HRD introduces major changes in school education

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May 9, 2017

Union Minister for Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar has said to improve the school education system in the country, major changes have been brought, including allowing detainment in the same class and reverting to examinations for assessing academic progress of students, besides updating NCERT textbooks.

The minister was speaking at the inauguration of North-Eastern Region workshop on “Innovations and Best Practises in School Education”. The workshop was organised by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD).

Javadekar said, a student would be given two chances to pass, with one being in the first examination in March and the second one in June.

“If he/she fails there, he/she will be detained in the same class,” he said.

According to him, the second major change is making the class 10 board exam mandatory for all students.

Explaining the decision on detainment, the minister said “We have taken a very important decision and we will take a call on it this month.”

“We had a meeting of education ministers from all the states, wherein those from 25 states lamented that they were finding it difficult to improve the quality of education without examinations. On their demand, we unanimously decided that the right to decide on detention will be left to the states and it will be done anytime soon,” Javadekar said.

Javadekar also invited suggestions from all education stakeholders to make changes in NCERT Books as the books have not been revised since the last ten years.

Stating that benchmark and learning capacity outcomes have been introduced for every class and monitored every year, the BJP leader said handbooks have been introduced for teachers to monitor every child and thus reach the benchmark.

IITs to develop a revenue model: MHRD

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Akash

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May 9, 2017

The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has directed Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) to come up with a revenue model for their operations.

Recently, directors of various IITs approached the ministry, saying the 122 per cent fee hike was of ‘no good’ revenue-wise as lot of concessions were announced simultaneously. The same was also discussed during the meeting of the IIT Council took place in Mumbai last week.

However, the ministry suggested the institutes to figure out a revenue model before any further discussion on fee hikes and concessions.

“Institutes had complained that they were not making any revenue despite multiple grants from the Ministry. It is important to have a revenue model to increase the component of self-sustenance in the functioning of IITs,” a senior official said.

“Right now what we are deciding is based on perceptions. The Minister proposed during the meeting that there is need for real data to show how things need to change. There is no revenue model, the IITs take money but have no idea how much money they will have next year, the policies keep changing,” he added.

The premier IITs are also asked to submit data of the fees charged, revenue collected, expenditure, fee concessions and loans.

“They have also been asked to submit their analysis of the data and draft of a revenue model which has suggestions on various factors including what kind of loan system needs to be built, who will pay the interest, what will be the interest component, for what time the loan should be interest-free and what should be the recovery options,” the official added.

There was also a proposal for replacing the fee waiver with reimbursement by either the HRD Ministry or the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.

It has also been recommended by IITs that students from the economically backward sections should be given interest- free loans instead of full or partial waiver.

Panel set up for minority education in Maharashtra

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Akash

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May 8, 2017

The Maharashtra Government has set up a committee in a step to study various issues pertaining to minority education.

The 10-member panel will study the existing and proposed schemes to better the minority education scenario.

Minority schools are presently exempted from implementing certain clauses of the Right to Education (RTE) Act, like the compulsory 25% reservation of seats in primary classes for economically and socially disadvantaged children, The Times of India reported on Sunday.

The committee will study all these clauses and come up with a new policy for minority education and it will be headed by Education Commissioner Vipin Sharma. It will have to submit its report within two months, said a government resolution on Saturday.

One of the main issues regarding minority education in the State is the refusal by schools to reserve 25% seats in their entry-level classes for children from poor background as demanded by the RTE Act. Many schools had approached the court regarding the same and the latter had ruled in schools’ favour in those cases.

Another controversy is the fact that many of the schools with minority status had less than 50% minority students.

While state officials had claimed that with less than 50% students of the minority community, the school cannot claim minority status, this was again quashed in a legal battle.

“Various court orders have said clauses within the RTE Act are not applicable for minority institutions. Hence, there is a need to formulate an administrative and educational policy for minority schools, teachers and students,” says the government resolution.

