Indian street kids work at dawn, then dream of school
MySinchew.com, May 31, 2011

NEW DELHI, India: Fourteen-year-old Deepchand should be learning but instead he lies sprawled fast asleep on the floor of an Indian school — exhausted by his early morning labours finding rubbish to sell.

Abandoned by his mother, his father dead, he works as a trash collector on the streets of New Delhi, starting two hours before dawn collecting plastic bottles, drink cans and metal — anything that will earn him a little cash.

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Education not a plaything
Free Malaysia Today, May 21, 2011

MALAYSIA: The country will be the biggest loser if young talents seek greener pastures elsewhere instead of putting down their roots here to help bring out the best in the nation.

All citizens have a right to education. It is a basic right that is universally recognised. All countries put great store by education because “a nation can be no swifter than its progress in education”. A country cannot prosper when its citizens are not intellectually equipped to face the challenges of a competitive world.

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Quality at IITs : the road ahead
The Hindu, May 30, 2011

Jairam Ramesh, Union Minister of Environment and Forests, started a small controversy asserting that the fabled IITs are not “world-class” in their faculty and research but only in their students. But the IITs are, after all, the pride of the Indian education system, according to even “60 minutes,” an American news show, that compared their prestige to Harvard, MIT and Princeton combined. So is there any truth in Mr. Ramesh’s statement?

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RTE Act: combating the lethargy in implementation
The Hindu, May 30, 2011

If it took six decades for the Central government to honour the constitutional commitment to provide free and compulsory education to all children in the age group of 05-14 by putting in place the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2010, the State governments, barring a few, have failed to complete the necessary spadework even a year after the law was enacted. The spadework related to notifying the rules governing the implementation of the Act and constituting the Council for Protection of Child Rights or Right to Education Protection Authority as stipulated in the Central Act. Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Orissa, Sikkim, and Manipur are among the few States that had completed all the formalities relating to the implementation of the RTE Act.

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Why teachers are not committed
GreaterKashmir.com, May 24, 2011

Nowadays it is believed that the teachers in the State of J&K lack commitment towards their profession and their contribution for nation building is timid. The educational institutions are the places where the mission of nation building is accomplished and so they need a sound backing in terms of money, resources and infrastructure. The talented and qualified youth of the state should feel attracted towards the profession of teaching and they must choose this profession by choice and not by compulsion.

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India education: Dalit student suicide
Global Post, May 24, 2011

NEW DELHI, India: Jaspreet Singh, a young student from a caste once considered “untouchable” by other Hindus, was in his last year of medical school when his life began to fall apart.

A talented student, and his family’s brightest hope for clawing their way into the middle class, he was stunned to find that he had failed community medicine, one of his easiest subjects. But he was even more devastated by the alleged reason: His professor was determined to flunk him because of his caste.

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School Districts Nationwide Implement Controversial ‘Pay To Play’ Fees
Huffington Post, May 30, 2011

An Ohio school district is the latest to implement a controversial “pay to play” policy, reports The Wall Street Journal. Medina Senior High, faced with budget cuts and repeated rejection of proposals to increase taxes, has started charging students for, well, just about everything. After-school sports, clubs, electives and even required courses such as Spanish all carry a price tag.

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As Thais vote, a struggle with education
Dawn.com, May 24, 2011

BANGKOK, Thailand: The 14-year-old pupil is known simply as “Number 26″ because, with 52 children in the class at his suburban Bangkok school, the teacher can’t remember his name.

Overcrowding in classrooms is just one of the problems dogging Thailand’s education system, where an inward-looking curriculum emphasises rote-learning and basic literacy.

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Report: Education of Minority Children in Kosovo

Author: Kayo Kasai

Introduction: In the four years after the war, the Provisional Institutions of Self Government (PISG) of Kosovo and the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) made efforts to restore security, the rule of law and the full exercise of human rights for each and every person in Kosovo regardless of his/her ethnicity. One of their main objectives, given persisting ethnic tensions, a high unemployment rate, and relatively lower educational standards compared with European educational standards, was to establish an inclusive and qualified education system in which every child could have access to education. The education system was to help children understand equal rights. However, it soon became clear that to build such an inclusive system, accurate data needed to be collected and every aspect of the educational environment analyzed.

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ENABLE – ARK & CCS’s School Access and Voucher Programme

ARK’s work in Delhi has identified many communities where children are facing multiple social and economic challenges which put them at great risk of being excluded, dropping out or never attending school. To address this need ARK has partnered with Centre for Civil Society (CCS)
to implement ENABLE (Ensure Access to Better Learning Experiences), a school access and
voucher programme for underprivileged children in Shahdara.Read more

WISE Awards 2011: Now open for submissions

Innovative educational projects from all regions of the world and from all educational sectors may now be entered for the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) Awards 2011 at www.wise-qatar.org. The submissions deadline is 31 May 2011.

Click here for details.

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.

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

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

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

For more details on how to support, log on to www.schoolchoice.in or email us at [email protected]