-Tribune News Service   A new study on learning and teaching outcomes in government schools of rural India has thrown up significant challenges for the Right to Education Act.It has found that in language and Maths, children are at least two grades behind where they should be and though the RTE Act stresses teacher qualifications immensely, neither higher educational qualifications nor teacher training are associated with better student learning. It is the...

Medical facilities have collapsed as encephalitis epidemic continues to rage Even as the rest of India recovers from Deepavali celebrations, residents of Poorvanchal have been marking a grim time that descends on the eastern Uttar Pradesh region each year: a time local people call the season of death. Ever since July, 470 people, mostly children, have died of viral encephalitis and its biological cousin, Japanese encephalitis — the first caused by a...

-The Hindu   The Centre of Indian Trade Union (CITU) has strongly opposed the new National manufacturing Policy approved by the Union Cabinet recently and termed it as an attempt by the government to give back door entry to the so-called labour reform of ‘hire and fire' being pressed by the business houses. “The national manufacturing policy will create new islands of lawlessness with bountiful concessions to business houses and absolute jungle raj...

-The Indian Express   A majority of children of primary classes in rural areas are at least two grades below the required level of proficiency in both mathematics and language, according to a study released today. It said that while the ability of children to correctly formulate and write sentences on their own is “exceedingly” low, a high proportion of children in class IV were struggling with basic multiplications and divisions. The Annual Status...

Herding cattle and weaving carpets, on city waste-heaps, at traffic lights, in roadside eateries, in farms and in factories, in brick kilns and coal mines, in brothels and in our homes, children of the poor work at an age when our own are in school or at play. What is remarkable is not just our collective acceptance of such diverging destinies of children merely because of the accident of where they...