Against the backdrop of a rising tide of lumpens and louts running amok in Uttar Pradesh, a growing number of hitherto subdued women students in the states higher education campuses are determined to assert their constitutional rights of equality, freedom of movement and protection of personhood -Dilip Thakore & Puja Awasthi
A toxic malaise has silently […]
Education milestones 2017
With the BJP government at the Centre focused upon containing the disastrous fallout of the demonetisation initiative on the Indian economy, and preoccupied with implementation of GST countrywide, the important issue of reform of early childhood, primary-secondary and higher education was severely neglected – Summiya Yasmeen
2017 was a quiet year for Indian education. […]
As an enthusiastic supporter of Brexit, I was surprised to be told that I had been asked to write this essay because EW wished to publish a “contrarian view”. Supporting the will of the majority is hardly contrarian, and for it to be widely regarded as such highlights the propaganda success of the real contrarians, […]
Despite several decisive victories for autonomy — T.M.A. Pai vs. Union of India (2002) and Inamdar’s Case (2005) — in the Supreme Court, private independent education institutions are experiencing incremental pressure from the Central and state governments — and a subsidies-addicted middle class — for government ‘regulation’ (reduction) of their tuition fees. This time round, […]
I’m in my final year BA degree programme and am interested in acting. Please give me information about FTII (Film & Television Institute of India), Pune. — Sarla Patil, Mumbai
The Film & Television Institute of India, Pune offers a two-year postgraduate diploma in acting. Admissions are open to graduates through a FTII entrance examination followed […]
SHISHIR JAIPURIA – Chairman, Jaipuria Group of education institutions, Delhi
Where would you place education on your national list of priorities?
Education is the most effective instrument for the empowerment of people. I would place it among the top priorities in the national interest.
How best to upgrade government colleges?
Our colleges and universities should place special emphasis […]
The municipal corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) — the richest local government institution in the country (2017-18 budget: Rs.25,138.91 crore) — has failed to arrest the steady exodus of children from its 1,000-plus primary schools. Over the years, MCGM’s free-of-charge schools, essentially for bottom-of-pyramid households, have become infamous for ill-conceived government interventions, teacher absenteeism and […]
Panel discussions on the seminar circuit normatively discuss how education needs to evolve and keep abreast with the times. While in the educational discourse widespread criticism of the system is warranted, quite a few education institutions are evolving. Despite facing backlash from uninformed parents unhappy with change, some schools are doggedly marching ahead in their […]
Kalvari, the first of six Scorpene class conventional submarines — also the first submarine to be inducted into the Indian Navy in 17 years — was commissioned by prime minister Narendra Modi at the Mazagaon Docks, Mumbai on December 14. Two more are expected to be inducted into the navy in mid-2018 at six-month intervals. […]
Tainted with corruption, mismanagement and poor quality teaching, Tamil Nadu’s once highly reputed 22 state universities have lost their lustre. In the latest NIRF (National Institutional Ranking Framework) 2017 league tables of India’s best universities compiled by the Union HRD ministry, only one state government university — Anna University — is ranked in the Top […]
Following a split in the Delhi-based Delhi Public School (DPS) Society — one of India’s most successful K-12 chains comprising 11 owned and 240 franchised primary-secondary schools which are routinely ranked among the Top 10 in the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings — Dr. Salman Khurshid, former Union minister of external affairs in the Congress-led […]
One could blame the Jain brothers of the Times of India — perhaps the richest newspaper and media group worldwide — for the phenomenon of paid news which has become ubiquitous with the market leader ToI openly proclaiming that it is ready, willing and able to publish purchased news. This in your humble editors […]
The central government is set to introduce the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (Second Amendment) Bill, 2017, in Parliament’s winter session that began on December 15, clearing the path to detain children in class V, VIII or both, while allowing for re-examination. However, education being on the concurrent list, the Central government […]
Education evangelist Sonam Wangchuk is the high-profile and much acclaimed Leh (Ladakh)-based co-founder of the Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL, estb. 1988), a non-profit which runs the SECMOL Alternative School (estb. 1994). This offbeat school offers children from poor households, school drop-outs, failed class X students and those looking for a gap […]
