On Friday, the Prime Minister launched the Shiksha Ka Haq Abhiyan — a yearlong nationwide campaign for promoting the Right to Education (RTE). As these efforts gain ground, the country faces one important choice: should elementary education be delivered through the current model, which focuses on the expansion of schooling through a top-down, centralised delivery system? Or should we use the RTE as an opportunity to fundamentally alter the current...

It has to be but a means to development, not an end in itself Is India doing marvellously well, or is it failing terribly? Depending on whom you speak to, you could pick up either of those answers with some frequency. One story, very popular among a minority but a large enough group—of Indians who are doing very well (and among the media that cater largely to them)—runs something like...

Come November 11, the students at India’s 13 lakh government schools will receive a message from the Prime Minister. “Education gave me a new life,” it will say. “Education is the magic wand that can help us meet any challenge.” The written piece will be read out in the assembly at each school on that day, observed as National Education Day to commemorate the birth anniversary of India’s first education minister, Maulana...

Flaying the governments unique the Right to Education (RTE) Act awareness campaign which will be launched on November 11, non-Congress ruled states are calling it a "politically-motivated" move. The HRD ministry has decided to mail a letter from the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to over 13 lakh elementary schools across the country to generate awareness about the Right to Education (RTE) Act. Called  'Shiksha ka Haq' (Right To Education), the awareness drive...

-The Telegraph   Bengal education minister Bratya Basu today said the state government would next month notify rules to implement the right to education act, a requirement for central assistance to set up elementary schools. Basu, who was here for a conference of state education ministers on the one-and-a-half-year-old law, said the rules were “almost ready”. “We will notify the rules by November. Then we will demand the additional grants that we have not...