Government reforming regulatory bodies: Smriti Irani

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November 13, 2014

Human Resource Development Ministry is reviewing the functioning of regulatory bodies that governs India’s education sector.

“I have undertaken review of regulatory bodies. We can design a path forward which is not only holistic but also that takes cognisance of the future,” HRD Minister Smriti Irani said while inaugurating the FICCI Higher Education Summit 2014 here in the capital.

“For the last six month we are understanding the working of these regulators and how reforms can be brought in the functioning of our regulators? Be it UGC or AICTE and NCTE, need to understand that India needs to redefine its destiny by redefining how we can manage education. We have undertaken the review of regulatory bodies to design a path forward holistic in nature and but also that takes cognizance of the future”.

There are more than a dozen regulatory bodies that governs different sectors of education- All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), Medical Council of India (MCI), Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR), National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), Dental Council of India (DCI), Pharmacy Council of India (PCI), Indian Nursing Council (INC), Bar Council of India (BCI), Central Council of Homeopathy (CCH), Central Council for Indian Medicine (CCIM), Council of Architecture, Distance Education Council, Rehabilitation Council, National Council for Rural Institutes, State Councils of Higher Education and University Grants Commission.

The Summit was attended from representatives eleven countries. Notable delegates were Nikki Randhawa Haley, Governor of South Carolina, USA and Greg Clark, Minister of State for Universities, Science and Cities, UK.

On Clark’s announcement that the first batch of students from United Kingdom will visit Indian universities next year, Irani said she expected experts and professors too from UK to visit educational institutions here under Global Initiative For Academic Networks for those cannot afford to go abroad.

New teacher training scheme to be launched soon: HRD Minister

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November 13, 2014

Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani said the new effort, Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya New Teacher Training Programme will be launched soon.

“While we look at the infrastructure and research, we are conscious of an important component of Indian education system, which the teacher. Dedicating ourselves training them we will soon launch Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya New Teacher Training Programme”, HRD Minister Smriti Irani said while inaugurating the FICCI Higher Education Summit 2014 here in the national capital.

The scheme was announced with an initial allocation of Rs 500 crore in the Union Budget presented by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

India is facing shortage of teachers in primary, secondary and higher education.

This programme will focus on training students, who aspire to become teachers, in professional colleges. Details of the programme are not available, but the indication is that the government is going to focus on teachers, reiterating its recognition that they remain the weakest link in the government’s school education efforts.

The programme is envisaged to benefit nearly 20,000 teacher trainees studying in Teacher Education Institutions.

The programme envisions to focus holistically on whole sector of education without fragmenting it based on levels and sectors and also to strengthen institutional mechanisms for strengthening vertical and lateral linkages. This would consolidate and strengthen on-going programmes related to teachers and teaching through effective coordination.

It will also provide an integrated platform for building synergies among all the existing initiatives and will attempt to create a comprehensive vehicle for Teacher/Faculty related programmes and schemes. The programme envisages augmenting capacity at individual level and also enhance institutional infrastructure to give impetus to training of teachers at pre-service and in service level.

Use digital technology for dispensing education: President

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November 13, 2014

President Pranab Mukherjee called the nation to harness digital technology to usher changes in education and to bridge the gap between digital ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’.

Inaugurating the National Education Day celebration which was the birth anniversary of India’s great freedom movement leader Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the President said that it is education that can lead to the trinity of progress, which are greater political participation, social emancipation and upward economic mobility. “We have traversed a long distance from just one out of four children in school in the early fifties to a school accessible to every child today and almost universal enrolment with gender parity. In recent times, our expenditure on education has risen – from 2.9 percent of GDP in 2008-09 to 3.3 percent in 2013-14.”

President Mukherjee extolled the exemplary contributions of Maulana Azad in nation building, Institution-building and particularly his indelible imprints in the field of education.

Emphasising on the importance of teachers in the education, Union Minister of Human Resource Development Smriti Irani said that they are the fulcrum of the entire education system. “Teacher should not merely be concerned with ‘income’ but also the ‘outcome’ to help improve the quality of education.” According to Irani, “the Mission of Unnat Bharat Abhiyan is to enable higher educational institutions to work with the people of rural India in identifying development challenges and evolving appropriate solutions for accelerating sustainable growth.”

Dr. Najma Heptullah, Minister of Minority Affairs said that there is a need to adopt a pragmatic view that blends modernity into tradition and synthesizes our inherent traditional strengths with modern day needs without losing our values.

New schemes launched on National Education Day

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November 13, 2014

National Education Day this year marks the 125^th birth anniversary of politician, scholar, and Bharat Ratna Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, acknowledging the occasion, the Ministry of Human Resources and Development launched new initiatives for the benefit of the education system in the country.

