-Hindustan Times The last few weeks have seen a spate of government notifications making Aadhaar mandatory for receiving the benefits of government programmes. The most recent orders relate to an Aadhaar requirement for children to access schools (even under their fundamental right to education), mid-day meals, supplementary nutrition (ICDS) and scholarships. These directives raise a number of ethical as well as practical questions, besides violating children’s right to education, nutrition and...

-HuffingtonPost.in This is a way to force Aadhaar enrolment, not fix the scheme. Children will suffer. I am not usually an opponent of Aadhaar, India's controversial scheme to give a unique identification number to all residents of India, with their biometric information seeded into it. Any fears that I may have about privacy or surveillance or misuse are overridden by my experience that what the poor want is to be counted, not...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Economic Survey has recommended that biometric tracking of teachers' attendance be introduced in government primary schools and the data monitored by parents and local communities. The Survey has cited the low-learning outcome of children in government schools and linked it to teacher absenteeism and shortage of professionally qualified teachers. According to the UNESCO- EFA (Education For All) Monitoring Report for 2014, teacher absenteeism in India varies between 15...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A survey of children's learning levels has found that Class V and Class VIII students performed as poorly in arithmetic in 2016 as they did in 2014 but Class III kids did marginally better.   The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) released today also found little change in the enrolment figures in private schools. About 30.5 per cent children of the 6-14 age group were enrolled in private...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Studying in an English-medium school does not automatically make your child proficient in English, a comparison of two nationwide surveys on School Enrolment trends and performance in English suggests. One in three schoolchildren goes to English-medium schools in Himachal Pradesh while one in 30 does so in Bengal, according to a survey by the National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA). But Class X students in Bengal, sampled...