“Why are other government schools not as good? One-fourth the teachers in 10+2 rural schools remain absent. Admissions take place in good numbers but children who leave studies midway are sizeable,” Gandhi said at a function here, launching 31 new JNV buildings across the country via video conferencing.

She said all children had equal right to education and that other government schools should also meet the challenge of providing quality education to all children.

Lauding JNVs, which are residential schools from Class 6-12, she said they had been largely successful in attaining their objectives of providing quality education to talented children from predominantly rural areas.

Gandhi said education in JNVs should meet the requirements of the changing times.

Pointing out that children belonging to weaker sections were often not able to complete their education, she said scholarship schemes of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government should reach them.

Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said that the first two JNVs were started in 1985-86 and the government had planned to open a JNV in each district of the country.

He said that 78 percent of children in JNVs were from rural areas and 74 percent were from families where the father’s annual income was below Rs.48,000. He said 40 percent of students were from families where mothers were illiterate.

“Children from these schools have reached heights. The schools have recognised talent in villages,” he said.

Sibal added that the government planned to open JNVs dedicated to sports, culture and vocational education as well.

Manoj Singh, commissioner of the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti, said that nearly 4,500 children from JNVs get selected into engineering and medical courses and civil services every year.

He said 147 JNV students were selected in IITs and 3,286 in engineering colleges in 2009-10.

The JNVs that were inaugurated Wednesday are spread across various states, including Mizoram, Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Haryana.

The National Policy on Education, 1986, envisaged setting up of navodaya vidyalayas with an aim to provide excellence in education coupled with equity and social justice.

IANS

“Prof. Deepak Pental has broken his own previous record of shamelessness. Never before in the history of Delhi University has a person clung to the office of Vice-Chancellor after the expiry of five-year term without any grant of extension by the Visitor. The shameful self-appointment has ceased to shock because he continues to violate the law of the land in delaying and derailing investigation into and action against the criminal sale of radioactive material as scrap”, alleged DUTA in a press conference today.

The teachers’ body also blamed the ministry of Human Resource Development for the situation. “The HRD Minister Kapil Sibal used to visit foreign universities but he does not give a look to Indian universities like Delhi University, where irregularities, violation of statutes and ordinances have become daily norms. The HRD minister has become a mute spectator in the whole episode”, DUTA President Aditya Narayan Mishra said. He said that teachers will hold a Dharna on September 13th and march to MHRD if the Prof. Pental continue with VC office ‘illegally’.

“We have a foolproof plan for the entry of foreign universities. Any foreign varsity entering India will have to create a $12-million corpus fund and profits will not be allowed to be expatriated to shareholders,” Kapil told reporters here on the margins of a function.

Allaying concerns over the Foreign Educational Institutions (regulation of entry and operation, maintenance of quality and prevention of commercialisation) Bill, Sibal said they would have to re-invest 75 percent of profit in the school or university and the rest would become a part of the corpus fund.

“The bill is in line with the 2020 vision of top management guru C.K. Prahalad to create an educated talent pool with access to higher education for about 200 million people,” Sibal said.

Though foreign universities will have the right to form their own fee structure and admission rules, they will have to function within the purview of the Indian regulatory system, as envisaged in the Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act 2009.

“If we realise this vision through universalisation of education, attaining double digit growth and economic prosperity will be possible,” Sibal pointed out.

Sibal was in this tech hub to deliver the Vithal Chandavarkar memorial lecture at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc).

Chandavarkar was an industrialist, who served as Mayor of Bombay (now Mumbai) and also as vice-chancellor of the University of Mumbai.

IANS

“Teachers’ own value system, their character and their behaviour directly influence our children,” Singh said while addressing the winners of the Teacher’s Day awards here.

India celebrates Teacher’s Day Sep 5, in honour of the second president of India, academic-philosopher Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, whose birth anniversary falls that day.

“But, misinformation and limited learning behaviours that children sometimes internalise can also be traced back to teachers’ lack of knowledge, poor understanding, or biases. We must guard against these negative features,” the prime minister said.

Manmohan Singh expressed his worry over teachers being excluded from policy-making, governance and management of the educational system as well as “day-to-day instructional strategy and decision making”.

“In our endeavour for educational reforms we must, therefore, emphasize the empowerment of teachers and that includes real opportunity for them to share policy perspectives and decision-making in pursuit of educational development and reforms,” he said.

The prime minister said the government was committed to provide quality education to all.

“The Right to Education Act was passed by parliament last year. The Right to Education Act and Article 21-A of our Constitution guaranteeing elementary education as a Fundamental Right, have now become operational with effect from 1st April, 2010,” the prime minister said.

“I compliment and pay tribute to my colleague Kapil Sibal for the zeal, dedication and enthusiasm that he has brought to bear on the work of this most important ministry of Union Government, that Human Resource Development Ministry is,” the prime minister said.

He said no child, irrespective of caste, gender or community to which he or she belongs should dread the thought of going to school.

“The RTE Act bans corporal punishment and mental harassment. It also bans detention and expulsion,” the prime minister said.

In answer to the teachers who questioned how discipline could be maintained in the classroom, the prime minister said the answer to this important issue was given by the well known philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti: “Discipline is an easy way to control a child, but it does not help him to understand the problems involved in living… If the teacher can give full attention to each child, observing and helping him, then compulsion or domination or discipline in any form may be unnecessary”.

