8 million children still out of school in RTE Act first year - April 1 is the first anniversary of implementation of RTE Act

New Delhi: The Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act which promises free and compulsory education to all children between the age six to 14, on Friday completed a year since its implementation. However, the fact that more than eight million children are still out of school shows that a lot more needs to be done.

Releasing the RTE report card in the capital on Friday, Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said: "It's unfortunate that 81,50,619 children in the age group of six to 14 are still out of school. We have to bring all those children to school."

The report which analyzed the overall primary education scenario of the country, said that the total enrollment in the primary level in 2009-10 was 13,34,05,581 while in the upper primary level it was 5,44,67,415.

The percentage of girls enrolled in the primary level was 48.46 percent while in the upper primary level it was 48.12 percent.

The total number of elementary schools, government and aided, in 2009-10 was 11,20,968. And the total number of teachers was 44,77,429.

"21 percent teachers were found to be without professional qualification and nine percent schools were with a single teacher," Sibal said, citing the report.

"It was found that 508,000 additional teachers are required and in 2010 we approved the recruitment of 455,000 teachers," he added.

According to Sibal, the real problem now is no longer access to education but its quality.

"Access to education is no longer the real problem now, it's quality of education and for that we have set parameters under the RTE Act like infrastructure in schools, pupil-teacher ratio and professionally qualified teachers," he said.

The student classroom ratio across the country was found to 32:1. As many as 93 percent schools were found to have drinking water facility, 59 percent with girls toilet and 47 percent with ramps for the benefit of physically disadvantaged children.

Some of the not so encouraging figures came as far as the notification of rules in the states was concerned - 15 states had notified the rules and only 11 had constituted state commissions for protection of child rights, meant to monitor implementation of the Act.

"However the level of commitment in the states is good. This is just the first year, things will be even better next year," Sibal said.

Sounding excited about the latest census data, Sibal went on to say that India will be completely literate by the year 2020.

"The Millenium Development Goal says that India should achieve literacy rate of 72 percent by 2015 but we have already gone ahead of that figure. The census datasays that our literacy rate is 74.4 percent," he said.

"What is even more encouraging is that the female literacy rate has gone up by 12 percent," he added.

source:http://www.indiaedunews.net/Today/8_million_children_still_out_of_school_in_RTE_Act_first_year__-_April_1_is_the_first_anniversary_of_implementation_of_RTE_Act_13789/

Over a lakh children in Delhi still out of school

New Delhi: More than one lakh children in the national capital are still out of school, a report by the human resource development ministry said as the Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act completed a year on Friday since its implementation.

The RTE report card which analyzed the primary education scenario in the country was released especially for the occasion.

According to the report, 1,24,022 children in the age group of six to 14 were out of school in Delhi, as per a survey in 2009. Across the country, the out-of-school children figure stands at 81,50,619.

"It's unfortunate that 81,50,619 children in the age group of six to 14 are still out of school. We have to bring all those children to school," Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said while releasing the report.

On a positive note however, Delhi has scored quite well in other parameters.

For instance, as compared to national figure of pupil-teacher ratio of 32, in Delhi the ratio is 28. Then, at the national level the percentage of teachers without professionalqualification is 21, but in Delhi it stands at one.

Water drinking facility is present in 100 percent schools in Delhi. 79 percent schoolshere have girls toilets, 71 percent schools have ramps for disadvantaged students, 75 percent schools have playground and 98 percent have boundary walls.

Delhi is one of the 11 states which have constituted a state commission to monitor implementation of the RTE Act. Notification of the state rules however is still "in process", the report said.

A total of 16,84,425 students have been enrolled in the primary level in Delhi and 9,82,164 in the upper primary level. Delhi has 3,034 government and aided schoolsand has 57,777 teachers in these schools.

source:http://www.indiaedunews.net/Today/Over_a_lakh_children_in_Delhi_still_out_of_school_13790/

NCPCR seeks redressal mechanism for RTE law

New Delhi: The absence of a clear grievanceredressal structure for the Right To Education (RTE) law was questioned on Thursday by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR).

The NCPCR is the apex body that ensures the implementation of the RTE Act in the country. 

It has been a year since the law had been brought to action in India. However, the NCPCR has cited the lethargy on the part of most state governments that have failed to notify key rules for the successful implementation of the RTE.

National RTE Coordinator at the NCPCR Kiran Bhatty said that there was definite tardiness in the implementation of the act. "We have written to the state governments repeatedly and would still keep on writing to them," she said. 

Guidelines for a redressal mechanism for the RTE have also been proposed by the NCPCR to theHuman Resource Development (HRD) ministry. These guidelines are currently being examined by the law ministry. 

