“Teacher education programmes should underline active engagement in public life, and dispositions and sensibilities for living in plural societies with a commitment to social cohesion and solidarity.”
Seema Sarohe, assistant professor of education, University of Delhi on the role of teacher education programmes (Economic and Political Weekly, October 6)
Last month two significant and keenly anticipated elections for control of the Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) and Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) produced contrasting results which are being interpreted as forerunners of General Election 2019 scheduled for next summer.
The 135,000 (44 percent turnout) members of DUSU who voted on September 12, returned candidates […]
In maharashtra — india’s most industrialised state (pop.114 million) — 25,000 college and university teachers have been on an indefinite ‘cease-work’ strike since September 25. They are protesting poor pay scales and a huge number of teacher vacancies in the state’s government- funded higher education institutions.
The Maharashtra Federation of University & College Teachers Organisation (MFUCTO) […]
The political power and influence of the students’ community in the eastern seaboard state of West Bengal (pop.91 million) has been historically acknowledged right from the heyday of the anarchic Naxalite movement of the 1970s — often romanticised as the golden age of student politics in Bengal. Moreover in Bengal, Gandhian non-violence made minimal impact […]
Despite a stringent law against ragging in Tamil Nadu (pop.72 million) and a slew of directives issued by the Supreme Court to state governments and educational institutions countrywide to curb the practice of ragging, this pernicious campus initiation ritual has not been eradicated. Persistent fear, threat of violence and abuse continue to stalk school-leavers entering […]
In the public perception, Bangalore (pop.12 million, renamed Bengaluru in 2014 in a fit of foolish sub-nationalism which has jeopardised its international brand as India’s Silicon Valley) is the garden city of India. Ex facie, the statistics are impressive. The charm of this once clean green city which attracted a bevy of the world’s top-ranked […]
“Honest politics needs intelligent debate. One of the clearest signs of fascist politics is attacks on universities and expertise — the support systems of discussion and the sources of knowledge and facts.”
Jason Stanley, professor at Yale University (The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 2)
“I think some day, and soon, I’ll go back to teaching. This […]
Ever since the aam aadmi (Common Man’s) Party (AAP) — a political formation born out of Gandhian social activist Anna Hazare’s abortive anti-corruption crusade of 2012 — swept the Delhi state legislative assembly election of 2015, unexpectedly trouncing the BJP fresh from its triumph in General Election 2014, it has always been in the thick […]
The state government’s online Centralised Admission Process (CAP), introduced a decade ago to streamline admissions into class XI/first year junior colleges (FYJCs) aka Plus Two, ended in chaos and confusion after a Nagpur bench of the Bombay high court stayed the allocation of religious and linguistic minority quota seats to the merit quota. The court […]
The undisputed supremo and leader of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC), which ended 34 years of uninterrupted, disastrous communist rule over West Bengal in 2011, chief minister Mamata Banerjee is all set to emerge as a national kingmaker in the aftermath of General Election 2019, now less than a year away.
Tamil nadu’s once highly reputed 22 state government universities are steadily losing their sheen because of scams, corruption and serious graft that are constantly being exposed by the media.
