'Lack of political will hampering implementation of RTE Act'

New Delhi: A year after the implementation of the Right to Education (RTE) Act, the dream of universal education still remains a distant reality for many children due to the lack of political will in the states, experts said on Thursday.

According to the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), the chief monitoring body of the Act's implementation, only 13 states have notified their state rules.

"Without notification, how can the states implement the RTE Act? Notification of the rules means a financial commitment on behalf of the states, liketeachers' salaries and the like. For this there has to be a political commitment," NCPCR chairperson Shantha Sinha said.

Taking stock of the progress of the RTE Act, she added, "There are drawbacks, including lack of human resources but with political commitment, we can skip timelines to make sure the RTE reaches every child in this country." 

A report taking stock of implementation of RTE in India was presented by the RTE Forum - a coalition of over 25 national civil society organizations and over 10,000 grass roots networks - at the conference.

According to the report, there were several provisions within the Act that had to be fulfilled within the first year, but not much progress has been made.

The report said that while the NCPCR has been mandated with monitoring the implementation of the Act, the body lacks the capacity to do justice.

"The overall shortage of teachers is estimated to be 14 lakh and states like Uttar Pradesh have a huge shortfall of over two lakh vacancies, which have not been filled up due to lack of resources," the report said.

Eight states have less than 50 percent teachers who are professionally qualified, it added.

"Many teachers are not aware about the Act. If we want to get rid of archaic practices like corporal punishment, urgent attention must be given to school based training for teachers," said Ambrish Rai, spokesperson of RTE Forum.

The report said that the school management committees (SMCs), with three-quarter representation from the community, are the first line complaint mechanisms under the RTE Act. However, these have not been formed in most states. 

"This leaves parents and children without a visible place to go if their educational rights are violated," the report said.

The Right of children to Free and Compulsory Education Act came into force from April 1, 2010. According to it, the right to education will be accorded the same legal status as the right to life as provided by the Indian Constitution. Every child in the age group of 6-14 years will be provided 8 years of elementary education in an age appropriate classroom in the vicinity of his/her neighborhood.

source:http://indiaedunews.net/Today/'Lack_of_political_will_hampering_implementation_of_RTE_Act'_13784/

Exhibition titled 'Transformation' to be held at JMI

New Delhi: An exhibition titled "Transformation", organized by four students of the Jamia Millia Islamia(JMI), will be held at the university campus from February 21 to 26.

The students that are organizing the exhibition are from the Department of Art History and Art Appreciation at the varsity. They will be donning the roles of curators for the exhibition that is a part of the paper "History of Curational Practices", which is included in their syllabus.

Other institutions that will be participating in the exhibition include Delhi College of Art, GovernmentCollege of Art in Chandigarh, Tecnia Institute of Art and Design and Banaras Hindu University.

According to one of the student curators for the exhibition Pradeep K. Arya, as curators, their job will be to view various works, select those that will be displayed at the exhibition and provide their perspective on the exhibits by way of captions.

The students whose works have been chosen to be displayed at the exhibition were selected by the four student curators who had viewed all the entries and then chosen the ones that would be displayed.

The theme of the exhibition is "Transformation", which is a "metaphoric process which gets defined through various aspects of human life from birth to death".

The process of transformation while taking into account the social-political issues ofgender, class and caste will be explored by the show.

source:http://indiaedunews.net/Delhi/Exhibition_titled_'Transformation'_to_be_held_at_JMI_13556/

Making progress in academic reform

Despite many odds, the University of Calicut has made gains on the academic and administrative fronts during the last four years under the stewardship of its Vice-Chancellor Anwar Jahan Zuberi, reports ABDUL LATHEEF NAHA.

Making progress: In the last four years, the university sanctioned 65 new affiliated colleges as well as 161 courses; a view of the university's administration block.

The University of Calicut is set to launch some prestigious and ambitious initiatives, even as its Vice-Chancellor Anwar Jahan Zuberi is preparing to pack her bags. She will complete her tenure on February 25.

Prof. Zuberi led the university to newer heights of academic excellence in the last four years. According to her, the last four years have been a time of unparalleled progress for the university. The university saw many academic, infrastructural, administrative and social initiatives. But seldom did the university succeed in cashing in on the good work it did.

When only two of the universities in Kerala went for NAAC re-accreditation in 2010, Calicut University got top score, pushing Mahatma Gandhi University to the second position.

