The 25 per cent quota in all schools envisaged by the RTE has created a big debate Do upper middle class people in a city believe that the quality of their child's education is compromised when they share classroom space with the children of construction labourers or domestic workers? This fundamental question is at the heart of the heated debate on a clause in the Right to Free and Compulsory education Act,...

There’s more bad news for Bangalore’s private and unaided schools. The state government has decided to modify the concept of ‘neighbourhood’, which now means that schools will have to consider poor students living within a radius of 6km of the neighbourhood, instead of 3km as laid down by the Centre in the Right to education Act (RTE). Under the RTE Act, all state governments have to establish schools for poor children...

CELIA ORBOC, a cake-seller in the Philippines, spent her little stipend on a wooden shack, giving her five children a roof over their heads for the first time. In Kyrgyzstan Sharmant Oktomanova spent hers buying flour to feed six children. In Haiti President René Préval praises a dairy co-operative that gives mothers milk and yogurt when their children go to school. These are examples of the world’s favourite new anti-poverty device,...

Modifications recommended in definition of ‘child with disability\\\' Taking forward the agenda set by actor Aamir Khan in the Bollywood film Taare Zameen Par, a Parliamentary Committee has suggested that dyslexia and any other type of disability, if existing, need to be included in the definition of “child with disability” while amending the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory education (Amendment) Bill 2010. Dyslexia does not find mention in...

School vouchers should be an integral part of the Centre’s plans to implement the Right to education (RTE). For the state to spend gargantuan amounts on school education is fine, but to insist that the delivery too would be by the state is meaningless. Surveys have shown that government teachers are absent from their schools and children cannot do simple arithmetic or write small paragraphs after years of schooling. Reforms...