnataka BJP government’s 26 position papers on National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which is being rolled out nationally after being kept on hold during the Covid-19 pandemic disruption, submitted in early July to the National Council for Educational Research & Training (NCERT), have sparked outrage within the academy.
Submitted in response to the Union […]
Ashokrao Thorat, vice president, MRSSM
More than 60 marathi-medium private aided school managements have filed writ petitions before the Nagpur bench of the Bombay high court demanding complete autonomy to appoint teachers. Currently, there are a total 66,750 primary-secondary schools statewide with an aggregate enrolment of 5.25 million children mentored by 450,000 teachers. Private-aided […]
-Autar Nehru
Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia
Perhaps the sole political party in India whose leadership believes that provision, upgradation and universalisation of school education is an election-winning issue is the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which was born out of social reformer Anna Hazare’s futile anti-corruption crusade of 2012. In 2015, AAP led by […]
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