Whatever be the merits of the case against the cartoon, the matter should not be treated as one of mere executive discretion. This establishes the kind of precedent that should be avoided.  Such issues are bound to come up from time to time, therefore appropriate procedures have to be followed, such as the setting up of a committee of academics to look into each case, so that summary judgments of the ministers concerned, under political pressures of various kinds, do not determine the contents of our academic syllabi.

 We strongly condemn the vandalism perpetrated by a group of people in the office of Professor Suhas Palshikar, one of the advisors for the textbook. Such vandalism is fundamentally antithetical to the democratic values cherished by Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar for which he is  justly revered by all Indians.

 The signatories are:

Romila Thapar,  Prabhat Patnaik, Zoya Hasan, Amitabh Kundu,  Mushirul Hasan,  C P Chandrasekar, Pralay Kanungo, Gopal Guru, Jayati Ghosh, Ram Rahman,   N K Sharma,        Sudhanva Deshpande, Rajendra Prasad,  P K Shukla  and    M K Raina.

A scheme for setting up 20 new IIITs on Public Private Partnership (PPP) model has been approved by Government at a capital cost of Rs. 128.00 crore for each IIIT to be contributed in the ratio of 50:30:15 by the Central Government, the State Government and the Industry respectively (57.5:35:7.5 in the case of North Eastern region).  The concerned State Government will  provide 50-100 acres of land, free of cost and initially the new IIITs would be registered as Societies under the Societies Registration Act, 1860.

This information was given by the Minister of State for Human Resource  Development, Dr. D. Purandeswari, in written reply to a question in Lok  Sabha

Under its platform, Rural Educational and Economic Development (REED), the organization has not only constructed the buildings of basic multipurpose one-teacher schools but also appointed trained Telugu-speaking teachers.

“We will run these schools for two years and thereafter hand over the management to local Muslims,” Ahsan Syed, a member on IMRC board, told IANS during his recent visit to Hyderabad.

It was three years ago that IMRC got a survey conducted on the socio-economic conditions of Muslims in coastal Andhra villages. Appalled by the utter poverty, illiteracy and inequality, it decided to launch the project, but despite its offer for total funding of the project, no organization came forward to undertake the work. It finally launched the project with the help of some individuals.

The mosques-cum-schools with libraries have come up in Srikakulam, East Godavari, Guntur and other districts in coastal Andhra. The organization, which raises donations from individuals in the US, is also providing food and clothes to the poor and conducting medical camps.

“We are spending Rs.5-6 lakh for construction of each school building and spending another Rs.2 lakh on the maintenance,” said Ahsan Syed, a retired engineer with US Army Corps of Engineers, who now delivers sermons at a mosque in Santa Clara.

The organization is at present working only in Andhra Pradesh, but it is receiving requests from other states like Assam, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra to undertake similar projects. “We don’t have resources and people who can work in field,” he said.

He believes that Muslims not just in villages in India but across the world face the same problems. “Deprived of education and living in utter poverty, they have moved away from Islam and as a result they are being exploited by Christian missionaries,” he said.

“We are teaching basics to them, creating the fear of God in them. We tell them that this world is temporary, everybody has to die and there is ‘Akhirat’ (hereafter) and everybody will be questioned about his deeds.”

The IMRC also has a proposal to extend micro loans to the poor in Andhra Pradesh villages.

“After ‘Iman Billah’ (belief in Allah), the biggest intellect is serving people. This is built in for us,” explains Ahsan, who had migrated to the US from Hyderabad in 1967.

An expert of ‘Iqbaliyat’ (studies of poet-philosopher Allama Muhammad Iqbal), Ahsan believes the young generation of Muslim Indian Americans are not aware of the problems of their brethren in India. He attributes this to the problems faced by the youngsters in maintaining their own identity in the US.

“They (the young Muslim Indian Americans) are the best Muslims at the international level. We hope that on world stage they will bring glory to Islam,” said Ahsan, who teaches Iqbaliyat to youth.

Ahsan is also on the board of trustees of the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), an advocacy group which informs the US Congress and the US President about the conditions of Indian Muslims. He claims the biggest achievement of IAMC was the cancellation of diplomatic visa of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

“It is not a pressure group. It is an advocacy group. We work with Hindus and Christians. We tell them we share the same problems. If a man is poor, we don’t see whether he is Hindu, Muslim or Christian.”

•      The Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination, 2011 was conducted on 12^thJune, 2011.  A record number of 4,72,290 candidates applied for this examination, out of which 2,43,003 candidates have actually appeared.
•   11984 candidates were declared qualified for the Main written examination held in October-November, 2011 out of which 2417 candidates were selected for the Personality Test conducted in March-April, 2012.  Finally, 910 candidates (715 male & 195 female) have been recommended for appointment to the IAS, IFS, IPS and other Central Services against 1001 reported vacancies.  Vacancies unfilled presently are on account of 91 reserved community candidates qualifying on general standards.  Depending on the options exercised by them finally, these vacancies will be filled by candidates recommended for the Reserve List that is maintained by the Commission.
• The First two positions have been taken by female candidates.  The top 25 candidates include 19 male (including 01 visually challenged candidate) and 06 female candidates. In the top 100 candidates, there are 21 female candidates.
•  Ms. Shena Aggarwal (Roll No. 233541) has topped the Examination.  She has done MBBS from All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi.  This is her 3^rd attempt.
•  The 2^nd ranker is Ms. Rukmani Riar (Roll No. 27895).  She has done Master of Arts (Social Entrepreneurship) from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.  The is her 1^st attempt.
•  The 3^rd position is bagged by Shri Prince Dhawan (Roll No. 1804).  He has done M. Tech (Elect. Engg.) from IIT, Delhi.  This is his 1^st attempt.
•  The result also showcases the pan-Indian distribution of successful candidates of this Examination. Amongst the top 25 candidates, there are candidates claiming domicile from as many as 16 States, i.e., Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Delhi, Haryana, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamilnadu, Uttarakhand & Uttar Pradesh.
•    The top 25 candidates include alumni from some of the premier educational institutions of the country including AIIMS, IIM and IITs.  An alumnus of London School of Economics also figures in the top 25.
•  The family background of top 25 candidates show diverse representation from all walks of the life which include farmer, teacher, businessman, army personnel, low and middle level govt. servants, doctors, advocate, professor & civil servants.
• Amongst top 25 candidates, 6 have made to the merit lift in their 1^st attempt; 07 in 2^nd attempt; 09 in 3^rd attempt; and 01 each in 4^th, 5^th & 6^th attempts. As many as 12 have already been recommended to services other than IAS on the basis of Civil Services Examinations of previous years.
•    Of the top 25 candidates – 13 appeared from Delhi; 3 from Jaipur, 2 each from Mumbai & Chandigarh; and 1 each from Hyderabad, Chennai, Dispur, Patna & Jammu Centres.

