Category: Education

Education

Fee Controversy: Parents urge LG to direct schools to curtail monthly fee

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While the government has imposed a strict lockdown for more than three weeks in view of surge in Covid-19 cases, the parents of those wards studying in private schools on Tuesday appealed the LG administration to issue directions to private schools to curtail the tuition and transportation fee. The parents told the news agency, that they have not earned a single penny during the ongoing and previous Covid-19 lockdown and can’t afford to pay the tuition fee and other charges. One of the parents Manzoor Ahmad, who have been working…

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As on-campus facilities remain closed, Schools must reduce fees: Supreme Court

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As on-campus facilities remain closed, Schools must reduce fees - Supreme Court

While listening to a bunch of pleas by private unaided schools of Rajasthan against the state government’s order to forego 30 per cent of the tuition fee during the pandemic, the bench agreed that schools had to reduce the fees. Amid calls to slash school fees, Supreme Court has asked educational institutions to reduce fees as their running costs have come down with offline class and on-campus facilities remaining closed. Bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar and Dinesh Maheshwari said that schools must be sensitive to the problems faced by people…

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After two years of lockdown children from across the Kashmir Valley started returning to schools

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Schools across Kashmir have reopened after nearly two years of home learning forced by back-to-back lockdowns. Initially closed after the disputed region’s partial autonomy was revoked in 2019, the schools were shut again after the coronavirus was declared a pandemic in March 2020. It was the day Waseem, a 16-year-old grade 10 student had been waiting for. “We were away from friends, from school which impacted our mental health. We used to feel depressed as we had no one to talk to and our classes also got impacted.” But the…

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When should schools be reopened?

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State governments are in a dilemma – should schools be opened when the epidemic is still raging? T Jacob John, Dhanya Dharmapalan Across India, about 1.5 million schools were shut as part of the nation-wide lockdown, affecting 247 million children, from midnight of 24 March 2020. During the initial lockdown period, which was set at 21 days, the number of infections increased 2,100 per cent, from 536 to 11,487, according to official figures. Although the spread of the epidemic was disappointing, yet, by removing school children as vectors of transmission,…

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Emphasis on Indian culture reflects RSS sway on New Education Policy

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The RSS, which is the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s ideological fount, has been pushing for a review of the education policy to Indianize it further . It has also sought rewriting of History textbooks from what it calls an Indian perspective. The renaming of human resource development (HRD) ministry as education ministry, and the emphasis on Indian arts, languages, and culture reflect the Rashtriya Syawamsevak Sangh (RSS)’s influence on the New Education Policy (NEP). The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved NEP, which also seeks to increase public spending on education…

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Scrapping of Article 370 and developments of J&K from 2002 onward added to Class 12 syllabus

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The NCERT has revised a chapter in its Class 12 political science textbook to drop a paragraph on separatist politics in Jammu and Kashmir and to add a brief mention of the scrapping of its special status last year. The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has revised the chapter in the textbook “Politics in India since Independence” for the academic session 2020-21. While the topic “Separatism and Beyond” has been deleted from the chapter, the scrapping of Article 370, which gave the erstwhile state of Jammu and…

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As life moves Online amid the Pandemic, Education system in Kashmir is left behind in the absence of fast internet

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The 4G internet ban in Jammu and Kashmir has left teachers and students struggling. By: Ishfaq Majid and Shazia Kouser The internet is often in the news in Jammu and Kashmir. After abrogating Article 370 on August 5, 2019, the central administration suspended internet services in Jammu and Kashmir, fearing for the law and order situation. Months later, in the first week of March 2020, the authorities restored internet services but restricted the speed to 2G. We recently tested the speed of the internet on Airtel and Jio, two internet…

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Government’s move to open schools in J&K evokes strong reaction

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A day after the Education Department announced to devise a strategy for opening schools in mid-June, former chairperson of the J&K Women Commission, Vasundra Pathak Masoodi, termed the action as “an abject contravention and violation of the guidelines issued by the Union Home Ministry under the National Disaster Act”. In a letter written to the Lieutenant Governor, Masoodi, who is a Supreme Court advocate, took strong exception of the circular issued by the School Education Department, Government of Jammu and Kashmir, Civil Secretariat, Srinagar, in which it was mentioned that…

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Align state curriculum with national standard: MHA

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The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has directed the J&K authorities to accelerate the sports activities in the state and bring the curriculum of the Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education (JKBOSE) on a par with the national curriculum.The authorities have also been directed to “identify the madrassas and bring them under formal education”. “These measures would be taken to streamline the mess that the state is in. These are developmental projects for the betterment of the state youth,” said a senior official in the administration. The directions by…

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Attacks on Kashmiris continue, Student allegedly attacked in Bengaluru

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There seems to be no end to attacks on innocent Kashmiris are are continuing after the Pulwama attack, in which 49 CRPF personnel were killed. In the latest incident, a Kashmiri student residing in Bengaluru was brutally attacked by four men. The reason behind the attack is yet to be ascertained. 24-year-old Absar Zahoor Dhar was assaulted by youths in AECS Layout near HAL in southeast Bengaluru. The victim who is studying civil engineering suffered grave injuries to his hand, head and face. Reportedly, the victim does modelling to fund…

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