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.