These institutions are meant to enhance the capacity of African countries and to benefit African students.

This information was given by the Minister of State for Human Resource Development, Dr. D. Purandeswari, in written reply to a question in Lok Sabha

A scheme for setting up 20 new IIITs on Public Private Partnership (PPP) model has been approved by Government at a capital cost of Rs. 128.00 crore for each IIIT to be contributed in the ratio of 50:30:15 by the Central Government, the State Government and the Industry respectively (57.5:35:7.5 in the case of North Eastern region).  The concerned State Government will  provide 50-100 acres of land, free of cost and initially the new IIITs would be registered as Societies under the Societies Registration Act, 1860.

This information was given by the Minister of State for Human Resource  Development, Dr. D. Purandeswari, in written reply to a question in Lok  Sabha

Till 20.03.2012, model schools in 1,942 blocks in 22 States have been approved and funds have been released for setting up of 1,562 model schools in 20 States. For setting up of these schools, the sharing pattern between Central Government and State/ UT Governments in respect of non-recurring and recurring costs is 75:25 (90:10 for special category States and for upgraded Ashram schools in all States) during the 11th Five Year Plan.

The school buildings are under different stages of construction except in Punjab, where construction of all the 21 schools approved, has been completed. Out of Rs. 1,750.03 crore released to the State Governments, an amount of Rs. 149.90 crore has been reported to be utilized by the State Governments, 2,500 Model Schools under Public-Private Partnership mode are proposed to be set up in headquarters of the blocks which are not educationally, backward.

This information was given by Dr. D. Purandeswari, Minister of State for Human Resource in written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha

Meta Universities represent 2nd Generation Universities, free from physical boundary conditions and able to operate in virtual space, taking advantage of the innovation and flexibility possible in such domain. Hence the existing capabilities and resources of these institutions will be utilized and no separate funding for these intuitions is proposed for the purpose.

It is expected that these institutions will commence course offering from next academic session.

This information was given by Dr. D. Purandeswari , Minister of State for Human Resource Development in written reply to a question in Lok Sabha

Measures taken to stimulate the growth of IT, ITES and Electronic Hardware manufacturing industry in the country as under

1.                  Approvals for all foreign direct investment upto 100% in the IT, ITES and electronic hardware manufacturing sector are under the automatic route.

2.                    The Government has approved the proposal to provide preference to domestically manufactured electronic products, in procurement of those electronic products which have security implications for the country and in Government procurement for its own use, consistent with our World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments.

3.                   The indirect tax structure has been rationalized to the extent feasible given that 217 tariff lines covered under the Information Technology Agreement (ITA-1) of WTO are exempted from basic customs duty.

4.                   Software is exempted from basic customs duty.

5.                  Government has constituted an Empowered Committee (EC) for identifying technology and investors for setting up Semiconductor Fabrication facilities in the country.

6.                    Under Software Technology Park (STP) and Electronics Hardware Technology Park (EHTP) Schemes, approved units are allowed duty free import of goods required by them for carrying on export activities, CST reimbursement and excise duty exemption on procurement of indigenously available goods, as per the Foreign Trade Policy.

7.                  235 IT-ITES specific Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have been notified across the country. Income tax benefit is available for units located in SEZs under Section 10AA of the Income Tax Act.

8.                  Under the Focus Product Scheme of the Foreign Trade Policy, exports of listed electronic products are entitled to duty credit scrip equivalent to 2% FOB value of exports.

9.                   Several steps have been initiated to create a Communications and Brand Building Campaign for promotion of ESDM sector in India, including conducting National level and State level workshops and bringing out an e-Newsletter with the objective of keeping the ESDM stakeholder community better informed about the policy initiatives, decisions and actions of the Government in the sector.

10.                For the promotion of Research & Development, a weighted deduction of 200% of expenditure incurred on in-house R&D in case of a company engaged in the business of electronic equipment, computers and telecommunication equipment is available under the Income Tax Act.

11.                The Department of Electronics and Information Technology provides funding under several schemes for promotion of R&D, including support for International Patents in Electronics & IT (SIP-EIT); Multiplier Grants Scheme and Scheme for Technology Incubation and Development of Entrepreneurs (TIDE) in the area of Electronics, ICT and Management.

As regards strategy adopted for capacity building in educational institutions, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) and National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT) (formerly DOEACC Society) are engaged in providing training in the formal and non-formal sectors of Information, Electronics and Communication Technology (IECT) through their various centres, franchisees/ accredited centres in the country. The Department is further expanding training capacity of these centres. In addition, training capacity in private sector is also being enhanced.

The Government has taken steps to set up a high speed (of gigabit capabilities) National Knowledge Network (NKN) to interconnect institutions of higher learning. NKN aims to facilitate creation, acquisition and sharing of Knowledge resources among Universities, Libraries, Laboratories, Hospitals and Agricultural Institutions across the country.

                Further, the Department has also taken initiatives which are primarily directed towards capacity building in certain niche areas such as to meet the emerging needs of knowledge-based industry. The efforts include initiation of projects in the area of Information Security and VLSI design and Scheme of Manpower Development for Software Export Industry.

Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), an autonomous Society under the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has set up 52 STPI Centres across the country, out of which 45 STPI Centres are located in smaller cities.

                Department of Commerce, Ministry of Commerce and Industry vide Notification No. G.S.R.No: 597(E) dated 12 July, 2010 has amended Rule 5(b) of the SEZ Rules to relax the condition regarding minimum built-up area requirement in respect of SEZs located in B1 and B2 category cities, making them attractive for investment. The minimum built up area has been reduced to 50% of the requirement prescribed in the SEZ Rules in respect of SEZs located in B1 category cities and in respect of SEZs located in B2 category cities, it has been reduced to 25% of the area prescribed.

 The Information Technology Investment Regions (ITIRs) Scheme of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology is expected to create new investment regions for Information Technology (IT)/Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) and Electronic Hardware Manufacturing Sector away from the big cities.

  This information was given in Lok Sabha today by Shri Sachin Pilot, the Minister of State,                Communication and Information Technology in response to a question.

Measures taken to stimulate the growth of IT, ITES and Electronic Hardware manufacturing industry in the country as under

1.                  Approvals for all foreign direct investment upto 100% in the IT, ITES and electronic hardware manufacturing sector are under the automatic route.

2.                    The Government has approved the proposal to provide preference to domestically manufactured electronic products, in procurement of those electronic products which have security implications for the country and in Government procurement for its own use, consistent with our World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments.

