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.