Despite funding, drop in education standards in India: Survey

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January 17, 2014

The annual survey done by the Indian education research group Pratham reveals that the standards of education in rural India have declined every year since 2009 despite huge government investments in the field.
The Right to Education Act passed in 2009 guarantees state schooling for children from six to 14 years of age but the study said that the enrollment levels reached 96 percent in this age category in 2013, a marginal difference from 2012. The survey showed that in 2009, 52.8 percent of children in standard five across government and private schools were able to read a text from standard two, this fell to 47 percent in 2013. The enrollment of children in private schools increased slightly in 2013 to 29 percent. This number was just 18.7 percent in 2006. The report pointed out that the guarantee of education is meaningless without satisfactory learning. There are serious implications for India’s equity and growth if basic learning outcomes do not improve soon. The survey was conducted in 16,000 villages across the country and covered about 600,000 students in government and private schools in rural areas.

Indian Institute of Packaging organises INDPACK 2014

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January 16, 2014

Indian Institute of Packaging (IIP), a premier institute and an autonomous body working under the administrative control of Ministry of Commerce and Industry is organising 16th edition of National Packaging Exhibition and Conference, INDPACK 2014 on 16-18, 2014.

The main objective of INDPACK 2014 is to provide Indian packaging industry a unique platform where the industry would showcase state of the art packaging technology and machinery, products and services along with international companies providing effective packaging solutions in terms of costs, productivity suitability and quality. The three days exhibition, INDPACK 2014, will witness participation of about 90 exhibitors from all over India.

As compared to the global context, in India, the value addition to food production is only 7%, the same is 23% in China. To realize India’s potential in this industry, the government has set an investment target of US$25.07 billion by 2015 to double India’s share in global food trade from 1.6 percent to 3 percent, increasing processing of perishable food from 6 percent to 20 percent and value additions from 20 percent to 35 percent. Inaugurating the conference K Chandramouli, IAS, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, said that while India has abundant food supply, the processed food industry is still in its nascent stages, only 2 percent of fruits and vegetables and 15 percent of milk is processed. The opportunity for collaboration and improvement through conferences such as these is huge.

Nursery admission put on hold

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January 16, 2014

Delhi government told the High Court on January 15 that the nursery admission will begin only after an order is passed on the petition of certain unaided private schools challenging the new admission guidelines.
The Delhi High Court heard a plea of the city’s private schools challenging the government’s notification on the criteria for nursery admissions in the capital. A division bench comprising Chief Justice NV Ramana and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw reserved the order after hearing both the parties. The nursery admission process is now on hold after the government told the bench that it would wait for the court’s decision on the issue before commencing the admission process.

Convocation of Gujarat Technological University to be webcast live

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January 16, 2014

Gujarat Technological University (GTU) will webcast its third convocation live which will be held at university’s Chandkheda Campus on January 16. The Governor of Gujarat and the chancellor of GTU Dr Kamla will present the degrees to all the eligible students of GTU.
A total of 62,687 students will be awarded degrees at the ceremony. GTU will also confer an honorary doctorate to Dr Vijay Bhatkar, the architect of India’s national initiative in supercomputing. The Chairman of All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), S S Mantha is also expected to be present at the convocation. A total of 143 students will be awarded gold medals in nine courses. More than 5,000 students are expected to receive their degrees personally and others can watch the convocation ceremony by accessing the link given on the website of the university.

Mumbai University introduces new courses

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January 16, 2014

University of Mumbai is all set to introduce three new courses starting from January and February this year. The courses anchored at the extra-mural centre of the university are gardening course in Marathi, garden craft course in English and ornamental aquarium fish keeping and breeding course.
Gardening course in Marathi is an intensive course for gardening and farmhouse makers. The garden craft course which is taught in English is a 15 sessions course meant for small gardens and ornamental gardening. The ornamental aquarium fish keeping and breeding course commencing from February will cover training in setting up an aquarium, maintenance, aquatic flora, types of freshwater ornamental fish, marine aquarium setting and maintenance, preparing fish foods, breeding techniques of fresh water ornamental fish. All the courses will be taught by expert professionals. The admission procedure for all the courses is quiet simple as extra-mural does not keep age and qualifications bars.

Government plans to formulate ‘national standards’ for schools’ performance

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January 15, 2014

The government is planning to formulate ‘national standards’ for schools’ performance with the aim to keep the students and parents informed about various activities of the schools. The initiative will help in highlighting the schools which are performing well and which are not. This will help the parents take a well informed decision. The move becomes significant in light of reports which suggest that learning outcome is still far from satisfactory in both primary and upper primary classes.
National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and UNICEF had organized a convention to evaluate the progress of RTE after three years and the performance of the states especially after the three year deadline to implement the infrastructure requirement that came to an end on March 31, 2013. Speaking at the convention, senior HRD Ministry official Brinda Swarup said that though a lot has been achieved in meeting the RTE parameters, much more grounds need to be covered. As against the target of 19.82 lakh teachers, 14.80 lakh have been recruited as of September 30, 2013.

Nursery admissions to begin from January 17

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January 15, 2014

The nursery admissions in Delhi which were about to begin from January 15 will now start from January 17, as told by the Delhi government to the High court on January 13. The date has been deferred by two days on account of the hearing on January 13 on a challenge to the new nursery guidelines which remained inconclusive.
The government said that it would wait for the outcome of the next hearing on the petition filed by a group of private schools to put a stay on the notification laying out new criteria for nursery admissions in the capital. In the petition, the schools had urged the court to grant interim stay on the notification but the court declined to stay the process and said that the matter will be taken up in the next hearing by a proper bench which will decide the later course.

Apeejay School, Noida conferred the ‘Best School with Outstanding Academics in Delhi-NCR’

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January 15, 2014

Apeejay School, Noida conferred the ‘Best School with Outstanding Academics in Delhi-NCR’

Apeejay School, Noida has been awarded as the ‘Best School with Outstanding Academics in Delhi-NCR’ by Royal Brands Pvt. Ltd. The award was presented by Kapil Sibal, Union Minister of Communication and Information Technology & Law and Justice.
Schools like Shalom Presidency, Banyan Tree World School and Indus Valley Public School also participated in the award ceremony. The winner was announced using the Royal Brands Indicative Consumer Insights (RBICI) TM Methodology, a proprietary tool of Royal Brands, to arrive at the final brand score. Factors like trust, belongingness, loyalty, providing quality and valuable services were considered while selecting the best school by Royal Brands Pvt. Ltd.

CAT 2013 results out, 8 students score 100 percentile

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January 15, 2014

Common Admission Test (CAT) 2013 results have been declared and eight candidates have scored 100 percentile. Incidentally, all of them are from engineering background.
Among the toppers, six candidates have done B Tech and two candidates have completed M Tech and three of them also have work experience of one to two years in sectors like automobile, banking services and information technology. Mumbai has highest number of toppers (three), New Delhi and Hyderabad have one each, and the other three are from Samalkot, Secunderabad and Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh.
Surprisingly, this year no female candidate could score a 100 percentile and only one female could make it to the 99.9 percentile group of ten students. Nearly 1.75 lakh students appeared for CAT 2013, of which 50,000 were female candidates. The number of students appearing for CAT registered a decline in 2013 and the number of students securing 100 percentile has also seen a fall as compared to CAT 2012.