3.                   The indirect tax structure has been rationalized to the extent feasible given that 217 tariff lines covered under the Information Technology Agreement (ITA-1) of WTO are exempted from basic customs duty.

4.                   Software is exempted from basic customs duty.

5.                  Government has constituted an Empowered Committee (EC) for identifying technology and investors for setting up Semiconductor Fabrication facilities in the country.

6.                    Under Software Technology Park (STP) and Electronics Hardware Technology Park (EHTP) Schemes, approved units are allowed duty free import of goods required by them for carrying on export activities, CST reimbursement and excise duty exemption on procurement of indigenously available goods, as per the Foreign Trade Policy.

7.                  235 IT-ITES specific Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have been notified across the country. Income tax benefit is available for units located in SEZs under Section 10AA of the Income Tax Act.

8.                  Under the Focus Product Scheme of the Foreign Trade Policy, exports of listed electronic products are entitled to duty credit scrip equivalent to 2% FOB value of exports.

9.                   Several steps have been initiated to create a Communications and Brand Building Campaign for promotion of ESDM sector in India, including conducting National level and State level workshops and bringing out an e-Newsletter with the objective of keeping the ESDM stakeholder community better informed about the policy initiatives, decisions and actions of the Government in the sector.

10.                For the promotion of Research & Development, a weighted deduction of 200% of expenditure incurred on in-house R&D in case of a company engaged in the business of electronic equipment, computers and telecommunication equipment is available under the Income Tax Act.

11.                The Department of Electronics and Information Technology provides funding under several schemes for promotion of R&D, including support for International Patents in Electronics & IT (SIP-EIT); Multiplier Grants Scheme and Scheme for Technology Incubation and Development of Entrepreneurs (TIDE) in the area of Electronics, ICT and Management.

As regards strategy adopted for capacity building in educational institutions, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) and National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT) (formerly DOEACC Society) are engaged in providing training in the formal and non-formal sectors of Information, Electronics and Communication Technology (IECT) through their various centres, franchisees/ accredited centres in the country. The Department is further expanding training capacity of these centres. In addition, training capacity in private sector is also being enhanced.

The Government has taken steps to set up a high speed (of gigabit capabilities) National Knowledge Network (NKN) to interconnect institutions of higher learning. NKN aims to facilitate creation, acquisition and sharing of Knowledge resources among Universities, Libraries, Laboratories, Hospitals and Agricultural Institutions across the country.

Further, the Department has also taken initiatives which are primarily directed towards capacity building in certain niche areas such as to meet the emerging needs of knowledge-based industry. The efforts include initiation of projects in the area of Information Security and VLSI design and Scheme of Manpower Development for Software Export Industry.

Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), an autonomous Society under the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has set up 52 STPI Centres across the country, out of which 45 STPI Centres are located in smaller cities.

Department of Commerce, Ministry of Commerce and Industry vide Notification No. G.S.R.No: 597(E) dated 12 July, 2010 has amended Rule 5(b) of the SEZ Rules to relax the condition regarding minimum built-up area requirement in respect of SEZs located in B1 and B2 category cities, making them attractive for investment. The minimum built up area has been reduced to 50% of the requirement prescribed in the SEZ Rules in respect of SEZs located in B1 category cities and in respect of SEZs located in B2 category cities, it has been reduced to 25% of the area prescribed.

The Information Technology Investment Regions (ITIRs) Scheme of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology is expected to create new investment regions for Information Technology (IT)/Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) and Electronic Hardware Manufacturing Sector away from the big cities.

This information was given in Lok Sabha today by Shri Sachin Pilot, the Minister of State,                Communication and Information Technology in response to a question.

            The skill training is being provided by the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) through its partner agency. The pilot project has been successfully completed in the State of Manipur and Meghalaya under which 138 youth have been imparted training of three months duration in Rural Retail Sales & Marketing with Information Technology and Personality Development.

The Minister further stated that the training under YES Project is being organized at temporarily opened trainingcentres by National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), the training partner. The training centres are at Guwahati,Silchar & Jorhat (Assam), Itanagar (Arunachal Pradesh), Imphal(Manipur), Shilong (Meghalaya), Aizawl(Mizoram),Agartala(Tripura), Dimapur (Nagaland) and Gangtok(Sikkim). Out of 138 youth of North- Eastern Region trained under the pilot project, 118 youth have been offered job placements in different service sectors. The scheme has been launched during the current financial year and the details of the funds released /allocated to different States including Assam is given below:-

The State wise details of funds released/allocated under Youth Employability Skill (YES) Project during the year 2011-12.

However, this increase was not reflected either in the children’s levels of learning or in the other parameters outlined in the RTE. There has been only a marginal improvement, as a report brought out by NGOs, Pratham and Accountability Initiative, shows. The report is part of the latter’s flagship programme — Planning, Allocations and Expenditures, Institutions: Studies in Accountability — popularly known as PAISA, that aims to improve accountability in the management of public funds used for social welfare programmes. It makes amply clear why despite so much more money being allotted to the SSA, half of India’s children in Class V can barely read textbooks prescribed for Class II and still fewer are able to do basic arithmetic.

For further reading:

As per the Survey, the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) norms have been revised to correspond with the provisions of the RTE Act including norms for sanctioning additional teacher posts, classrooms, teaching-learning equipment to enable states to move to an eight-year elementary education cycle, enhancement of academic support for better school supervision, and expansion of Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidhyalaya (KGBVs). The National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) has been notified as the academic authority for teacher qualifications. Also, a country wide campaign has been launched for raising public awareness about Right to Education (RTE) and to ensure all schools become RTE compliant. The number of out-of-school children has come down from 134.6 lakh in 2005 to 81.5 lakh in 2009 as per an independent study conducted by the SRI-IMRB.

The Survey states that as part of the National Mission in Education through ICT, content generation and connectivity along with provision for access devices for institutions and learners are the major components of the Mission. A major development during the year has been the launch of Aakash, the low cost access-cum-computing device that was launched on 5 October, 2011. Besides so far nearly 400 universities have been provided 1 Gbps connectivity or have been configured under the scheme and more than 14,000 colleges have also been provided VPN connectivity. Creation of e-content for 996 courses in Phase II in engineering, sciences, technology, humanities, and management has been undertaken by IIT Madras. The Consortium for Educational Communication (CEC) has been tasked with creation of e-content for 87 undergraduate subjects. More than 2000 e-journals and 55,000e-books from 297 publishers have been made available online under this programme.

The Survey points out some institutions like the IITs have, in order to promote innovation, created technology business incubation facilities in their campuses. These are providing to be focal points amongst students and faculty for working towards taking some of their applied research to the market through the creation of business models for the same. These efforts need to be expanded greatly (a) by scaling up the previously successful centres of such innovations, and (b) by creating many such centres across the higher technical institutions in the country.

