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English Education: A way out of slums?
Aakar Patel, Mint, December
30, 2010
Every afternoon, by the rear entrance
to St Andrew’s school in Mumbai’s Bandra
neighbourhood, gather dozens of women. Some are in burqa,
most work as servants, all are from the large Muslim
slum at the edge of the suburb. From the balcony of
my ground-floor flat next door I watch them squat in
the sun, awaiting the bell signalling the return of
their children. Girls in blue pinafores, boys in blue
shorts and white shirt (and a tie after class V) come
out to mothers who carry tiffin boxes. Almost inevitably,
the women pass a hand over the child, fondling it, ruffling
hair, proud. What were the tiffins for, I wondered,
till I understood. The children weren’t going
home directly but elsewhere, a tuition class perhaps.The
school-going children from the slum are many and rising,
and a newspaper reported the school’s response:
applying a system of reservation by religion. A third
of the children admitted would be Hindu, a third Christian
and a third Muslim.
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Three new
IIMs struggle in the absence of permanent teachers
Prashant K. Nanda, Mint, January
3, 2010
The absence of permanent faculty is
hurting the quality of education at the three Indian
Institutes of Management (IIMs) that opened last year,
even as the government readies to launch three more
in the next academic session. Visiting professors from
other IIMs are taking virtually all classes at the IIMs
in Rohtak, Ranchi and Raipur.IIMs are India’s
elite business schools. Older IIMs are located in Ahmedabad,
Bangalore, Kolkata, Lucknow, Indore, Kozhikode and Shillong.
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| Iran’s
education reform takes anti-Western tack
Thomas Erdbrink, The Washington
Post, January 2, 2011
Iran is overhauling its education system
to rid it of Western influence, the latest attempt by
the government to fortify Islamic values and counter
the clout of the country’s increasingly secularized
middle class. Starting in September, all Iranian high
school students will be introduced to new courses such
as “political training” and “living
skills” that will warn against “perverted
political movements” and encourage girls to marry
at an early age, Education Ministry officials say.
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| Sibal’s
New Year gift may find few takers
Kalpana Pathak, Business Standard,
January 1, 2011
Kapil Sibal’s New Year gift may
not cheer many management and engineering institutions.
The human resource development minister yesterday allowed
an additional 200,000 engineering, 80,000 management
and 2,200 architecture seats. But data obtained from
the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE)
showed that in 2010, around 60,000, or 30 per cent of
the existing 200,000 management seats remained vacant.
This is the highest vacancy ever in management education,
with institutions even accepting money and selling seats
to students without entrance test scores.Ditto with
engineering institutes, where nearly 530,000 seats or
40 per cent of the total 1.32 million seats remained
unoccupied.
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| Govt moves
to strip Bar council of education role
Dhananjay Mahapatra, The Times of
India, January 1, 2011
The UPA government is keen to bring
in a new legislation to set up a National Commission
for Higher Legal Education and Research, which will
take over the traditional role of Bar Council of India
(BCI) as the body to grant recognition to law colleges
and specify the academic curriculum.The move is not
prompted by the recent arrest of a BCI member by CBI
on charges of taking bribe to grant recognition to a
law college. Rather, the government feels that the statutory
body created to enforce code of professional conduct
and ethics for the one-million strong lawyers is ill-equipped
to decide matters relating to higher legal education
and research.
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| Nursery admission
process to begin in all Delhi schools Monday
Hindustan Times, January 2,
2011
Nursery admissions in Delhi will start
in a full-fledged manner on Monday as parents gear up
to brave the cold while queuing up at schools for buying
application forms. “We are all prepared to start
the year by lining up for the admission form,”
said Yashika Malik, software professional whose daughter
turned three last November.While some schools started
selling admission forms Saturday, the bulk of them will
start the process on Monday. The forms will be sold
till Jan 15.
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| School choice,
but few real options
Naomi Rubin DeVeaux and Mark Schneider,
The Washington Post, January 2, 2011
Every summer, an increasingly common
event occurs across the nation – parents open
a letter telling them that their child’s school
failed to meet benchmarks set by the federal No Child
Left Behind law. As a result, the letter explains, they
have the right to send their child to another public
school if space is available.The District is no stranger
to this event. Some 39 percent of D.C. public school
children attend independently run but publicly financed
charter schools. About 30 percent more reject their
neighborhood school to participate in the out-of-boundary
program operated by D.C. public schools.
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| Bali School
Makes Sustainability a Way of Life
Bettina Wassener, The New York Times,
January 2, 2011
Half a world away from Cancún,
Mexico, and the international climate change talks that
took place there last month, a school here in Indonesia
is staging its own attempt to save the planet. It is
small-scale and literally grassroots — and possibly
in some respects more effective than the tortuous efforts
of politicians to agree on how to stop global warming.In
the midst of the lush, steaming jungle of Bali, along
a pitted road, past scattered chickens and singing cicadas,
Green School has two dozen buildings made of giant bamboo
poles. There are no walls, and there is no air-conditioning.
Just gracefully arched roofs, concrete floors and bamboo
furniture. There is a big, grassy playground, complete
with goalposts made — yes — of bamboo; a
bamboo bridge across a rock-strewn river; vegetable
patches; and a mud-wrestling pit.
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| Research Paper
To Segregate or to Integrate: Education Politics and
Democracy
David de la Croix and Matthias Doepke
ABSTRACT: How is the quality of public
education affected by the presence of private schools
for the rich? Theory and evidence suggest that the link
depends crucially on the political system. We develop
a theory that integrates private education and fertility
decisions with voting on public schooling expenditures.
We find that the presence of a large private education
sector benefits public schools in a broad-based democracy
where politicians are responsive to low-income families
but crowds out public education spending in a society
that is politically dominated by the rich. The main
predictions of the theory are consistent with state-level
data and micro data from the U.S. as well as cross-country
evidence from the Programme for International Student
Assessment study.
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Book
of the Month
To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher
William Ayers
NY: Teachers College Press
This new edition, with a Foreword
by Sonia Nieto and an Afterword by Mike Rose, is invaluable
in helping the reader explore exactly how to approach
the sacred role of being a teacher. Ayers, who is
now retired from his position as
Distinguished Professor and Senior University Scholar
at the University of Illinois at Chicago, brings to
this volume his experiences as a teacher whose students
ranged from small children to graduate students. He
applies wide reading of literature beyond that specifically
thought of as educational. And he applies the lessons
he learned from being a parent.
For more click here
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RTE Coalition
To initiate and continue the discussion
amongst concerned groups and individuals on the issue
of right of education and monitor the implementation
of the RTE Act, an RTE Coalition has been formed. Join
the coalition to make universal elementary education
a reality in India. Log on to www.righttoeducation.in
for more information.
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| Skill Vouchers
- Global Experiences and Lessons for India
Leah Verghese and Parth J Shah
A study of the role that skill vouchers can play in
catalysing demand for quality skill development services.
This study examines global experiences with skill vouchers
and draws lessons for India from these experiences.
For more click here
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| Reservation in
Private Schools under the Right to Education Act: Model
for Implementation
Shekhar Mittal and Parth J Shah
Through this document the Centre for
Civil Society seeks to highlight the lacunae in the
current framework for 25% reservation for weaker and
disadvantaged groups in unaided private schools and
seeks to provide inputs on effective implementation
of the same.
For more click here
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| SCHOOL VOUCHERS FOR
GIRLS
400 girl children from poor families
of North East Delhi receive school vouchers for a period
of 4 years.
For details visit website
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Support Children's Right to Education of Choice!
DONATE
For more details on how to support, log on to www.schoolchoice.in
or email us at [email protected]
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