New York, Jun 4: Poor security situation, grinding poverty, discrimination against girls and continuing conflict in Afghanistan have led to a surge in the number of out-of-school children for the first time since 2002, according to a report by the United Nation’s Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF).
The report found that some 3.7 million children, that represents almost half of all children between 7 and 17 years of age were missing out on school, with girls accounting for 60 per cent of that number, reflecting the frequent gender-based discrimination in the country.
In some provinces, including Kandahar, Helmand, Wardak, Paktika, Zabul and Uruzgan, the figure for out-of-school girls rose to as high as 85 per cent.
The Centre will provide Rs 70,000 as monthly fellowship to those researchers doing their PhDs in IITs or IISc, Union higher education secretary Kewal Kumar Sharma has said.
Presently researcher-students get Rs 25,000 as monthly scholarship at IITs. “As part of the research fellowship scheme of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, we wish the meritorious students who are being forced to leave the country for purely financial reasons stay within the country. “We will provide 2,000 such monthly fellowships across the IIT system and IISc Bengaluru,” Sharma said at the 67th Foundation Day of IIT Kharagpur at its Kharagpur campus in West Midnapore district on Friday. It will be given for a period of five years, he said.
This will also enable meritorious researchers, keen to further their research but forced to opt for corporate jobs for higher pay, to pursue their goal, he said. However, the scholarship recipients can’t do any other job, the senior official said. “The cabinet nod for the proposal should come soon. We are hopeful to start it from the next session,” he said. IIT-KGP director Partha Pratim Chakrabarti later said, “This is a very good proposal.”
New Delhi, Mar 2 : The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) today told the Delhi High Court that the UGC notification setting a limit of eight students per professor for M.Phil and PhD courses, was binding on all varsities in the country.
“The said notification is binding and is mandatory in nature and is to be followed by all the Universities (Central, State and Deemed Universities) including JNU,” Justice V Rao was informed.
The court was also told that it was obligatory for JNU to apply the notification.
“It is not the discretion of any university to apply or reject the notification,” Centre’s standing counsel Monika Arora, appearing for JNU, said.
She further said there were over 40 universities and all of them have adopted it.
JNU students have been protesting the UGC notification since February 9 and allegedly blockading the administrative block of the varsity.
Senior advocate Arvind Nigam, appearing for the students, said he did not doubt the validity of the University Grants Commission’s (UGC) notification and was only challenging the procedure of JNU in adopting it.
Taking note of this, the judge said it means the students are not challenging the May 5, 2016 notification of UGC, which allegedly “threatens to put their future in jeopardy as they would not be able to find a supervisor”.
Nigam agreed and said, “I am only questioning procedure of adoption by JNU.”
However, the counsel for UGC raised objection over the maintainability of the petitions.
The petitioners have contended that the notification not only affected the existing students, but would also result in fewer admissions in the current academic session, “thereby violating constitutionally mandated reservation norms”.
JNU, in its affidavit, has stated that the adoption of the notification was in “accordance with the provisions of the JNU Act, Statutes and Policies”.
“Due process has been followed in adoption of the Regulation through its statutory bodies. It is reiterated that New Admission Policy 2016 is in accordance with the reservation policy of the Government of India and therefore any apprehension in this regard are misplaced. Existing JNU students will not be affected by the New Admission policy,” the affidavit stated.
The court fixed the matter for further hearing on March 7.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has recently filed a criminal case against 21 educational institutions in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka and many officials from the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), an autonomous body under the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry.
The agency had been sifting through the records of over 600 institutions recognised to run teacher training programmes and found major discrepancies in their documents.
NCTE accords recognition to institutions after its officials, also known as visiting teams (VT), inspects the infrastructure and academic facilities of educational institutions.
According to the NCTE mandate, for admitting 50 students, a college should have a minimum built-up area of 15,000 sq m and land area of 2,500 sq m, including parking space. However, these 21 institutes were not following the mandate.
Officials said there are also instances of institutions providing bogus addresses and some did not even have buildings on the ground.
These institutions are in Bengaluru, Bijapur, Hubli and Chitradurga in Karnataka and Madnapalle, Guthkal, Tadipatri, Kurnool, Nandiyala, Nandikotkur, Dharmavaram, Chittoor, Karveti Nagaram and Kadappa in Andhra Pradesh.
While the CBI has named only 21 institutes so far, officials did not rule out the possibility of more being brought under the lens.
“In spite of several irregularities, they were granted recognition by the NCTE for the academic year 2016-17,” the FIR reads. The agency has booked the accused under Sections for criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery and criminal misconduct.
“The visiting teams also observed certain discrepancies in documents such as building completion certificates, size of land, and land utilisation certificates. The public servants have collectively failed to conduct proper verification and inspection of buildings and have still issued recognition certificates,” CBI documents said.
Some of the institutes are Kalidas Training Teacher Education in Karnataka, IBMR College of Education in Hubli, Aditya College of Education in Bengaluru, SAS college of Education in Nandikotkur in Andhra.
The CBI said that officials of the Southern Regional Committee (SRC), NCTE, Bengaluru, the office of the Regional Director, Southern Region, NCTE, Bengaluru, and VT officials entered into a criminal conspiracy with the heads of the 21 institutions.