It was in April 2000 that the World Education Forum at Dakar adopted the Dakar Framework for Action. It recognized that education is a fundamental human right and is the key to sustainable development and peace and stability within and among countries.

The international community committed itself at Dakar to achieving free and compulsory universal primary education of good quality by 2015, and eliminating gender disparities in education. It specifically decided to improve all aspects of the quality of education so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills.

Quality indeed lies at the heart of the goal of “Education for All”. What happens in classrooms and other learning environments is vitally important to the future of our citizens. Education of acceptable quality must address basic learning needs, enrich the lives of learners and their overall experience of living and well being.

The key element of the edifice of our human resource development that has come to plague all branches – elementary, secondary and tertiary education is the issue of quality, or the lack of, in our educational system.

India has achieved considerable progress in universalizing elementary education through the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan during the course of the past decade. In this period, we have reduced the number of out of school children and succeeded in retaining the majority of children in school. The passing of the Right to Education Act and its implementation has transformed a human right into a fundamental right for all children to demand 8 years of quality elementary education.

A critical element of the Eleventh Plan strategy in education was to achieve a paradigm shift from access to quality. This, regrettably, is yet to be achieved. The Approach Paper to the 12th Five Year Plan spells this out in words that I wish to share with this audience:

“Despite improvement in access and retention, the learning outcomes for a majority of children continue to be an area of serious concern. Several studies suggest that nearly half the children in grade 5 are unable to read a grade 2 text. Concerted efforts are required to ensure that a minimum set of cognitive skills are acquired by all children during eight years of elementary education. Thus, quality issues and determinants thereof such as ensuring availability of trained teachers, good curriculum and innovative pedagogy that impact upon learning outcomes of the children must be addressed on priority basis. Quality as mandated under the RTE shall have to be realized in tangible terms, failing which it will be difficult to wean students away from private tuitions that are prohibited under the RTE”.

The situation is not significantly different in the case of higher education in the country. A look at the ground reality is relevant to this discourse. Today we have over 500 Universities, with varying statutory bases and mandates. Of these, 44 are Central Universities, 285 are State Universities, 130 are Deemed Universities, 106 are State private Universities, around five institutions are established under State legislation, and 33 are Institutions of National Importance established by Central legislation. We have over 30,000 colleges and a total teaching faculty of over 6 lakhs in higher education.

The structure and quality of these institutions, and their output, was the subject of critical scrutiny in the YashpalCommittee Report of 2009, tasked to suggest measures for the renovation and rejuvenation of higher education. It noted that “we have followed policies of fragmenting our educational enterprises into cubicles” and that “most instrumentalities of our education harm the potential of human mind for constructing and creating new knowledge”.

The Report said that our universities remain one of the most under-managed and badly governed organisations in society, with constricted autonomy, internal subversion within academia and multiple and opaque regulatory systems. Furthermore, university education is no longer viewed as a good in itself but as the stepping stone to a higher economic and social orbit.

The Yashpal Report dwelt on the increasing demand for expansion of private college and university level institutions necessitating an understanding of its implications in terms of the system’s enrolment capacity, programme focus, regional balance, ownership pattern, modes of delivery, degree of regulation, quality and credibility as well as social concerns of inclusiveness. It points out that State universities and affiliated colleges represent the bulk of enrolment in higher education and remain the most neglected in terms of resources and governmental attention.

Thus higher education in our country suffers the pincer effect of low enrollment and poor quality.  The Approach Paper to the 12th Five Year Plan calls for “a strategic shift from mere expansion to improvement in quality higher education” for which “the focus should be not only on larger enrollment, but also on the quality of the expansion”.

There are four questions pertaining to quality in education that need to be addressed urgently:

First, across all tiers of education, we must shift focus to learning outcomes from the current emphasis on input indicators such as infrastructure, teaching faculty and staff employed and resources made available. Even as we move to cover the gaps in access, we must realize that lack of quality would increase the associated costs for students, to the industry hoping to hire them and to the nation in the long run.  Poor quality of education, especially in the public sector, would negate fundamental and human rights of our citizens and deny them equal opportunity to fully realize their potential and lead fulfilling and rewarding lives.

Second, there is an urgent need to move away from the lure of branding and elitist education. The average institution must improve for overall institutional improvement in the human resource development sector.  The enormous resources deployed for education in the last decade in terms of human and material resources must be justified by vastly improved learning outcomes. Government schools must deliver educational outcomes that are commensurate if not superior to those in the private sector. The booming tuition and coaching industry that stands as a monumental reflection of the institutional and systemic failure of education must be reversed so that centrality is accorded to classroom learning.

Third, State universities, and the 30,000 strong college system, which are the backbone and represent the bulk of enrolment, must obtain greater funds, create new infrastructure and enrich their existing academic programmes. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the budget of one central university is almost the same or more than the budget of all state universities in some states. Just like the central government has assumed the responsibility for elementary education through SarvaShiksha Abhiyan, it should also vastly enhance its support to state universities and under graduate college education as a shared national enterprise in qualitative development and quantitative expansion.

Fourth, education in our country must be an arena of choice, not of elimination. Increasingly, one notices that entrance and admission criteria and procedures are designed to screen out and eliminate, due to the adverse ratio of demand and availability, in the entire spectrum from nursery school admissions to admission in IITs and IIMs. We must create avenues for skills training and vocational education so that entering universities does not become a default choice for the sake of employment, particularly for those who might not have interest in the subject or desire for higher education.

The Glion Declaration of 1999, emanation from UNESCO’s World Conference on Higher Education, stressed that knowledge is neither a free good nor a natural resource; instead, it comes only to the prepared mind, coaxed into existence by personal reflection and inquiry, individual discovery, sophisticated research and costly exploration. In this venture, universities play a unique and crucial role.

The Declaration went on to elucidate this vision of universities in the contemporary world:

They are the chief agent of discovery, the major providers of basic    research that underlies new technology and improved health care, they are the engines of economic growth, the custodians and          transmitters of cultural heritage, the mentors of each new generation of entrants into every profession, the accreditors of                   competence and skill, the agents of personal understanding and social transformation. In them on a daily basis, the young and the      old seek to bring wisdom, insight and skills to bear in the daunting complexities of human affairs.

These words, encapsulating the purpose of a modern university, should be inscribed on the portals of all institutions of higher education.

Source: Vice President, Hamid Ansari’s address at 44^th Annual Convocation of ofUtkal University at Bhubneshwar, Odisha.

