Parrikar wants Goa RTE rules to be notified by June 30
The Times of India, 24 June 2012

PANAJI: The fiasco over the medium of instruction (MoI) for primary education was the only hurdle standing in Goa's way in notifying the state rules for the Right of Child to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009. With the matter resolved for now, Goa is set to get its RTE rules by June 30. Goa had come under fire from Union human resource development minister Kapil Sibal in March this year for being the only state other than Karnataka to have not notified its RTE rules, even as the central government's deadline for states and union territories to implement RTE's provisions ends in April 2013.

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Can’t afford free education, AP tells centre
Deccan Chronicle, 23 June 2012

HYDERABAD: The state government has put the onus on the Centre for the implementation of 25 per cent quota for economically disadvantaged students in private schools under the Right to Education Act (RTE) from this academic year 2012-13, saying that it has no funds to reimburse fees for students. The government, which has already diluted the RTE quota by exempting elite schools which offer the CBSE, ICSE, IB curriculum and collect huge fees for admissions by citing a “funding crunch”, is now running away from implementing the quota even in schools affiliated to the state board. The government estimates that nearly Rs90 crore is needed to admit 25 per cent RTE quota students in Class I in private schools this year, which will increase by Rs100 crore every year in the next eight years, as the RTE promises free education till Class VIII.

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Not happy with compliance of RTE
Daily News & Analysis, 24 June 2012

MANGALORE: Primary and secondary education minister Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri on Saturday said the positive effects of the Right to Education (RTE) Act might not be felt from this academic year. He said there were many problems regarding the implementation of the act in the state. Mobilising the help of parents, motivating teachers and putting up good infrastructure were some of them. Taking the benefits of the act to the children of migrant labourers was another big challenge, he said, adding that the concept of mobile schools and tent schools would be extensively used in all parts of the state to address this problem.

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NCPCR bats for strict implementation of RTE
Zee News, 24 June 2012

New Delhi: Citing increasing instances of children being targeted in Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has called for strict implementation of the Right to Education Act in such places to check the practice. "Children are being made scapegoats in the crossfire between officials and underground groups. This is worrying and disturbing," said Shanta Sinha. She said the government and the child rights body are leaving "no stone unturned" in addressing children's needs comprehensively in 'disturbed' areas and schemes like 'Bal Bandhu', implemented in 10 states, have met with "astounding success". "Besides, we had in the earlier stage done social audit in 12 states and developed a template to train communities on how to audit schools and to see how RTE is being implemented and it has turned out well.

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Private school managements seek clarity on minority institutions
The Hindu, 24 June 2012

BANGALORE: Even as the implementation of the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 (RTE) may be under way, some associations representing private schools are still unclear about certain aspects as far as implementation of the Act is concerned. A confusion is the definition of minority institutions. “We wrote to the State government on April 30, asking that the word ‘minority’ should be defined when they exempted minority institutions from the purview of the Act.,” said K.V. Dhananjay, advocate for the Karnataka Unaided Schools Management Association (KUSMA). Explaining that the association had both minority as well as majority institutions, Mr. Dhananjay said that this would help them know which schools fall under the minority category.

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Unaided schools to close for a week over Right to Education
The Times of India, 25 June 2012

BANGALORE: Irked by the "clumsy" implementation of the Right to Education (RTE) Act, around 1,600 schools affiliated to the Karnataka Unaided Schools Management Association (KUSMA) have decided to shut down from July 16 to 22. A KUSMA meeting on Sunday made this decision. The schools are agitated that several institutions aren't implementing the RTE mandate claiming they're minority institutions. "We are going on strike because the government hasn't responded to our demand to define 'minority institutions'.

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Human Resource and Development team in Bhopal to explore Right to Education in pre-schools
The Times of India, 25 June 2012

BHOPAL: A team from the National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA), ministry of Human Resource and Development (HRD) has arrived in Bhopal on Sunday to explore the possibility of extending the Right to Education Act (RTE) and its implementation in pre-school classes. The 10-member team from the NUEPA is a part of draft committee on extension of the RTE Act to pre-school education (nursery and kindergarten).State school education minister Archana Chitnis is the chairperson of the committee, according to department sources.

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Denied admission by schools? Report to Education Board
The Indian Express, 20 June 2012

With many parent and student organisations complaining that many city schools were refusing to admit children belonging to economically weaker sections under the Right to Education Act, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) education board has formed an 80-member team to inspect all the schools in the next three days. The education board has also urged parents to report to the board and it will ensure that such students are admitted. Each inspection committee will have a supervisor from the education board and a teacher from Sarva Siksha Abhiyaan’s cluster resource centres (CRC).

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Obama and Romney Right to Agree on Charters
Huffington Post, 21 June 2012

Recent developments give charter schools a promise that warrants the twinned blessings from Romney and Obama. New York's Relay Graduate School of Education is a place where the charter-generated teaching techniques that have proven effective with high poverty minority students get passed along. Traditional teacher colleges that fail to learn from Relay risk irrelevance. Obviously, Romney and Obama have no shortage of differences, some of them stark. But the shared desire to expand quality charter schools places both Romney and Obama on the right side of the same issue.

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Improving Educational Quality through Enhancing Community Participation: Results from a Randomized Field Experiment in Indonesia
Authors: Menno Pradhan, Daniel Suryadarma, Amanda Beatty, Maisy Wong, Armida Alishjabana, Arya Gaduh, Rima Prama Artha

Abstract: This study evaluates the effect of four randomized interventions aimed at strengthening school committees, and subsequently improving learning outcomes, in public primary schools in Indonesia. All study schools were randomly allocated to either a control group receiving no intervention, or to treatment groups receiving a grant plus one or a combination of three interventions: training for school committee members, a democratic election of school committee members, or facilitated collaboration between the school committee and the village council, also called linkage. Nearly two years after implementation, the study finds that measures to reinforce existing school committee structures, the grant and training interventions, demonstrate limited or no effects; while measures that foster outside ties between the school committee and other parties, linkage and election, lead to greater engagement by education stakeholders and in turn to learning. Test scores improve in Indonesian by 0.17 standard deviations for linkage and 0.22 standard deviations for linkage + election. The election intervention alone leads to changes in time household members accompany children studying per week, but this does not lead to learning. Linkage is the most cost effective intervention, causing a 0.13 change in standard deviation in Indonesian test scores for each 100 dollars (US) spent.

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School kids get a lot of local touch in textbooks
There is an attempt to indigenise and add local flavour to the content in science textbook for Class VI by curriculum designers to convert international and national developments, contexts and references, in to an “easy-to-understand” mode. Click here to read more

Subsidized Higher Education comes at a High Cost
We the People had an interesting conversation regarding government funded colleges that heavily subsidize student fees, even for the families that can afford to pay full fees. The issue that ended up taking the talk by storm was whether or not students who use tax paying money should go overseas to work. Click here to learn more

Redefining quality education
Education is a dynamic, continually evolving concept that keeps adapting to the changes around it. Likewise, the methodology used in teaching is equally transitory in nature and demands contemporary approaches too. Click here to know more

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 our website

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

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