Tiny tot Shraddha Somanath (5), a kindergartener of Greenwood High International School, Bangalore, has become a celebrity in her school and beyond, by bagging a silver medal at the Asian Schools Chess Championship held between August 30-September 6, in Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka. Shraddha was the runner-up in the Classical Chess and Blitz categories in […]
An eve-of-election statement of intent taken through the ordinance route by the Union HRD ministry inviting globally top-ranked foreign universities to establish captive campuses in India, has drawn lukewarm response from foreign higher education institutions wary of entering India’s over-regulated higher education system. Dilip Thakore reports
Despite alarming new millennium reports about the poor quality of graduates […]
The annual EducationWorld India School Rankings Awards Nite dinner staged in New Delhi’s The LaLit Hotel on September 14 to felicitate India’s top-ranked day, boarding and international schools, received unprecedented response from 400 principals, trustees, and teachers of the country’s most respected schools. In a filled-to-capacity chandeliered auditorium, EducationWorld felicitated and celebrated India’s Top 10, […]
The HRD ministry has sent proposals to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion and the Department of Economic Affairs to permit foreign universities to open their campuses in the country as companies as provided under the Companies Act.
As per the powers vested with the Central government to make rules under the UGC Act, the […]
“We would certainly consider the option to establish a high quality, niche research campus in the country.”
Anthony Smith, Vice-Provost, University College, London
“At this time, Stanford University does not intend to open any additional campuses within the US or abroad, in India or elsewhere. This is an institutional decision and not related to any actions taken by […]
Lifetime Achievement in Education Leadership 2013
Sumer Singh, Principal, Daly College, Indore
CITATION
A globally respected educationist upon whom EW is proud to confer a Lifetime Achievement in Education Leadership award is Sumer Singh, principal of The Daly College and Daly College Business School, Indore. An alumnus of The Doon School, Dehradun, St. Stephen’s College, Delhi and the DAV […]
Lifetime Achievement in Education Leadership 2013
Augustine & Grace Pinto, Founders, Ryan International Group of Institutions
CITATION
Born in Mangalore, Karnataka — one of nine children of a farmer of modest means — Dr. Augustine Pinto schooled in St. Aloysius High, Mangalore and Loyola College, Chennai, from where he graduated in 1969 with a degree in economics. […]
Lifetime Achievement in Education Leadership 2013
Achyuta Samanta, Founder-Director of KIIT University & Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences
CITATION
Born in a remote village (Kalarabank) in Cuttack district as one of six children of a shopfloor employee in a steel plant, Samanta and his siblings experienced grinding poverty after their father died in a train accident in 1970. “It […]
Although two of the four vital factors of production and national prosperity — labour and enterprise — are intimately connected with human resource development, there is an idée fixe in Indian society that land and capital (the other two vital factors of production) are the only measures of wealth. Development and nurturance of intellectual capital, […]
The anointment of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi as prime minister-designate should the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party win the looming general election of May 2014, is a denouement filled with dreadful implications which neither the reckless middle class which has rallied to his banner, nor the nation’s under-educated majority have adequately grasped. The belated misgivings […]
With reference to your EducationWorld India School Rankings 2013 (EW September), the creation of so many sub-categories within categories has diluted the impact of the annual survey. In my opinion the three categories of day, boarding and international schools of your earlier surveys were far better, and well defined. Whether a school is all-boys, all-girls or co-ed, […]
Spared the heavy-handed and usually obsolete regulations of Central and state government educrats and itching palms of school inspectors for 65 years since independence, privately-provided nursery and preschool education is about to be included within the regulatory ambit of government.
