Jaipur-based Mohit Parikh’s debut young adult novel Manan was published by Harper Collins in October 2014. Manan is set in the summer of 1998 in an anonymous sleepy Indian town slowly awakening to new information and communications technology (ICT), and revolves around the eponymous 15-year-old and his difficult adolescence, the tyranny of family relationships, authoritarian […]
Sanket Tomar (15) captained the Delhi state five-member tennis team to victory at the 60th National School Lawn Tennis Under-17 Boys Championship 2014-15, held in Gulbarga (Karnataka) between January 7-11. Also a member of the winning Delhi squad which bagged the Under-14 nationals in 2013-14, this class IX student of Venkateshwar International School (VIS), Dwarka […]
œIn India, the quality of students is good. But the deterioration in the quality of faculty across tiers is much greater than the decline in the quality of students.
Nitin Nohria, dean of Harvard Business School (Forbes, February 6)
œI am for freedom of expression but there are no absolutes in life. Limitless freedom contains […]
ALTHOUGT THE SAMAJWADI PARTY government which has been ruling Uttar Pradesh, India™s most populous (200 million) state since 2012, is more reputed for caste and community-based politics and its high tolerance of criminals and criminality, sometimes ” even if rarely ” a socially beneficial proposal is produced by the state™s massive 2.7 million-strong bureaucracy.
One […]
AN AMBITIOUS ATTEMPT OF the Indian academy, ruined by six-plus decades of continuous Central and state government interference and over-subsidisation of tuition fees, to make a global impact, has suffered a severe setback.
In a letter dated February 19 addressed to the board of governors of Nalanda University, promoted to revive the ancient glory of […]
The open, uninterrupted and continuous persecution of civil rights activist/lawyer Teesta Setalvad (and husband Javed Anand) by the BJP government of Gujarat headed by Anandiben Patel ” the hand-picked choice of prime minister Narendra Modi ” is further proof that the prime minister has few qualms about hounding his actual and perceived enemies by abusing […]
SINDHURA P.
Managing director, Narayana Group of Educational Institutions, Hyderabad
Where would you place education on your national list of priorities?
Education is vital for the economic advancement of India. Educating and skilling our human resources are preconditions of making India globally competitive.
How best to upgrade government schools?
There™s an immediate need to set […]
Nehru & Bose: parallel lives by Rudrangshu Mukherjee penguin books; Price: Rs.599; Pages 256
Critics and laymen who complain the history of India in the 20th century is overly dominated by the towering personalities of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and his offspring, are not unjustified in voicing dissatisfaction. Several scholarly and informative biographies have been written […]
The Pardada Pardadi Education Society (estb. 2000) has transformed socially backward Anupshahr in the badlands of Uttar Pradesh into a model village, offering a blueprint for the upliftment of women and empowerment of girl children summiya yasmeen
Four hours by road from Delhi, the village of Anupshahr in the badlands of Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh […]
About five years ago I was in my mid-seventies, commuting between Washington DC and my home in California. I worked a consulting job and was putting the final touches on what I thought would be my eighth book titled Kid Sense: Advice to Coaches and Parents from Kids in Sport.
I was in a reflective […]
With the resignation of vice chancellor Abhijit Chakraborty on January 12, peace and calm has returned to West Bengal™s showpiece university. But with the ruling Trinamool Congress Party determined to infiltrate the state™s premier varsity, its future is bleak Somdev Thakur & Summiya Yasmeen
After four months of student and teacher agitations during which classes and […]
At an astonishing 787ft (240m) tall, the vast tower of Lomonosov Moscow State University dominates the skyline of Russia™s capital. Inaugurated shortly after Stalin™s death in 1953, his œtemple to Soviet science remains the world™s tallest university building and can be seen by Muscovites for miles in every direction. But while the tower ” more […]
Cherian George used to be an academIC at Singapore™s Nanyang Technological University (NTU). The former journalist is a political liberal and a prominent critic of the Singapore government, and he has been publicly rebuked by the state in response.
In 2014, Dr. George joined Hong Kong Baptist University, after what he describes as a œforced […]
Nearly 70 schools in Cameroon™s Far North Region have been forced to close, are damaged, or operate intermittently as a result of the recurrent cross-border raids by Nigeria™s Boko Haram insurgents. œBoko Haram attacks on villages and schools have forced students and teachers to flee. There are many displaced families in the region. This displaced […]
When Sugata Mitra won the TED Prize, it didn™t just give him $1 million (Rs.6 crore) to put ideas about internet-based learning into action. It also gave the professor of educational technology at Newcastle University a global platform for his theories, which have now been adopted in thousands of schools and communities worldwide.
It is […]
President barack Obama says 9 million students could benefit from his plan to make at least two years of community college education free of charge. This proposal featured in his state-of-the-union address on January 20. If all 50 states go along with it, a typical full-time community-college student could save $3,800 a year, he claims. […]
US-based billionaire and finance whiz Michael Milken, one of the most famous names in American education and healthcare philanthropy towards which he has donated over $1 billion (Rs.6,000 crore), co-founder of the Milken Family Foundation and chairman of the Milken Institute, among America™s top think tanks, recently completed a whirlwind ten-day tour of India (February […]
I™m a second year B.Sc student interested in a packaging design study programme abroad. What are the eligibility requirements?
