-The Hindu Madurai: No end to doubts raised and clarifications provided with respect to the Act even after three years The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act 2009 stipulates that private schools reserve 25 per cent of seats at the entry level for children belonging to ‘disadvantaged groups' and ‘weaker sections'. The Central Act originally defined a ‘child belonging to a disadvantaged group' as one belonging to...

-The Hindu Students in government schools in Assam study only for two-and-a-half hours every day at the primary level compared to five-and-a-half to six-and-a-half hours in the rest of the country, an official study has shown. Similarly, the total number of working days in primary schools each year is 180 in Nagaland and Manipur and a maximum of 253 in Bihar and Jharkhand with lower than average literacy rates. But in most...

-The Indian Express Having faced criticism over objectionable content in school textbooks, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has ruled that all 14,000 institutions affiliated to it must stick to NCERT and CBSE textbooks. All schools will also have to set up websites declaring relevant information, including details pertaining to textbooks being used. Making these conditions for affiliation, the board recently amended its affiliation bylaws to ensure that only properly...

-The Hindu India's hard won gains in achieving food security are in danger of being undermined by a clause in the National Food Security Bill that encourages States to adopt cash transfers in lieu of food entitlements under the Public Distribution System (PDS). Supporting this view, a recent report by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) concluded that the provision of food subsidies in the form of cash would...

-The Statesman GUWAHATI, 7 MAY: Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR), a New Delhi-based rights body, has come out strongly against the Delhi University (DU) for its decision to introduce compulsory Hindi and other Modern Indian Languages (MIL) in its courses without assessing the ground reality and urged the University Grants Commission to intervene with the famed university "to halt the four year undergraduate programme and not to introduce compulsory MILs...