-The Hindu Hyderabad: Not a single mandal in the city could achieve the distinction of retaining all the students at a single school till the end of the five-year elementary education, latest figures from the Rajiv Vidya Mission (RVM) reveal. Data of district-wise student retention rates at the elementary level has revealed that the city has zero mandals with 100 per cent student retention. Mahabubnagar is the only other district sharing...

-The Hindu The role of education in reducing poverty is widely recognised but our planners are yet to realise how the impoverished struggle with a learning process that is unresponsive to their needs In a society where poverty is far more common than prosperity, one would expect the implications of poverty for education to be widely recognised. What we find, instead, is that poverty is seldom mentioned directly in policy documents on...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: More than three years after the implementation of the RTE Act and an expenditure of over Rs 46,282.11 crore on school infrastructure, around 1.28 lakh out of 10,75,407 government elementary schools across the country still don't have toilets and over 61,000 lack drinking water facilities. According to the District Information System for Education 2011-12, Bihar has 18,169 schools without lavatories, the highest among states. Andhra Pradesh...

-The Hindu Meals low on calories and proteins, says Review Mission Hyderabad: Food quantities served under Mid-day Meals scheme in the State's schools are way below the norms prescribed, going by the findings of the Fifth Joint Review Mission to Andhra Pradesh. According to the Mission's report after its visit to Hyderabad and Medak between June 24 and July 3, the gap between the norms and actuals is more in the case of...

-The Business Standard The tragedy involving the death of children in a Bihar school should reinforce recent efforts to improve the programme, notes Amarjeet Sinha. The sad loss of 23 innocent lives after consuming hot cooked meals in a school in Bihar has rightly shocked and angered people. The highly poisonous pesticide monocrotophos found in children's food and a headmistress overlooking the cook and the children's protests about the oil and not...