Ashok Raghavan, Chennai
Numerous universities abroad offer postgrad packaging design study programmes. They include MA (packaging design) and MS (packaging technology, design and marketing, packaging science) offered by universities in the US, UK, France and Finland. […]
According to a report of Gartner Inc, India™s active mobile telephony connections will exceed 900 million by 2016, a national penetration of 72 percent
The demand for applications (˜apps™) software for digital hand-held devices ” mobile phones, tablets and i-pads ” is booming globally. Apps can be pre-installed or delivered as web applications by innovative software […]
Dilip Thakore interviewed Dr. Manjunath Sadashiva, a co-founder and director of the Children™s Movement for Civic Awareness (estb. 2000), in Bangalore. Excerpts:
Congratulations for commissioning CMCA™s unprecedented Yuva Nagarik Meter aka Young Citizen National Survey 2015. What were the aims and objectives of the survey?
The preamble of the Constitution of India ” the world™s […]
A nationwide study commissioned by the Bangalore-based Children™s Movement for Civic Awareness highlights that high school and college students are shockingly casual about democracy and entertain regressive beliefs and anti-social attitudes Dilip Thakore
WITH THE INK HAVING HARDLY dried on the recently released Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2014, which indicates that 53 percent […]
THE WHEELS OF A NEW EDUCATION policy (NEP) have been set in motion with the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry inviting public participation and initiating a consultation process œto ensure that an inclusive, participatory and holistic approach is undertaken. In the circumstances, it would be instructive to study the backdrop against which the new […]
A mere 25 minutes from London by rail, Reading University’s five faculties offer over 200 study programmes to 17,040 students from 141 countries – SUMMIYA YASMEEN
Conferred a royal charter in 1926 ” the only British varsity to be chartered between the two World Wars ” the 89-year-old University of Reading is ranked among Britain’s Top […]
Within the short span of five years, Litera Valley Zee School, Hosur has earned a sound reputation for offering well-balanced primary-secondary education – Paromita Sengupta
Spread over 3.47 green acres in the Karnataka-Tamil Nadu border town of Hosur (pop. 260,000) ” an industrial hub which hosts several automobile and manufacturing blue-chips including Hindustan Motors, Taneja Aerospace, […]
CAMBRIDGE ENGLISH, a not-for-profit affiliate of the University of Cambridge, UK and a global leader in English language development, introduced its ˜Cambridge English for Schools™ programme in India last month (February).
œOur international assessments and certifications open doors to higher education and the world of work. Our learning support and materials bring international expertise into […]
Himachal Pradesh
85 principals under scanner
The state government has urged speedy completion of a preliminary enquiry into cases pertaining to misuse of funds and grants by 85 principals of government schools across Himachal Pradesh. Speaking to mediapersons in Dharamsala on February 23, an education ministry official stated that principals facing enquiry are of Government […]
DESPITE A 2010 INITIATIVE OF THE Chennai Municipal Corporation (CMC) to rename the primary-upper primary (˜corporation™) schools it runs in the eponymous port city as ˜Chennai Schools™ and œa series of development initiatives to upgrade teaching-learning standards, their popularity with the public has steadily declined during the past four years. An RTI application filed by […]
WITH CAMPUS VIOLENCE, fraudulent admissions, faculty recruitment scams and mass cheating during examinations de rigueur in West Bengal™s government colleges and universities, œpolitics in education and œeducational anarchy are frequent descriptors employed by academics in the state (pop. 91 million). The general consensus is that the Trinamool Congress Party (TMC), which swept to power in […]
CHARGES THAT CHILDREN FROM poor families admitted into upscale private unaided schools under s.12 (1) (c) of the Right to Free & Compulsory Education Act, 2009, are being maltreated and discriminated against, have generated a stir among academics and NGOs in the industrial city of Pune (pop.4.5 million), which prides itself as the cultural and […]
COGNOSCENTI WITHIN THE academic and NGO world in the national capital are shocked by an order of the state government issued under the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009, declaring the K-X Deepalaya School, Sanjay Colony, in the Okhla industrial area, illegal.
As a consequence, if it continues to declare itself a ˜school™ and offers […]
Thank you for the very inspiring cover story ˜Design for Change: Global learning by doing movement™ (EW February).
It™s commonplace in Indian society to ignore children™s voices and opinions. Adults predominantly opine that children should restrict themselves to prescribed studies and not bother about larger social issues.
I believe the DFC programme should be made […]
The sweeping victory of the aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the Delhi state election, winning 67 of the 70 seats in the legislative assembly in early February, signals a tectonic shift in Indian politics. The BJP which won a spectacular victory in the General Election of May last year, was reduced to three seats while […]
The prime motivation behind the promotion of this sui generis magazine 15 summers ago, was to secure a fair deal for the country™s neglected and short-changed children and youth. The number of children below age 18 in India aggregates 450 million ” the world™s largest child population. And if to this you add youth below […]
Bengal: Madhyamik pass dropouts want to return to Class XI for Rs 10000 scheme Mita Mukherjee A decision taken by Mamata Banerjee government to provide Rs 10,000 each to Class XI students from the ... 
CBSE adds 12000 more centres for board examinations CBSE adds 12000 more centres to conduct board examinations for classes 10 and 12 ensuring social distancing. Union HRD minister ... 
Ten busiest railway stations of India Travelling in the Indian Railways is always fun with families and friends. In fact it is considered a unique travel ... 
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 ... 
Enabling multiple learning experiences
Travel back in time to Harappa and Mohenjo Daro. Weigh yourself on different planets. Figure out how heating and cooling metals adds or reduces energy. These are a few learning experiences that latter-day information and communication technology (ICT) offers school students. ICT enables students to connect with a world of resources, experts and curious peers. […]