“At present there is no such policy. To clear the ambiguity regarding all this, a law and policy is required.”

In a first, IIT-Kanpur sets up Economic Sciences department

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Akash

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May 8, 2017

The IIT-Kanpur is the first among the IITs to start Economic Sciences department which has come into effect recently.

It would be a help for those clearing JEE Advanced 2017 and those willing to pursue Bachelor of Science (BS – Economic Sciences) program would get admission in it.

According to Director IIT-Kanpur, Prof Indranil Manna, after adding Earth Sciences Department in the last academic session, this year II-Kanpur is establishing New department of Economic Sciences, The Time of India reported on Sunday.

He said that the Economics program was already in existence in IIT-Kanpur but there was no separate department for the same. Deputy director, IIT-K, Prof Manindra Agarwal said that IIT-K is first amongst IITs to start Department of Economic Sciences.

Interacting with reporters at the institute campus on Saturday evening, Prof Manna said: “Economics was taught as a subject in IIT-Kanpur at the undergraduate level as a requirement in Humanities and Social Sciences department.”

He added from 2005, a unique five-year integrated MSc programme was launched here where the students who came into this programme were selected through JEE Advanced. “In 2011, this programme was reshaped as a four year BS and five year BS-MS dual degree programme in Economics.”

Asked about the need of constituting the dedicated department for the Economics course, Prof Manna said this undergraduate programme in Economics had become very popular with more and more higher ranking JEE students opting for it. Also the economics students continue to have excellent placements.

He said: “Together this prompted us to go for a complete department on the existing programme (course). But this did not happen overnight as it involved one and a half years of thinking and consultations.”

“National Advisory Board which was constituted by us having experts from IIM-Indore, TIFR, a professor of Standford university and others strongly recommended us to start the department after which the same was considered by the senate of IITKanpur before its approval.”

After the formal approval of the Board of Governors, the department has become formally operational from May 6, 2017, Director mentioned further.

Deputy Director, IIT-Kanpur, Prof Manindra Agarwal told reporters that IIT-Kanpur is first among the IITs to start Department of Economic Sciences. He said that more faculty members for this department would be recruited soon. He also mentioned that at present there is no separate building for the new department and it will continue to function in the premises of the Department of Humanities.

Head of department of Economic Sciences department, Prof Joydeep Dutta, said the department would consist 13 faculty members and would continue to run four-year BS and five year BS-MS dual degree programme in Economics along with PhD programme.

Byju’ growth, now a case study at Harvard Business School

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Akash

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May 5, 2017

Byju’s, India’s leading education technology start-up, will now be taught as a case study by Harvard Business School.

The Bengaluru-based company’s case study will be titled as “BYJU’s The Learning App”, is co-authored by John J-H Kim and Rachna Tahilyani. Kim is a senior lecturer at Harvard and teaches a course on entrepreneurship and technology innovations in education. Rachna Tahilyani is a research associate at Harvard Business School’s India research centre.

The case study was published in March this year by Harvard. The paper explores Byju’s growth in India and the challenges to its expansion into the US and other English speaking markets, revealed a abstract available on Harvard’s website.

ByJu’s is managed by Think and Learn Pvt Ltd. It offers visual and written learning modules through its mobile application. The app now has around 300,000 annual paid subscribers across different K-12 schools of the country.

Research in higher education must for sustainable growth: Javadekar

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Akash

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May 5, 2017

Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar has underlined the need to encourage research in higher education in India for ensuring sustainable growth.

Speaking while delivering poet Ramdhari Singh ‘Dinkar’ memorial lecture in the national capital, the minister favoured the need for promoting research and innovation also to combat brain drain and insisted on improving quality of education from primary to higher education.

“The progress India and China have attained over the last 30 years is due to reverse engineering and become cost competitive basically on the back of low wages. “But that prosperity is not sustainable. The only answer is sustainable prosperity lies in innovation,” the Indian Express quoted Javadekar as saying on Thursday.

