Education News

Karnataka: Kumaraswamy vindicated

The decision taken by the shaky JD (S)-Congress coalition government last July (2018) to promote 1,000 English-medium government primary schools across Karnataka (pop.67 million) after decades of hostility to English of successive state governments — and complete bar on teaching English in classes I-V in government primaries — has proved to be one of the […]

West Bengal: Slipping ground

The fallout of general election 2019 in West Bengal in which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) bagged an unprecedented 18 of 42 Lok Sabha seats reducing the 2014 tally of the ruling Trinamool Congress Party (TMC) from 34 to 23, is that the state has become a battleground in the run-up to the state legislative […]

Maharashtra: Self-created crisis

The decision taken by Maharashtra’s BJP-Shiv Sena-led government to scrap in-school assessment for languages and social science subjects in the class X secondary school certificate (SSC) board exams held in March, has delayed first year junior college (FYJC) admissions. Moreover, there is a 12.31 percent decrease in the number of students who passed this school-leaving […]

Delhi: Timely warning

One of the highlights of the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2019 draft prepared by a high-powered committee chaired by Dr. K. Kasturirangan, eminent space scientist and former chairman of ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation), and released for national debate and discussion on May 30, is the centrality of teachers in school education. “Teachers truly […]

They said it in May

“In the failure to generate a comprehensive policy for a common schooling system or to support processes that would enable a diversity of schools but with similar standards, schools in India have become the key institutions by which inequities are being reproduced.”
A R Vasavi, social anthropologist, writing in The India Forum (May 9)

“They (liberals) […]

Tamil Nadu: TET troubles

Over 1,500 school teachers of 8,403 government-aided schools in Tamil Nadu, who were on the verge of being sacked by the state government, have been given a last minute reprieve. Their transgression was that they had not passed the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) mandated by s.23 (1) of the Right of Children to Free and […]

West Bengal: Descending star

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)

With the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which had bagged a mere two of West Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha seats in General Election 2014, increasing its haul to 18 in the recently concluded general election and the ruling Trinamool Congress Party’s dropping from 34 to 23, the star of the state’s feisty chief minister […]

Karnataka: Hard grind school

A second student suicide within two years at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore (NLSIU, estb.1987) — routinely ranked the country’s #1 law school by all media publications — has provoked much anguish and a day-long protest vigil on this premier law school’s green 23-acre campus in suburban Bangalore.

On March 16, Kanish K. […]

Maharashtra: Harder times

A 2018 decision of the Maharashtra State Board of Higher Secondary Education (MSBHSE) to scrap internal school-based exams for language and social science subjects will impact 1.7 million students who wrote its secondary school certificate (SSC) class X board exams in March. Until last year, oral communication capability and project assignments with weightage of 20 […]

Delhi: New pious intention

Autar Nehru (Delhi)

The top priorities of the new Union minister of human resource development (aka education) — the betting is that incumbent HRD minister Prakash Javadekar will retain this portfolio — are likely to be release of the New Education Policy (NEP) promised in the 2014 election manifesto of the BJP (which has been returned […]

They said it in April

“Students educated in government schools evolve into better citizens compared to their counterparts from elite schools.”
Uday Holla, advocate general of Karnataka, defending the state’s RTE Rules amendment that allows RTE quota admissions in private schools only if no government schools are sited in their neighbourhood (April 3)

“Private investment in education makes government uncomfortable because […]

Tamil Nadu: Patience erosion

A long-standing proposal of the incumbent E.K. Palaniswamy-led All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) government to introduce the Aadhar-enabled biometric attendance system (AEBAS) for over 390,000 teachers and administrative staff of Tamil Nadu’s 57,000 government and aided schools has been stymied for nearly two years because of stiff opposition from teachers. This despite an […]

West Bengal: Education initiatives boost

At the time of writing, the electorates of 18 of West Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha constituencies — the largest representation in Parliament at the Centre after Uttar Pradesh’s 80 and Maharashtra’s 48 seats — have already voted in the ongoing General Election 2019. The principal players in the state’s political arena are chief minister Mamata […]