The new initiatives include Saksham, PRAGATI, SAMAVAY, Know your College and Unnat Bharat Abhiyan. The details of the schemes are given below:

* Saksham is a college level scholarship for the differently abled, needy and meritorious children.

* Providing Assistance for Girls Advancement in Technical Education Initiative or PRAGATI is an AICTE, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India scheme that envisions selection of one girl per family whose income is less than 6 lakhs per annum to pursue technical education. The scholarship amount under the scheme is Rs 30,000 for tuition fees and Rs 2,000 per month contingency allowance for 10 months.

* Skill Assessment Matrix for Vocational Advancement of Youth (SAMAVAY), allows multiple pathways between Vocational education – skills, education and job markets. This will facilitate India to harness the potential of young India.

* Know your College Portal is an application developed for helping a prospective student make a valued judgment of the college he / she wishes to join by providing him / her necessary information about the college.

* Unnat Bharat Abhiyan involves higher educational institutions to work with the people of rural India in identifying development challenges and evolving appropriate solutions for accelerating sustainable growth.

IIT Kharagpur plans to become international

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November 13, 2014

IIT Kharagpur will now go global as it plans to bring professors and scholars from foreign universities besides offering joint PhDs with top international institutes.

Ten professors from some of the world’s leading universities would come to the Kharagpur campus each year for few months, under the Shri Gopal Rajgarhia International Programme which was launched recently.

According to Director Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, around 30 talented international scholars would be invited each year to conduct research activities at IIT. He also mentioned that they were already in talks with leading universities from the US, Europe, Australia, and Japan.

Under the joint PhD programme, students would be awarded with the doctorate by IIT-Kharagpur and an international university.

“The students will study at both the places. There will be international workshops and activities with the foreign university,” Chakrabarti said.

The international programmes will start from the January session.

IIT Kharagpur’s distinguished alumni from the 1968 batch, Gopal Rajagarhia donated Rs 10 crore for funding the initiative.

“I was always keen to give it back to IIT. Its international ratings are poor because of low international exposure. With this program, we want the IIT to make its presence felt in the international arena so that its ranking improves as per our Vision 2020,” Rajgarhia said.

At present around 200 PhDs are awarded by the IIT each year which they hope to take it to 400.

“We want around 25 per cent of PhDs to be joint PhDs. We will also be getting foreign students to study here for such joint PhDs,” director Chakrabarti said.

Besides student and faculty exchange, the IIT is also adding an international component to its courses by offering micro specialisations with a foreign collaborator.

They have already started the International Summer Winter Programme wherein students and faculties from India and abroad are participating.

Leeds Beckett University celebrates 10 years presence in India

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November 13, 2014

Leeds Beckett University celebrated its 10^th anniversary in India in the presence of Vice Chancellor, Prof. Susan Price and other senior delegates from Leeds Beckett University. Vice Chancellor and other senior delegates from the University were on their maiden visiting to India to join the celebration at British Council. Other guests included, the Director of Education for the British Council in India, Richard Everitt, and a number of Indian graduates from Leeds Beckett

The university first began its operations in India in 2004 with its base in New Delhi. Since then, the team has recruited over 2,000 students for the Yorkshire institution as a facilitator to the Indian education system.

Speaking on the occasion Vice Chancellor, Prof.Susan Price said “We recently reached a milestone with the new name for our University as we became Leeds Beckett University and have made significant progress over the last few years and that is down to the hard work and dedication of staff and students. We don’t just help to create great graduates here at Leeds Beckett, but exceptional employees, dynamic citizens, and enterprising leaders. Over the last ten years we have enjoyed a number of fruitful academic and non-academic partnerships in India as well as sending our home students on a range of volunteering projects and we look forward to welcoming many more Indian students to Yorkshire in years to come.”

The Leeds Beckett University India Office is based in the business district area in South Delhi and provides support to students in India. India team of Leeds Beckett University also manages academic partnerships with some of India’s leading universities including Symbiosis International University and Manav Rachna University where exchange of students and academic conferences have taken place.

Speaking at the occasion, Ms. Jayashree Raghuram, Country Head, India – Leeds Beckett University, said, “I am delighted to have been part of this prestigious university’s journey in India for more than 10 years. The part I enjoy most is sharing the success stories of our alumni and students. We value these relations in India immensely.”

Ricoh India launches Ricoh IntelliClass for K12 schools

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November 13, 2014

Ricoh India Ltd., a market leader in Printing & Document solutions and IT services, has entered into the multimedia solutions for K12 School, with the launch of Ricoh IntelliClass. It is a state-of-the-art solution designed for Indian schools that offer modern multimedia classroom with world class content.

The solution was launched by Dr. Shayama Chona a renowned Educationist, Founder-President of Tamana Association and the former Principal of Delhi Public School, R. K. Puram, New Delhi.