On September 20, the Union cabinet approved a draft National Early Childhood Care and Education (NECCE) […]
The condition of the education system in West Bengal (pop. 91 million) is near its nadir. Acts of indiscipline and general lawlessness are now a daily occurrence in this state which led the subcontinent’s education awakening and renaissance of the mid 19th century. All hopes of the political transformation of West Bengal following the electoral […]
After prolonged hesitation, on September 15 the Maharashtra State Council of Examinations (MSCE) declared that it “proposes” to conduct a statewide Teacher Eligibility Test (TET), as mandated by s.23 (1) of the Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, in November. Maharashtra (pop.112 million) is among the last states to implement TET (conducted […]
Gujarat Vidyapith (university), an Ahmedabad-based K-Ph D education institution promoted by Mahatma Gandhi in 1920 as a nationalist alternative to the Western education system in the heady days of the freedom struggle, is caught in a clash between the traditional and modern.
On September 12, an estimated 250 of the vidyapith’s 4,300 students staged a protest fast before the registrar’s […]
Karnataka’s mid-day meal scheme, which provides hot cooked lunches to 6.1 million children in 55,113 state government and government-aided primary schools, has come under a cloud following the horrible deaths of two six-year-olds within the space of ten days in September. On September 17, a class II girl child was burnt to death after she […]
Despite being ruled by former film star-turned chief minister J. Jayalalithaa who shook more than a leg on the silver screen during her heyday, a rising wave of puritanism is sweeping over campuses in the industrially and educationally advanced southern state of Tamil Nadu (pop.72 million), ranked third nationwide in the Union finance ministry’s latest […]
“Language diversity should not be seen as a development liability, but as an economic asset.”
Ganesh Devy, scholar-activist, on the People’s Linguistic Survey of India (Outlook, September 9)
“Pens and books are the weapons that defeat terrorism.”
Malala Yousafzai, 16-year-old Pakistani education activist who survived a 2012 Taliban assassination attempt, presiding over inauguration of Europe’s largest regional […]
Bihar
Teachers welfare goal
Addressing the public on Teachers Day (September 5), Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar said his government is taking all steps to strengthen the states education infrastructure to make it an engine of growth. Announcing a hike in the honorarium of contractual teachers by Rs.3,000 per month without any demand from their side, […]
The well-known Mumbai-based Vardhman Group has signed up with Good Life Education, a start-up, to introduce certificate study programmes in real estate.
According to a company spokesperson, the initial programme has a dual structure comprising basic and advance level streams. The basic programme is designed for individuals with no previous experience of this industry, and teaches […]
In the latest EW India School Rankings published last month, knowledgeable respondents of the survey ranked Children’s Academy, Malad, Mumbai among the country’s Top 40 (#37) co-ed day schools and #12 in Mumbai
Sited in Malad, a bustling suburb of Mumbai, Children’s Academy (estb.1970), a K-X co-ed day school affiliated with the Maharashtra […]
Since it began training medical students in 1733, St. George’s, University of London is the UK’s sole independent college offering study programmes in medicine, biomedical, health and social care sciences
A constituent college of the University of London, St. George’s is the UK’s sole independent medical and healthcare higher education institution offering study […]
A group of six Mumbai-based students, aged between nine-16 have been awarded the Gold Championship of the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Lego League (FLL) Asia Pacific Championship, a global engineering and robotics competition held in Sydney, Australia, between July 4-6. The only Indian team to have won an FLL championship, […]
With breakthroughs of monumental importance being made in the world of physical sciences, suddenly a career in physics has become an exciting option for science scholars
“In recent years, we have had exciting developments like the discovery of the Higgs boson, dark matter and dark energy in the world of physical sciences (aka physics). Numerous applications […]
After I complete my Plus Two (science) next year, I want to take up a career in healthcare/biosciences. Should I sign up for an undergraduate programme in bio-medical engineering, biotechnology or pharmacy? Please advise.
