-The Times of India Education researcher Sugata Mitra has won 2013's million-dollar Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) Prize with his 'Hole in the Wall' experiment, showing slum children learning to work a computer and teaching each other minus adult supervision. Speaking with Pratigyan Das, Mitra discussed the dynamics of this venture in India, the radical potential it offers - and how our educational system apparently persists in trying to produce clerks for...

-The Business Standard The various grants under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan don't reach all schools - and not on time, either Educational spending is soaring. At the turn of the decade, new legislation has been enacted to make education a fundamental right. But India's elementary schoolchildren are just not learning. The country's elementary education budget has more than doubled since 2007-08, from Rs 68,853 crore to Rs 147,059 crore this fiscal, but the...

-The Pioneer Minister misused Corporate slot to raise funds for family Trust Union Petroleum Minister M Veerappa Moily could be in the dock for raising funds for his family controlled trust from a corporate giant when he was Corporate Affairs Minister. Moily faces another serious case of conflict of interest as a top official of Reliance Industries is advisor to a company controlled by Moily’s son Harsha Moily. Even earlier, the Minister...

-The Hindu Those opposing Justice Katju’s suggestion of minimum qualifications for journalists are out of touch with reality Some years ago, the journalism entrance test at a career development institute in Mumbai had this objective-type question: Kofi Annan is (a) a Nigerian footballer (b) lead singer of a Sierra Leone pop group (c) a Sri Lankan delicacy (d) Secretary-General of the United Nations. The 100-odd candidates who appeared for the test were...

-The Business Standard Kolkata: Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, Ford Foundation International professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has slammed the government's Right To Education (RTE) programme. This, he said, was only a step towards ensuring a means of livelihood for teachers. Banerjee said the programme, implemented in 2009, lacked sense. He said he wasn't hopeful about the outcome of the initiative. "It is simply for the teachers, by the teachers,...