Among india’s 28 states, the eastern seaboard state of Odisha, formerly Orissa (pop.46.3 million), is an outlier. Unlike other states of the Indian Union in which political action is fast and furious, Odisha has enjoyed political stability and orderly governance under the ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) headed by Doon School and St. […]
More than 1,200 english-medium schools have closed down in Maharashtra during the past two years due to financial hardship. The majority of them are financially independent budget private schools (BPS) levying tuition fees of Rs.30,000 per year or less. They became unviable during the prolonged government mandated pandemic lockdown of all education institutions […]
Although students in india experienced the world’s highest learning loss because of the most prolonged shutdown of education institutions from pre-primaries to universities during the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of enrolments and awards for Ph D degrees rose significantly.
Even in higher education institutions where the number of Ph D admissions took a minor […]
A long-standing demand of serious scholars intent upon acquiring multidisciplinary qualifications and skills has finally been conceded. On April 13, the University Grants Commission (UGC), the apex-level regulator of Indian higher education, issued a circular to universities permitting pursuance of two degrees simultaneously in undergraduate as well as postgraduate education (barring Ph D) […]
“All of us who believe in @INCIndia are hurting from the results of the recent assembly elections. It is time to reaffirm the idea of India that the Congress has stood for and the positive agenda it offers the nation – and to reform our organisational leadership in a manner that will reignite those ideas […]
The announcement by the University Grants Commission (UGC) of the Central Universities Entrance Test (CUET) as mandatory for admission into all undergraduate programmes of the country’s 45 highly-prized Central universities from the start of this academic year 2022-23, has provoked strong opposition in Tamil Nadu (pop.79 million). The state’s political class across the […]
With all schools in the state reopening from February 16 after a 23-month lockdown, classrooms across Bengal are coming to life. But judging by the reports published in local vernacular dailies, a large number of benches in the state’s 50,000 government primary schools are empty. During the pandemic lockdown, with a great majority […]
The high cost of the prolonged pandemic-induced 82-week schools closure in India — the most prolonged of any major country worldwide — is becoming manifest. Even though education activists have been ringing alarm bells that over the past two years several thousands of children have dropped out of the education system and have […]
The Maharashtra education ministry’s drive to match government and government-aided schools’ student enrolments with their UID (unique identification number) aka Aadhaar card registrations, has opened a Pandora’s box. Of the 2.1 million students enroled on the ministry’s online portal, SARAL, 1.9 million have fake Aadhaar cards while another 2.9 million have been enroled […]
The out-of-the-blue announcement of a Central Universities Entrance Test (CUET) for admission into undergraduate programmes of all 45 Central government universities from the start of this academic year (2022-23), has sparked a nationwide debate on its impact on higher secondary school education, the future of school examination boards and board exams, homogenisation of K-12 education […]
“The English language continued to remain dominating (sic) in our country because we were colonised. Parents fear that if their children will not learn English, they won’t have a future. Once we give them better options in regional languages, this hesitancy will go away.”
Dinesh Prasad Saklani, newly appointed director of the National Council of Educational […]
After a gap of nearly two years, 3,000 aided and 12,000 unaided private schools across Tamil Nadu reopened nursery classes on February 16, following an official order of the DMK-led state government permiting nursery classes, kindergarten, and playschools statewide to restart. This order has brought much needed relief to pre-primary schools, which had […]
With the daily count of Covid-19 cases in West Bengal dipping from 24,000 cases per day in mid-January to 500 on February 13, the state’s hyper cautious Trinamool Congress government announced reopening of all primary and upper primary schools with effect from February 16 — after a 23-months lockdown. The government also greenlighted […]
Against the backdrop of Karnataka (pop.69 million) becoming the first state countrywide to start implementing the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 beginning with higher education last September, the Karnataka Private School Managements Teaching and Non-Teaching Staff Coordination Committee (KPMTCC), which has 7,000 member schools, hosted a two-day national symposium to deliberate the ‘Regulatory […]
On February 27, as Maharashtra celebrated Marathi Language Day on the birth anniversary of popular poet, Kusumagraj, 64,000 mostly Marathi medium private aided schools announced they would abstain from conducting the state government’s forthcoming class X and class XII board exams on their premises. The managements of these schools are on the warpath against […]
If parents and students in India experienced the world’s most prolonged lockdown of schools during the Covid-19 pandemic, the national capital’s citizens claim they experienced the longest schools’ lockdown within India. Now with Covid-19 reduced to a mere epidemic, it’s official that Delhi’s 5,500 K-12 schools which educate 4.5 million children, will restart […]
“This is a country where in a range of exams marks are calculated to the seventh decimal place to decide who will get selected. Every single place where we have an exam, from IIT to CLAT, is pressure ridden because of the law of numbers. So the idea that this exam will be a relief […]
The Tamil Nadu government school teachers Association (TNGSTA) has submitted a petition to chief minister M.K. Stalin to cancel the state’s unique class XI board exams. This exam is scheduled to be written in March-April by 1 million students enrolled in 39,300 government and government-aided schools affiliated with the Tamil Nadu Board of Secondary Examinations […]
For a state that prides itself on its intellectual prowess and cultural refinement, West Bengal (pop.91 million) — or specifically the state’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) government which was re-elected for a third term in May 2021 — is exhibiting a curious reluctance to reopen its schools after an epic 82-week lockdown prompted by the Covid-19 […]
Hitherto one of India’s most secular states with a 8-million strong and prosperous Muslim minority, Karnataka (pop.68 million) is experiencing slow spread of religious communalism with headscarves row.
