Today's Supreme Court judgment saying all private schools other than unaided minority schools must reserve one in four seats for poor children has provoked dismay in private schools. Principals of leading private schools in Delhi said the 25 per cent reservation would impose a severe financial burden on them. "The government should take care of education for the poor. Why cannot the government open new schools? Why are they pushing the 25...

-The Pioneer Almost 95.2 per cent of schools are not compliant with the complete set of Right to Education (RTE) infrastructure indicators. These shocking statistics came to light in the two-day RTE Stocktaking Convention which was recently held. The Convention aimed to address the pending gaps and detect the reasons behind the schools missing out on the deadline to meet the basic standard of education as highlighted by the RTE. The RTE...

-The Times of India Slow implementation of the Right to Education Act raises concern as only a year left to fulfil norms Unhappy with the slow progress in implementing the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, a memorandum was submitted to the Prime Minister last week by theRTE Forum. The RTE Act, which came into force on April 1, 2009, guarantees the provision of free and compulsory education...

When universities start censoring speech and banning books, and permission is needed to hold conferences, we risk becoming a hollow, illiberal democracy. Do you need the administration's prior permission to hold a meeting, seminar, symposium or conference at a university? Most academics in liberal democracies would either be astounded by the question or feel compelled to answer it with an emphatic, if not vehement, no. The administration, they would argue, should...

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...