Ricoh IntelliClass caters to the learning needs of the students and enables infrastructure that makes classrooms achieve global standards. IntelliClass is created keeping in mind different learning abilities of students of various age group. The classroom typically comes with PC, fingers touch interactive whiteboard, speakers, projectors, UPS & cabinets.

Ricoh IntelliClass content library helps teachers to create question banks, assessment, class test, class presentations, CCE worksheets and lesson plans from over 50000 chapter mapped questions. The unique lesson planner allows teachers to create their own interactive lesson plans. It will also help teachers form presentation from existing content as well as external sources and share lesson plan with other teachers, interactive virtual labs wherein students can learn through experiments.

Also present during the launch was Manoj Kumar, Executive Vice President and CEO, who stated, “Education market in India is estimated to be US$ 135 billion by 2020, of which the e-learning market alone will be US$ 7 billion. We expect huge increase in student population, 200 million in K-12 and 90 million in private schools. Ricoh IntelliClass solution is capable of providing quality education to students by helping them in better concept formation, concept elaboration, and academic achievement. We wish to make learning more interactive and interesting and take it beyond textbooks and chalkboard. With the introduction of Ricoh IntelliClass solution, we are committed to provide best in class education to the students for brighter future.”

IIM-C, Tata Group join hands to promote social entrepreneurship

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November 11, 2014

Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, in collaboration with Tata Group, has planned to popularise social entrepreneurship model among the companies for utilisation in their CSR initiatives. Both the groups together have been organising yearly competitions for social entrepreneurs since 2012.

Professor Ashok Banerjee, Dean (New Initiatives and External relations) of IIM-C, stated “We have expanded the scope and reach of Tata Social Entrepreneurship Challenge (TSEC) to include three more elements – conducting seminars, round tables and a revamped TSEC website to create a repository of all information on social entrepreneurship in India. In future, all the activities of TSEC will be held under the umbrella of IIM Calcutta Innovation Park – the newly formed incubator at IIM-C.

A nation-wide awareness campaign – ‘Thinking Social’ was also launched to include students and budding social entrepreneurs. For this campaign four seminars will be held in a year – one in each region in a tier II city. The first seminar has already taken place in IIT Guwahati on 1^st November.

The round table series, establishing link between CSR and social enterprises, will also kick off in New Delhi shortly.

IIM-C also planned to provide its professional expertise in CSR delivery, reporting and monitoring for the companies. Moreover, IIM-C would be responsible for monitoring, reviewing and certification for the social entrepreneurs who would contribute companies on CSR assignments. Meanwhile, TSEC has invited detailed business plan for its 2014-15 edition from early-stage (not older than three years) social enterprises or people with actionable ideas in the different areas.

EMC ties up with 27 Engg colleges to ready students job ready

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November 11, 2014

EMC, provider of IT storage hardware solutions, has tied up with 27 engineering colleges in Pune with the aim to prepare students for careers in the area of information storage and management. EMC will offer students ‘open’ curriculum-based education on topics like cloud computing, big data analytics and information storage and management.

The demand for trained software storage professionals is elevating due to accelerating growth of digital information. According to EMC Zinnov study, private cloud alone in India is expected to create 1 lakh jobs by 2015 from 10,000 in 2011. This demand is unlikely to be met.

Owing to this demand, the EMC Academic Alliance initiative will aim to bridge the skill-gap in a rapidly changing IT environment and prepare students for better employability. Over 120,000 students have been educated till date under this alliance.

The colleges associated with this alliance include Sinhgad College of Engineering, MIT College of Engineering, Sinhgad Institute of Technology and Science, D.Y.Patil Institute of Engineering & Technology and Maharashtra Institute of Technology.

NUS launches ALFI programme to prepare next-gen leaders

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November 11, 2014

The National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School has launched the Asia Leaders in Financial Institutions (ALFI) programme for senior directors and managing directors in the financial sector. This programme will provide an opportunity for candidates to assume regional and global responsibilities.

The ALFI programme, that will welcome its first cohort in September 2015, will have a curriculum that will be train candidates to strengthen thought leadership, professional competencies and change management skills during the test of times. Training on technological and service innovations would also be part of this curriculum.

S Dhanabalan, Chairman, NUS Business School’s Managemet Advisory Board and Honorary Advisor to Temasek Holdings, stated “The financial sector is becoming increasingly complex, and competition forces institutions and management to stretch the boundaries of business innovation and ethical frameworks. Management leaders in the sector require deeper skills, expertise and a clear sense of what is good for the institution, economy and society. ALFI will certainly help establish future leaders who are able to navigate and build financial institutions that will be relevant in the years ahead.”

After joining NUS alumni network, participants will have lifetime access to the B-School’s executive education programmes. During this time, the candidates will get the chance to visit leading financial institutions in cities such as New York, Beijing and Mumbai to meet top officials and financial sector leaders, over an eight-month period.

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