PRINCIPALS, POST GRADUATE AND TRAINED  GRADUATE TEACHERS -2012 FOR MODEL SCHOOLS

(Notification  No.01/RMSA/Model Schools/2012 dt.06-02-2012)

 INFORMATION BULLETIN

1. RMSA, A.P., Hyderabad is establishing 355 Model Schools in identified
Educationally Backward Mandals in the State of Andhra Pradesh. These Schools
will start functioning w.e.f 2012-13.In these schools there will be classes from VI  to XII with co-education in English Medium. During the year 2012-13 the schools  start with classes VI to VIII and XI.

2. 2 In pursuance of the orders of the Government in G.O.Ms.No.254 Finance  (SMPC-1) Dept. Dt.03-12-2011 applications are invited online through the  prescribed APPLICATION to be made available on website  http://apms.cgg.gov.in from 29-02-2012 to 16-03-2012 for recruitment to the  posts of Principals, Post Graduate and Trained Graduate Teachers -2012 for  Model Schools in the State through State Selection Committee.

3. The Vacancy position is given in Annexure – I. Upto 1/3 of the posts may be filled  by Deputation from persons working in Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan/Jawahar  Navodaya Vidyalaya Samithi/ Central schools under the control of Govt. of India.  Actual appointments will be restricted to the number required in relation to the  opening of Model Schools/Classes/Sections.

4. The applicants are required to carefully go through the INFORMATION BULLETIN and should satisfy themselves as to their eligibility for this recruitment before  payment of Fee and Submission of Application. The information bulletin will be  available on website http://apms.cgg.gov.in, www.dseap.gov.in and www.rmsaap.nic.in from the date of notification which can be downloaded free  of cost.

5. The applicants have to pay a fee of Rs.250/- towards application processing for  the recruitment test for each post through APONLINE or e-seva between  28-02-2012 to 15-03-2012. The last date for payment of fee is 15.03.2012 and  the last date for submission of application online is 16.03.2012.

6. The step by step procedure for submission of application through online will be  given on website http://apms.cgg.gov.in, www.dseap.gov.in and www.rmsaap.nic.in which will be made available from 28.02.2012.

7. AGE: for PGTs & TGTs Applicants must have completed the minimum age of 18  years and must not have completed the maximum age of 39 years as on
1 st July 2012. However, in case of BC/SC/ST, the maximum age limit is 44 years and in case of Physically Challenged 49 years.  For principal post applicants shall be between 35 and 50 years as on  1 st July 2012.

8. Written Test: The written tests are scheduled on 10-05-2012 from 10:00 AM to  1:00 PM for PGTs and from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM for TGTs. For Principal posts from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM on 11.05.2012. The centres shall be constituted  depending upon the number of applications received and will be communicated  in the Hall Ticket through website. 2

9. Rule of Reservation:

i) The rule of reservation to local candidates is applicable and the provisions of  Andhra Pradesh Public Employment (OLC&RDR) Order (Presidential Order)  1975 and amendments thereto shall be followed strictly.

ii) The rule of special representation in the matter of appointment of candidates  belonging to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Backward Classes,  Physically Challenged, Ex-servicemen and Women is applicable as per Rule 22  of the Andhra Pradesh State and Subordinate Service Rules 1996 as amended  from time to time.

iii) The rules issued from time-to-time by the Department of Disabled Welfare  shall be followed in respect of special representation for differently abled  (physically challenged) persons.

iv) The number of candidates selected shall not be more than the number of  vacancies notified.

10. METHOD OF APPOINTMENT

Sl. No            Posts              Scale of Pay                               Method of Recruitment
1            Principal            Rs.20680-46960/-                     Direct Recruitment
2             PGTs                  Rs.16150-42590/-                       Direct Recruitment
3            TGTs                   Rs.14860-39540/-                       Direct Recruitment

11. JURISDICTION OF POSTS: With reference to Rule 9(i), The Principal Post
being State-wide, they may be posted anywhere in the State. The Posts of PGT and TGT being Zonal, they may be posted anywhere in their selected Zone.

12. QUALIFICATIONS:

A candidate for selection to the posts of Principal /PGT /TGT shall possess the  academic and professional/ training qualifications prescribed for the post under this Rule given as below.

1). Principal:  Qualifications & Experience:

A. Academic Qualifications

i) Two year Integrated Post Graduate Course from Regional Institute of Education  of NCERT; (or) Master’s Degree from UGC recognized University with at least  50% marks in aggregate. And

ii) B.Ed. or equivalent teaching degree. And

iii) Must have studied in English Medium at any three levels of School/Junior College  / Degree College/ Post Graduation 3

B. Experience

(a) Persons holding the post of Principals in the recognized senior secondary schools in English Medium (or) equivalent institutions (or) analogous posts in the grade of  Rs. 20680-46960; (or)

b) Persons holding Group ‘B’ posts or the post of PGTs or Lecturer in the pay scale  of Rs. 16150-42590 working in the recognized senior secondary school /
junior college in English Medium (or) equivalent institutions with at least 5  years’ regular service in the aforesaid grade. (or)

(c) Headmasters working in recognized secondary schools in English Medium (or)  equivalent institutions with a minimum service of 5 years (or) analogous posts in  the grade of Rs.18030-43630. (or)

(d) Vice Principals working in recognized senior secondary schools in English  Medium (or) equivalent institutions with a minimum service of 3 years (or)
analogous post.

C. Desirable  Knowledge of Computer Applications.
2). PGT:

Qualifications & Experience:

A. Academic Qualifications

i). Two year Integrated Post Graduate Course from Regional Institute of
Education of NCERT in the concerned subject; or Master’s Degree from UGC
recognized University with at least 50% marks in aggregate in the following
subjects:

a. PGT (English)-English.
b. PGT (Telugu)- Telugu.
c. PGT (Maths)-Mathematics /Applied Mathematics
d. PGT (Physics)-Physics/ Electronics/Applied Physics/Nuclear Physics
e. PGT (Chemistry) – Chemistry with specialization in

Inorganic/Organic/Physical Chemistry

f. PGT (Botany) – Botany/Life Sciences/ Bio Sciences/Genetics/ MicroBiology/Bio-Technology/Molecular Bio/Plant Physiology provided they  have studied Botany and Zoology at Graduation level.

g. PGT (Zoology)-Zoology Life Sciences/ Bio Sciences/Genetics/ MicroBiology/Bio-Technology/Molecular Bio/Plant Physiology provided they have studied Botany at Graduation level.

h. PGT (History)-History
i. PGT (Geography) – Geography
j. PGT (Commerce) – Commerce with Accountancy/Cost Accounting/Financial
Accountancy as a major subject of study. Holders of M.Com in
Applied/Business Economics are not eligible.

k. PGT (Economics) – Economics/Applied Economics/Business Economics.
l. PGT(Civics)- Political Science
ii). B.Ed or equivalent degree with methodology in the concerned subject
from UGC recognized University.
iii). Must have studied in English Medium at any two levels of School/Junior College / Degree College/ Post Graduation except for the post of PGT  (Telugu).