In the Budget presented by Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac last week, the State government allotted Rs.15 crore for Calicut University — an increase of more than 50 per cent from last year. The university is all set to introduce a ‘school system' which will convert various disciplines and departments into cohesive units and bring them together under an academic roof. “This reorganisation is designed to facilitate inter-departmental cooperation, inter-disciplinary teaching and research, and the pooling of resources and expertise for greater academic effectiveness,” Prof. Zuberi said.

All teaching departments of the university are being restructured into 12 schools. They are the School of Bio-Sciences, the School of Business Studies, the School of Chemical and Physical Sciences, the School of Information and Communication Studies, the School of Education, the School of Language and Literature, the School of Mathematical and Computational Sciences, the School of Performing Arts, the School of Legal Studies, the School of Social Sciences, the School of Engineering and Technology, and the School of Earth Sciences.

When the university introduced the new Departments of Nano-Technology, Environmental Studies, Computer Science and Political Science last year, it is going to open three new centres such as Inter-University Centre for Plant Biotechnology, Institute of Tribal Studies and Research, and Centre for Classical and Traditional Studies. “Some of them will be the first of its kind in the country,” said Prof. Zuberi.

Some of the new courses the university launched this year include Master of Hospital Administration, MA in functional Hindi, M.Sc. aquaculture (Lakshadweep), M.A. in Arabic (Lakshadweep), and M.Sc. in mathematics (Lakshadweep).

In the last four years, the university sanctioned 65 new affiliated colleges as well as 161 courses. It opened overseas centres in countries such as Kuwait, Ras-al-Khaima, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Above all , the university takes pride in the introduction of choice-based credit semester system (CCSS) in a time-bound manner. “It is sure to bring greater academic choice and curricular flexibility. Thus it will be an immense benefit for students,” Prof. Zuberi said.

First, the university introduced CCSS for postgraduate programmes in the university teaching departments in 2008. In the next year, the university introduced CCSS for undergraduate programmes in affiliated colleges. The following year saw the introduction of credit semester system (CSS) for postgraduate programmes in colleges.

And the coming academic year will see lakhs of private and distance education students taking CCSS — an achievement no other university in the country can boast of. According to the Vice-Chancellor, we got to wait for some more time to gauge the results of the academic reforms.

Even when the university filled almost all teaching vacancies by hiring 75 new teachers and promoting 50 teachers to higher posts, three new Chairs of study and research are being opened up on the campus. The Vaikkom Mohammed Basheer Chair is sponsored by the State government. The UGC sanctioned Moulana Abul Kalam Azad Chair. And the

C.H. Mohammed Koya Trust has sponsored the C.H. Mohammed Koya Chair for the Study of Developing Societies.

Prof. Zuberi was fortunate to sign the Ph.D. certificates of 613 scholars as well as to host some major international lectures and seminars. When Frontier Lecture series crossed 90, the recently introduced Erudite Scholars in Residence Programme did 10 in a row.

The Departments of History, Education, Philosophy and Chemistry have won the Special Assistance Programme (SAP) funding from the UGC for their research and developmental activities.

The Vice-Chancellor was happy that she could set up a Board for student grievances, providing a platform for students for redressal of their problems. Student grievance cells too have been set up in all departments.

The university will soon have a renovated guest house and a refurbished Senate House. The State government has sanctioned enough funds for it.

The opening of a large multi-purpose building at the entrance of the university on February 25 by Education Minister M.A. Baby will be yet another feather in the cap of the current administration. It will be a building exclusively meant for the well being and comfort of the students.

The ongoing modernisation of the Examination Wing has already had encouraging results for the university. Registration for examination has been made online. Distribution of hall-tickets is also online. Calicut has become the first university in the State to introduce bar-coded answer scripts, greatly reducing the delay in the publication of results.

“Examination results are now available to our students through SMS,” Prof. Zuberi said, explaining how the modern technology was used for the benefit of the students. Similarly, the university is making use of the mobile technology to inform employees of their monthly salary details.

The C.H. Mohammed Koya Library of the university has undergone a facelift in recent months. The library has an ICT centre for the visually-challenged. Among the other reforms the library underwent were the beginning of a digital resource centre with UGC funds, and introduction of a master catalogue system.

All teaching departments on the campus have smart classrooms with laptops, projectors, large LED screens and teacher interface. The University Botanical Garden has grown to newer fames in recent years, especially with the setting up of a Ginger Villa and Poly House.