According to the RTE Act, the NCPCR, chaired by Magsaysay Award winner Shantha Sinha, is the watchdog body for the implementation of the right to education all over the country. The NCPCR had been given the role with the aim to ensure and the implementation of and independently monitor the law instead of the HRD ministry.

Section 36 of the RTE Act says that the state governments are required to appoint designated local authorities who are empowered to sanction prosecution of school or government officials for conducting screening tests, corporal punishments or running unrecognized schools.

Vinod Raina, a member of the National Advisory Council on the RTE Act has informed that only 13 of the 36 states and union territories have notified about the rules accompanying the Act or notified the authorities.

source:http://indiaedunews.net/Today/NCPCR_seeks_redressal_mechanism_for_RTE_law_13787/

Number of dead, missing nears 21,000

KAMAISHI: The toll of dead or missing from Japan's worst natural disaster in nearly a century has neared 21,000.

With 8,199 people confirmed killed, the massive earthquake and tsunami of March 11 is Japan's deadliest natural disaster since the Great Kanto quake levelled much of Tokyo in 1923.

Another 12,722 are missing, feared swept out to sea by the 10-metre tsunami or buried in the wreckage of buildings.

In Miyagi prefecture on the northeast coast, where the tsunami reduced entire towns to splintered matchwood, the official death toll stood at 4,882.

Miyagi police chief Naoto Takeuchi, however, told a task force meeting that his prefecture alone “will need to secure facilities to keep the bodies of more than 15,000 people”, Jiji Press reported.

Nuclear plant

At the damages Fukushima nuclear power plant, crews were striving to restore electricity after extending a high-voltage cable into the site from the national grid.

A spokesman for Japan's nuclear safety agency said electricity had apparently reached the power distributor at the No. 2 reactor, which in turn would feed power to the No. 1 reactor. Plant operator TEPCO confirmed an electricity supply had been restored to the distributor but said power at the reactor unit was not back on yet. Engineers were checking the cooling and other systems at the reactor, aiming to restore power soon, TEPCO said.

Children affected

According to the charity Save the Children, around 100,000 children were displaced by the quake and tsunami, and signs of trauma are evident among young survivors as the nuclear crisis and countless aftershocks fuel their terror. “We found children in desperate conditions, huddling around kerosene lamps and wrapped in blankets,” Save the Children spokesman Ian Woolverton said after visiting a number of evacuation centres.

source:http://www.hindu.com/2011/03/21/stories/2011032163371600.htm

Relax, and pick a job

Let them decide: Students of the Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore, discuss placement offers.

For years, the placement season at the prestigious Indian Institutes of Management has been a race of sorts. With each trying to outdo the other, using it as a yardstick for greater excellence, several parameters have been used to judge who fared better: slot zero figures (this slot would have the most coveted companies coming in), number of days over which the process was held, international offers, lateral placement figures, and, of course, the all-important and headline-generating pay packets.

IIM-Bangalore, a few years ago, decided to stop disclosing the salaries. While some say the reason behind this was to protect the privacy of students, IIM-B officials have reiterated that they had taken the decision because they did not want to give primacy to pay packets. Indeed, news reports about freshers and people with less than two years of work experience taking home mind-boggling pay packets — it was reported in a newspaper that at one of the IIMs the pay crossed Rs. 1 crore per month this year — was also projecting a wrong image about management education, and what the B-schools are all about.

While most other IIMs do mention the pay packets, many have stopped putting a face to the pay. Most reporting around this has been more or less vague and unsubstantiated. “It is the media that has an unholy obsession with the pay, not the management of the IIMs. While we want our students to do well, it has not dominated our discourse on jobs or placements,” says a professor from IIM-B, who did not wish to be named.

So in 2009, IIM-A decided to opt out of the fierce placements race by institutionalising what it called the cohort-based system. This means that previous yardsticks of slots and number of placement days could not be applied to it. In the cohort-based system, companies visit on weekends through a longer period, in clusters. These clusters could be based on company profiles such as consulting, finance or investment banking. Held over something like a month, students can be at ease.

New tweaks to old process

IIM-B, this year, in a smaller way opted out of the numbers game. Though it did not go the IIM-A way, it decided to fix the number of placement days before hand. Though in 2010, placements had been completed in five days, and every year is compared to the previous one (this is often closely watched as it is regarded as a measure of how the job market is doing), this year it was strung out over 10 days. Pre-fixed, the placements went on at a relaxed pace, points out P.D. Jose, Chairperson, Placements, at IIM-B.

Dismantling the ‘slot-based' classification process, where recruiters were clustered into slots depending on their demand amongst students of that batch, they went for a more relaxed process where all sort of recruiters were invited on all the placement days. Some prioritising was done; however, the rigorous slot system was removed. Besides being stressful for students, companies too compete fiercely for the top slot and institutes find it difficult to please them all.

