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HIMALAYAN MIRROR
EDUCATION/BOOKS
GANGTOK, MONDAY 30 MARCH 2015
Education system decaying due to
political interference: Delhi CM
New Delhi: Ruing
"decay" in education
system, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal
today said political
interference was responsible for the decline and
asserted that his government would not meddle
and only focus on providing resources to the
educational institutions.
Kejriwal said education is the "topmost priority" of the AAP government and it would
extend all possible assistance to the educational
institutions in their pursuit of excellence.
"Political interference
shiksha ko khaye ja rahi
hai (political interference has been decaying
the education system),"
Kejriwal said addressing
the 10th convocation of
Guru Gobind Singh
Indraprastha University
(GGSIPU).
The Chief Minister
said he has given the the
Vice Chancellor of the
university a "blank
cheque" and asked him
to prepare a blueprint to
make the institution one
of the top 100 universities in the world.
"I have given the VC a
blank cheque and have
asked him to prepare a
plan for the university so
it can stand among top
100 universities in the
world," he said.
Vice President Hamid
Ansari, who also attended
the
function,
expressed concern over
lack of research in the
country, saying only one
per cent of the students
enrolled in higher education are pursuing
research in various
areas. "This reflects a
lack of focus on
research. India's output
in PhDs is relatively
small and its share in
world output of science
papers in 2012 stood at
around 3.6 per cent compared to more than 14
per cent of China.
"We have to aim at
quadrupling
our
research and development base, stimulate
research where R&D
productivity is relatively
lower and build large
publicly funded an privately managed facilities to help researchers,"
he added.
The chief minister said
he will not allow any
political interference but
support the institutions
by providing all required
resources.
"Education is the topmost priority of our government and I assure
that there will be no
political interference. If
you want resources, if
you want amendments
in any laws or provision,
approach us we will
facilitate it but there will
be no interference from
government's side," he
added.
Jammu & Kashmir government reveals
vision about education
Jammu : Jammu and
Kashmir
Education
Minister Naeem Akhtar
said on Saturday that the
coalition government is
determined about course
correction in education
and the creation of a
knowledge-based society
in the state.
"Knowledge-wise,
J&K has historically
been the source of
knowledge and enlightenment in South Asia.
The first Buddhist conference was held in
Kashmir in the 4th century, this place was known
as Sharda Peeth (seat of
knowledge),"
Akhtar
said.
"Even up to contemporary times, iconic people
like Krishna Joo Razdan,
Shiv Kumar Sharma,
K.L. Sehgal and Mallika
Pukhraj were born here.
In not very distant past,
Lal Ded and Sheikh
Nuruddin Wali were
born. Wali set up the first
girls school in Kashmir
during times when girl
literacy was unheard of
in South Asia."
"Today our literacy
rate in J&K has dropped
to 6th rank in the country.
The vision is to achieve
100 percent literacy level
among females," Akhtar
told a media conference
on Saturday in winter
capital Jammu.
Akhtar said the present
education system in the
state is "a juggernaut
which is either focused
on employment or creation of infrastructure
and the least spoken
about in the present educational system of the
state is the child".
The minister said there
are at present 24,265
schools with 16.68 lakh
students and 1.43 lakh
teaching staff.
"This means in physical terms the state education department is half of
the entire state government. And yet, the passout percentage of government schools is 50%
which is 25% less than
that of private schools. In
the Jammu province during the last five years,
just four students have
figured in the top 20 in
the 10th class exams,"
Akhtar said. The minister
said the most difficult
problem for the department has been postings
and transfers of teachers.
"It is not fully verified,
but I have been told that
there has been a racket in
transfers and postings
and the racket goes right
up to the exam centre
where bids were held at
astronomical rates to
manage exams", he said.
The minister said all
this will have to change.
"We will ensure transparency, accountability
and efficiency. I will
make
government
schools competitive and
attractive so that people
send their children to
these schools and not pay
exorbitant rates at places
where education had
been reduced to a lucrative business," Akhtar
bypassed to push inconsistent
financial decisions such as
diverting Rs.172.56 crore out of
an OBC (other backward classes) grant meant for expansion in
teaching faculty and general
upgrade
of
infrastructure
towards purchase of laptops for
the batch of FYUP (four-year
undergraduate programme) students...as well as diversion of
funds from School of Open
Learning," Banerjee wrote.