Also present on the occasion was NCP general secretary DP Tripathi.

To ensure that the best Indian minds are able to innovate in the country itself, the minister said the government has decided to set up “best of the research laboratories” in the central universities.

He said the “IITs will also jointly interview and pursue Indian students studying abroad to come back as faculties. The students will have research and consultancy freedom”.

“So, we will avail good teachers, students and labs. We will give them Rs 75,000 per month Prime Minister scholarship.”

While stressing on enhancing quality of education imparted through schools too, the minister referred to camps being held this month at Raipur, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Guwahati and Pune.

“Imparting quality education to students is the gist of the learning outcome process. We have to keep striving for it,” Javadekar said, adding the government plans to allow States, by amending right to education act, to decide on detaining students after assessing their performance in class V and VIII.

According to the present no-detention policy, students are promoted every year till class VIII.

If a student takes annual exam in March and fails, Javadekar said, he/she will be given another chance in June to clear the same as per the proposed amendment. States though will have the right to give another opportunity to these students to pass, he added.

MHRD to boost teacher training at school level

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Akash

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May 5, 2017

With an aim to improve teacher’s quality at school level, Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has launched various initiatives for the same.

“In the context of teachers, a number of steps are being taken by the department. National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) is working very hard in bringing out a regime wherein the teachers are appropriately trained before joining the service,” said Anil Swarup, Secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy, MHRD.

“We are trying to bring an accreditation system for the BEd colleges. Only the colleges that are accredited by the NCTE will only be allowed to run BEd courses,” Swarup added.

He said, to have good teachers at school is one of the major challenges. According to him, teachers are the fulcrum and the government is trying to provide pre-service training and also improving the training process.

“For hiring good quality teachers at schools, the selection process will be revamped. Good teachers will ensure good quality education at government schools that will result into more student enrolments at these schools,” he added.

MHRD to conduct central curriculum assessment from June

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Akash

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May 5, 2017

In order to review its own curriculum and to determine a student’s learning, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has decided to conduct a nationwide curriculum assessment from June this year.

“We are doing an assessment. The Right to Education Act provides that there should be learning outcomes on the basis of which we should determine, how much a child has been learnt so far. We have been providing lots of inputs but how much a child has learnt was not determined through the specific learning outcomes”, said Anil Swarup, Secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy, MHRD.

“Now, these learning outcomes have been announced. Post announcement, we are going to conduct a national assessment survey through which we are going to assess the students of class 3, 5 and 8 as to where has the child progressed. So that is what we are going to under Central National Assessment Survey (CNAS),” said Swarup, in a conversation with Elets Technomedia.

In its efforts to improve the school education segment, the latest move by the ministry will help in upgrading the curriculum after reviewing the students’ performance.

“By 31^st of December, we expect to get all the results. It will be rolled out in schools in a random sampling basis. This will help us to figure out the bottlenecks for every class and in adopting corrective measures,” he added.

AISECT: Refining Private Education Space

Interviews

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Akash

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May 4, 2017

AISECT, the first private university of Madhya Pradesh, has taken various initiatives on different fronts to provide quality higher education in the State. The university has also made efforts to ease the norms for operating a private university, says Santosh Kumar Choubey, Chancellor, AISECT University, in an interview with Arpit Gupta of the Elets News Network (ENN).

With the changing times and maddening race to emulate competitors, what prominent challenges a private university like yours is faced with?

The biggest challenge for the university was to change the perception of education stakeholders and build reputation. Earlier, the rules of operating a university were harder, which continues to be the case. Private universities were deprived from the funding benefits and various types of assistance that State and Central Universities enjoy.

To improve the situation, an All India Private University Conference was organised by AISECT University in 2012 where all universities from across the country were invited. The Central and State Government regulatory bodies discussed about challenges and anomalies faced by the private operators in higher education system at the conference. Almost everyone in the conference agreed to the problems faced by private universities in terms of regulation, multiple commands and operations.

