In all lamentations about the pathetic quality of public education, the elephant in the room which politically correct commentators choose to ignore is the country’s 9 million-strong teachers community and its role in plunging teaching-learning standards to the nadir – Dilip Thakore
The establishment — which also includes captains of Indian industry who incur arguably the highest […]
The country’s 594 JNVs are arguably the most valuable legacy of the late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. These free-of-charge CBSE-affiliated boarding schools are shining beacons of hope offering a small minority of rural students a lifeline to escape the grinding poverty and backwardness of village India – Summiya Yasmeen
The 11th Annual Status of Education Report […]
The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2016 released in Delhi on January 18, indicates that learning outcomes in rural primaries countrywide continue to be pitiable, with only 19-20 percent of government school students and 38-44 percent of class III private primary students being able to read class II texts correctly and complete two-digit subtraction […]
Although widely feared neta-babu licence-permit-quota raj has substantially disappeared from Indian industry following the historic economic liberalisation of 1991, this dreaded regimen seems to be alive and well in Indian education. Abject sycophancy and pandering to the neta-babu brotherhood was on full display at the FICCI-ARISE School Education Conference, 2017 convened by the Delhi-based Federation […]
Monica Malhotra Kandhari is managing director of the Delhi-based education conglomerate, MBD Group (MBDG, estb.1956), arguably the largest publishing house in India with a print run of 5 million books per day — mainly education textbooks for schools in most state languages. A graduate of Delhi’s Jesus & Mary College, Kandhari is the elder daughter […]
The manner in which most political parties and politicians, as also fringe elements regularly indulge in propagating casteism and intolerance in society in flagrant violation of constitutional provisions and democratic values, is indeed sickening. Sickening, because it impacts the younger generation presently experiencing the process of growing up, and who will take over the reins […]
Nirmala Kamath is founder-director of Bangalore’s Chie Media Pvt. Ltd, an education technology start-up (estb.2011, headcount: 25) offering curated education content specially designed for primary school children. Its flagship online portal iKidsworld.com offers Airtel digital TV interactive content for math, science and English through learning tools such as digital games, quizzes, videos and puzzles.
Newspeg. Last November, […]
One of the dirty secrets of Indian education is that early childhood care and education (ECCE) has received scant attention despite the feeble effort made by the Central government’s Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme introduced in 1975. Forty two years after the ICDS programme was initiated, only 84 million of the country’s 164 million […]
The head of the biggest business university in Norway (pop. 5.5 million) has decried the lack of government focus on attracting international students, warning that the nation is already “far behind” other European countries. In an interview with Times Higher Education, Inge Jan Henjesand, president of BI Norwegian Business School, says discussion of attracting international […]
“Our premier institutions of higher education are the vehicles on which India has to propel itself into a knowledge society. These temples of learning must resound with creativity and free thinking.”
Pranab Mukherjee, President of India, delivering the sixth K.S. Rajamony Memorial Lecture in Kochi (The Tribune, March 2)
“If you mix your politics with your investment decisions, […]
The UK government will decide whether BPP University, London should continue to be eligible for university title and degree-awarding powers after its US owner was sold to a private equity consortium for $1.1 billion (Rs.7,275 crore). BPP, one of only three for-profit universities in the UK, witnessed the sale of its owner, Apollo Education Group, […]
The University of New South Wales, Australia (UNSW Australia) has announced a new scholarship programme targeting bright Indian students. Under UNSW’s Future of Change scholarship programme, ten students residing in India will be awarded A$10,000 (Rs.4.9 lakh) each and one student will have her full tuition fee paid, said Prof. Ian Jacobs, president and vice […]
At a school in the township of West Point, Monrovia, a teacher should be halfway through her maths lesson. Instead she is eating lunch. A din echoes around the room of the government-run school as 70 pupils chat, fidget or sleep on their desks. Neither these pupils nor the rest of Liberia is learning much. […]
France’s brain drain of young scientists may be far worse than imagined as Gallic researchers are choosing not to return home after their postdoctoral studies abroad, says a recent study. Previous studies undertaken in the 1990s estimated that about 7 percent of French Ph D graduates who went abroad were still there three years after […]
Although Jeremiahs and doomsday prophets lament the reportedly widening technology gap between India and the West, some young engineers suffer no such apprehensions.
Team AlphaGears comprising Sharafath Shahsu V.P, Nandu J. Krishnan, Sayuj Vijayan T. and Muhammed Asif Abdulla — all final year mechanical engineering students of the low-profile Mudbidri (Karnataka)-based Mangalore Institute of Technology and […]
Every morning the children of Tsukamoto kindergarten stomp their tiny feet in time to military anthems, bow to pictures of the emperor and vow courageously to offer themselves to defend the state. At school functions, the three, four and five-year-olds exhort watching parents to protect Japan from foreign threats.
The great-grandparents of Tsukamoto’s pupils were once […]
South Korean universities are among world leaders when it comes to publishing research with industry, according to new data.
The Pohang University of Science and Technology, founded by Korean steel company POSCO in 1986, tops a table of universities publishing the highest proportions of their research output in collaboration with industry produced by Clarivate Analytics for […]
Promoted by the Kanpur-based Sparsh group of companies, JPIS (estb. 2004) is among the first K-12 schools to acknowledge the critical importance of dispensing skills education coterminously with traditional academics – AUTAR NEHRU
An extension of the fast-growing satellite city of Noida, Greater Noida (pop.107,676) has evolved into a major education hub of the Delhi National Capital […]
City’s five academic schools, sited in the heart of London, offer students opportunities to avail internships and study abroad options
Sited in the heart of UK’s administrative capital, City, University of London (aka City) is a top-ranked public higher education institution focused on training students for “business and the professions”. The university’s five academic schools — arts […]
Nehru’s 97 major blunders, Rajnikant Puranik, Pustak Mahal; Rs.350; Pages 222
Although the country’s “traitorous academics” enjoying well-paid tenures without any accountability, and its subsidies-addicted middle class wrapped up in foolish dreams of the nation attaining global super- power status in the near future are in wilful denial, the plain truth is that 70 years after attaining full independence, […]
Where would you place education on your national list of priorities?
