It is essential for India to raise the level of public expenditure in education to ensure quality. THE failure of the Indian state more than six decades after Independence to provide universal access to quality schooling and to ensure equal access to higher education among all socio-economic groups and across gender and region must surely rank among the more dismal and significant failures of the development project in the country....

The state is not serious about the need for a robust programme of elementary teacher education to realise the right to education. IN India today it is difficult to decide how the agenda for teacher education and its reform can be taken forward. The Right to Education will succeed only if teachers are able to work to ensure that all children do become educated by attending school; effectively, this means...

The Right to Education Act, which lacks a transformational vision, is geared to preparing foot soldiers for the global market. THE most encouraging and delightful news regarding school education in India since the pro-market reforms began in 1991 came from Erode district in Tamil Nadu recently. To be sure, it is neither about the World Bank-sponsored District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) of the 1990s nor about the internationally funded and...

Optimise number of affiliated colleges under one university. Shift from affiliation to autonomy. Rank cradles. Train teachers. Implement graduate employment survey… These were some of the many smart solutions that surfaced during the maiden deliberations on higher education between World Bank experts and Jharkhand academics here today. The daylong workshop — Higher Education in Jharkhand: the Way Forward — brought together key policy-makers, renowned academics and stakeholders under one umbrella to prepare...

Human Resource Development Ministry issues show-cause The Ministry of Human Resource Development, taking note of complaints and representations against the functioning of the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), has decided to supersede the Council and issued a show cause notice seeking its response. The notice, issued under Section 30 (1) of the NCTE Act, 1993, expressed grave concern over the working the NCTE as well as the regional committees constituted by...