-Press release by National Coalition on the Education Emergency (NCEE) dated January 22, 2022 Schools in Bengaluru remain closed while malls, theatres, pubs and restaurants have been kept open. As of 21 January, the weekend curfew has been lifted as well. The decision to keep schools closed is having catastrophic consequences on children. Schools had only recently started opening after remaining mostly closed since March 2020. Their being closed again spells...

-Hindustan Times In the last of its five part series on the pandemic, school shutdowns and its effects on India’s children, HT travelled to Bastar to find that not only could this mean the usual learning loss, or problems with the lack of connectivity, but a deeper, more worrying malaise. Bijapur: There is a main road that runs close by, but the government school in Bhairamgarh is hidden from view. The campus...

-The Telegraph The apex court acted after some states rejected monetary claims by thousands of families that had lost members to the pandemic The Supreme Court on Wednesday chastised the states for rejecting the monetary claims by thousands of families that had lost members to Covid and ordered the governments to directly reach out to orphaned children with financial succour. The court said no application for ex gratia should be rejected outright on...

In the previous news alert, we looked at the under-nutrition problem in the Bundelkhand region in terms of 3 indicators -- proportion of children under 5 years who are stunted (height-for-age); proportion of children under 5 years who are wasted (weight-for-height); and proportion of children under 5 years who are underweight (weight-for-age). However, the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data also indicates that severe under-nutrition like severe wasting and anaemia among...

-Hindustan Times The study has been authored by Ashish Jhalani, co-author of the State of Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) in India’ report released by the PM's Economic Advisory Council. Let us first recognise that there is a fundamental challenge in early education years, that has been severely underestimated in the education planning strategy of India. Perhaps that is why the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council released a report titled The State of...