KEY TRENDS   • Oxfam India's 2023 India Supplement report on poverty and inequality in India reveals that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Following the pandemic in 2019, the bottom 50 per cent of the population have continued to see their wealth chipped away. By 2020, their income share was estimated to have fallen to only 13 per cent of the national income and have less than 3...

Newsclick There is an acute shortage of teachers in government-run primary, upper primary and composite schools in Uttar Pradesh, despite the guidelines on the teacher-to-student ratio issued under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE) of 2009. The new academic session of Uttar Pradesh Basic Education Board schools is about to begin next month (April 1) but about 51,000 posts of assistant teachers are lying vacant in the...

-Business Standard CUET has merit but pitfalls too The University Grants Commission has taken a broadly sensible decision to hold a mandatory Common University Entrance Test (CUET) for undergraduate admission to all 45 centrally funded universities from the upcoming academic year. This means Class XII board exam marks will be superseded for determining university admission in favour of an all-India exam on the lines of the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for admission to...

-The Hindu Thousands of Indian students travel out of the country for a basic medical degree simply because it is more affordable and less competitive “Wuhan is a beautiful place, you know,” says Vinod*, over the phone, as we talk about the plight of Indian medical students forced to return home two years ago after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. His stammer and long pauses reflect the anxiety that students and...

-The Hindu SDMC’s education panel chairperson issues instructions to prevent ‘religious attire’ in schools Officials of South Delhi Municipal Corporation-run schools have been instructed to ensure that no students come to class wearing any “religious attire”. The directions, issued by the civic body’s Education Committee chairperson Nitika Sharma (BJP) to the SDMC’s Director of Primary Education on Friday, have come following a controversy over a girl student being asked to remove her hijab...