Edu board gets only 27 suggestions from parents on change in syllabus
MidDay, 13 December 2011

It has been around a month since the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MSBSHSE) invited suggestions, opinions and objections from parents and teachers on its proposed new syllabus for the upcoming academic year, but the panel has received only 27 suggestions for trivial amendments in school subjects like mathematics, science and Marathi so far.

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Learning by rote prevalent in top schools too
The Hindu, 12 December 2011

Among Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi, who is still alive? Only a little over a third of class 4 students interviewed as part of a five-city school survey in India got this one right, with a small percentage saying it is Mahatma Gandhi. As many as two-thirds of students, also from class 4, who were asked to state the length of a pencil — placed against a ruler — could not give the right answer.

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Education dept rejects aid plea for sex abuse victims
Times of India, 13 December 2011

MADURAI: Chief educational officer of Madurai S Nagarajamurugan informed the Madurai high court bench on Monday that S Arokiasamy, the headmaster of Government High School in Podhumbu , who was suspended for alleged sexual abuse of school girls, “has not committed any unlawful activity while discharging his official duty but the crime done by him was purely his personal activity.” Arokiasamy, was suspended over allegations that he had misbehaved with the girl students in the school.

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Reform education system: Scientist
Times of India, 13 December 2011

COIMBATORE: India’s contribution towards the growth of science and technology is meagre when compared to US and China, pointed out CNR Rao, renowned scientist and National Research Professor of Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore. Talking to reporters after inaugurating an international conference on Advanced Materials at PSG College of Technology in Coimbatore on Monday, he lamented that not even a single institution in the country was able to include itself in the top 100 scientific institutions all over the world.

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Purta unhappy with education Bills
Times of India, 9 December 2011

PATNA: The Patna University Retired Teachers’ Association (Purta) has expressed its deep anguish over the measures envisaged in the two Bills namely, the Bihar State University (Amendment) Bill 2011 and Patna University (Amendment) Bill 2011 passed in the assembly on Wednesday. The Purta leaders — Bakshi Vidyanand Sinha, S W M Subuktagin and S K Ganguli — said that the sole intention of the state government appears to be abridgement of academic, financial and administrative autonomy of the universities and deprive the statutory benefits available to the retired teachers since 1980.

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Education reforms and 10 other bills pending for more than a year
Economic Times, 8 December 2011

This is the case even as the parliamentary standing committee has discussed and the Cabinet has passed most of these bills. Human resource development minister Kapil Sibal has also met and ensured a buy-in by the opposition leaders in Parliament. The pending bills aim to address vital issues of accessibility, quality and availability of education centres in the country.

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Educomp Solutions introduces digital Smartclass CTS in Gujarat
Business Standard, 13 December 2011

Educomp Solutions Ltd, which is a globally diversified education solutions provider, has launched its digital class transformation system (CTS) in Gujarat. The company has been catering its educational services to around 150 schools in Gujarat and 8000 schools in India. Speaking on the occasion, Nilesh Gotecha, regional manager, Educomp Solutions Ltd, said “There is an urgent need in today’s knowledge age to supplement traditional methods of learning in classrooms with digital instruction and assessment materials and applications to improve a child’s educational experience.

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Low-cost Aakash is not the only solution, says Ncomputing
Business Standard, 13 December 2011

‘The screen size of the tablet PC is still small and opening multiple browsers is difficult’. End-to-end desktop virtualisation company, Ncomputing, which has deployed 420,000 Ncomputing virtual desktops in major state education projects in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Punjab and Maharashtra, claims low-cost tablet PC, Aakash, is not the answer to the woes of India’s education sector.

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Getting Beneath the Veil of Effective Schools: Evidence from New York City
Research
Authors: Dobbie & Fryer Jr

Abstract: Charter schools were developed, in part, to serve as an R&D engine for traditional public schools, resulting in a wide variety of school strategies and outcomes. In this paper, we collect unparalleled data on the inner-workings of 35 charter schools and correlate these data with credible estimates of each school’s effectiveness. We find that traditionally collected input measures – class size, per pupil expenditure, the fraction of teachers with no certification, and the fraction of teachers with an advanced degree – are not correlated with school effectiveness.

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