Trigerring a fresh controversy over some provisions of the Right to Education (RTE) Act, a Bangalore school’s circular to parents virtually warns them of what could be in store once the act comes into force. Bethany High School, in a circular dated July 26, a copy of which is with TOI, said: "Under this Act, all private unaided schools will have to accommodate 25% of their strength of children around...

Enrolment of Muslim children in primary and upper primary classes in 2009-10 improved significantly with Muslim girls -- as was the trend in the previous two years -- again doing better than boys across the country. In fact, at the upper primary level (class VI-VIII) the percentage of Muslim girls -- 49.97% -- has been higher than the national average of 48.04%. A report by the National University of Educational...

In an upstairs classroom at a residential school in Mal, near Lucknow, the girls are revising for their exams. As the light starts to fade at the glassless windows, each girl takes a brightly coloured plastic lamp and carries it to her space on the floor. There is no electricity, but the lamps are solar powered. They have been donated jointly by Swedish company Ikea and the United Nations Children’s...

In this land of rolling hills, made lush by the monsoon, traffic ceases after dusk. So it is unusual to hear jeeps running through the night on the winding roads of tribal south Rajasthan. Through the day, the local police, villagers and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are out in force, trying to stop what they can only slow—the mass trafficking of children across the border into Gujarat from the Rajasthan districts that...

The Rs 2-a-kg rice may have scripted a successful 'political' story in the State, but it has failed to translate into a successful 'anti-hunger' story. This is not a general assumption rather the scientific inference of a well-researched study by Orissa MDG Forum a joint venture of Unicef, Orissa, and Xavier Institute of Management Bhubaneswar (XIMB) released here today. Majority of the tribal people in Bhatangpadar panchayat (site of the study) in...