Typically, 30 companies would come in slot zero, making it difficult for students to attend interviews and forcing them to make on-the-spot decisions. “After all, it is a huge career decision we are talking about here. We felt it is necessary to give students a bit of breathing space to be able to think it over, and also allow them to give multiple interviews and choose from their options. It shouldn't just be about the numbers, we took a decision,” explains a key IIM-B official.

They divided the bay into two and parallel interviews took place, and students were allowed to take a shot through the day. There was no pressure on them to hurry up, and in fact students were allowed to take as much time as they wanted.

“In the older system, because everyone was racing against a deadline to complete placements and to look good on the comparison charts, everybody was under pressure to finish fast. That had just vanished,” an IIM professor, who was not associated with the placements, commented. “It was certainly more relaxed and good to watch,” he added.

This year, all 332 students who sat for placements received offers, of which over 100 were placed beforehand during the lateral placement process. The ‘laterals' are students who have had prior work experience. Over the years the numbers of students with work experience has been on the rise. In the batch of 2011, only 28 per cent of the batch comprised freshers and another six per cent had worked for less than a year.

Of the batch of 348 (the largest ever at IIM), 16 had opted out of placements, and two groups among these (comprising around five students) are incubating an innovation or an innovative business idea with the NSR Cell that provides support to start-ups, sources told The Hindu.

Though the total placements was from 105 companies, 130 had evinced interest. As far as trends go, it was work as usual, with finance leading the pack at 36 per cent, followed by consulting at 31. Sales and marketing made up for 21 per cent.

How other IIMs did

IIM-Ahmedabad completed its placements in early March, having commenced in mid-February. Divided into four clusters held on four days, the placement has been successful and all students have been placed.

The others, which are still sticking to the traditional placement process, are more comparable. Among the older IIMs, IIM-Calcutta wrapped up its process in five days, placing all 388 students. Here, slot zero offers were up from 90 to 139.

IIM-Kozhikode saw the total offers go up to 305 from 265 last year (the number of offers per company rose to 3.37 from 2.66 in 2010, according to news reports). IIM-Indore, which wrapped up its placements last month, saw the number of offers increase to 241 this year, from 235 in the previous year.

However, the newer IIMs are still picking up and are yet to complete the placement process.

source:http://www.hindu.com/edu/2011/03/21/stories/2011032150660100.htm

UGC-NET launches e-certificate

Candidates appearing for the UGC-NET will get the qualifying certificate within six days now with the University Grants Commission launching the e-certificate. The Minister for Human Resource Development (HRD) Kapil Sibal launched the service recently.

The process of issuing the UGC-NET qualification certificate to successful candidates normally takes around six to eight months, a cause of concern both to UGC and to the students. However, these E-certificates will cut down the time lag for issuing the certificate to just six days. Similarly, whenever an institution writes to UGC for verification of authenticity of the NET certificate presented by the candidates, the authenticity of the certificate can now be done within a span of 24 hours as against the earlier four months.

The UGC has already initiated steps for online registration of the NET examination so that all the necessary information with regard to the candidates is captured, including their photographs, at the time of registration itself. The information thus captured is proposed to be used for the award of these e-certificates once the results are announced.

The UGC has also released a compendium of UGC schemes where the 63 schemes of the UGC have been synoptically profiled, covering the objectives of each scheme, the criteria for becoming eligible to receive financial assistance from the UGC, the operational tenure of the scheme, process of selection followed in approving the proposals, and finally the quantum of financial assistance that can be provided to execute the scheme.

source:http://www.hindu.com/edu/2011/03/08/stories/2011030850040100.htm

Education key to a longer life

Washington, Feb 28 : Your granny was right after all in insisting that being attentive and studying hard at school and college helped you live longer, besides fending off risks of cardiovascular disease

Education is now also being correlated with lower blood pressure (BP), decrease in alcohol consumption, smoking and weight gain, according to latest research.

Researchers followed 3,890 people for 30 years from the Framingham Offspring Study, regarding their education levels, status of heart disease, the journal BMC Public Health reports.

Eric Loucks from Brown University department of community health, who led the study said: "Even when adjusted for socio-economic variables, education is inversely correlated with high blood pressure..."

Educated men (with more than 17 years of education) had a lower body mass index (BMI), a height to weight ratio, smoked less and drank less than men with less education, according to a Brown University statement.

Similarly, educated women also smoked less, had lower BMI, but drank more than their less educated sisters (however, they still drank about half as much as the educated men).

For both men and women, each extra level of academic study completed further reduced the incidence of high blood pressure.

--IANS

Source:http://www.newkerala.com/news/world/fullnews-157287.html

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