The latest scandal rocking the state’s floundering academy is a major scam in answer scripts re-evaluation at the Chennai-based Anna University (AU), the state’s premier engineering and […]
As admissions for 2018-19 close for professional education programmes, the southern state of Karnataka (pop. 67 million), which steered the nationwide private engineering colleges building boom of the 1990s, is confronted with the prospect of huge vacancies in these institutions. When the final round of counselling was completed on August 29, of the 68,404 seats […]
“Intellectualism was never associated with Indian politicians, but never before have there been such blatant attempts to de-intellectualise the country as now.” Anand Teltumbde in ‘The New Normal in Modi’s New India’ (Economic & Political Weekly, August 4)
“Why do we hesitate to spend on them? Why do we constantly look for ways to reduce the […]
Strident protests and threats of prolonged litigation by Maharashtras powerful coaching classes and test prep schools lobby have torpedoed the state governments Private Coaching Classes Regulatory Bill which had been readied for enactment in the monsoon session (July 14-August 30) of the state legislative assembly. The states BJP-Shiv Sena coalition government was determined to enact […]
By ending 34 years ofuninterrupted misrule of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM)-led Left Front government in West Bengal (pop. 91 million) in 2011, and winning a second term for the Trinamool Congress (TMC) with a landslide mandate in the 2016 assembly election, chief minister Mamata Banerjee has not only established herself in West Bengal […]
Reckless negligence andflouting of safety norms by schools and colleges continue to take a grim toll of childrens lives in Tamil Nadu. Although a plethora of safety guidelines have been issued by the Central and state governments following a horrifying fire at the private aided Sri Krishna Saraswathi English Medium School, Kumbakonam in 2004 in […]
The politics of language in education is back on the agenda in the southern state of Karnataka (pop.67 million). On July 5, in his maiden budget speech, Karnataka chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, also finance minister, announced the two-month-old Janata Dal (Secular)-Congress coalition governments decision of introducing English medium education in 1,000 government schools, starting from […]
Since children lack both the political resource of ‘voice and the consumer resource of ‘choice, they are ignored by the state, ill-used by the market, and made invisible by society.Manabi Majumdar, professor, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata (www.thewire.in, July 2)
The IT industry has created bonded labour for years together, making money through labour […]
According to all indications, its finally curtains for the University Grants Commission (UGC, estb.1956), a Soviet-style over-arching control-and-command body (fashioned after the British University Committee, UK, shut down in 1989). For 62 of Indias 70 years as an independent nation, UGC has presided over its higher education system monitoring and accrediting the countrys higher education […]
Following heavy criticism from the media (especially EducationWorld) and the tragic suicide of 17-year-old Anitha, an aspiring medical student who topped the class XII state board exam but failed to clear NEET (National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test) for admission into medical colleges countrywide, the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) government led by chief minister […]
Three decades after introduction of the awards-winning Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNVs) across the country, Tamil Nadu (pop.72.1 million) remains the only state that does not host a single one. JNVs are classes VI-XII co-ed, rural, residential schools affiliated with the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and administered by the Noida-based Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti […]
The tragic suicide of 17-year-old Anitha, an aspiring medical student from a Dalit family in rural Tamil Nadu (pop.72.1 million) on September 1, has sent shockwaves across the country and sparked huge protests by several political parties, college students and activists in the state. Anitha’s tragedy was that she averaged 98 percent in the class […]
After a record breaking 104 days, the general strike in the Darjeeling hills district of West Bengal by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) which is demanding a separate state of Gorkhaland to be carved out of West Bengal, was called off on September 27, following an appeal by Union home minister Rajnath Singh. Singh said […]
Maharashtra’s night schools, which run evening classes to provide classes V-XII state board education for economically weaker sections of society (irrespective of age and gender) unable to attend day schools, are facing an acute shortage of teachers since the beginning of the current academic year (2017-18). That’s because a government resolution (GR) dated May 17 […]
The initiative of the vintage but continuously parochialised University of Mumbai (MU, estb. 1857) to replace manual assessment of students’ examination papers with an online evaluation system has come a cropper with technological disruptions and tedious processes delaying results for most of the university’s undergrad and postgraduate students. The delay has impacted 425,000 students who […]
