-Frontline Two draft Bills on the Tribal Sub-Plan and the Scheduled Caste Sub-Plan raise hopes of granting these decades-old schemes statutory status and ensuring allocation of funds in the Central and State budgets for their implementation. IN a significant legislative move, the Union government's Ministry of Tribal Affairs released a draft Bill for the implementation of the long-neglected Tribal Sub-Plan (TSP), a special programme mandated by the Planning Commission to benefit the...

-Down to Earth More than a fourth of rural students opt for private schools for better education, says Annual State of Education Report by non-profit Pratham The Union government may have made right to education a fundamental right by bringing into force the Right To Education (RTE) Act of 2009, but government schools are lagging far behind in providing quality education, according to the latest report released by Delhi-based non-profit, Pratham. At...

-Live Mint UPA govt hasn't succeeded in improving learning outcomes in India's schools, says the report New Delhi: Despite levying a tax to fund education and enacting a law to ensure access to education for all children between the ages of 6 and 14, the government hasn't succeeded in improving learning outcomes in India's schools, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) published on Wednesday. The quality of learning-as measured...

-The Hindu State governments are going "against the letter and spirit" of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE Act) on several issues in the State rules they have formulated, reveals a recent review report of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR). They have in effect diluted the Act that is supposed to provide all children between ages 6 and 14 the fundamental right...

-Down to Earth Thousands of people working under NREGS bring a 38 km stream back from the dead in Uttar Pradesh Thirty nine-year-old Ram Ishwar gave up farming to pull a rickshaw outside the railway station in Uttar Pradesh's Fatehpur town. He says scarcity of water and a resultant increase in the cost of irrigation rendered farming unprofitable. Wheat production from his 0.4 hectare (ha) farmland shrank from one tonne to half...