Karnataka: Pay parity shock

A department of public instruction (DPI) circular of March 30 mandating all 20,581 private unaided schools in Karnataka (pop. 60 million) to pay government prescribed salaries to teachers and administrative staff, has caused much hand-wringing and despair within their managements. According to the circular, all private schools — including the state’s estimated 14,000 private budget […]

Maharashtra: Sexual abuse scandal

Reportedly continuous sexual abuse of minor girls at a private tribal students’ hostel run by a former Congress MLA has rocked Maharashtra. Even as citizens geared up to vote for 48 members of Parliament who will represent the state in the Lok Sabha, Delhi, widespread rallies have been staged by women’s groups and tribal organisations […]

Delhi: Ritual obeisance

Despite damning start-of-the-year Annual Status of Education Report 2018, QS and Times Higher Education World University Rankings highlighting the pathetic condition of India’s education system from pre-primary to Ph D — and continuous whistle-blowing by EducationWorld for almost two decades — education reform is a peripheral issue in General Election 2019.

Although as usual, all political […]

They said it in March

“Weakening institutions, making way for commercialisation of higher education and slashing support for educational welfare are some of the obvious examples of the short-sightedness herein. Notwithstanding the rhetoric, the present government’s report card on education has more misses than hits.”

Academics Shivali Tukdeo and Subhankar Chakraborty in ‘BJP’s record on education runs afoul of its own […]

Karnataka: S. 12 (1) (c) sabotage

A recent amendment at the time of school admissions to the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 Rules, has disillusioned thousands of socio-economically underprivileged families in Karnataka (pop. 60 million).

Under s. 12 (1) (c) of the RTE Act, children of poor households (with incomes below Rs.3.5 lakh per year in […]

West Bengal: Teacher vacancies strike

Against the backdrop of hectic campaigning for the 17th General Election with West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) party led by chief minister Mamata Banerjee expecting to bag all of the state’s 42 seats in the Lok Sabha, around 450 youth have been on a hunger strike since February 28 in the heart of Kolkata, […]

Tamil Nadu: Teacher deployment row

The steady decline in class i enrolments in Tamil Nadu’s 23,395 class I-V government primaries and 7,597 class I-VIII upper-primaries (aka middle schools) has prompted the incumbent E.K. Palaniswamy-led All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) government to introduce formal preschool education (lower and upper kindergarten) in 2,381 spruced-up anganwadis attached with upper primaries across […]

Maharashtra: Quota upon quota

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s decision to reserve 16 percent of capacity in postgrad programmes of Maharashtra government’s 14 medical colleges for the Maratha community under the socially and educationally backward classes (SEBC) category, and another 10 percent for economically weaker section (EWS) students mandated by the Central government on January 9, has […]

Delhi: Scathing indictment

A report card which compares the education delivery record of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre with promises made in its Election Manifesto 2014, shows the coalition in poor light.

The RTE Forum, a coalition of civil society groups which monitors implementation of the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education […]

They said it in February

“I daresay that humanity hasn’t matured.”
Pope Francis, acknowledging Catholic priests’ sexual abuse of nuns after a mass in Abu Dhabi (February 5)

“My resignation is not an attempt to be heroic or to make a statement. It is simply the only thing I felt anyone in this position must do. It is not just for […]

West Bengal: Campus election politics

As the country waits for the Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora to visit the troubled state of Jammu and Kashmir on March 4-5 after which he will announce the Lok Sabha election schedule, West Bengal’s fiery chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who is a prime ministerial possibility should the united anti-BJP parties (mahagathbandhan) win General Election […]

Uttar Pradesh: Long hot summer forecast

In the new globalised world, it was inevitable that the freedom of speech on campus debate, which is sweeping across university campuses in the US and Europe, would be echoed in India.

