The India Country Report 2015 on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) comes at a time when the Union Budget 2015-16 allegedly cut expenditure on several social sector schemes and programmes. This year's MDG country report says that India will fail to achieve two important targets pertaining to reducing hunger and maternal mortality by 2015, among others. Released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), the report says that India is...

-Economic and Political Weekly The release of the independent Annual Status of Education Report has become an annual event, bringing attention to the status of learning amongst children in rural India. An examination of the 2014 report looks at the representation of data within the binary of government vs private schooling, as well as the silence of the report on the quality of Private schools, and highlights the need to move...

-The Hindu Panipat (Haryana): Launching the ‘Beti Bachao-Beti Padhao' scheme in Haryana, he said we must fight female foeticide and celebrate the birth of a girl child. The ‘Beti Bachao-Beti Padhao' scheme, which seeks to address gender imbalance and discrimination against the girl child, was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Panipat in Haryana on Thursday. This is the fourth major scheme of his government after Jan Dhan Yojana, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan...

-The Hindustan Times Around this time every year, news about the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) survey creates a short-lived stir in the media over the dismal performance of children studying in State-run elementary schools. Pratham - the NGO which produces the ASER reports - carries out this nationwide evaluation of children's competence in reading and arithmetic, and presents the results of children's grade-wise scores. The sample consists of nearly...

-Livemint.com Experts must stop supporting public schools that even the poor don't want for their children The problem with public schools, one is often told, is the lack of sufficient administrative supervision required to bring accountability to the system. Funds to aid learning are often misappropriated, children's learning outcome is abysmally poor, and teachers that sleep and make merry in their classes are far too common in Indian public schools. It is...