Munnar (Ker), Feb 10 : Kerala’s tea-town Munnar is all set to host a two-day international conference to discuss recent trends in special education tomorrow.
A host of global experts from various countries, including Sweden, Israel, Australia, United States, besides India, are expected to take part in the two-day event.
Titled ‘Recent trends in Special Education for Young Persons With Special Needs’, the conference is being organised by ‘Srishti’, a public charitable trust and ‘DARE’ (Developmental Activities in Rehabilitative Education) which provides special education to differently-abled here, with the support of Tata Global Beverages.
Srishti was formed by the erstwhile Tata Tea Limited in 1991, as part of their efforts to support differently-abled children and adults in the region, especially those belonging to the plantation workers.
DARE also came into existence in the same year as a safe heaven for the specially-abled children in the high ranges of Munnar.
It now works as part of Srishti.
Ajoy Mishra, Managing Director and CEO, Tata Global Beverages and Ratna Krishna Kumar, Trustee, Srishti Welfare Centre will be among those attending the conference.
The conference’s core objective is to share views, experience and research findings on innovative ways to rehabilitate differently-abled students educationally and vocationally enabling them to be independent, self-motivated and valuable members of the society, Srishti sources here said.
It also aims to share recent trends in training the persons with developmental disabilities such as new models, curriculum adaptations, vocational skill training, technology use and independent living, the sources said.
Some of the major topics to be discussed in the two-day conference are , ‘child-friendly classes’, ‘earning a livelihood with dignity’, ‘inclusive education: retrospection from paternal perspective’, ‘models of special education& inclusive education: challenges, gaps and possibilities’.
New Delhi, Jan 31 (PTI) The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) will conduct the National Eligibility-cum- Entrance Test (NEET) for admission to all medical colleges in the country on May 7.
The board will conduct the test as per the Indian Medical Council Act, 1956 (amended in 2016) and the Dentists Act, 1948 (also amended in 2016).
The test will be conducted across 80 cities on May 7 for admission to MBBS/BDS courses in medical/dental colleges run with the approval of Medical Council of India/Dental Council of India under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, except for the institutions established through an Act of Parliament ie AIIMS and JIPMER Puducherry.
“Candidates have been given an opportunity to submit the online application for a month from January 31 to March 1.
This year in all the seats of MBBS/BDS courses, admission will be done through NEET,” an official statement said.
Accordingly, admissions will be done in all-India quota seats, state government quota seats, state/management/NRI quota seats in private medical/dental colleges or any private/ deemed university and central pool quota seats.
Indian citizens, non-resident Indians, overseas citizens of India, persons of Indian origin and foreign nationals are eligible to appear in NEET (UG) 2017 and will also be eligible for 15 per cent all-India quota seats.
The upper age limit of the candidates has been fixed at 25 years on the date of conduct of the test. Reserved category candidates will get a five-year relaxation. Candidates will be allowed to appear for three attempts.
Candidates need their Aadhaar number to fill up the online application of NEET 2017, except those from Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and Meghalaya. After conducting the test, the CBSE will prepare an all-India rank list based on the instructions of the Medical Council of India.
The test will be held at 1,500 examination centres across the country and more than 10 lakh candidates are expected to appear. Last year, in both NEET-I and NEET-II, 8,02,594 candidates were registered.
With the Election Commission announcing the dates for polls in five states, the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examination (CISCE) has decided to reschedule its class X and XII examinations. CISCE Chief Executive Gerry Arathoon said that owing to elections, the examinations will be rescheduled but emphasised that no dates have been finalised yet.
According to the previous schedule, the CISCE was planning to hold Indian School Certificate Examination for the year 2017 from February 6 and the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education Examination from February 27.
Can your Class 1 child count objects up to 20 or add and subtract two-digit numbers if she is in Class 2? If she is in Class 6, can she arrange family expenditures of the past six months in tables, pictographs or bar graphs?
Many in Delhi and other metropolitan cities might say ‘yes’, but millions of parents in rural and semi-urban India could have a different answer. These questions are part of ‘learning outcomes’ parameters devised by the NCERT to assess learning levels of Class 1 to 8 students.
The NCERT has sent a final draft of the learning outcomes to all the states for their inputs, following which they will be required to incorporate them into their schools’ teaching methodology.
HRD ministry sources said a number of states were positive about the method and discussions are on to bring them on board as the Centre is hoping to roll it out from the next academic session.
The move is aimed at making a shift from rote learning and to ensure there are clear parameters to judge the performance of students, especially with states being given the mandate to revoke the no-detention policy, under which a student is promoted automatically.
“Rather than concentrating on textbook-based assessment, we want to find the competency levels of students. The learning outcomes have been prepared in a very simple manner so that all stakeholders should be aware what we want to achieve,” said a source.
In 2014, only one-fourth of Class 3 students in rural India could do a two-digit subtraction, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) of non-profit organization Pratham, which depicted a bleak picture of school education in the country.
NCERT will conduct a national assessment survey (NAS) in government and private schools soon to see the level of learning.