Alas, poor Mani Shankar Aiyar! I knew him well. After years of unshakable loyalty to the Congress party and its ruling Nehru-Gandhi family, his membership of the party was peremptorily suspended by the newly anointed party president Rahul Gandhi on December 7. Now his detractors in the Congress — and their number is not minuscule […]
On December 2-5, principals and headmasters of over 67 legacy boarding schools, some established over 150 years ago, convened at the Punjab Public School, Nabha, a salubrious town 27 km from Patiala, for the 78th annual conference of the Indian Public Schools’ Conference (IPSC), the umbrella theme of which was ‘Positive progressive partners soaring towards […]
London-based Dr. Ger Graus is director of education and partnerships at KidZania Global, a Mexico-based company which has 24 indoor educational and entertainment theme parks worldwide, where over 68 million children have augmented their education through real life role-play activities in numerous careers and industries. KidZanias offer simulated role-playing activities for over 100 vocations and […]
Although Karnataka’s congress government seems blissfully unaware, the annual scramble of middle class parents to secure admission for their children into private English-medium schools has become more intense with every passing year. On December 6, a software engineer immolated himself after he was cheated of Rs.1.25 lakh by a middleman who promised to secure a […]
Parminder Gill is co-founder and head (business) of Bangalore-based Edusports Pvt. Ltd (estb. 2009), a pioneer sports education company which delivers extensively researched fitness and sports programmes to 500,000-plus students in 800 K-12 schools across 250 cities countrywide, through a task force of 800 certified physical education instructors.
Apart from offering structured physical activity curriculums formulated […]
“Those opposing the bullet train project should travel on bullock carts. We won’t mind.”
Prime minister Narendra Modi responding to the Congress party’s criticism of the Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train project, addressing an election rally in Gujarat (December 3)
“Higher education — particularly, the idea of a liberal university — is in crisis… Possibly, Jawaharlal Nehru University — some […]
Dr. Rajesh Tandon is president of the Delhi-based PRIA (Participatory Research In Asia, estb.1982), an institution of repute in the field of community-centric research, and co-chair of Unesco’s Community-Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education. An alumnus of IIT-Kanpur and IIM-Calcutta, Dr. Tandon was awarded his doctorate by the Case Western Reserve University, […]
On December 27, the Gujarat high court ruled that the law enacted by the state legislature to regulate fees levied by private schools is constitutionally valid. Rejecting 40 petitions filed by private schools including CBSE and minority schools challenging the law, a division bench upheld the Gujarat Self-Financed Schools (Regulation of Fees) Act, 2017.
Under the […]
Pramod Tripathi is the Indore-based founder and CEO of EnglishBug Educational Resources (EBER, estb. 2005), an education services company offering K-12 students, teachers and working professionals English communication, personality development, linguistics translation and localisation services. Started as a supplementary English language training provider for teachers and students in the Hindi heartland state of Madhya Pradesh, […]
Pearson India, a subsidiary of the globe-girdling Pearson Plc, London (estb.1844), launched MyPedia Reader Storybook — a compilation of 42 stories written by young authors — on November 29. The volume features stories of the winners of MyPedia Reader Creative-writing Contest 2017, organised by Pearson India.
For the contest, Pearson received more than 1,500 stories from […]
Almost half of financial planning staff at US universities believes that the current business model at their institution is “not sustainable for the next five to ten years”, according to new research. A survey of 183 US higher education professionals involved in financial planning and budgeting at their institutions found that 47 percent of respondents thought […]
Mumbai-based Meghna Mishra (16) is creating ripples in the Bollywood playback music circuit with her debut tracks ‘main kaun hoon’ and ‘nachdi phira’ which have been featuring in the Top 20 play-list of several popular radio channels since the October 2017 release of Hindi film Secret Superstar, produced by veteran actor Aamir Khan assisted […]
The UK government will change the immigration rules to make it easier for overseas students and researchers to seek work in the country, signalling a shift to a more welcoming approach. The changes — which include plans to allow students to apply to switch to skilled worker visas as soon as they complete their courses […]
A two-member team of Samarth Jain and Harshit Kumar Prabhakar — both class XI (science) students of the BGS National Public School, Bangalore — was awarded second rank in Season 14 of the Technothlon International School Championship 2017, staged in Guwahati between September 1-3.
