English is No.2 medium in Indian schools

English has become the second largest medium in India's primary schools after Hindi. In year 2006, it was fourth behind Marathi and Bengali.

More details: timesofindia

NCERT studies mood of kids

NCERT is conducting a unique study to gauge the student's emotions in schools.

Students were asked to write critical incidents of their school life: one positive and one negative. Then there were incomplete sentences that children were asked to complete. These sentences ran thus: Going to school makes me ---, What I like myself as a student is ---, What I don't like myself as a student is ---, While learning in school I feel pressurised when ---, I do not like teachers who ---, I like the teacher when ---.

Results showed that three key emotions common in class VII, IX and XI were happy, good and interested. Three negative emotions were boring, sad and do not like.

For details: timesofindia

School Dropouts CRY

Many problems of the state's poor children were brought to the fore in an event organized by the NGO, Child Rights and You (CRY), where children were brought to Bangalore from across the state.

From DNA,
Rekha, 14, from Hassan district said, "I have studied till class 9. My teacher used to compare me with students from the upper castes, and ask me not to come to school at all.
Not just that, the school had no toilet or drinking water, and roof was the sort that might just cave in. I would like to study, but not at that school, not with that teacher."

There were at least 200 children at the public hearing, who poured out their complaints to a panel comprising CS Dwarkanath, chairperson, Karnataka State Commission for Backward Classes, Mathew Philips, director, South India Cell for Human Rights Education and Monitoring, (SICHREM), education activist Nandini and High Court advocate BT Venkatesh. The panel submitted its recommendations to CRY.

Three recommendations

The right of children to free and compulsory education should be extended to cover all children in the age group 0 - 8. Every habitation should have a school within one km.

Eduction is the responsibility of the state, and all children between 0-18 years should be able to avail it.

All schools should have teachers trained to teach children with disability. And all disabled children too should have easy access to schools. All children should be treated equally at school; stringent action should be initiated against school authorities found violating the provisions of the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989.

Allocate minimum of 10% of GDP to school education alone (10+2) Make human rights and gender education compulsory in school curriculum.

Let us hope something come out of this exercise.

Scrapping class X exam an experiment: PM

PM said in an interaction with school children to mark the birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru that the issue of scrapping the class X exam is still in debate phase. He also said that this is an experiment and decisions should not be taken in haste.

In September, the HRD ministry had announced that the compulsory CBSE class X board exam will become optional from the next academic year (2010-11) while a grading system will be in place from the current year.

Microsoft launches shared resource computing

Microsoft launched its newest entry into the shared resource computing category: Windows MultiPoint Server 2010, an educational solution that extends the reach of technology in learning environments like classrooms, labs, and libraries by allowing multiple users to leverage the resources of a single computer, giving more students access to Windows technology that can help them to learn, share, produce, communicate and positively impact their future employability.

Designed for educational institutions with limited IT resources, Windows MultiPoint Server 2010 enables schools to access technology at a lower overall total cost of ownership with lower ongoing operations costs per user. More details here.

NComputing offers a similar device which enables muliple users to share the computing resources.

Intel Launches Text-to-Speech Mobile E-Reader For Disabled

Intel has launched the Reader, a mobile device that converts printed text to digital text and reads it aloud to the user. It s a paperback-sized device that can take a picture of printed text with its 5 megapixel camera and convert it to speech. The company hopes the $1,499 system will serve millions of people with dyslexia and difficulty seeing printed text.

Intel Reader uses an Atom processor and 4 Gbyte Intel flash drive as well as Intel's Moblin mobile Linux operating system. The 4 Gbyte card can hold 600 processed page or 500,000 raw text pages.

The Intel Reader aims to address a wide variety of ad hoc reading needs from books and newspapers to instructions and poster. Some existing electronic readers sport text-to speech software, but they don't support full speech-based menus or enlarge font sizes the way the Intel Reader does.

More details here.

NGO to reach underpriviledged children to teach English

Times Foundation has partnered NGO Yuva Unstoppable to reach English to every child across weaker sections of society.