Among the top three, together with healthcare and law and order.
How best to upgrade government colleges and universities?
They must be given adequate autonomy and resources with incentives for performers.
Thinker/philosopher you admire the most.
Aristotle, a thinker, philosopher and much more.
Your favourite Nobel laureate.
Our own […]
By most yardsticks, India’s 9 million-strong teachers community hasn’t distinguished itself. Almost one-fourth of the country’s population is comprehensively illiterate and another 600-700 million citizens are at best functionally literate with the result that industrial, agriculture and factor productivity in contemporary India is among the lowest of all countries worldwide. Quite clearly, the teachers community, […]
With global expenditure on cyber security systems expected to cross $1 trillion during 2017-21, cyber security experts (aka ethical hackers) are in great demand
With India’s Internet user base expanding fast — 432 million users as of December 2016, according to a report of the Internet and Mobile Association of India — and a fast-rising number […]
The widely reviewed Mr. & Mrs. Jinnah — The Marriage that Shook India (Penguin, 2017), engagingly written by former Delhi-based journalist Sheela Reddy, which recounts the runaway marriage of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Mumbai’s patrician barrister and later Qaid-e-Azam of independent Pakistan, with Ruttie Petit, the socialite and by-all-accounts beautiful daughter of Sir Dinshaw Petit, a […]
The BJP’s sweeping victory in the recently concluded Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly election in which it bagged a three-fourth majority in the 403-strong house, and with the resurgent party forming coalition governments in Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur — Punjab is the sole state in which it failed to win a sizeable vote — the BJP, […]
I am a Plus Two student interested in a career in art direction. What are my options?
— Rajesh Singh, Delhi
A bachelor’s degree in fine arts, digital media or visual communication will give you a good foundation for a career in art direction. Depending on your area of interest, you could opt for any of […]
Strange but true. In Indian education there’s almost universal tolerance of plagiarism, cheating and fraud with school leaders and academics across the education spectrum inclined to turn a blind eye to blatant knock-offs and theft of intellectual property.
If not, how does one explain the curious phenomenon of highly-respected school promoters and principals lining up to […]
Your cover story profiling ‘33 young rising stars of Indian education’ (EW March) was interesting and well-written. It’s very encouraging to learn that highly-educated professionals with degrees from the world’s best universities are returning to their motherland, and contributing to reviving Indian education.
However I would have liked to read profiles of young entrepreneurs and educators […]
Bangalore-based public health evangelist Dr. Anand Lakshman is the founder-promoter of AddressHealth Solutions India Pvt. Ltd (AHSIL, estb. 2010) which offers children in the 3-18 years age group a range of mainly preventive health services through comprehensive health programmes and three child specialty clinics spread across the garden city. AHSIL’s school health services include annual […]
If for little else, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government of Delhi state, led by former social activist-turned-politician Arvind Kejriwal, has to be credited with moving education to the top of its development agenda. For three consecutive years since 2015 — when it was unexpectedly swept to power routing the Bharatiya Janata Party fresh […]
Lohit Sahu is founder-director of the Mumbai-based Phyzok Learning Solutions LLP (estb.2011), an edtech start-up providing customised maths and science content for class V-X students of CBSE-affiliated schools. The company, which began with conducting science workshops for students, currently offers blended classroom end-to-end learning solutions — pre-class videos for flipped learning, in-class interactive content, teacher […]
The municipal corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) — the country’s richest municipality with an annual budget of Rs.37,052 crore (2016-17) — is all set to restart its 35 vernacular-medium primary schools as ‘semi-English’ primaries (classes I-VIII) in the new academic year beginning June. All these 35 primaries were shut down last September due to zero […]
Siddhartha Upadhyay is founder-secretary general of the Delhi-based not-for-profit organisation STAIRS (Society for Transformation, Inclusion and Recognition through Sports, estb.2005), which has promoted 400 free-of-charge sports training centres in over 4,000 rural habitations countrywide under its Khelo India (‘Play India’) initiative. The centres are accessed daily by over 300,000 children who receive training in 40 […]
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who is at loggerheads with the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre over demonetisation and investigation of several TMC members of Parliament for numerous chit fund scams, has retaliated with threat of forced closure of 125 schools in the state with “saffron links”.
Antagonism between the ruling TMC and BJP […]
Coimbatore-based Latha Sundaram is promoter and managing trustee of the Aram Foundation Charitable Trust (AFCT, estb.2012), which provides soft skills training, counselling, guidance and academic support to 24,170 underprivileged students of 83 schools managed by the Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation (CCMC). AFCT also conducts awareness and self-defence training programmes for school girls and women to […]
With several national surveys and studies (Nasscom-McKinsey 2005, Aspiring Minds 2016) concluding that over 75 percent of graduates of India’s 6,214 engineering colleges are unemployable in Indian and foreign multinationals, the Chennai-based Anna University (AU) — Tamil Nadu’s premier engineering and technology university — which has 550 colleges affiliated with it, is belatedly introducing major […]
Politicians’ claims that universities around the world (India included) are systematically prejudiced against researchers and students with conservative views raise the prospect that universities could become key battlegrounds in a new age of “culture wars”.
President Donald Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, lit a fire under the long-standing debate over supposed liberal bias in academia in […]
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