B. Desirable: Knowledge of computer applications
NOTE: In case of PGT (Commerce) if the candidates with B.Ed are not
available M.Com candidates can be recruited. The incumbent will have to
acquire B.Ed or equivalent degree from recognized University within a
period of 2 years with his /her own cost.

3). TGT:  Qualifications & Experience:

A. Academic Qualifications

i). Four year Integrated degree course from Regional Institute of Education  of NCERT in the concerned subject with at least 50% marks in aggregate ; or  Second Class Bachelor’s Degree from UGC recognized University with at  least 50% marks in the concerned subject(s) and in aggregate including  electives and Languages in the combination of subjects as under :

a. For TGT (Telugu) – Must possess a Bachelor’s Degree with Telugu as the  main subject or one of the three equal optional subjects or Bachelor’s Degree in Oriental Language in Telugu (B.O.L) or its equivalent or a Post Graduate  Degree in Telugu and B.Ed with Telugu as methodology Subject or Telugu  Pandit Training or its equivalent.

b. TGT (Hindi)- Must possess Bachelor’s degree with Hindi as one of the full  elective subject or Bachelor’s Degree in Oriental Language in Hindi (B.O.L) or  Praveena of Dakshina Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha or Vidwan of Hindi  Prachara Sabha, Hyderabad or any other equivalent recognized qualification  in Hindi (BA degree Standard) or Post Graduate Degree in Hindi and along  with any one of the following training qualifications.

Sl.  No. Course Title Institution Govt Order

1.
B.Ed with Hindi as
methodology
Any recognized
university and NCTE
–

2. B.Ed (Hindi Medium)
Dakshina Bharata
Hindi Prachar
Shabha, Hyderabad
G.O.Ms.No.68 Dated.10-3- 95

3.  Pracharak Degree and
Bachelor of Education
Dakshina Bharat Hindi
Prachar Sabha,
Madras.

G.O.Ms.No.90 Edn.Dt.6-2- 74 5

c. For TGT(English) – A Bachelors Degree with English as the main subject or  one of the optional subjects or a Post Graduate Degree in English and a B. Ed  Degree with English as methodology subject. The candidates who have  studied SSC, Intermediate and Graduation through English Medium only are
eligible.

d. For TGT(Maths) – Must possess a Bachelor’s Degree with Mathematics /  Applied Mathematics / Statistics as the main subject OR one of the three  equal optional subjects and a B.Ed degree with Mathematics as a  methodology subject provided he has studied Mathematics at Intermediate  level.

e. For TGT(Science)- Must possess a Bachelors Degree with at least two of
the following subjects as optional subjects: Physics / Applied Physics /
Engineering Physics & Instrumentation and Chemistry / Applied Chemistry /
Industrial Chemistry / Pharmaceutical Chemistry / Medicinal Chemistry / BioChemistry / Geology or either Physics / its allied subjects or Chemistry / its
allied subjects as one of the main subject and other as subsidiary / ancillary
subject and B.Ed. degree with Physical Science / Physics / Chemistry / Science
as a methodology subject, provided he has studied Physics and Chemistry at
Intermediate level.

or

Must possess a Bachelors Degree with Botany and Zoology as optional  subjects or one of the two as main and the other as subsidiary subject or any

For Details Click Here . .INFORMATION BULLETIN on Model schools

NOTIFICATION FOR RECRUITMENT OF PRINCIPALS, POST GRADUATE AND TRAINED GRADUATE TEACHERS -2012 FOR MODEL SCHOOL

Structure and Syllabi

Virtual Labs’ primary focus is to provide graduate and undergraduate college and university students with the ability to perform their required laboratory experiments using only the World Wide Web, a standard computer, and an Internet connection. Virtual Labs allow students to practice and better learn the science and engineering behind the experiments that they are required to perform. Virtual Labs also allows the sharing of costly equipment across the country, and in very rural areas, students will be able to perform experiments that they would not otherwise be able to access.

Nearly 300 department heads, faculty, and staff representing 152 institutions have been trained across India. Over 20 Nodal Centres have been created, institutions who have expressed their interest to champion Virtual Labs in theirorganisations and geographical areas.

The Pilot Phase of the Virtual Labs project started in April 2009.  During this phase, approximately twenty labs were developed as proof of concept.  The Main Phase began in April 2010.  So far, over 80 Virtual Labs have been developed, and are undergoing field trials in various parts of the country.

Two types of virtual labs have been developed under this project. In the Simulation Based Virtual Labs the experiments are modeled using mathematical equations.  The simulations are carried out remotely at a high-end server, and the results are communicated to the student over the internet.  Simulation based Virtual Labs are scalable and can cater to a large number of simultaneous users.

Using the Remote Triggered Virtual Labs the actual experiments are triggered remotely.  The output of the experiment (being conducted remotely) is communicated back to the student over the internet.  This class of Virtual Labs gives the student the output of real-time experiments.  Typically, time-slots are booked before conducting such experiments.

All Virtual Labs can be accessed through a common website: www.vlab.co.in. At the user end, a PC and broadband connectivity enables the user to access Virtual Labs.

These Virtual Labs will be very useful for Engineering College Students who do not have access to good lab-facilities, High-school students, whose inquisitiveness will be triggered, possibly motivating them to take up higher-studies, Researchers in different institutes who can collaborate / share equipment and engineering colleges, who can benefit from the content and related teaching resources.

Currently 85 Virtual Labs have been developed comprising of 769 experiments. Trainings and workshops have been held all over India to disseminate knowledge of these Virtual Labs. Future efforts will involve development of virtual labs in different subjects and wide dissemination of this knowledge.

A Collaborative Platform for Development of Virtual Labs has been created that assists the faculty with authoring and maintaining Virtual Labs. The platform hosts over 825 experiments developed by many of the partner institutions. The Collaborative Platform provides the server side architecture for ensuring that virtual labs run securely, can effectively serve thousands of students simultaneously, and reserve time slots for experiments that require scheduling. The Collaborative Platform also provides tools to help teachers monitor their students’ progress and make changes to the instructional material.

Student interest in Virtual Labs has also been enthusiastic. The Virtual Labs site (vlab.co.in) has had 233,570 site visits and 1,034,443 page visits in just the last 6 months. There are over 4500 registered users from 134 countries and handles around 100GB of traffic per month with visitors from India, United States, Malaysia, Philippines, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Germany, Pakistan and so on.