On February 12, a motley group of 20 students of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) gathered in the university circle to protest an invitation […]

Karnataka: OOS children outcry

Despite the landmark right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 mandating that every child aged 6-14 should be in primary/elementary school, 70,016 of the estimated 14.4 million children in the southern state of Karnataka are out of the formal education system, according to a Union human resource development ministry survey released […]

Tamil Nadu: Unwarranted teachers strike

An indefinite strike called by the Joint Action Council of Tamil Nadu Teachers’ Organisation and Government Employees Organisation (JACTTO-GEO) on January 22, supported by over 700,000 government school teachers and public sector employees ended with a whimper on January 30. The incumbent Edappadi K. Palaniswami-led All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) state government firmly […]

Maharashtra: Poor rich MCGM schools

Faced with a steady exodus of students from its 1,192 schools, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) — the wealthiest local government in the country (budget: Rs.30,692.59 crore for 2019-20) — has drawn up an ambitious plan to revamp them. To attract and retain children, the budget for this fiscal is 6 percent higher […]

Delhi: Poor children admission fracas

There’s a virtual unanimity among political pundits and educationists that no political party countrywide is as committed to improving and upgrading K-12 public education as the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which has an overwhelming majority (67 out of 70 seats) in the Delhi state legislative assembly. Despite this huge majority, the AAP government has not […]

They said it in January

“Can a woman give birth to 100 children in one lifetime? Mahabharata says, 100 eggs were fertilised and put into 100 earthen pots. Are they not test tube babies? We had hundreds of Kauravas from one mother because of stem cell research and test tube baby technology. It happened a few thousand years ago. This […]

Karnataka – Endless language debate

After almost a quarter century, a major politician in Karnataka has taken the powerful Kannada language lobby in the state head-on.

The state’s ruling JD (S)-Congress government, which was sworn in on May 23, 2018, is determined to provide English-medium education in 1,000 government elementaries to stop the steady exodus of children from the state’s 44,000 […]

West Bengal – Education makeover initiatives

With general election 2019 just a few months away, in a major show of strength Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee convened a massive ‘united opposition rally’ in Kolkata on January 19 to highlight the “misrule” of the Bharatiya Janata Party which is in office at the Centre and 16 […]

Maharashtra – Unwarranted complacency

There’s an unwarranted self-congratulatory mood within Maharashtra’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), particularly in the education ministry, following the national release of Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2018 on January 15. On several metrics children in rural Maharashtra’s 42,000-plus primary schools performed better than the national average. While the national average for children in […]

Delhi-Unconnected dots malaise

The 13th Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2018 — the labour of love of 30,000 volunteers (mainly college students) mobilised by the globally-respected Mumbai/Delhi-based NGO Pratham Education Foundation (estb.1994) — released in New Delhi on January 15, has caused a storm in the teacups of the small number of academics, intellectuals and media pundits […]

Delhi-Band-aid mergers

A ground zero reality which communists, socialists and assorted lefties, who despite the collapse of communism worldwide continue to dominate India’s academy, refuse to acknowledge is that there is a steady exodus of pupils out of government schools, especially public primary-secondaries run by state and local governments.

The reality which education bureaucrats and ideologically obstinate academics […]

Maharashtra Children’s burden

A curious anomaly of indian primary-secondary education is the literally heavy burden that even tiny children have to bear because they are obliged to lug a heavy load of text and notebooks to and from schools every day. In Maharashtra following several PIL (public interest litigation) writ petitions filed against the state government for failure […]

Karnataka Overdue fees hike

The southern state of Karnataka which hosts the country’s largest number of medical colleges (51), is set to introduce a 15 percent reserved quota for non-resident Indian (NRI) students — following the example of private medical colleges — in its 17 government medical colleges. Thus far, government medical colleges only admitted meritorious students from the […]

Tamil Nadu-Distance learning regulations ire

A slew of public notices, rules and regulations issued by the Delhi-based University Grants Commission (UGC) — the apex higher education supervisory organisation — relating to open and distance learning (ODL) have raised the hackles of the 13 government and seven deemed (private) universities in Tamil Nadu (pop.72 million), which offer distance education programmes.

The UGC […]

West Bengal – Banerjee’s bet

With general election 2019 round the corner, chief minister and undisputed supremo of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) party Mamata Banerjee who harbours national ambitions, is pulling out all stops to woo the electorate of West Bengal to consolidate her support base.

West Bengal’s quota in the Lok Sabha — the lower house of Parliament in […]

They said it in December

“School readiness blah blah blah, school readiness, but I think schools should first be made ready to welcome every child.”
Uma Mahadevan, principal secretary, women and child welfare, Karnataka government, on twitter (December 16)

“Do we need another Education Policy? The problem with education is not prescription. It is with application. How about a monitorable action […]