The Centre on Monday cleared for implementation the Rajiv Gandhi Scheme for Empowerment of Adolescent Girls — known as ‘Sabla' — aimed at enhancing their nutritional and economic status. The scheme will be run along with the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) project in anganwadi centres in 200 select districts, targeting girls in the age group 11-18. The districts will be selected using a set of indicators and will be a...

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) is world’s most extensive primary education programme, but is it working? The grim reality that India’s Right to Education is at best working in terms of quantity of schools, and certainly not in terms of quality of education, was first proved in successive Annual Status of Education Reports (ASER), brought out by education NGO ‘Pratham’ through nationwide ground-level surveys. Now a Planning Commission evaluation report confirms most...

Putting an end to the months of controversy over fund sharing for the Right to Education Act, the Union government has now fixed a 65-35 sharing pattern. The pattern, which received the in-principal approval of the expenditure finance committee of the ministry of finance, will be applicable for the next five years. With this, states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, both governments that had demanded 100% Central assistance, will have...

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,...

Amipur may be a small dot along the national highway from Patna to Nawada, but its ambitions are big. In the 50-odd households in the village, sparsely populated and rife with an uneasy quiet, most men have left for work outside Bihar. Siyaram Chauhan is the one who returned. He was rescued last month by the state government officials from a brick kiln in Uttar Pradesh’s Bahraich where he worked as...