With summer holidays approaching, a select mix of knowledgeable educationists, teacher trainers and principals recommend a miscellany of extra-curricular reading for teachers and educators – Summiya Yasmeen
In under-appreciated perquisite of the teacher’s job is the long summer break which normatively extends to eight weeks in India. With school summer holidays beginning this month (April), this […]
Universalisation of primary-secondary education would establish the rule of reason over emotion and empower citizens of the world’s most populous democracy to appreciate the profound logic of the Gandhian prescription of religious harmony, caste and gender equality and development of self-respect in all Indians, to reap the country’s much-awaited demographic dividend – Dilip Thakore
With the […]
Biplab Das, an engineering graduate of Jadavpur University and business management postgrad of IIM-Bangalore, and Saurabh Kumar, an engineering alum of Banaras Hindu University and IIM-Bangalore, are co-founders of the Kolkata-based Kishalay Foundation (estb.2013). This is an education NGO that’s making extraordinary efforts to improve the learning outcomes of 3,000 children in 25 government […]
Bart Peterson is the newly appointed chief executive of the Indianapolis (USA)-based Christel House International (CHI, estb.1998), a global non-profit that runs six exemplary free-of-charge K-12 schools for 5,154 poor children in the US, Mexico, South Africa and India.
In India, Christel House provides free English-medium education, nutrition monitored meals, healthcare facilities, college scholarships, career counselling […]
Asna Nafees is principal of the Delhi Public School-Modern Indian School (DPS-MIS), Doha (Qatar) — a franchisee of the Delhi-based Delhi Public Schools Society which runs one of India’s most successful K-12 school chains. The CBSE-affiliated DPS-MIS (estb.2001) has 5,700 students mentored by 320 teachers on its muster rolls.
Nafees, who took charge […]
An economics graduate of the Warsaw School of Economics (Poland), Michal Borkowski is the promoter-chief executive of Brainly Inc (estb. 2009), a closely-held private limited liability company registered in New York and Kraków, Poland (pop.38 million).
Borkowski was recently in India — “our fastest growing market” — to appraise the Indian public and […]
Education evangelists Sumantra Roy and Rubia Braun are the Bangalore-based co-founders of Learning Yogi Pte. Ltd (estb.2014), a social impact edtech start-up offering a comprehensive digital game designed to teach reading, maths, science, creativity, critical thinking and problem solving skills to children in the four-seven years age group. Roy is currently the company’s CEO, and […]
Time to put the bubbly back into the fridge. Enthused by the rosy picture of the economy drawn by spokespersons of the establishment and the BJP/NDA government in particular — globally highest GDP growth for the five years past, fantastic albeit unrecorded employment growth in the medium and small-scale industry and self-employment, huge increase in […]
The intent behind the Conduct of Election (Amendment) Rules 2019 notified by the Election Commission of India on February 26 that all candidates for the Lok Sabha election beginning on April 11, are obliged to file their income tax returns of the past five years and provide details of foreign assets held by them, is […]
Alas, poor Chanda Kochhar, who reluctantly resigned her office as managing director of ICICI Bank last October.
Yet there is some merit in the assertion that all too often, success doesn’t sit lightly on women who rise to high positions. They fall precipitously from grace because they easily succumb to the sins of hubris and […]
Balkishan Sharma, Managing director, National Academy Group of Institutions, Mumbai
Where would you place education on your national list of priorities?
Education is of paramount importance. If one member of a family is educated, he/she will educate the entire family and contribute to society.
How best to upgrade government colleges and universities?
This initiative […]
Refashioning India: Gender, Media and a transformed public discourse, Maitrayee Chaudhuri, Orient Black Swan; Rs.895; Pages 344
In October 2018, a couple of weeks after the #MeToo Movement hit Indian social media and made its way into mainstream print and broadcast media, a young journalist called this reviewer to ask: ‘How did things come to such […]
Not just grades: schools that educate differently, Rajeev Sharma, Penguin Random House; Rs.599; Pages 387
The problem about education reform is that everybody has strong views on education and parenting. After all, we have experience of education as children and later in life of parenting. This book is a useful resource for parents, educators, social workers, and […]
Meiduo (not her real name) is one of more than 141,000 children from Tibet who have taken part in a scheme known as ‘inland classes’, or neidiban. Set up in 1985, it offers selected students places at secondary schools in parts of China inhabited by the country’s Han majority. There are dozens of schools scattered […]
German university leaders are overwhelmingly male, all German, almost entirely white, and many have limited experience outside their own institutions, according to a report that has sparked debate about university presidents’ homogeneity. There are fears that their lack of outside experience could be harming German universities in the new globalised world.
