Pune-based Peeyush Shah (14), a student of the city’s Vidya Bhavan School, has earned an entry in the Limca Book of Records 2011 for accumulating 12,000 erasers of all types, shapes and sizes. “I now want an entry into the Guinness World Records. But for that to happen, I have to break the record of a […]
These are the best and worst times for India’s community of educationists and educators, principals and teachers included. On the positive side, perhaps more than ever before in the history of the Indian subcontinent, public interest in education and its life-sustaining social and private benefits is at its zenith. On the negative, there are the […]
Currently celebrating its quartoseptcentennial, over the past 175 years Madras Christian College, Chennai has been carefully nurtured into one of south India’s top arts, science and commerce colleges
A festive air pervades the green wooded, eco-friendly 365-acre main campus in Tambaram of Madras Christian College, Chennai (MCC), which is celebrating […]
Routinely ranked among the best universities in the UK and the top 200 worldwide, University of Lancaster is one of six varsities in the UK which follows the collegiate system
Established by royal charter in 1964, University of Lancaster (LU) has rapidly matured and is routinely ranked among the best […]
For the Indian polity and economy, these are the worst times. Industrial and agriculture growth percentages are rock bottom; inflation is relentless with food, fuel and transport prices 15-20 percent higher than a year ago; the Sensex is below the plimsoll line of 16,000; the rupee which was 45 to the US dollar months ago is currently […]
The commemoration of the 60th year of independent India’s Parliament by all members of both houses of the legislature cutting across party lines on May 13, should have been a gala occasion nationwide. Instead, the festivities were muted and confined to Parliament while the rest of the country introspected upon the reality that contemporary India is a […]
Compliments for your in-depth analytical cover story on the Supreme Court’s verdict on the Right to Education Act (EW May). Now I have no doubt in my mind that what ails our education system, specially at the primary and secondary levels, is too much government control which the recent Supreme Court’s majority judgement has sanctified. The […]
Over 100,000 copies of Indian Constitution at Work, a class XI political science textbook published by NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) — the country’s largest (Central government controlled) school texts publisher — have been proscribed and withdrawn from the market following protest in Parliament by caste-based political parties on May 14. Their grouse: a cartoon […]
The Maharashtra state government has stayed its decision to implement the controversial s.12 (1) (c) of the Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 which makes it mandatory for all private unaided (financially independent) schools to admit 25 percent of children in class I or preschool from among poor households in their neighbourhood. Following the […]
Even as the BJP government in Karnataka (pop.60 million) has gone into overdrive during the past month to implement the Right to Free and Compulsory Education (aka RTE) Act, 2009 in private day schools which — post the April 12 verdict of the Supreme Court — are obliged to reserve 25 percent capacity in class I for […]
Every May, the stress levels of millions of students (and parents) in the southern seaboard state of Tamil Nadu (pop. 72 million), scrambling for admission into the state’s 525 engineering and 39 medical colleges, rises in direct proportion to mercury levels. This year was no exception. Students and parents had to wait in serpentine queues to purchase […]
“Some people had said that there will be a bloodbath in Bengal. But in the year that our government has been in power, no blood has been spilt…The people will throw out those trying to create unrest in the state.”
Mamata Banerjee, West Bengal chief minister, at a public rally commemorating the first anniversary of the Trinamul […]
Rajasthan
Challenged citizens’ PIL order
The Rajasthan high court has issued notice to the state government to provide enabling facilities to the visually impaired in public institutions. A division bench of the high court comprising Chief Justice Arun Kumar Mishra and Justice N. K. Jain (Sr), issued notice to the state government on May 8 while admitting […]
The Mumbai-based Early Childhood Association (ECA, estb. 2010) organised its first annual national conference on the theme ‘ECE — 21st Century, Transformations and Challenges, What we Know, What we Show and How we Grow’, at the Sea Princess Hotel, Mumbai on February 25-26. Over 150 delegates from across the country attended the sessions, panel meets and […]
Network Virtualisation and Cloud Computing — a nine-page graphs-intensive research mono-graph focusing on virtualisation of networking — has bagged computer science engineer Dharmesh Kakadia (23) first prize in a Cloud 20.20 online technical paper contest conducted by the Bangalore-based Unisys India Pvt. Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the US-based Unisys Corp.