It’s hardly a national secret that the biggest drag on national development are the BIMARU (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) Hindi-belt states of the Indian Union. Among them, Uttar Pradesh — India’s most populous (215 million) state — is commonly believed to be the country’s most lawless and educationally backward, with the possible […]
The Madras high court has struck down the Tamil Nadu Establishment of Private Law Colleges (Prohibition) Act, 2014 which had banned the promotion of new private law colleges in the state. A division bench which heard a batch of three writ petitions on October 26 ruled: “There is a difference between restriction or regulation and […]
The southern state of Karnataka (pop. 64 million) is staring at a massive teacher shortage crisis in primary-secondary education. According to a survey report of the Union HRD ministry (Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan) titled Teacher Demand and Supply in Secondary Schools, released in May, only 5.3 percent of the state’s 14,937 secondary schools and 7.2 […]
FOR THE SECOND YEAR in a row, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government — which swept to power in the Delhi state legislative assembly last year routing the fancied BJP — tabled an education-focused Budget 2016-17 on March 29. Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, also the finance and education minister, announced an outlay of Rs.10,690 […]
THE BJP-SHIV SENA government of Maharashtra (pop.112 million), which swept to power with a huge majority in the state’s legislative assembly election of October 2014, is set to make Marathi a compulsory subject for primary (class I-VII) children in all schools, no exceptions. Hitherto primary-secondaries affiliated with the pan-India Delhi-based Council for the Indian School […]
THE MANAGEMENTS OF TAMIL NADU’S 580 CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) and 52 Council for the Indian School Certificate Examination (CISCE) schools got a respite on January 28 when the Supreme Court passed an interim order restraining the Justice S.R. Singaravelu Private Schools Fee Determination Committee (PSFDC) from interfering with tuition fees charged by […]
AN ELECTRONIC DATABASE engineered to track the number of children in government primary schools with the objective of controlling wastage of social benefits — free mid-day meals, textbooks, uniforms etc — has yielded unexpected data. Of the total 159,625 state government primary-secondary schools, 6,898 have less than 25 students on their muster rolls while 22,959 […]
CAMPAIGNING IS IN FULL swing in West Bengal for the state’s 16th legislative assembly election which begins on April 4 and concludes on May 5. During its first term in office, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government led by the fiery trade unionist Mamata Banerjee, who improbably ended the uninterrupted 34-year rule over the state of […]
With only one of india’s 800 universities (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore) ranked among the Top 200 in the World University Rankings (WURs) league tables published annually by the reputed London-based Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), Times Higher Education and Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University, the 18-month-old BJP-led NDA government at the Centre has devised an out-of-the-box solution. […]
The BJP/Shiv Sena government of Maharashtra — India’s most industrial state (pop.112 million) — is under opposition fire for its suggestions made to the Delhi-based Union human resource development ministry which is putting the finishing touches to its much awaited New Education Policy (NEP). The report uploaded on the state government’s website on November 9, […]
Persistent attempts by the dominant regional parties in Tamil Nadu (pop. 72 million) to make all school children statewide study Tamil, including students of 6,500 private matriculation schools (unique to Tamil Nadu), 565 schools affiliated with the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and 468 Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE), have […]
It’s an indicator of the magnitude of the scale of educated unemployed in the eastern seaboard state of West Bengal (pop. 91 million), where too few jobs were created during 34 years of uninterrupted rule of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (1977-2011) because of a prolonged private investment famine and flight of capital. The Teacher […]
On November 16, following a supreme court directive of September 8, the Bangalore-based National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC, estb.1994), which appraises and accredits institutions of higher education in India, cleared 38 private universities which were among 44 universities across the country that had been recommended for derecognition by the Tandon Committee (2009) for “aberrations […]
“Learning is about so much more than filling in the right bubble.”
US President Barack Obama calling for a cap on time spent on standardised testing in US classrooms “to make sure that we’re not obsessing about testing” (Time, November 9)
“There is an imperative need in India to have these issues discussed openly, beginning with the pervasive […]
Kalpesh Banker, EduShine Search Partners Self-learning has expanded tremendously in its scope, with experts placing it on the same pedestal as traditional education. The rise .....Read More
Reshma Ravishanker Just three days after the announcement of class 10 board exams (SSLC) in Karnataka, Pre-university Colleges across Bengaluru have commenced admissions. A handful .....Read More