Since December 31, 2021, six hijab (headscarf)-wearing Muslim girl students of the Government Girls PU College (classes XI-XII), Kundapur in the state’s coastal […]
The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is gearing to hit the streets with statewide protests against the incumbent Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition government’s proposal to curb the powers of the governor in 11 state government universities. By law and convention, state governors appointed by the Central government, are ex-officio chancellors of all public universities […]
Delhi University: full circle. Inset: Dinesh Singh
The wheel is set to turn full circle for Delhi University (DU, estb.1922), one of India’s largest (82 affiliated colleges and 400,000 students) and most popular universities. In 2013, DU became the first university to introduce four-year arts, science and commerce undergrad programmes.
Within six weeks of reopening senior schools (class IX-XII), colleges and universities after a prolonged 65-70 weeks lockdown because of exaggerated fear of the Covid-19 pandemic, West Bengal’s 92,000 government and 1,500 private schools, 372 colleges and 32 universities have been ordered to shut down again from January 3. A mere two citizens […]
In line with other states such as West Bengal, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, following a sudden spurt in Covid-19 infections triggered by the Omicron variant, Karnataka’s BJP government has ordered an immediate shutdown of primary-secondary schools and switch to online instruction with effect from January 6. Optional on-campus classes are permitted for […]
On December 16, the pune police investigating allegations of malpractice in the recruitment exam of the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) held between December 12-20, stumbled upon large scale tampering in the state’s annual teacher recruitment exam.
Investigations into the state’s teacher eligibility test (TET) — a compulsory qualification for college/university graduates […]
Following a prolonged and sustained campaign by EducationWorld, which staged its first international conference on early childhood care and education (ECCE) in 2010 and has been since rating, ranking and awarding the best private pre-primary schools and government-run anganwadi centres in major cities countrywide, the critical importance of ECCE was acknowledged by the high powered […]
Following chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s October 25 declaration that education for class IX-XII students in West Bengal’s 92,000 government and 2,000 private schools, 372 colleges and 32 universities would resume, they were duly reopened on November 16 after the unprecedented 20-month pandemic lockdown. Although education minister Bratya Basu has expressed willingness to reopen […]
Even as the reopening of primary-secondary schools on November 8 after 64-weeks of pandemic lockdown cheered the state’s 21,000 private unaided schools, a new circular of the state’s BJP government directing them to issue transfer certificates (TCs) to students within seven days has proved a dampener. On November […]
The Maharashtra government’s celebrated Wablewadi Zilla Parishad Primary (WZPP) School in Shirur district, Pune, that made headlines for transforming into a state-of-the-art Marathi medium school delivering internationally benchmarked education, is facing a crisis because of political machinations. On November 22, the Pune Zilla Parishad education department suspended its […]
As schools in delhi reopened after an unprecedented closure of 73 weeks (arguably the most prolonged schools closure worldwide) because of the Covid-19 pandemic, there’s looming uncertainty about another lockdown following the discovery of Omicron — a new variant of the novel Coronavirus.
After 19 months of continuous lockdown and dithering over reopening of schools because of fear of Covid-19 contagion, on October 25 the state’s BJP government greenlighted commencement of in-person classes in all 73,238 government, aided and private schools of Karnataka with free mid-day meals for classes I-V children in government schools, beginning November […]
West Bengal’s 92,000 government and 2,000 private schools, 372 colleges and 32 universities will reopen for on-campus classes on November 16. Following chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s declaration to this effect on October 25, an official gazette notification was issued by the state government on October 28 re-starting the massive education system of West […]
The Maharashtra state government’s ill-advised initiative to slash the reimbursement amount payable to private unaided schools admitting students under s.12 (1) (c) of the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (aka RTE) Act, 2009, has boomeranged.
Dattatray Jagtap, director of the school education department, who recommended that the amount […]
Following heavy criticism from Supreme Court for not having devised an alternative examination system for the pandemic academic year 2020-21 after board examinations were cancelled in the wake of the second wave (March-June 2021) of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) […]
On September 6, government and private schools in Karnataka (pop. 68.4 million) reopened for on-campus, in-person teaching-learning for classes VI-VIII children after 18 months of Covid disruption. Two weeks earlier, schools had reopened for classes IX-XII students on August 23. Therefore, all middle-secondary students statewide are back in class and learning normatively, subject to prescribed […]
The turmoil in Visva-Bharati University (VBU, estb.1921), established by Nobel laureate, sage, savant and litterateur Rabindranath Tagore, shows no signs of simmering down despite this being its centenary year — a time for celebration.
On September 15, the Calcutta high court set aside a three-year rustication order issued on August 23 by controversial vice chancellor Bidyut […]
The State’s Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, an alliance of the Shiv Sena, Congress and Nationalist Congress Party, which was hastily cobbled together in November 2019 to shut the BJP out of power in India’s most industrialised state, has made common cause with the DMK government of Tamil Nadu in its opposition to NEET (National […]
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which has been in power in Delhi state since 2015 and against all expectations, has bested the BJP juggernaut in two legislative assembly elections (2015 and 2019) with K-12 education upgradation serving as a major electoral plank, has introduced a Deshbhakti (patriotism) curriculum which will be taught in its 1,028 […]
In an important even if belated development, several blue-chip boarding schools — some of over 150 years vintage and respected around the world — have jointly promoted the Boarding Schools Association of India (BSAI), registered on September 29.
BSAI founding members: policy formulation goal
The prime objectives of BSAI declared in the association’s constitution are […]
“The new National Education Policy is expected to revolutionize the educational sector in India and lay the path for the next 25 years as per the Vision 2047 of prime minister Shri Narendra Modi. He stressed that education has to make each one of us more responsible and become global citizen.” – Dharmendra Pradhan, union education […]
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