With the launch of Virtual Labs Indian students will have easy access to an encyclopedia of science and engineering knowledge presented in a way that is engaging, immersive, and enjoyable. Virtual Labs will allow students to explore, discover, and learn wherever they are and at their convenience.

List of Virtual Labs that are ready

A.        Electronics & Communications

• Virtual Advanced Lab for Interactive Design and Test in Electronics
• Virtual Microwave Laboratory
• Wireless Lab
• Engineering Electro-magnetics Laboratory
• Queuing Networks Modelling Lab
• Hybrid electronics Lab
• RF microwave characterization Lab
• Transducer and instrumentation virtual lab
• Electronic design using DSP,FPGA,CPLD and Micro controllers through simulation and direct access of the hardware
• Digital Electronic Circuits Laboratory
• Digital Signal Processing Laboratory
• Fading Channels and Mobile Communications
• Basic Electronics
• Systems, communication and control laboratory
• Speech Signal Processing Laboratory
• Digital VLSI Design Virtual lab
• Signals and Systems Laboratory
• Electromagnetic Theory
• Virtual Electric Circuits

B.        Computer Science & Engineering      

• Problem Solving
• FPGA & Embedded systems lab
• Computer Architecture & organization
• Advanced Network Technologies
• Software Engineering
• Data Structures
• Computer Programming
• Data Mining
• Databases
• Computer Organization
• VLSI
• Digital Logic Design
• Speech Signal Processing
• Mobile Robotics
• Computer Graphics
• Image Processing
• Pattern Recognition
• Artificial Neural Networks
• Virtual Advanced VLSI Lab
• Cryptography Lab

C.        Electrical Engineering      

• Sensors Modeling & Simulation
• Industrial Automation Laboratory

·         PLC

• Analog Signals, Network and Measurement Laboratory
• Real Time Embedded Systems Laboratory
• Electrical Machines Laboratory
• Creative Design, Prototyping & Experiential Simulation Lab
• Ergonomics Lab for Assessing Physical Aspects of Design
• Virtual English and Communication
• Virtual Anthropology Lab

D.        Mechanical Engineering

• Metal Forming Lab
• Vibration and Acoustics
• Micromachining laboratory
• Kinematics & Dynamics of Mechanisms
• Mine Automation and Virtual Reality

E.         Chemical Engineering     

• Process control, reaction engineering and unit operations lab
• Chemical Engineering
• Simulation of Control of Magnetic Levitation System
• Virtual Lab for Mass Transfer

F.         Biotechnology and Biomedical Engineering   

• Bioreactor Modeling & Simulation lab
• Biomedical and Signal processing Laboratory
• Virtual Proteomics Laboratory
• Neurophysiology (pilot)
• Neuron Simulation Lab (pilot)
• Biochemistry Virtual Lab I
• Biochemistry Virtual Lab II
• Population Ecology I
• Population Ecology II
• Immunology Virtual Lab I
• Immunology Virtual Lab II
• Microbiology Virtual Lab I
• Microbiology Virtual Lab II
• Molecular biology Virtual Lab I
• Molecular biology Virtual Lab II
• Cell biology Virtual Lab I
• Cell biology Virtual Lab II

G.        Civil Engineering

• Strength of Materials Lab
• Fluid Mechanics Lab
• Soil Mechanics Lab
• Basic Structural Analysis Lab
• Surveying Lab

H.        Physical Sciences     

• Physical sciences
• Virtual Advanced Mechanics Lab
• Virtual Optics Lab
• Virtual Electricity & Magnetism Lab
• Virtual Heat & Thermodynamics Lab
• Virtual Modern Physics Lab

·         Virtual Harmonic Motion and Waves Lab

I.          Chemical Sciences      

• Analytical Lab
• Virtual Chemistry Lab
• Virtual Lab in “Charge and Particle size Determination in Colloidal Systems”
• Virtual Lab in “Absorption Spectroscopy”
• Virtual Lab in “CD Spectroscopy”
• Physics of Biomolecules
• Physical chemistry lab
• Physical Chemistry
• Organic Chemistry
• Inorganic Chemistry

A study of students at the University of Calgary in Canada showed that those who texted more were less receptive to new words while those who read more books, magazines, and newspapers were more accepting of the same words, the Daily Express reported.

“Our assumption about text messaging is that it encourages unconstrained language, but the study found this to be a myth,” said Joan Lee, the report’s author.

The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) has been successful, along with the mid-day meals programme, in drawing small children to school. One of the reasons, as the Ministry of Human Resource Development points out, is that “98 per cent of our habitations have primary schools within a distance of one kilometre”. But why are children unable to improve on their educational skills and enter secondary schooling? There are three forces at work: the state’s retreat from education prior to SSA; the impact of broader socio-economic forces on a child’s schooling; and pedagogical concerns, or the absence of clarity on what is “knowledge”, and how it should be imparted. This article deals with the first two issues.

For further reading:

• ·Recognised by the UGC as Centre for Excellence in the subject of Traditional Sastras.
• ·Accredited at A+  level by National Assessment and  Accreditation Council (NAAC) in 2003.
• ·Vidyapeetha rated best in the country

        Recently Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha was assesed for its academic excellence, research programmes, infrastructure, co-curricular and extension activities by the Prof. ‘TANDON’ committee appointed for assessing quality of Deeded University in the country under Ministry of Human Resource Development. It is a matter of great pride and joy that Vidyapeetha was ranked the best in the country the other being the TIFR, Mumbai, BITS, Pilani, IIIT, Bangalore to name a few.

Centre Of Excellence In Traditional Sastras

        The Vidyapeetha has achieved a rare honour of being recognised as a Centre of Excellence in Traditional Sastras by the UGC consecutively for the second time basing on its achievements, academic excellence earned in the field of teaching and research in Traditional Sastras and its potential for future development. Under this scheme, the following activities have been undertaken by the Vidyapeetha.

• ·Post-Acharya Training in Sastraic Studies – Sastravaridhi.
• ·Publications.
• ·Audio and Video Documentation.
• ·Audio-Video Recording Centre activities.
• ·Lipi Vikasa Pradarsini.
• ·Electronic Tools for Ancient Script Learning.
• ·Sanskrit Self Learning Kits.
• ·Documentation of Artefacts.
• ·Digitalization of Manuscripts.
• ·Yoga, Stress Management and Healing  Centre.
• ·Seminars / Workshops.
• ·Post Graduate Courses to bridge Computer Science and Sanskrit Language Technology.

 Subsidised Meals Scheme

            The Vidyapeetha has introduced the Annadanam Scheme under which the Vidyapeetha has been providing meals to the students at the rate of Rs. 10.

