Free uniform and notebooks; compulsory for schools to reserve 25% seats for children from poor sections The State Budget gives a major boost to school education, with the government earmarking a record sum of Rs.14,553 crore for it — the highest ever allocation made to any department in Tamil Nadu. The school education department will also focus on increasing enrolments and arresting drop-out rates, Finance Minister O. Panneerselvam told the Assembly...

-The Indian Express   For once, Mamata does the right thing — by laying down work rules for her employees Mamata Banerjee’s politics, in a word, could be called “populist”, in the absence of a well-formulated and well-enunciated agenda. In her last years in opposition, and now as chief minister of West Bengal, Banerjee has steadily positioned herself as “more left than the Left”. The Luddite politics of Singur, her stint as the...

Two central ministries have locked horns over the country’s youngest students, the tug-of-war for the tiny tots unfolding after a plan to bring pre-school education under the Right to Education Act. While the human resource development ministry wants to include pre-primary education under the act, which provides for free and compulsory education to children between six and 14, the women and child development department says education and childcare shouldn’t be segregated...

-IANS Jaunpur (Uttar Pradesh), Jan 9: Broken roads and power cuts have failed to deter people in their drive for education in this eastern Uttar Pradesh district. They have set up more than 30 schools and technical institutes for youth of the area. If you drive between Imran Ganj to Guraini in the Shahganj sub-division of the district -- a distance of some 10 km -- you can count about 40 schools...

-The Indian Express   While Madhya Pradesh government is making all efforts to make the 'Surya Namaskar' exercise on Swami Vivekanand's birthday here tomorrow, a world record, Muslim leaders have opposed the move by issuing a fatwa against it. Leaders of the minority community have termed the move as un-Islamic and equated it with idol-worship, which is prohibited in Islam. They also issued a fatwa in this regard on Tuesday which was also...