English Unstoppable — an ambitious, three-month-long project to make underprivileged children read and write English — will be launched in Ahmedabad and Mumbai simultaneously on November 16, with a huge support from the corporate world. India Inc has agreed to send its employees to teach English at municipal schools in the two cities for two hours every week. Details here.

Kids to bridge urban-rural divide

(source timesofindia) In a kind of exchange programme, students at St. Xavier's School, Dhobi Talao, will be going to schools in villages so that they can experience the environment there. While the kids from villages will come St. Xavier's and experience the urban life.

The aim - "Any kind of exchange broadens the horizons for both parties. Kids from the city will learn to open their minds and hearts to those less fortunate than themselves. And children from rural areas will strive for more in their lives,'' said Fr Errol Fernandes SJ, the rector of St Xavier's School.

Lets hope we see more such exchange programmes.

When should formal learning start for kids?

Is it four, five or six? An elaborate article on BBC news discusses the age for starting formal education in primary schools in England.

"There is no evidence that an early introduction to formal learning has any benefit, the review says, but there are suggestions it can do some harm."

The situation in India is not much different, where kids start going to schools (nursery) at age of three. And it is not just the play component that is introduced to the kids at this age. Proponents of early education claim that the learning power of people deteriorate as they grow old so its better to catch them young.

Nothing has been proven for sure, in absence of which, the best strategy is to take a path midway.

School Students to design Google Doodle for Children’s Day

(Source) Institute of Design (NID) and search engine Google have teamed up for the Doodle4Google” competition (the special logos are called “doodles”) — open for any child in India studying between classes I and X. Google has conducted such competitions in the West, but this year it will reach out to the Indian students with the theme — “My India”. The search engine has sent brochures to at least 10,000 schools and spread advertisements online. Faculty from the NID have volunteered to do the judging.

So all the best to all the students who are participating!

I, Pencil

"I, Pencil" is an essay by Leonard Read. It was first published in the December, 1958 issue of The Freeman.

"I, Pencil" is written in the first person from the point of view of an Eberhard Faber pencil. The pencil details the complexity of its own creation, listing its components (cedar, lacquer, graphite, ferrule, factice, pumice, wax, glue) and the numerous people involved, down to the sweeper in the factory and the lighthouse keeper guiding the shipment into port.

Interesting read: I, Pencil

Missing Teachers

An astounding news in the economic times reveal that 4.17 lakh primary schools in India have one or at best two teachers. And that's 54% of all primary schools in the country.

Worse, the number of primary schools with three or less number of teachers is as high as 5.49 lakh - that's a staggering 71.5%.

Its another signal to government that it should stop opening more IITs/IIMs and pay more attention to the primary education in India!

And a problem area to target for entrepreneurs!

CBSE Schools to be rated

(Source: The Telegraph) All Central Board of Secondary Education schools will need to undergo formal accreditation by a set of licensed agencies, and will be required to repeat the process after every few years.

A CBSE draft note suggests amendments to the board’s affiliation and examination by-laws, laying down that every school must get itself accredited, and that this must be done within a time limit. The note suggests “a span of three to five years”.

There are around 10,500 schools affiliated to CBSE. CBSE schools will be rated by:

- Faculty, including their qualification
- Assessment, evaluation and admission procedures
- Infrastructure and facilities
- Health and safety mechanisms

Does class size matter?

This article in New York Times posts some data on the size of primary and secondary classrooms for OECD countries. An average size of class size in American primary schools is around 23.1 students compared to 21.4 average in OECD countries. The comments at the end of the article are more interesting!

India rural schools get broadband-connected

Source: EE Times India

"Qualcomm Inc. and the Azim Premji Foundation announced an initiative that will advance Web-enabled educational content and provide wireless broadband to rural and government-run schools in India.

In its pilot phase, the initiative will connect close to forty government-run schools in underserved communities across four states—Gujarat, Karnataka, Orissa and Rajasthan. The project is aimed at impacting government schools through provision of wireless broadband technologies and facilitates enriched learning experiences for students through engaging Web-enabled and regionalised/contextualised educational content that can be easily updated and disseminated broadly."

Are internet and phones damaging education?

That is what study carried out by the Cranfield School of Management in the UK reveals. The research points that almost 60 percent of schoolchildren are guilty of lifting content directly from online sources when completing homework beyond the gaze of their teachers. Some 25 percent of those students also intimated through the survey that copying online information was acceptable – despite acknowledging that to do so was plagiarism.