Since then efforts have been made to ease the norms for operating private universities across the country. It is also expected that in coming time all the universities, irrespective of private or government, will be provided a level field to operate.

What are some of the innovations being introduced in AISECT University vis-a-vis State and Central Universities?

Some of the important innovations introduced by AISECT University include:

Promoting Skill Development by setting up skill academies, collaborating with the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and making one skill course compulsory for each year at UG and PG level i.e. four skill courses in an undergraduate (UG) course and two at PG level.
Establishing Renewable Energy Centre and Energy Park in the University to develop green energy culture, the only campus in Madhya Pradesh and amongst 17 in India to be selected for Green Campus by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE).
Adopting three villages and holding week-long camps in the villages at regular intervals for awareness and training of villagers in the areas of health, cleanliness, education, literacy, digital communication, banking etc.
Developing an incubation centre to promote the best startup projects and conducting startup competitions at national-level. The centre has also attracted industry mentors who have supported the finest startup projects at AISECT University.

With placement of students becoming a yardstick to evaluate a university’s status, what has been your achievement in this context? How significant innovation is to your university?

Placement is an important mark of credibility for an institution. Our university’s innovative Training and Placement Department serves this aspect. Our emphasis is on producing well educated, skilled and confident professionals who are industry-ready after graduation. More than 50 per cent of our students get placed before completing their respective courses. A strong incubation centre is one of the most important dimensions of our placement. With an abundance of startup competitions, thereby enabling us to produce not only good number of employees but also successful entrepreneurs.

Almost every other university is collaborating with foreign universities and government departments, what initiatives have been taken by your university in this regard?

Right from the beginning, AISECT University has given lot of importance to expand its horizon across the academia, industries and research labs. We have identified organisations in India and abroad for collaboration and to gain from their expertise in specific fields. Some of these collaborations include:

NCTU, Taiwan: We are working together along with IIT Delhi to enhance spectral efficiency of solar cell in a project costing about Rs 40 lakh.
ICEWaRM, Australia: This collaboration involves working jointly in the field of water resources and management. In this context, we organised a four-day international conference on Water, Energy and Environment where 350 research papers were presented by 20 countries were being published by Elsevier.
KIEV University, Ukraine: This entails collaboration in the field of space and earth science.
MoI University Eldoret, Kenya: This is a research project in the pipeline on water resources.
KAIST, South Korea & RPI, USA: It involves collaborative work on Renewable Energy.
PetruMaior University of TarguMures, Romania: We are working jointly on environmental science/engineering.

Similarly, there are more than 15 research laboratories, industries and institutes in India, including AMPRI, CIAE, NITTTR, IIT New Delhi, TATA Motors, Reliance, BSNL, etc, with whom AISECT University has a collaboration for skill delivery, research projects and exchange programmes.

What steps your university has been following to ensure the finest faculty delivering in this fast developing world?

Rigorous faculty selection process is undertaken by the university to ensure highly qualified and experienced teachers. Almost 50 per cent of which are PhDs and around 20 per cent are having industry experience. Moreover, collaboration with seven foreign universities, 10 Indian institutes, research laboratories and industries, facilitates exchange programmes for students and renowned experts. We promote a strong culture of national and international academic events, about five every year, where experts expose students to latest development in technology, corporate, industries and academia.

What steps have been undertaken for research-based learning by your university?

