Mayavati had better do something quick about the state of schools in Uttar Pradesh if she wants children to spell her name right. An NGO assessing the District Primary Education Programme and Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, a national programme for universalisation of elementary education, asked 16 students of Classes III and IV of a government school in Joar village near Lucknow to write the name of their chief minister in Hindi. Mavit and...

The Centre plans to open over 1,000 residential schools for girls in backward and remote areas as part of its plan to universalise education. The National Sample Survey has found out that over 81 lakh children aged 6 to 13 years remain out of school and that most of them are girls. The human resource development ministry has told the finance ministry it wants to set up 1,073 new Kasturba Gandhi Balika...

The implementation of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 has created controversy in West Bengal. The gram sabha, the basic unit in the process of forest rights recognition, has been replaced by the gram sansad, denoting the village level constituency under the panchayati raj system. This has been followed by contiguous arrangements as well as initiatives which are inconsistent with the Act....

Muslims' enrolment at secondary level of education is less than that of the scheduled castes, a government survey has indicated. Giving this information in Rajya Sabha in a written reply, Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said that the report of 64th Round (2007-08) of National Sample Survey (NSS) indicates that Muslims' enrolment at secondary level is 10.2 per cent of the total enrolments. The survey said that the same for the scheduled...

Meritorious students from 27 districts to be covered this financial year Monthly pension of freedom fighters enhanced from Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 8,000 The Assam government will provide scholarships of Rs. 2,000 each to 2 lakh meritorious students belonging to tea-tribe communities, the Scheduled Tribes, the Scheduled Castes, Other Backward Classes, as well as other communities living in the border areas, chars (sand isles of the Brahmaputra river) and other economically and...