Forty percent of Germany’s 81 […]
Roly poly right, right, right. Roly poly left, left, left,” sings a class of five-year-olds at a government primary school in Sarojini Nagar on the outskirts of Lucknow, a city in India’s Hindi-speaking heartland. This English-medium school, one of seven that was inaugurated last year, is part of an effort by the government of Uttar […]
Leading universities in South Korea and China have improved at a faster rate over the past three years than top institutions in other major Asia-Pacific countries, according to Times Higher Education’s latest Asia-Pacific University Rankings. South Korea is the most-improved nation since 2017, with its average overall score increasing by 15 percent during that time. […]
US government investigators have charged dozens of people — including celebrities, business leaders and sports coaches — over allegations that bribes were paid to admit favoured students in elite universities. FBI spokespersons trace the scandal back to 2011, involving coaches, testing officials and private admissions counsellors who allegedly accepted millions of dollars in bribes to […]
There’s a raging debate on the financial and quality crises of the UK’s tertiary education system with particular reference to new universities, many of which are upgraded polytechnics rather than traditional multi-disciplinary universities. The evidence indicates massive failure of management in higher education institutions. Yet so many of the captains who are running many of […]
Vagish K. Jha
On February 20, Union HRD (human resource development) minister Prakash Javadekar launched Operation Digital Board (ODB). The objective of this initiative is to digitise education delivery in schools and colleges countrywide. ODB will digitise 700,000 classrooms — 500,000 in schools and 200,000 in higher education institutions — in three years starting […]
I am a class XI student exploring higher study options. What are the benefits of a liberal arts education?— Siddhika Rai, Pune
Liberal arts study programmes educate students in the social and natural sciences and humanities. They promote interdisciplinary study in subjects ranging from literature, languages, art history, music, to philosophy, history, and psychology. Liberal arts […]
Relocation services are availed for domestic pets by new genre pet parents who are resolutely reluctant to abandon their pets when they relocate to other cities or countries – Sruthy Susan Ullas
The rising purchasing power and sensitivity to nature and animals of the growing number of pet parents who pamper their four-legged companions with the very […]
The most prestigious of three institutions under the University of Illinois system, UIUC is rated #13 among US public universities by U.S. News & World Report
Founded in 1867, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) is an American public research varsity consistently ranked among the world’s Top 100 by reputed international rating agencies. […]
Within less than a decade since it was established, MIS has earned an excellent reputation in the textiles city and beyond for providing rigorous academics balanced with co-curricular and sports education to its 539 students including 29 from six foreign countries – Hemalatha Raghupathi
Spread over a 17-acre green campus featuring expansive avenues, shady nooks and […]
Mumbai’s Tilak Mehta (13) is the latest to enter India’s elite club of innovative entrepreneurs and undoubtedly the youngest recipient of the Forbes (India) Leadership Award 2018. Last July Tilak successfully launched Papers N Parcels (PNP), an app-based courier service firm utilising the maximum city’s globally famous 5,000-strong dabbawallah network which unfailingly delivers over 200,000 […]
Team Aqua, comprising Sachin Dwivedi and Shivam Mishra — final year mechanical engineering students of the Army Institute of Technology (AIT, estb.1994) — bagged the Platinum prize of Rs.10 lakh for its revolutionary ‘vertical axis water turbine’ at KPIT Sparkle 2019, a design and innovation talent contest open to engineering and science students countrywide. […]
Dubai, March 22. Peter Tabichi, a science teacher of the Franciscan order in Kenya, was awarded the US $1 million (Rs.6.9 crore) Global Teacher Prize at the 7th Global Skills and Education Forum (GSEF), a three-day conference in Dubai hosted by the Varkey Foundation (estb.2010).
Over 2,000 delegates from around the world felicitated Tabichi, who teaches […]
Ghaziabad (up), March 1. Shripad Yesso Naik, minister of state in the Union AYUSH ministry, laid the foundation stone of a proposed National Institute of Unani Medicine (NIUM) to be constructed on a 10-acre site at a projected cost of Rs.300 crore. The project is scheduled to be completed in 2021.
NIUM will be equipped with […]
“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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Your cover story ‘Bright diamond schools of small-town India’ (EW March) was well-researched and extraordinary.
Thanks to a new breed of edupreneurs, job postings to tier II-IV cities should not be a bugbear for working professionals in transferable jobs like me. Moving to a small town no longer means second-class school education for my children.
Brijlal Chadhdha
In contemporary 21st century india, which prides itself on being the world’s most populous democracy governed by the rule of law, a dangerous new epidemic of police torture and custodial deaths is running riot. On March 21, Rizwan Asad, a young principal of a government school in Awantipora near Srinagar, was reportedly tortured to death […]
India’s citizenry, especially its grievously short-changed children and youth population of 550 million —the contemporary world’s largest cohort under 24 years of age — need to make common cause with Greta Thunberg. Last September this 15-year-old Swedish schoolgirl boycotted classes every Friday to picket Sweden’s parliament calling upon the country’s — and the world’s — […]
Within 40 days of your reading these words, a new government will have assumed office in New Delhi. At the time of writing, the situation is fluid and although the incumbent BJP/NDA coalition is the frontrunner of General Election 2019, it is impossible to forecast the outcome of the world’s largest democratic election. The tea […]
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India’s lamentable social progress
– Rahul Singh, former editor, Reader’s Digest and author of Family Planning Success Stories: Asia, Africa and Latin America
In the final lap of General Election 2019 with electioneering at fever pitch, a major plank of the ruling BJP-led NDA coalition at the Centre is that during its tenure, India has become the fastest growing major […]