This annual competition — open to two-member teams of secondary (junior squad) […]
On the first floor of a crumbling colonial building in Yangon, a teacher taps the words written on the board with a bamboo rod. “Repeat after me so you will remember this by heart,” she instructs. The whole class chants back in unison, a familiar scenario in neighbouring India. The children have been regurgitating sentences […]
Turkey’s crackdown on academic freedom has spawned a feud between rival scientific academies after scholars abandoned their original academy to set up a new one with more political independence. Bilim Akademisi (Science Academy) was founded in Istanbul in 2011, and in September it won full membership of All European Academies (Allea), a continent-wide grouping that […]
There’s a pernicious evil abroad in the republic which is disturbing the peace, equanimity and citizenship of over 600 million women citizens on a daily basis. This is the evil practice of large-scale molestation of women, causally dismissed as ‘eve-teasing’ by benighted leaders of the country, police and the judiciary. This phenomenon which has its […]
In the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings 2017-18, St. Stanislaus High School, Mumbai is the sole state board-affiliated private school ranked in the Top 10 national all-boys day schools league table dominated by CBSE and CISCE-affiliated schools – Dipta Joshi
Spread across a generous seven-acre campus in land-starved Mumbai’s upscale suburb of Bandra, St. Stanislaus High […]
China’s “new era” of increased global power poses a threat to academic freedom across the world and could result in global university leaders seeking to appease the country’s Communist Party, warn experts. China’s president Xi Jinping heralded the dawn of a “new era” of Chinese power during a recent speech at the Communist Party congress […]
Some important lessons need to be learned from the Gujarat state legislative election which concluded on December 18. First, the BJP juggernaut led by former three-time chief minister of Gujarat and incumbent prime minister Narendra Modi, can be stopped. Contrary to most forecasts which predicted a BJP sweep, the party’s majority in the 185-strong legislative […]
With campuses in France, London and Singapore, EDHEC Business School, Franceis consistently ranked among the Top 20 B-schools worldwide.
With campuses in Lille, Nice and Paris (France), and two campuses in London and Singapore, the EDHEC (Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales) Business School is consistently ranked among the world’s Top 20 business management education institutions. The […]
Political deadlock over the future of South Africa’s higher education funding system is pushing the country’s universities to crisis point as institutions are unable to set fees or budgets for the coming year, experts have warned.
As South Africa’s academic year draws to a close, universities are facing tough choices over how they will balance their […]
Theres a dangerous strain of puritanism wafting through school and college campuses across India. The spontaneous hug exchanged between a class XII boy and a class XI girl of the co-ed CBSE-affiliated St. Thomas Central School, Trivandrum, Kerala over a prize-winning achievement which resulted in the school authorities expelling the students and depriving them of […]
Thank you for apprising us of your decision to rank Step by Step #2 among the top preschools of Delhi. We respect your process of evaluation and humbly suggest if people from your organisation could personally visit our school to get a sense of all that is being done.
We are constantly attempting to raise the […]
It’s thanks to carefully planned interventions of restoration architects that the public can appreciate the splendour of Unesco World Heritage Sites – Swati Roy
There’s growing public awareness world over of the cultural importance and value of preserving and restoring heritage buildings and monuments for the benefit of the present and future generations. It’s thanks to […]
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Arundhati Roy, Penguin; Rs.599, Pages 445
In her first novel after the God of Small Things (1997), which won the prestigious Booker Prize to global hosannas, Arundhati Roy, who switched to polemical non-fiction writing after her highly acclaimed debut novel — The Algebra of Infinite Justice (2001), An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire (2004), […]
10 oldest cities in the world Every city in the world has a story to unfold. The ancient cities have all the more tales engulfed with ... 
Bangalore B-school lands Trout The Bangalore-based Sri Bhagawan Mahaveer Jain College's Center for Management Studies (CMS) staged a first-of-its-kind academic coup by organising a ... 
Delhi govt tells CBSE to postpone board exams 2021 to May, reduce syllabus The Delhi government has written a letter to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) asking it to postpone the ... 
Students Corner: Mugdha Thanawala, Symbiosis Institute of Technology Mugdha Thanawala, the Students Council representative at Symbiosis Institute of Technology, Pune has varied interests. An artificial intelligence (AI) buff ... 