The Council used to conduct the survey in select government schools for Classes 3, 5, 8 and 10, but the results were used more as a status report without effecting any change in the way students are taught.
The new NCERT survey will focus on whether students in a particular class can read the time correctly using a clock, estimate the capacity of a container in known units—eg. a bucket containing water is 20-30 times that of a mug—and measure short lengths using non-uniform units like a finger, hand span, length of forearm, and footsteps.
HRD minister Prakash Javadekar had recently said that learning outcomes would become part of the Right to Education too.
For the upcoming academic year, students will no longer have to submit their original certificates with the university or college for admission. The move is likely to help lakhs of students who are unable to withdraw admission from the institute for better prospects.
Not only this, educational institutions cannot make it mandatory for students to purchase a prospectus; they will have to offer them a full refund if admission is cancelled by the student within 15 days.
Also, institutions can charge fee in advance only for the semester or year in which a student is to engage in academic activities.
The University Grants Commission (UGC) has brought out an elaborate sets of rules to put to an end “coercive and profiteering” practices followed by educational institutions in issues related to verifying certificates at the time of admission, remittance of fees and refunds among others.
These rules are part of the notification issued by UGC called ‘Remittance and Refund of Fees and other student centric Issues”. “Taking the certificates and testimonials into institutional custody under any circumstances or pretexts is strictly prohibited for it is a coercive tactic, which can be misused for blackmailing students who wish to withdraw admission from the institute for better prospects or other compulsions,” reads the notification.
According to officials, UGC had formed a committee for this purpose too after getting a number of complaints from students and parents regarding non-refund of fees and retention of original certificates by higher educational institutions and other related issues.
The notification covers all undergraduate, postgraduate and research programmes run by all universities recognised by the UGC and all colleges under their affiliating domain and deemed universities. The rules will come into force immediately.
They can charge fees in advance only for the semester/year in which a student to engage in academic activities. “This enabling provision is in line with the UGC guidelines on Choice-Based Credit System (CBCS) and Model Curricula which are geared towards promoting a student’s inter-institutional mobility,” it said.
New Delhi, Nov 4 : Prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) will conduct faculty recruitment drives in foreign countries from January in a bid to improve its global ranking and attract talented faculty members.
The recruitment drives will be an attempt to unlock the value of the globally renowned IITs and to attract talented faculty members from foreign Universities to teach on Indian campuses.
“To ensure that the global ranking of IITs improves, it is important not only to have international students but also international faculty. We are planning to conduct faculty recruitment drives in foreign countries and will begin with the US in January,” IIT Delhi Director V Ramgopal Rao told reporters here.
“Earlier also we used to conduct a similar exercise but that was limited to candidates with Indian-origin. Here we will look only for global talent. We will also encourage the faculty members to start their own companies while teaching here to lead students in establishing their start ups,” he added.
The institute which will be holding its 47th Convocation ceremony on November 6, is also planning to increase its intake of PhD students.
“We plan to increase the intake of PhD students from current 2500 to around 5000 in next three years. The idea is to do it in phases so the quality of research doesn’t suffer,” he added.
IIT Delhi is also planning to set up an Alumni Development Cell which according to Rao will be manned by professionals.
“We are planning to create a CEO like position for the alumni development cell whose financial rewards will depend on money generated by him for various initiatives being run by the institute,” he said.
The institute is now gearing up for the convocation ceremony on Sunday where Bharat Ratna awardee scientist CN Rao will give degrees to 1964 students, the highest number in past 10 years.
Fifty students of Rotaract Club of Jai Hind College, Churchgate, have decided to hold a community service by adopting a slum in Mumbai Central for a month where four main causes will be taken up on for slum dwellers.
Like every year, this year too the club members have decided to take up a cause in November. The students have a project called ‘Silent Saturdays’ under which they will work in slum for four different causes. Their first cause will be health and sanitation, in which students will distribute free sanitary napkins to women in the slum. The second cause will be education, under which students will distribute books and stationery items to children. The third is hunger, where the entire slum will be given a nutritious, healthy meal. The last one is cleanliness, under which students will build washrooms and take up a cleanliness drive in the slum, and also have a pest control operation done for the hygiene of the entire slum.
“One of our causes is to build washrooms in those slums that we have adopted,” said Neha Gori, Jai Hind student, Organising Chairperson for Silent Saturdays.
“We will also be holding health check up camps and spread awareness about sanitary napkins. Children will be given crayons, drawing books, etc,” said Kausar Madhyia, Project Mentor.
Close to 1.5 million students studying in Classes 1 to 4 in Kerala can now enhance their learning ability with the introduction of a new textbook which integrates even games through meaningful learning situations.
The new textbook, named ‘Kalipetty’ (which means Playbox), has been developed in a scientific manner and is expected to simplify mathematics and other subjects.
For differently abled students, who require special attention, ‘Kalipetty’ also has specific content which would help them overcome many of their limitations and learn ICT education.
This new learning solution has been developed by a committee headed by K. Anvar Sadath, Executive Director of IT@School.
“The textbooks for schools will be given from November onwards and will have versions in English, Tamil and Kannada,” said Sadath.