Research-driven education is an integral part of our vision and mission. Following initiatives have been taken in this regard:

The university has identified four areas to encourage researches – Renewable Energy, Material Science, Environmental Engineering and Water Resources, and Earth and Space Science. Advanced research labs in these four areas have been developed with an investment of more than Rs two crore. An advanced software lab covering these areas is also available. These resources are available from undergraduate to research scholars.
The university has been publishing two bi-annual peer reviewed research journals – “Anusandhan” for Science, Management and Technology and “Shodhaytan” for Non Tech discipline from the past five years.
A Core Research Group (CRG) has been formed to promote research projects with external and internal funding. CRG has pan India experts in the field as members. In this context, the university has one ongoing Indo-Taiwan project in the field of solar cells, five ongoing internally funded projects marked at Rs one crore each and four projects have been currently put up to various external agencies for funding.
The university has an incentive scheme for research activities and writing. This has resulted in publishing of more than 300 research papers in national and international conferences and seminars and more than 20 books. In last three years, more than 15 faculty members and students have gone abroad related to research activities.

Today’s Connected Campuses Need Trusting Identities

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By

Akash

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May 4, 2017

Securing university campuses across the globe is one of the major concerns for the management of educational institutes. Adoption of smart card technology is one of the initiatives by educational institutes for enhancing the security. WeiJin Lee, Regional Director, Secure Issuance, APAC HID Global, explores various dimensions of smart card technology for Elets News network (ENN).

India, a growing market for identification technologies and ID card personalisation, is going through a significant transition. There is a growing demand of durable and secure ID cards among corporate as well as government bodies for their employees.

A secure ID card with visual security provides cheaper yet significant advantage by ensuring that only genuine users can have access to offices buildings. The technology also helps in easy verification and discrimination of an ID from a fake one.

Better security systems are very important for every educational institute in India. Some of these institutions need to upgrade their existing technologies to tackle the security challenges they face. As enrolments grow, university and college administrators expand facilities and services, often using vulnerable campus ID card systems.

Older solutions often lack many necessary features, functions and flexibility. Moreover, after rise in number of incidents like violence in schools, it is challenging for administrators to improve security, restrict fraudulent access to the campus and improve overall quality of the campus experience. Along with meeting the growing demand of security, administrators have to provide securely connected services while protecting user privacy in today’s ever growing digital world. They must navigate a shift in the use of identities that is fueling broader adoption of mobile and advanced smart card technology, while putting greater emphasis on the cloud and Internet of Things (IoT) use cases.

Charting a Course

The best path forward for today’s universities and colleges is to systematically replace old technology with the latest “One Card” solutions. It delivers improved end-to-end card issuance capabilities and a path to new functions – as well as the Return on Investment (ROI) value. Successful implementation of card identification system must deliver flexible student and faculty accessibility through visual security. The cards will also enable the users for many applications such as from opening dorm room doors to making cashless transit system payments or checking out media centre materials. These systems are dependent on physical cards, so implementation must also support “Green Campus” initiatives through features like waste free ID card lamination and eco-friendly card printers.

To upgrade smart card technology, universities must evaluate the time, cost and logistics associated with replacing existing card infrastructure and then re-badging every card holder in the campus. What required is a comprehensive, end-to-end ID solution and phased process for upgrading an existing card system. It enables incremental deployment of new smart cards while still using old student ID cards and the existing campus hardware.

Key solution features include an integrated ID card system with the power to issue new cards, multi-technology readers, card technology, and a combination of ID card printers and encoders with card personalisation software. Some universities will need their readers to support both new contactless smart cards and legacy magnetic stripe cards, as they phase out legacy systems, as well as wireless locks with built-in encryption and enhanced security. Choosing the right card technology will deliver advanced security and interoperability between locks, readers, and multiple card applications. The cards, readers, and software technology should be flexible enough for physical access control (i.e. opening doors) as well as logical access control (i.e. used with desktop readers to pay for cafeteria meals, or checking out library materials).

Choice of ID card printers and encoders, and associated card personalisation software is also very important. Use of in-line personalisation technology is a big time saver for institutions at the time of registration. It enables the office staff to print student information to the card at the same time they are encoding and programming both the magnetic stripe and contactless smart card technology, all in a single, in-line issuance process. This approach significantly reduces total issuance time, and eliminates mistakes that are often made when data is entered manually.

