-The Hindu Against recommendation to delete several cartoons and texts from Political Science books   Historian K.N. Panikkar has said the S.K. Thorat panel, constituted to review the use of cartoons in the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks, had undone an academically commendable effort. Terming the majority panel recommendation to delete several cartoons and texts of some others from the political science textbooks “most unfortunate,” Dr. Panikkar told The Hindu...

The government and the MCI dither on a proposed course to provide better primary health care in villages. On February 27, the Delhi High Court slapped contempt notices on the Union Health Secretary and the Chairperson of the Medical Council of India (MCI) for their non-compliance with its order of November 10, 2010, to initiate measures to introduce a “Bachelor of Rural Health Care (BRHC)” course of three and a half...

-PTI The Madras High Court has observed that the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education ( RTE) Act does not make it clear as to what constitutes a neighbourhood school.  "If there is more than one school in a neighbourhood, to which institution the parent can have the choice, which authority can direct admission to such school and who will supervise the admission is not clear," justice K Chandru said.  The...

-The Hindu In the filled slots, SCs constitute just 12% against the stipulated 15% and STs 5% instead of 7.5% Among the ills that plague the Indian higher education system is the continued poor stake of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in it. Year on year, the huge backlog of vacancies in teaching positions in SC/ST categories remains a constant concern with little change in its position. Nearly half the teaching positions...

Only a handful of candidates from the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category have managed to get a seat or an institute of their choice in the open category this year. A majority had to use Reservation or relaxed score to get into the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). According to the IITs, of the 4,805 OBC candidates who cracked the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) this year, 1,625 candidates had figured in...