But what about the positive contribution of internet in education? Do you think than the negative overpowers the positives?

Rohan climbs to raise money for kids

Rohan Paramesh, a high school student recently scaled the 4,000 metre high Mount Rainier near Seattle to raise money for schools for underprivileged Indian children. He has raised $13,882 (roughly Rs 6.8 lakh), 92% of his target of $15,000.

Source: TOI

"I wanted to make math fun and simple. I made card games for geometry and addition, a dice game for arithmetic, and a bingo (housie) game for geometry that could be played as a class.''

The games have been formally recognised by the state, and at least three are widely used in schools, he notes with satisfaction. Since Eureka reaches more than a million students in over 9,000 schools in Tamil Nadu, Rohan's work is helping thousands of children.

Intel celebrates 10 years of Intel Education Program

Intel Education Program in India announced a significant milestone with approximately one million teachers, teacher educators and student teachers having completed the Intel Teach program during the past 10 years, across 20 states and 73 universities in the country. Globally, Intel has trained over six million teachers across 50 countries and India is the second country to reach this milestone. Details here.

Bye Bye Class X exam

CBSE has approved making class X exams optional in all the CBSE schools. Mr. Kapil Sibal is determined to change the education system in India for good or bad. The time will tell how these actions turn out.

Board exams were becoming really very competitive with students aiming for 95+% percentages as having just 80-90% started meaning nothing. Lets hope this decision will ease some pressure from them.

Another thing to watch is how this "optional" case will be taken up by the schools.

Update: Some parents and teachers are not happy about this decision. They feel that the decision will result in students taking their exams casually and no accountability can be fixed for poor performance. (Source)

Top ten Education related inventions

An interesting two-part article (hear and here) on examiner.com lists down the top ten education related inventions. The list includes inventions like the alphabet, printing press, periodic table, dictionary and pens and pencils. The list also includes the computer and internet in one point. The list is very subjective based on author's opinion so one may not agree with all the rankings.

How is this list going to look like several years down the line? In my opinion internet is going to play a bigger role in education and hence more inventions related to it are going to come up in the top ten [or top hundred - the list will have to be bigger as the number of inventions are going to increase multiple fold]. Some technologies , which can make it big and I can think of at this moment, are netbooks, low cost laptops, e-book readers, e-learning and m-learning.

What do you say about the list?

Sam Pitroda bats for liberal arts education

Sam Pitroda said during a conference in Higher Education Policies in India, China and the United States that too much focus on engineering and medical education has created a situation in India where liberal arts dir not get the kind of attention it deserved.

"A good liberal arts education is important to produce leaders. India has now begun to recognizse that we need not only world class engineering education, we also need world-class liberal arts education."

"And, we agreed that the model we have in (University of) Chicago or Harvard is a model that we need to look at, but it needs to be Indianised -- it has to be of a local context,"

More details here.

2,500 model schools on PPP model in two years

Government is planning to set up over 2,500 model and 200 central schools on public-private- partnership (PPP) basis in the country in next two years.

Details here

"About 1.5 lakh Indian students are going abroad for education. We will like to provide all facilities in the country so that students need not go to foreign countries."

Sibal also said only 12 out of 100 students reach the graduation level in India, while the figure was 85 in the US and added that the Central universities in backward places like Koraput could help students get into higher learning.

Class 10th board

Our education minister Mr. Kapil Sibal is considering doing away with the Class 10 Board examination, and setting up an alternative evaluation system based on percentiles, not percentages. Sometime back he was in the news seen batting for a unified board all over India. In fact, he has been in the news almost every week since he became the education minister with his new ideas hitting the headlines.

However it is not very clear what he means by doing away with board exams and setting percentile system and not percentages. If the aim is to reduce the stress and trauma faced by students undertaking, it is very likely that there will be more stress with percentile system as it is a better measure of relative competitiveness.

Anyways, it is better start thinking about these issues rather than do nothing. Lets hope he gets somewhere in reforming the education space in India.

Meanwhile, parents and students are rejoicing over this news.