Sunita Rao, Bangalore
Instead of getting confused with alternatives, you must first understand the nature of work associated with these study programmes. […]
By education I mean an all-round drawing out of the best in child and man — body, mind and spirit — Mahatma Gandhi
Once upon a time, the Indian subcontinent was the global epicentre of education. The world’s first university established at Takshashila in 700 BC offered close to 70 subjects including languages, grammar, philosophy, medicine, surgery, sports, […]
It sounds as uncontroversial as apple pie. Teach for America (TFA), a not-for-profit organisation founded in 1990, places young ‘corps members’ at schools in poor areas to teach for two years. Recruits work in 35 states, most are fresh out of college, and they learn mainly on the job. Fair enough; but TFA has many […]
Russell group member the University of Exeter (UoE) is to cut the intake of foreign students into its business school following concerns over their academic quality — a move that may be followed by other UK institutions. Fifty-four percent of students in UoE’s business school are from outside the European Union — above the figure […]
As recent headline-grabbing resignations by two federal government ministers attest, the issue of academic plagiarism is a higher-profile matter in Germany, and with bigger political stakes, than almost anywhere else. Both defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who quit his post in 2011, and Annette Schavan, the minister for education and research who departed from chancellor […]
Purges may be what political junkies are talking about, but for Chinese families the big issue is homework. As children across the country returned to their classrooms in September, the education ministry has put forward plans to decrease the amount of pupils’ homework.
The ministry’s proposed guidelines, issued on August 22, ban written homework for every […]
A new report has highlighted the major challenges facing Iraq’s universities as they struggle to forge international partnerships and adopt robust systems of assessment, evaluation and quality assurance. It draws on the results of a three-day conference organised by the New York-based Institute of International Education in collaboration with its Scholar Rescue Fund.
Held in Erbil […]
More than ever before, universities are being measured against not only national competitors but also rivals from around the world. There are already a number of well-established global university league tables, which are generally based on research power.
Then there is the Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes project, a scheme run by the Organisation for […]
I turned 79 this year and it’s a good occasion to pay a tribute to all of us who are now septuagenarians. We have lived many experiences that the current and succeeding generations may never know about. So here are a few of our rich (primary school) childhood experiences.
• We played baseball on the streets […]
Punjab: A History from Aurangzeb to Mountbatten by Rajmohan Gandhi; Aleph; Price: Rs.695; 432 pp
Rajmohan Gandhi is the paternal grandson of the Mahatma, and maternal grandson of Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, the first Indian governor-general of independent India. Few Indians have such a distinguished lineage. That should have been the ideal stepping stone to politics. Though he unsuccessfully […]
MVM Velmurugan
Chief executive officer
Velammal Educational Trust, Chennai
Where would you place education on your national list of priorities?
Undoubtedly at the top.
How best to upgrade government universities?
Striving for excellence, sustainable funding, focus on research, commitment to high quality, recruiting outstanding human resources, and collaboration with public and private sector institutions.
Thinker/philosopher you […]
The adjudication and enthronement of Indian (Andhra)-origin Nina Davuluri as Miss America 2013 is not only a triumph for this 23-year-old medical student, but also a well-deserved slap in the face of the brain-dead badshahs of Bollywood and beauty pageant organisers, who seem to be innocent of all notions of ethnic good looks. Although multi-ethnic […]
International Day of Democracy: Bringing Democracy To Indian Classrooms September 15, every year, is celebrated worldwide as the International Day of Democracy. The United Nation promotes it as the ... 
UGC warns against fake degrees with misleading abbreviations and nomenclatures The University Grants Commission (UGC) has warned aspirants against selecting courses with false promises like an MBA crash course in ... 
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 ... 
40% parents struggle to pay schools fees post lockdown: Survey With schools conducting virtual classes for more than a year now, parents are awaiting directions from the authorities on the ... 
IIMs should offer open classware
Dr. V. Raghunathan is a former professor of IIM-Ahmedabad, author and corporate executive
The steep fall in India’s annual rate of GDP growth from 8 percent-plus in 2007 to less than 5 percent this year, and almost total collapse of industrial growth has created a major problem for the estimated 400,000-500,000 business management graduates/MBAs streaming out […]