Hosur (Tamil Nadu)-based teenage water conservation activist Vibish Kashyap Balaji (14) is the new star ambassador of Project Sunlight, a CSR (corporate social responsibility) initiative of the Mumbai-based consumer products behemoth Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL, annual revenue: Rs.1413,847 crore). Launched in 2013, the objective of Project Sunlight is to œmake sustainable living desirable and achievable […]
Almost half a century ago, in his monumental three-volume magnum opus Asian Drama, Nobel laureate-economist Gunnar Myrdal ascribed many of the woes of post-Nehruvian India, already notorious for government corruption and on the brink of mass starvation, to the Great Man™s amateurish experiments with socialism, and described India as a œsoft state.
In step with […]
Anirudh Gupta
CEO, DCM Group of Schools, Punjab
Where would you place education on your national list of priorities?
Among the top three.
How best to upgrade government schools?
Formation of a steering committee to ensure appropriate flow and utilisation of sanctioned funds; regular school visits by monitoring committees; active SMDCs (school management and development […]
There is a God: How the World™s Most Notorious Atheist Changed his Mind by Antony Flew; Harperone; Price: Rs.683; Pages: 222
One can™t entirely be sure if the late Antony Flew (1923-2010) was at any time the œworld™s most notorious atheist, as the title of this book describes him. This description could well be a […]
Health and fitness is not a 21st century fad or phenomenon as is popularly believed. As long ago as 400 BCE, the benefits of exercise ” mens sana in corpore sano ” were well-understood. œLack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being, while movement and methodical physical exercise save it and preserve […]
Ground reports from across the country indicate that implementation of the RTE Act which became law on April 1, 2010 is piecemeal and inchmeal by state governments gripped by financial constraints, bureaucratic corruption and teacher shortages Summiya Yasmeen
On the fifth anniversary of the landmark Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (aka RTE) Act, 2009 […]
Although this might be news to third world “including India” politicians, enforcement of law and order is a precondition of quality education delivery.
In downtown Medelln “once a global symbol of drug-related violence in the cocaine trade” stands the bright yellow San Ignacio building. Built in 1803, this first campus of the University of Antioquia survived […]
Is it possible to offer a truly international education experience in the Western world? Not according to Alfred Bloom. Dr. Bloom has been vice chancellor of New York University™s outpost in Abu Dhabi since 2009 and, in terms of his pedagogical outlook at least, can be said to have gone native.
After 18 years as […]
Tuition fees are likely to rise above the minimum £9,000 (Rs.8.8 lakh) per year to enable spending cuts proposed by the new Conservative government, senior leaders in education have suggested, as universities also prepare a œpowerful public campaign for Britain to stay in the European Union.
The Tories™ election triumph will set in motion lobbying […]
Harrowing stories of the suffering and dilemmas faced by academics in Islamic State (IS)-controlled areas of Iraq have emerged through testimonies given to the Council for At-Risk Academics (Cara).
One witness, on condition of anonymity, describes what happened at the University of Anbar (sited in Ramadi, capital of the country™s largest governorate or province, Al-Anbar). […]
Abandoning schools can be perilous for politicians. When Rahm Emanuel, Chicago™s mayor, decided in 2013 to shut down 47 public schools that were half-empty and had atrocious results, he sparked protests that nearly cost him the next election. In New York, Michael Bloomberg, who once ran the city, infuriated teachers™ unions because he allowed charter […]
To become technology-literate is one of the universal mandates of the 21st century. Although the basics of language and arithmetic remain the foundation upon which all professions and occupations are built, the lives of people in the new millennium have been radically disrupted by new information and communication technologies (ICT). The umbrella term ICT covers […]
I intend to pursue postgraduate studies in clinical research after completing B.Sc in microbiology next year. What are my career prospects?
Arvind Swamy, Chennai
The clinical research industry recruits trained medical/dental investigators who could be graduates in pharmacy, life sciences and biotechnology for managing clinical sites; clinical trial coordinators for signing up patients; clinical research […]
With the Indian e-learning industry gradually moving up the value chain, demand for instructional designers ” the cog in the e-learning business wheel ” is set to rise Indra Gidwani
œThe aggregate revenue of the global e-learning industry is expected to cross $107 billion (Rs.680,948 crore) by end 2015. With India a major player in […]
Edited and abridged e-mail responses of eminent agri-scientist Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, founder-chairman of M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai.
To what extent in your opinion is the poor productivity of Indian agriculture the consequence of declining learning outcomes in rural primaries, as testified by the annual ASER reports of Pratham?
Poor productivity of Indian agriculture is […]
The overwhelming majority of the country™s academics, media pundits and intellectuals in their ivory towers seem unable to connect dismal quality primary education being dispensed in rural India with rising farm suicides Dilip Thakore
ON APRIL 28, HARESHBHAI JASMATBHAI RABADIA, a 34-year-old agriculturist who farmed seven acres of land in Bhader village in the Rajkot […]
Raymond Ravaglia is founder of the Stanford University Online High School and former associate dean and director of Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies
Dramatist, playwright and author George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) famously wrote: He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches. Although this is harsh criticism of teachers, there’s some measure of wisdom in the barbed quip.
