India is setting up a Rs.5,000 crore credit guarantee fund to facilitate easy education loans to needy students by providing protection against defaults to banks. The move was endorsed at a meeting of the Central Advisory Board on Education (CABE), the highest education advisory body to the government that comprises academicians, industry experts and state education ministers, human resource development (HRD) minister Kapil Sibal told reporters Wednesday. “CABE members endorsed the initiative to...

Schools scrambled to get minority status after the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act was framed, say education officials. Records show that after the RTE was implemented in 2009, around 930 schools across the state got minority status from January 2009 to June 4, 2012. Under the Act, all schools except minority unaided schools will have to admit 25% students belonging to economically weaker sections of society. Experts said schools...

Call it a strategy to garner political support for passing pending key education Bills or a progressive measure to reduce caste bias in colleges and universities—the central government has put in place a set of rules that can possibly stop grants or cancel recognition of higher educational institutes engaging in such discrimination. The new rules set out by the University Grants Commission (UGC) aim to provide safeguards to students of reserved...

-The Economic Times The "no-detention" and "comprehensive and continuous evaluation" provisions of the Right to Education came under criticism from some states particularly Bihar, Chhattisgarh, and Assam at the 59th meeting of the Central Advisory board of Education on Wednesday.  In the two years that the Right to Education has been implemented there appears to have been a great deal of misconception about the intent of having a "no detention" policy or...

-The Economic Times One of the most heartwarming films of 2011 centred on a child labourer who fitted in exceedingly well with his wealthier classmates at school. While a nasty teacher drives the child out of school in the celluloid imagining, in real life, a nasty education system threatens to drive such kids from the country's elite schools.  Among the most jarring arguments against a clause in the Right to Education (RTE)...