IANS

The meeting was chaired by Human Resource Development Minister, Kapil Sibal. D. Purandeswari, MOS, HRD, Secretary, DOT; Scientific Secretary to Principal Scientific Advisor; Chairman, UGC; Directors of IITs and other Central Institutions and Vice-Chancellors of many Central Universities attended the meeting.

In his reply, Sibal rejected the contention of opposition members that the Educational Tribunals Bill, 2010 had been brought in a hurry or the suggestions of the standing committee had been disregarded. He also said the bill will not have an impact on jurisdiction of states.

Sibal said that if the members wanted the bill to be deferred, he had no problems.

The bill provides for the establishment of educational tribunals for effective and expeditious adjudication of disputes involving teachers and other employees of higher educational institutions and other stakeholders (including students, universities, institutions and statutory regulatory authorities) and to adjudicate penalties for indulging in unfair practices in higher education.

IANS

“I had personally called up Viswanathan Anand at his hotel. I told him that we are sorry for what has transpired. As far as we are concerned, we were ready to give him the honorary doctorate today (Tuesday) evening itself,” Sibal told reporters.

The controversy began after HRD officials asked for confirmation of Anand’s citizenship before the University of Hyderabad conferred the doctorate on him at the International Congress for Mathematicians.

“But Anand indicated that this may be a problem. I said we are ready to award the degree any day it is convenient and he kindly agreed,” said Sibal.

Sibal said the issue came up due to bureaucratic procedures. “These are procedural issues.. if we have to send a proposal (on the issue) to the president, we have to send it in a bunch.” The president of India is the visitor of the university.

“Anand has done India proud on not just one occasion,” Sibal said.

IANS

“The committee is of view that education being a concurrent subject, the proposal for setting up state education tribunals needed a wider consultation process involving all the state and union territory governments,” the report said.

“With only very few states having formally supported the proposed bill and in the absence of any opposition from a majority of the states and union territories, their presumed support does not seem to be very convincing,” it said.

The bill provides for the establishment of educational tribunals “for effective and expeditious adjudication of disputes involving teachers and other employees of higher educational institutions and other stake holders (including students, universities, institutions and statutory regulatory authorities) and to adjudicate penalties for indulging in unfair practices in higher education and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto”.

The committee also underlined that there was no consultation with central universities and private institutions.

The committee however welcomed the meassure, stating that it was desired in the present scenario as the education sector grows.

“The phenomenal growth of higher education institutions, specifically in the private sector, with new diversifying courses emerging in the recent past has no doubt resulted indirectly in the disturbing increase in number of court cases,” the report said.

“Against this backdrop, the committee welcomes the proposed legislation for setting up dedicated tribunals for resolving disputes,” it added.

(IANS)

Terming these as heritage schools, the NCERT will restore them to carry forward the ideologies behind these institutions.

“During the freedom struggle, eminent educational thinkers in different parts of the country had started a number of innovative schools,” Minister of State in the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry D. Purandeswari said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

“Many such schools are languishing due to unsustainability of innovative ideas and ethos marked by a persistent pressure to conform and lack of financial resources,” he added.

These schools will be selected from among those founded during the Indian freedom movement inspired by nationalist educational philosophy, “representing a heritage of innovating pedagogy, having innovating learning material using local knowledge, inculcating dignity of labour”.

The criteria also includes the schools to be attempting all-round development of personalities, engaging actively with local community and instilling values of democratic participation.

“The selected heritage schools were provided academic and financial support and the impact was monitored periodically,” the minister said.

According to the HRD ministry, five heritage schools were supported with financial assistance of Rs.2 lakh each during 2007-08.

The apex body for regulating universities told the court that the government may or may not accept its recommendation or even call for more inputs on its own while taking a decision on the status of a deemed university.

An apex court bench of Justice Dalveer Bhandari and Justice Deepak Verma was told this during the hearing of petitions filed by 44 deemed universities challenging the Tandon Committee report which had recommended the termination of their deemed university status.

Meanwhile, the court asked the central government to file its reply to the petitions by 44 deemed universities faced with prospects of losing their current status on the basis of Tandon committee report. The government will file its reply on each of the deemed universities individually.

The court passed its order after the petitioner universities declined the its (court’s) offer that the central government would issue them a fresh show cause notice and the aggrieved universities could submit their replies to the same.

The court suggested that if needed central teams could visit these deemed universities for inspection.

The senior counsel Fali Nariman, appearing for one of the deemed universities under threat of derecognition, said: “We don’t want a truncated decision (that is based on the recommendations of the Tandon Committee report).”

He said that the UGC was an autonomous body overseeing the functioning of the universities and only its decision about their status was valid.

Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium told the court that the government was not going to turn its back on the Tandon Committee.

He said that it was the government which had the final word on the status of the universities, including deemed universities in the instant case.

“I want to be clear that if my friends (Nariman and other senior counsel) want to get rid of Tandon Committee then it is not acceptable to us,” said Subramanium.

At this, Justice Bhandari said that if we have the figure of 44 (deemed universities) then Tandon is there.

Senior counsel K.K. Venugopal wanted to include all the universities that were under the scanner of the Tandon Committee to be made party to the on going litigation.

Justice Deepak Verma said: “Why are you concerned about others. You satisfy us about yourself”.

The solicitor general intervened and said that this was not a fishing inquiry. “I don’t want to intimidate my friends. I have material (against them) in six volumes,” he said.

The Tandon committee’s recommendation last year to derecognise the petitioner universities was accepted by the government in principal.

The court was hearing a matter related to a public interest litigation questioning the quality of educational facilities in deemed universities. (IANS)