Typically, teacher […]
Sited in the dixie state of Alabama, Auburn University, USA offers 150 bachelor’s, 120 Masters and 96 doctoral programmes to 24,864 students including 1,089 foreign students from 80 countries
Founded as a liberal arts college in 1856, Auburn University (AU) is consistently ranked among the Top 50 public universities in the US. The US News and […]
Within a year of its promotion, The Aditya Birla Integrated School has earned a good reputation for providing high-quality inclusive education to children with disabilities writes Bharati Thakore
Located in the heart of South Mumbai’s Fort district on its vintage Dadabhai Naoroji Road, the mint-new […]
With a SAT score of 2,360 out of a maximum possible 2,400, Pulkit Agarwal (18), hitherto a class XII student of The Doon School, Dehradun (TDS, estb.1935), has received admission and scholarship offers valued at $61,000 (Rs.38.8 lakh) from 15 US universities including seven Ivy League varsities ” Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, UPenn, Brown, Cornell and […]
The current education landscape in India is characterised by nearly universal enrolment in elementary education (96 percent) on the positive side. But on the negative side, Indian primaries are notorious for the pitiably poor learning outcomes of millions of children, as testified by their performance in a PISA test of OECD; in tests administered by […]
The Hyderabad-based Sri Chaitanya Schools (SCS) is one of the country™s first K-12 education networks to adopt Microsoft™s edu-cloud, an IT-based solution for teachers and students, in the group™s 80 schools.
Under an agreement signed in Hyderabad on May 5 between Microsoft India, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the US-based Microsoft Inc (annual revenue: $86.83 billion […]
Himachal Pradesh
Teacher accountability drive
The Himachal Pradesh state education ministry is set to issue show-cause notices to government schools which clocked poor results in the class XII state board examination.
œThe government is likely to instruct the directorate of higher education to issue show-cause notices to these schools, asking them to explain why their […]
œTo choose IIM directors on the basis of ˜group discussions™ is to lower the best academic institutes to the standards of the worst TV shows.
Ramchandra Guha, historian-author, on the Union HRD ministry™s plans to make group discussion mandatory for hiring IIM directors (Bangalore Mirror, May 16)
œSo far as the government is concerned, there […]
AN UNPRECEDENTED CHANGE IN THE process of selecting the next director of the prestigious Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (IIM-L, estb.1984), reportedly ordered by Union HRD minister Smriti Irani, has generated considerable heartburn within the faculties of the country™s 13 Central government-promoted Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), especially the first six IIMs (Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, […]
THE SENSATIONAL POLITICAL COMEBACK OF five-time chief minister J. Jayalalithaa who was in hibernation for eight months after she was convicted by a trial court in Bangalore on September 27, 2014 in a 19-year-old disproportionate assets case and finally acquitted by the Karnataka high court on May 11, has over-shadowed all activity in Tamil Nadu […]
BY PRESCRIBING THE COLOUR combinations of uniforms of two municipal schools, the Ahmedabad Municipal School Board has provoked a raging controversy in the western seaboard state of Gujarat (pop. 65 million), ruled by the BJP since 1998 and hitherto the stomping ground of three-time chief minister Narendra Modi until his elevation to the prime minister™s […]
THE MAMATA BANERJEE-LED Trinamool Congress (TMC) government, which swept to power in West Bengal (pop. 91 million) in May 2011 ending 34 years of Left rule in the state, was expected to be the harbinger of much needed paribartan (change) in all sectors of the economy, especially education. However with members of the Communist Party […]
FOR MYSTERIOUS REASONS neither the Central nor state governments have paid more than lip sympathy to myriad difficulties confronting the country™s estimated 33 million school-going children with physical and learning disabilities. In the Union budget 2015-16 presented to Parliament on February 28, the allocation of their parent Union ministry of women and child development was […]
THE BJP-LED NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC Alliance (NDA) completed its first year in office on May 26. However, unlike the 200-days-in-office celebrations of December 22 last year when the Union ministry of human resources development (HRD) showcased its initiatives with pomp and ceremony, its anniversary celebrations were relatively muted. That™s because under the stewardship of former television […]
CONGRATULATIONS FOR PUBLISHING the EducationWorld India University Rankings 2015 (EW May). I am grateful the EW editorial team has taken the initiative to publish an India specific national universities league table, and highlighted the achievements of the country™s top varsities.
Over the past few years, the media has been providing disproportionate coverage to the under-performance […]
ALTHOUGH MOST LEARNED commentators give the BJP-led NDA government of Narendra Modi pass marks for a good first year, it™s patently discernible that optimism is fading among leaders and pace setters in several sectors of industry, over the failure of the Modi government to boldly initiate the promises he made in his campaign narrative to […]
The farm suicides epidemic sweeping the country is being ignored and/or mismanaged by the establishment and middle class India at its peril. Almost 250,000 farmers in the neglected rural hinterland have killed themselves since 1995, driven to extreme desperation not only by acts of commission and omission of the Central and state governments, but also […]
œWelfare helps alleviate poverty. But growth can end it.
Michael Schuman, American author and journalist, on bridging the wealth gap (Time, May 19)
œOn 16th May 2014 the people of India gave their verdict. They delivered a mandate for development, good governance and stability. Together we will script a glorious future for India. Let us […]
Decades of confusion, obfuscation, harassment and corruption aided and abetted by successive governments in the southern state of Karnataka (pop. 57 million) on the issue of Kannada or mother tongue being employed as the mandatory language of instruction in all 60,000 primary schools (classes I-V) ” including private schools in the state “ has been […]
A template for government-funded education Kendriya Vidyalaya Schools In a society where government managed schools are synonymous with ramshackle infrastructure, truant teachers and poor learning ... 
Odisha: Two teachers rape class 6 girl in school toilet, sent to jail An 11-year-old tribal girl student in Odisha's Nabarangpur district was allegedly raped by two teachers in a state-run school toilet ... 
Best colleges to study math programmes in India India hosts several world-class institutions for mathematics education and research. They include the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; the IITs; ... 
5 Ways a Survey Can Help You Engage Students Surveys are a great opportunity and tool for the improvement of the study process and environment. Students, faculty staff, and ... 