Delhi University introduced
the four-year undergraduate
programme for students during
the rule of Congress-led UPA. It
was scrapped after the BJP
came to power at the Centre last
year.
Banerjee accused Delhi
University vice chancellor
Dinesh Singh of misusing emergency powers to amend statutes
and ordinances, take arbitrary
decisions on "routine matters
related to programmes and
courses of study", tenure and
processes of teaching and
administrative appointments.
"The VC ignored the government's reservation policy and
implemented his own version of
the 200-point reservation roster,
which denies the reserved categories their entitlements of
posts through the calculation of
historic shortfall and backlog..."
"VC of Delhi University
Dinesh Singh is responsible for
the current state of affairs," he
said.
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Mamata writes to Centre on
teacher shortage in Bengal
Kolkata: Chief Minister
Mamata Banerjee has
written to Union HRD
minister Smriti Irani with
a plea to consider
appointment of untrained
teachers for limited period as the state is reeling
under severe teacher
shortage in schools. The
state argues that while the
Centre has exempted
other states regarding the
same matter but has not
made similar reliefs for
Bengal.
The Union Ministry
has put an embargo on
the
appointment
of
untrained teachers from
last month. As per the
Centre's rule teachers
without training beyond
31 March, 2014 will not
be
considered
for
appointments. As per this
rule, teachers teaching
from Class 8 are required
to be trained. For Bengal,
the situation is bleak.
Recruitment of teachers
through School Service
Commission did not take
place in 2014 due to the
General Elections as the
Court had ordered not to
hold examinations scheduled on 29 and 30 March,
2014. Due to this lag, the
State is facing a crisis
hence the Chief Minister
has requested the Union
Minister to extend the
deadline so that the same
can be dealt with.
The Chief Minister has
informed
the
HRD
Minister that the State
Government intends to
train the para-teachers
and secondary teachers
with
Diploma
in
Elementary Education in
the future. In this regard,
the Government has also
written
to
National
Council for Teacher
Education (NCTE) with
the same proposal. The
Chief
Minister
has
requested HRD Minister
to look into the matter
and take immediate steps
so that this problem can
be dealt with at the earliest.
NDA, UPSEE exams clash, students at loss
Noida: Thousands of
students are in a
quandary as the UP
Entrance
Test
Examination (UPSEE 2015) clashes with that
of the National Defence
Academy (NDA), with
both scheduled for April
19. The Uttar Pradesh
Technical
University
(UPTU)
conducts
UPSEE for admission to
various engineering and
management
programmes in its affiliated
colleges.
The Union Public
Service
Commission
(UPSC) conducts the
NDA examination twice
a year. The officials of
UPTU and UPSC both
have ruled out any
change in their exam
schedule.
R K Khandal, UPTU
vice-chancellor, said that
the university announced
its entrance examination
date two months in
advance to avert clash of
dates with other examinations. "It's late and
nothing can be done
now. This happens
almost every year," he
told TOI. Over three lakh
students are expected to
appear in the UPSEE 2015.
The UPSEE for postgraduate programme is
scheduled on April 18
and for undergraduate
technical courses like
BTech, BArch, BFA is
on April 19. Thousands
of students have applied
for both NDA and
UPSEE and are now left
with no option but to
drop
one.
Dhurv
Sharma, a student, said
that he had applied for
both the examinations
and now he is in a dilemma. "UPSEE and NDA
are the two major examinations after Class XII.
The officials should
have coordinated well
before finalizing dates.
Why should students
suffer from their fault,"
he said.
Indian industry should donate to
academia: IIT-R director
said.
He also said that relocation of teachers to
places where their services
are
gainfully
utilised, postings of
teacher couples together
at convenient places
where they can deliver
and incentives like laptops to middle school
headmasters are just the
beginning to make the
turnaround possible.
SFI asks Smriti Irani to sack Delhi University VC
Kolkata : The CPI-M-backed
Students Federation of India
(SFI) on Thursday urged
Human Resource Development
Minister Smriti Irani to sack the
vice-chancellor
of
Delhi
University for alleged financial
irregularities and autocratic
decisions harming students'
interests.