A first-generation science student of a Rajkot (Gujarat)-based […]
The growth and intensification of e-commerce traffic over the worldwide web (aka the internet) has multiplied opportunities for cyber terrorists. Enter the cyber security professional
With cyberspace payment gateways multiplying, e-payments, credit cards circulation and the country’s internet user base expanding, e-commerce is fast becoming a way of life for government, corporates and middle class India. […]
I’m a B.Com student planning a career in chartered accountancy (CA). Would it be more rewarding to study CA together with CWA (cost and works accountants) or M.Com?
Deepak Shah, Ahmedabad
Pursuing an M.com degree together with CA or CWA is definitely a better option provided you can cope with the academic demands of both programmes. Check […]
Special education for gifted children is an idea which is becoming increasingly popular worldwide. In our neighbourhood — Singapore, China, Korea and Thailand — dedicated schools for gifted children are mushrooming. Worried about well-trained youth from such special schools taking the best jobs from Americans, some states within the US have also legislated in favour […]
If you can’t beat them, join ’em. that’s the attitude being adopted by a growing number of traditional US universities towards their private-sector rivals, as they start to branch out from their main product of graduate and undergraduate degrees into the lucrative field of professional certification which is increasingly being demanded by business and industry.
Until […]
Min Weifang, one of the 371 most powerful politicians in the country and former chair of council at Peking University, has called for greater academic freedom in some of the nation’s universities.
Earlier, in March, premier Wen Jiabao announced that this year China will finally meet its long-held aspiration to devote 4 percent of its gross domestic product […]
The head of a front-rank Australian university has vowed to turn the tide of institutional “corporatisation” which he believes has demoralised staff and undermined leadership. The vice chancellor of Murdoch University in Western Australia says he wants academics to be more involved in decision-making — as the institution prepares for substantial cuts to its portfolio of courses.
Arguing […]
Opposite Tokyo’s elegant imperial gardens, hundreds of people waited in line to glimpse a British cultural icon. It wasn’t a film star, a Premier League footballer or even prime minister David Cameron, whose visit to Japan recently went largely unnoticed. The fans outside the British Embassy were assembled to see someone held in awe by all generations […]
So far this year 14 schools have been burnt down in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, northern Nigeria, forcing over 7,000 children out of formal education and pushing down enrolment rates in an already ill-educated region. In a video posted on YouTube in February, Boko Haram, a Islamic jihadist group based in Nigeria, called upon its […]
In the past year students protesting over the cost of university education in business-friendly Chile have captured the world’s attention. In recent months, their counterparts in statist Quebec have taken up the cause. Since February, about a third of the province’s 450,000 university students have boycotted classes to oppose the tuition-fee increases planned by Jean Charest, the […]
If one were to recount memories of an earlier generation, indulging (“excelling” would be an added motivation) in sports was both an imperative and matter of pride for parents. And lack of infrastructure was not necessarily a dampener as sports was a state of mind. But with the onslaught of technological innovations and subsequent gadgetisation […]
Nonstop India by Mark Tully; Penguin Books; Price: Rs.499; 257 pp
Sir Mark Tully is perhaps the most well-known and distinguished ‘foreigner’ living in India. Born in Calcutta, he has made India his home and speaks fluent Hindi. For 22 years he was the BBC’s chief of bureau in New Delhi. Tully was knighted in 2002 and […]
On several occasions, the frequent — once every nine days — peregrinations abroad at public expense of Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission (exposed by India Today), have provoked trenchant comment on this page.
Now it transpires that the itch for free foreign travel is not peculiar to Ahluwalia. Information reluctantly provided under […]
Tara story-teller: Gita Wolf Chennai-based Gita Wolf is the founder-editor of Tara Books Pvt. Ltd (estb. 1994), which began as a children’s book publishing house but ... 
Oxford Univ Press launches English-English-Kannada Dictionary Oxford University Press (OUP), the world’s largest university press, recently announced the launch of the Oxford English-English-Kannada Dictionary at an ... 
St. Xavier’s College Kolkata to start 3 new PG courses in bio-sciences Mita Mukherjee St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata has decided to introduce three new postgraduate courses in biological sciences from this year ... 
Top 10 Child YouTubers who are rocking the cyberspace -Shreyosi Chakraborty Unlike the 90's when "viral" meant fever and "trending" was used if one wore a fashionable dress, today ... 
Time for new strategies and ideas
JS Rajput is former director NCERT and National Council for Teacher Education
The outcome of the anomalies and aberrations in implementation of education policies over the past six decades in post-independence India presents the most intriguing contrast in human development worldwide. Despite the constitutional mandate of 1950 to provide free and compulsory education to all children until they […]