-The Times of India The building of school infrastructure as per norms set by the Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, is moving at a rather slow pace in the neighbouring Satara district. This, despite the substantial financial allocations made through the central government's Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA) programme. An independent assessment of 146 schools across Satara district, carried out by the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research (CPR), has...

Two years after the ambitious Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 came into being, 95.2 per cent of schools are not yet compliant with the complete set of RTE infrastructure indicators, a civil society survey nationwide shows. And a shockingly high percentage, 93, of teacher candidates failed in the National Teacher Eligibility Test conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education in 2010-11. In 2009-10, the failure...

-Economic and Political Weekly Yojana Bhavan never seems to know how to count India’s poor That the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government can on occasion after occasion mishandle a situation and also show insensitivity has been in evidence once again in its handling of the poverty figures estimated from the 66th (2009-10) round of the National Sample Survey (NSS). Although the Planning Commission’s estimates, as measured by the Tendulkar methodology, declined sharply...

Ranchi, April 3: Newbie eighth grader Radha Kumari at Government Middle School in Ranchi’s Tharpakhna is happy over her promotion, but says it does not feel like she is in a new class. “No new textbooks,” she frowns. Radha is not alone. In fact, 60 lakh students between classes I and VIII studying in 40,000-odd state-run primary and middle schools are in a similar quandary. They have not received their new,...

When the fledgling Indian government drafted its higher education policy after Independence, it formed two separate tiers for teaching and research: colleges and universities in one, exclusive research establishments in the other. The intention was of the noblest, to deploy our best talent exclusively to create an indigenous knowledge pool; in particular, to provide research input for the nation’s development. Sixty years down the line, the outcome has patently failed those...