Four year for Nursery is ok but the Delhi Government wants to implement the idea throughout the country. Over 80 percent students of CBSE belong to Delhi only as more than 900 schools in the city are either affiliated with Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) or follow CBSE curriculum. “We welcome the move of the Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal to raise minimum age for admission in nursery classes as it will be beneficial for both children and parents. But this should be uniformly implemented across all the states of the country”, Delhi’s Education Minister, Arvinder Singh told fachcha.com.

Reacting upon the recent proposal to raise minimum age for admission in schools, mooted by Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal, the Education Minister said that nothing could better for parents and children if all the states implement the proposal but if the proposal is limited for Delhi it is not good for Delhi’s students. “We will not let our students to lag behind for one year in terms of 10+2 or graduation in comparison with students of other students”, Arvinder Singh Said adding that in most of the cases Delhi normally used to follows Centre’s norms in this regard.

It is notable that except Central schools and some other schools, affiliated with CBSE, follow centre’s regulations in this regard but schools in other states (excepts Delhi) follow the regulations of state boards. It is normally discretion of State government in this regard as education comes under the concurrent list of the constitution. And, 85% students come from states’ schools only.

“HRD Minister should also try to increase the age bar for Civil Services, IITs, IIMs and other competitive examinations too”, Arvinder Singh told fachcha.com.

“Imagine the situation if a student of other state completes graduation in just 20 years and our students complete it in 21 year it will affect our student’s competitive edge as well as their career promotion and so many things”, he adds.

Third International Conference on Digital Libraries (ICDL 2010) inaugurated by Indian HRD Minister Kapil Sibal today in New Delhi. The conference is co-hosted by IGNOU and TERI. Delegates from various countries including USA are participating in the conference.
ICDL 2010 is being organized from 23rd to 26th February, 2010.The theme of the conference is ‘Digital Libraries: Shaping the Information Paradigm’ and the focus is on the strengths and potential of digital libraries and their role in education, cultural, social and economic development.
The International Conference will facilitate the availability of the rich repositories and connective links to the identified topics from the world’s libraries for students, researchers, scholars, teachers, trainers, writers, artists and other members of the Knowledge society. All libraries of the world will be networked for all domains of knowledge for sharing , research and development so that students will not have to visit libraries, but would be able to access any topic online.
Apart from the other aspects, this conference has special focus on web-based methodologies. IGNOU’s participation in the event would help it strengthen its arena of ICT, Web-based methodologies and digitization for promoting seamless access to all

The government has moved ahead to introduce SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) type for admission in different courses at the undergraduate level. The move may end the era of prestigious examinations like IIT-JEE, PMT and other entrance examination for professional courses after 10+2. The issue today discussed in a meeting of COBSE.

According to HRD Ministry the different boards may move towards a common entrance examination in these subjects in 2013. A task force is also being set up to formulate the modalities for this Common Entrance Exam. The HRD Ministry has already mooted the proposal in this regard and discussed it with different boards including Central School Organisation and Vice-Chancellors of Central Universities.

The experiment to conduct online test of two papers of Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) has completed successfully. Indian Institutes of Technology at Bombay, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras, Roorkee and the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore successfully conducted online Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) 2010 for two out of 21 papers on Monday.

Online tests were conducted for two subjects- Textile Engineering and Fiber Science (TF), and Mining Engineering (MN). Considering the recent cases of server failure during the IIM-CAT examination the GATE’s experiment became important for the government, especially for MHRD. The experiment was conducted simultaneously in eight cities over two shifts.

According to MHRD The experiment was conducted in GATE 2010 this year for the first time and depending upon the experience, online examination might be repeated on a larger scale in subsequent years. The offline version of the exam in other 19 papers shall be conducted all over the country on Feb 14, 2010. GATE is an all India examination conducted jointly by IISc and IITs on behalf of the National Coordination Board – GATE, Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD)..

After Xth the CBSE is now preparing itself to introduce grading system for XII too. Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal today said that the ministry is considering the modalities of introducing grade system in senior secondary classes.
The Ministry has already discussed the issue with the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangthan, Vice-Chancellors of Central Universities apart from CBSE. Sibal said that a committee on this issue has already been made. After the committee’s report the ministry will take view of CABE and CoBSE in this regard.
“Several issues are involved in introducing the grading system for 12th. The biggest hurdle is to get recognition from universities for it for admission in the undergraduate courses”, said a senior official of HRD Ministry. This is the reason that Ministry wants to introduce SAT-type test for admission in the undergraduate courses, he adds.