-The Hindu   The controversial decision earlier this month by the Academic Council of Delhi University to drop A.K. Ramanujan's celebrated essay on the Ramayana, Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translations from the B.A. History (Honours) course has evoked sharp protests from several historians and other scholars. Coming three years after the Hindutva student body, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), vandalised DU's History department to protest against the...

-The United Nations   The global demand for secondary education has risen exponentially, says a new United Nations report, which adds that governments, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, are having a hard time keeping up and many children are being left out. The 2011 Global Education Digest, released today by the Institute for Statistics of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), says there are only enough seats for 36 per cent of...

Pilot survey under Project Dipankar in four prosperous districts shows 87 per cent class I students of government schools are undernourished Eighty-seven per cent school children in four districts of West Bengal are undernourished right at the entry level. The shocking numbers are from the yet unpublished report of Project Dipankar, a child tracking system initiated by the department of school education in the state. The project tracks the educational performance...

Maharashtra has been struggling with a declining child sex ratio and is ranked among the five worst states in the country. The reasons are the same as elsewhere: preference for a male child. But in a shocking indicator of how extreme this desire is and how deep-rooted the bias against the girl child can get, scores of families across Maharashtra have simply named their daughters ‘Nakushi’ or ‘Nakusha’—meaning ‘unwanted’ in...

In a bid to implement better the 'Right to free and compulsory Education' Act (Right to Education - RTE) in the state, the education department is thinking up new ideas. The primary education department is mulling providing bicycles to those students who have to travel more than 3 kilometres to get to their schools. This provision of bicycles, however, is subject to the finance department's approval. Sources in the state education department...