Additionally, some card production solutions are offering the flexibility to print and encode through a commercial print bureau, further easing the burden of time and errors. Advances in print quality, lamination and visual security features made today’s cards are more secure and durable than those produced by legacy printers.

Card issuance choices can also affect sustainability. Two key developments include adopting “wasteless” lamination, and reducing carbon footprints as defined through the GreenCircle certification programme. With wasteless lamination, the lamination patches that are applied to cards for increased durability are attached to one another in a continuous stream of material on a single roll. Through technologies that ensure precise placement, the need for an underlying carrier film is eliminated so that, once the supply roll has been depleted, all that remains is a single empty core.

GreenCircle certification delivers further cost savings through advancements in card lamination technologies that have reduced the significant energy required to heat up and maintain optimal operating temperature.

In addition to these latest smart card advancements, there are other developments underway as the industry changes how it uses trusted identities.

Preparing for a Shift in the Use of Trusted Identities

The more identities are used to access a variety of campus facilities and services along with this it is important that wither they can be trusted or not. New technology is driving new forms of digitally connected trusted identities, and a shift in how we use these trusted identities is leading to increased adoption of mobile devices and the latest smart card technology. The greater emphasis and reliance is on the cloud and on new way of thinking about trust in the smart campus and Internet of Things (IoT).

For instance, credential issuance for physical ID cards will soon experience a digital transformation, as the use of cloud technologies will enable service-focused models for badge printing and encoding. Cloud -based models for delivering network-based ID badge issuance management will feature the security of end-to-end encryption and eliminate the need for stand-alone card printers attached to dedicated PC workstations. This will transform the user experience and operational management of ID badge printing. It will also reduce costs, increase administrative visibility, simplify system maintenance, and improve security as compared to on-premises solutions.

Administrators are also increasingly aware that smart phones, which seem to be permanently in their students’ hands, can provide a very convenient and quite natural way to carry trusted campus IDs for opening doors and performing other tasks that require presentation of a secure credential. Plus, students lose their cell phones less often than they lose their cards so, ultimately, the cost for replacement credentials will be reduced. University employees also benefit from carrying credentials on their phones. They aren’t required to wear their ID cards, so they may arrive at a facility without one and have trouble gaining access. But since most carry their cell phone everywhere, the ability to gain access is a given if these phones also carry their credentials.

Rather than acting as competitive forms of ID, traditional physical ID cards and mobile IDs that have been securely provisioned onto mobile devices will function most effectively in harmony, multiplying each other’s benefits. Digital identities in the form of smart cards have been successfully used in business and for a variety of government issued cards for over 10 years. The government issued cards include employee IDs, national IDs, healthcare cards and “smart” drivers’ license.

The concept of mobile IDs is particularly compelling in the university environment where trusted identities can be used for everything from accessing physical areas to conducting digital transactions and checking out media centre resources. New cloud-based systems will issue both physical and mobile IDs simultaneously in a one-step process that make issuance easy for both the organisation and recipient.

There will also be new ways to use trusted identities for more than access control on today’s connected campus. For instance, trusted identities can be used to connect people, places and things in applications like automating campus guard tours. By combining Near Field Communication (NFC) trusted tag technology with a cloud-based authentication platform, security check points can be accurately tracked and guards can be instantly dispatched for incident response. This approach enables security guards to patrol areas more easily and efficiently, automating patrol stops and replacing manual sign-in processes. With a simple tap of their mobile phone to a secure trusted tag, a guard can digitally prove that a security patrol took place at the proper location, at the proper time.

Universities need to secure their facilities and assets without restricting students, staff and visitors from enjoying campus offerings. As universities move to “One Card” solutions and new mobile options, it will make accessing their campuses more flexible and secure. It will enable more capabilities, reduce costs while improving efficiency, and support campus “green” initiatives. At the same time, they will be paving the way for additional capabilities down the road, as trusted identities play more integral roles across a wider range of applications in an increasingly connected campus environment.

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