EDUCATION
Seeking teachers
THE Supreme Court recently annulled 25,000 appointments to government-run schools in West Bengal, upholding charges that there had been cheating in a selection examination and that bribes had also been paid for appointments. Of those whose jobs were gone, 17,000 were teachers who had been in service for 10 years
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‘Tech has to be teacher driven in schools’
MUCH store is being placed by online learning. Companies in the business of tutoring children are now being valued at billions of dollars. Word has been getting around that digitized learning is the way to bridge huge backlogs in education. But transforming the classroom through technology may not, however, be
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‘To implement NEP, teaching and learning must change’
WHEN campus recruitments begin to falter, particularly at prestigious institutions, it is a sign that all is not well with higher education. Degrees are meant to at least lead to employment. There are also elliptical goals such as advanced research and the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. If
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ASER fine print: Figuring out the 14 to 18 year bunch
THE problems with school education are there for all to see. Children get enrolled and teachers are better paid, but learning outcomes are up in the air. Children reach the last few years in school with abysmal capacities in maths and reading and writing. It is a grim situation with
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Girls learn, boys listen
THE ladies who run the civil society organization, Sukriti, recently went to address the general assembly of the Krishnachandrapur High School at Mathurapur, near the Sundarbans in South 24-Parganas. They had before them a distinctive sight — a huge gathering of several thousand youngsters. Being a coeducational school, it was
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Kids get to grow and sell veggies in Kerala schools
One day in the week, children in Thodupuzha taluk in Idukki district of Kerala carry two bags to school. One, of course, contains their books. The other has freshly harvested vegetables from their homestead gardens. If you peep inside, you will be surprised. Apart from familiar vegetables there are some
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Enterprise syllabus livens up classrooms in Delhi
During a 40-minute class, girls in Class 10 at the Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya, a government school, listen intently to terminologies taught in management courses. They soak in terms like optimisation of resources, team spirit, critical thinking, empathy and a whole lot more. The class is interactive and lively and spiked
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Teaching Dalits to ride for social horsepower
How do you get socially marginalised children to see themselves differently? One way is to put them on horses and teach them to ride. To be in the saddle is to be on top and in a position of control. It can be a transformative experience, which, in an instant,
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Parents who play make better sense to children
More play time makes children smarter. That’s what a project by Sesame Workshop and Lego Foundation called Play Every Day, implemented in low-resource communities in India, Mexico and South Africa, indicates. When parents and teachers helped children between three and six years old to play, the children not only had
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Govt school teachers get tech savvy with a little help
At a picturesque resort amidst a tea garden in Alipurduar district of West Bengal, 20 schoolteachers from remote government schools listened intently to Debasish Mondal, a head teacher. He was explaining how audio-visuals could be used to make teaching fun for students. Mondal, who is younger than some of his
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Field report: Children suffer learning loss
An extract from a field report by the Azim Premji University on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on school education SCHOOL closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic have led to either a complete disconnect from education for the vast majority of children or inadequate alternatives like community-based classes
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Students learn farming by getting down to it in the fields
Every week two or three teams of curious schoolchildren turn up at Deesan Farms, in Chittoor taluk of Palakkad district, to learn about farming. They get their hands dirty too. They dig, weed, plant, water and apply mulch. They visit the dairy farm and study the value-added unit which makes 22 products
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