SFI general secretary and
Rajya Sabha member Ritabrata
Banerjee, in a letter to the minister, said: "I am writing this letter with faith that the ministry,
under your able leadership, will
take this process to a logical end
and will sack this VC for the
unpardonable harm done to the
public education."
"Statutory
bodies
were
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The Rajya Sabha member
from West Bengal also accused
the vice chancellor of pushing
an allegedly "illegal B.Tech
course" without approval from
the concerned authorities,
which has put "future of more
than 6,000 students at risk".
"His continuation at the helm
of affairs (of the university) will
only do further harm to the university," Banerjee said.
Last Friday, the HRD ministry issued a "show of cause"
notice to Singh, asking him to
explain the situation resulting in
introduction of the controversial
FYUP and other allegations
against him.
The VC has been given 15
days to respond to the notice.
Roorkee(Uttarakhand):
IIT-Roorkee
Director
Pradipta Banerji said on
Saturday that Indian
industry should emulate
the Western model and
donate to academia in
India while addressing
the media on the sidelines of the Cognizance
festival.
He cited the examples
of Cornell University and
Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT)
which receive generous
funds from industry and
achieve great results.
Banerji gave his reasons
for the absence of IITs in
the list of the world's top
200 educational institutions which gets regular-
ly mentioned by the president of India.
"We did a study and
presented it. It is huge
that the IITs are within
the top 400 (best institutes) in the world
because our funding is
peanuts.
Their
one
department budget is
more than our institution
budget," said Banerji
comparing IITs with foreign state universities
like
University
of
California,
Berkeley,
University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor and National
University of Singapore.
The professor said that
if the financial muscle of
some foreign state universities is so much
greater in comparison to
IITs, then one can only
imagine the financial
might of foreign private
universities like Harvard
University.
He also said that there
are constraints in India
and funding just cannot
be raised from anywhere.
The professor also clarified that he is not expecting funding to be similar
to the foreign state universities he mentioned.
"The government tries
to help the IITs within
their constraints, if they
don't have the money,
where will they get the
money from."
Banerji wished the
continuation of funding
to IITs which existed two
years ago. It was Rs.190
crore for IIT-R. There is a
huge crunch of space and
need for more laboratories in IIT-R, he added.
IIT-R is building a
large lecture hall complex to centralize teaching and propel interdepartmental interaction
and collaboration. The
institute is planning to
free up the present class
room
buildings
to
redesign them into laboratories and faculty
rooms.
India faces shortage of five lakh teachers
New Delhi : India is
facing a shortage of
over five lakh teachers
while the deadline for
regularisation of teachers under Right to
Education Act is only
days away.
RTE Forum, a network of 10,000 grassroot
organisations
working in 18 states, on
Wednesday highlighted
that an additional 6.6
lakh teachers need
teacher-training.
"It's a crucial juncture
as the nation stands at
the threshold of the RTE
Act's deadline 31st
March,
2015.
Unfortunately, only 10
percent schools in India
presently comply with
all the norms and standards of the RTE Act,"
Ambarish Rai, national
convenor of the RTE
Forum, said.
"We are facing a
shortage of approximately 5 lakh teachers
and an additional 6.6
lakh teachers need
teacher-training.
These statistics are
particularly disappointing considering that
March 31, 2015, marks
the final deadline for
teacher regularization
and training," Rai said.
At a national convention held here, the
activists said new challenges have emerged as
over one lakh government schools have been
shut in multiple states,
including
Rajasthan,
Maharashtra, Gujarat,
K a r n a t a k a ,
Uttarakhand.
"What is concerning
is that the state continues to violate provisions
of the RTE Act, recruiting contractual and
untrained teachers with
less pay.
The status of teachertraining and teachertraining institutes is
equally poor; and there
is no clear road-map to
improve the situation
and quality of education," Rai said.
The activist added
that numerous low-cost
private schools have
emerged across the
country, segregating the
society furthermore on
the basis of people's
ability to pay.
"In such a scenario, it
is the extremely marginalized children of the
society who continue to
remain deprived of their
fundamental right to
free and compulsory
education," Rai said.