-DNA A day after private schools in the state expressed their helplessness in implementing the Right to Education (RTE) Act from the current academic year, a determined state government on Wednesday directed private unaided schools to announce only 75% of the admission list and keep 25% of the seats aside to enable admission of students belonging to economically weaker sections. But here’s the worrying bit in the story. Most private schools have...

-PTI Mayo College Ajmer, among the most reputable schools in the country, has said the 25 per cent quota for students from underprivileged families does not apply to it as it is a boarding school. Under the Right to Education Act, all schools barring unaided minority institutions have to reserve 25 per seats for students from the weaker sections. However, there is no clarity yet on boarding schools. Appearing for the Mayo College...

The implementation of Right to Education Act may have got a shot in the arm with the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the 25% reservation in unaided private schools for children from lower income group families but inAndhra Pradesh (and possibly other states in the country), the Act might soon figure among the many well-intentioned government schemes that do not impact, leave alone benefit, its target group. At best, the...

Rudyard Kipling opens his superb novel with the street urchin Kim teasing the son of a wealthy man. Kim kicks Chota Lal, whose father, Lala Dinanath, is worth half-a-million sterling, off the trunnion of the mighty cannon Zam-Zammah. Kipling loved India and wrote that it was the only democratic place in the world. It warms us to read this, but of course this was quite untrue in Kipling’s time and...

-The Times of India JAIPUR: A day after TOI published a report, "Orphans in peril as RTE mandates parents' income, caste certificates," the Rajasthan government's social justice and empowerment department has written to the education department to soon clarify the issue of certificates mandated under RTE for orphaned children. The report had highlighted how orphans were being asked documents like parents' income certificate, caste certificate, age certificate etc. to get admission in...