The university campus saw Wi-Max communication even before BSNL introduced it in Kerala. “Extensive digitization of palm leaf manuscripts collected in the Thunchan Manuscript Repository is under way with the expertise of Keltron,” Prof. Zuberi said. The university is on a mission to preserve 60,000-odd ‘taliyola' records for posterity.

“We have made great strides in international academic collaboration too,” Prof. Zuberi said. MoUs have been signed with Charles University of Prague and Tubingen University of Germany.

Aid Cuts Have Texas Schools Scrambling

HUTTO, Tex. — The school superintendent in this rural town outside the state capital has taken steps to trademark the district’s oddly un-Texan school mascot — the Hutto Hippo — in a frantic effort to raise cash. He is also planning to put advertisements on school buses and to let retailers have space on the school Web site.

Case Sherva, a fifth grader, helped a teacher, Paul Suddeth, lower the Texas state flag after school at Veterans’ Hill Elementary School in Hutto, Tex. State budget cuts are forcing the district to close the three-year-old school.

“I’m doing some weird stuff in the district because we are low on money,” said the superintendent, Douglas Killian, sitting in an office full of Hippo figurines.

He added, “We hope to make our hippo as recognizable as Mickey Mouse.” (The mascot was adopted shortly after a hippopotamus escaped from a circus train in 1915 and took up temporary residence in a local creek.)

But the money expected from the sale of “Hustling Hippos” merchandise would be peanuts compared with the hole expected to open up in the district’s budget, as the Legislature moves to slash about $4.8 billion in state aid to schools over two years to close a budget gap.

So Mr. Killian and the beleaguered school board have agreed to shut down a recently built grade school and to cut a 10th of the staff, among them a principal, 2 assistant principals, 4 librarians and 38 teachers. That round of staff cuts is a just first step, he says, and layoffs will follow if the budget bills proposed in the Legislature are enacted without changes.

All across Texas, school superintendents are bracing for the largest cuts to public education since World War II, and the state is not alone. Schools across the country are in trouble as billions in emergency stimulus grants from the federal government have run out, and state and federal lawmakers have interpreted the victory of fiscal hawks in November’s midterm elections to mean that tax increases are out of the question.

Nowhere has that political trend been more potent than in Texas, where Republicans who ran on a promise to never raise taxes not only retained every statewide office, but also added to their majorities in both houses of the Legislature.

Gov. Rick Perry, easily re-elected in November, made it clear in his annual speech to lawmakers last week that he regarded raising revenue for schools as out of the question, saying Texas families “sent a pretty clear message with their November votes.” He has also refused to consider using $9.4 billion in a reserve fund to bail out the schools.

“They want government to be even leaner and more efficient,” Mr. Perry said, “and they want us to balance the budget without raising taxes on families and employers.”

To balance the budget with cuts alone, the governor and Republican leaders in the Legislature have put forth bills that would reduce the state’s public school budget by at least 13 percent — nearly $3.5 billion a year — and would provide no new money to schools for about 85,000 new students that arrive in Texas every year. School administrators predict that as many as 100,000 school employees would have to be laid off to absorb the cuts.

Not only are the proposed cuts to school aid draconian, but in addition the Legislature in 2006 put strict limits on how much districts can raise local property taxes. That means local school boards find themselves trapped amid rising enrollment, double-digit drops in state aid and frozen local taxes.

Many school administrators attribute the current budget crisis to an overhaul of the school finance system five years ago, which Mr. Perry and Republican leaders pushed through in response to popular anger over high property taxes. The Legislature put a cap on property taxes for schools and promised to make up the difference with a new business tax. But that tax has never produced enough revenue to make the districts’ budgets whole.

The chronic shortfall in money for schools was papered over in the last two-year budget passed in 2009. Mr. Perry and Republican leaders in the Legislature used about $3.3 billion in federal aid under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to plug the hole. That aid has disappeared this year.

“We had a problem before the shortfall ever occurred,” said John M. Folks, the superintendent of Northside Independent School District in San Antonio. “Now we have put this shortfall on top of an already horrible funding situation.”

Mr. Folks said the proposed budget bills would require him to cut about a sixth of his budget, and he sees see no way to avoid laying off teachers and letting classes become larger.

source:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/education/15texas.html?ref=education