If India is an aspiring society, education is perhaps the quickest vehicle of social mobility. Right to Education (RTE) is a supplyside intervention by the government that will make education cheaper and, in the process, every child will get a chance to be educated. But an approach that focuses on availability of schools, getting children to the classroom and getting them taught by reasonably well-trained teachers is not enough. Retention...

The state education board is set to usher in a more transparent evaluation system: starting this year, students sitting for the Class X state board exam and the Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) will be able to get a copy of their corrected answer booklets under the Right To Information (RTI) Act. In the past, the state board did not entertain RTI applications from students who wished to see their evaluated...

-IANS   Azamgarh: Amid the mushrooming convent schools, mosques still continue to be popular centres of learning at least up to the primary class level in Uttar Pradesh's Azamgarh district. The trend is more common in cities and towns where Islamic primary schools are rare. There are more than 100 mosques in Azamgarh city and around 40 per cent offer primary education. A majority of students in mosques come from the Muslim community...

The Sangh Parivar is systematically following its “Indianisation reforms” in schools run by its affiliates. THE attempts of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS)-led Sangh Parivar at “saffronising” education attracted widespread attention between 1998 and 2004 when the Hindutva combine's political arm, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), held the reins of power at the Centre. During that period, especially between 1998 and 2002, the BJP's Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi...

Hindutva continues to be the main agenda of the BJP in Karnataka, as is evident from the cattle slaughter Bill. THE Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged as the single largest party in the Assembly elections and managed to form the government in Karnataka in 2008. The electoral victory encouraged the hard-line elements in the party and organisations with Hindutva affiliation to advance their ideology in a spirited manner and stoke communal...