Mahabharata Project

            The Project of the Electronic Text of The Mahabharata is a prestigious one year project sponsored by Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, Tirupati undertaken by Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha, Tirupati to bring out standard text of Mahabharata with text variations with Hyper Links, which is use full to Researchers.

Objectives of the Project

• To bring out a standard text of the Mahabharata with text variations basingon the South Indian and North Indian editions available.

• To add a simple but authentic summary of each Parva in English, Hindi and Telugu languages.
• Appending the list of aspects for carrying research on the Mahabharata such as – Devotional, philosophical, ethical geographical, sociological, political, war – strategic and psychological aspects.

• To offer it on Web Site an Electronic Text with Hyperlinks with recitation of selected portions and graphic representation.

All India Sanskrit Students’ Talent Festival

            All India Sanskrit Students’ Talent Festival is a unique festival undertaken by the Vidyapeetha.  It was organised for the first time in February 2007 and has ever since, become a regular and annual event of the Vidyapeetha.  It is held for 4 days inviting participants from Sanskrit institutions all over India in order to bring to light the latent talents/skills in the students.

The  Alphabetical  Gallery

            The gallery aims to trace the origin, growth and development of the alphabet in India from the earliest times (3000 B.C.) till the development of regional scripts (9th Century A.D.).

            The historical context of the Indus writing has been attempted by displaying objects, especially Seals on which the script was engraved. These seals have been found in Indus Valley sites, such as Lothal in western India during archaeological excavations in 1950-1980. The gallery also consists of some models of seals from other Indus Valley sites, such as Mohenjodaro (Pakistan) and Kalibangan (India) as well as from ancient Near Eastern sites, such as Kish and Braq, Ur (Sumer – Iraq), Hissar and Bahrein. The models of Indus Valley seals, sealings, sculptures etc. give an insight into the life of the people and take the history of Sanskrit language, the, Vedic concepts and traditions to a much earlier date than what is known.

Ancient Indian Science  Exhibition

            Ancient Indian Science exhibition is one of the projects of the Vidyapeetha, which aims at highlighting the scientific wisdom preserved in the Sanskrit literature.  It is with this objective in view a torch-bearing task has been undertaken by the Sanskrit- Science Study Centre of Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha, Tirupati in the field of Sanskrit-Science. An enormous exhibition with worthwhile content has resulted from the constant efforts of this centre.

            This exhibition consists nearly 200 concepts pertaining to different branches of science with respective parallels from the ancient Sanskrit treatises. The branches covered are – Ayurveda, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Meteorology, Mathematics, Gemology, Acoustics, Botony, Sarry Plants. Exhibition on wheels was organised in 26 Universities and in several colleges situated in different states of the country.

Earn While You Learn

            The Vidyapeetha has been providing opportunities to its students to do some part-time jobs in the scheme of ‘Earn while you learn’. Most of the students of the Vidyapeetha who have knowledge of working with the computers and other technical skills are engaged in several research projects and other Vidyapeetha programmes enabling them to earn sufficiently to meet their expenses.

Publications

            The Vidyapeetha has brought out 50 prestigious publications on the eve of its Golden Jubilee Celebrations. In all the Vidyapeetha has 275 valuable publications.

Honours & Awards To The Institution/Individuals

            During the year 2009, the Presidential Certificate of Honour was conferred on Vidyapeetha sitting Professor Kompella Ramasuryanarayana. During the year 2010, the same award was conferred on Professor K.E. Govindan. Professor Harekrishna Satapathy, the Vice-Chancellor of the Vidypaeetha, has been conferred the Dalmia Srivani Alankara Nyasa for his outstanding contribution to the field of Sanskrit. During 2011, the Vice-Chancellor was conferred with the Kendriya Sahitya Akademi award for his valuable publication Bharatayanam.

Organisation Of Conferences/Seminars/Symposia

            During the year,  the Vidyapeetha has organized nearly 25 Conferences, Seminars, Symposia, Workshops etc. Every year the Vidyapeetha conducts Refresher Courses for college level teachers, besides holding extension lectures on topics connected with higher learning of Sanskrit. During the year 2010 the Vidyapeetha had organized the 45^th Session of All India Oriental Conference, in which 3500 delegates from India and Abroad have participated and presented their Research Papers. (PIB Feature).

NOTIFICATION FOR RECRUITMENT OF PRINCIPALS, POST GRADUATE
AND TRAINED GRADUATE TEACHERS -2012 FOR MODEL SCHOOLS

(Notification No.01/RMSA/Model Schools/2012 dt.06-02-2012)

1. In pursuance of the orders of the Government in G.O.Ms.No.254 Finance  (SMPC-1) Dept. Dt.03-12-2011 applications are invited online through the  prescribed APPLICATION to be made available on website  http://apms.cgg.gov.in from 29-02-2012 to 16-03-2012 for recruitment  of 7100 posts i.e. Principals (355), Post Graduate Teachers (4615) and  Trained Graduate Teachers (2130) -2012 for Model Schools in the State  through State Selection Committee.

2. The Vacancy position is given below in the Table. Upto 1/3 of the posts may  be filled by Deputation from persons working in Kendriya Vidyalaya  Sangathan/Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya Samithi/ Central schools under  the control of Govt. of India. Actual appointments will be restricted to  the number required in relation to the opening of Model  Schools/Classes/Sections.

3. The applicants are required to carefully go through the INFORMATION  BULLETIN and should satisfy themselves as to their eligibility for this  recruitment before payment of Fee and Submission of Application. The  information bulletin will be available on website http://apms.cgg.gov.in ,  www.dseap.gov.in and www.rmsaap.nic.in from the date of notification  which can be downloaded free of cost.

4. The applicants have to pay a fee of Rs.250/- towards application  processing for the recruitment test for each post through APONLINE or eseva between 28-02-2012 to 15-03-2012. The last date for payment of  fee is 15.03.2012 and the last date for submission of application online is  16.03.2012.

5. The step by step procedure for submission of application through online will  be given on website http://apms.cgg.gov.in , www.dseap.gov.in and www.rmsaap.nic.in which will be made available from 28.02.2012.

6. AGE: for PGTs & TGTs Applicants must have completed the minimum age  of 18 years and must not have completed the maximum age of 39 years as  on 1st July 2012. However, in case of BC/SC/ST, the maximum age limit  is 44 years and in case of Physically Challenged 49 years.  For Principal post applicants shall be between 35 and 50 years as on 1st July 2012.

7. Qualifications: Post–wise qualifications are given in the Information  Bulletin.

8. Written Test: The written tests are scheduled on 10-05-2012 from 10:00  AM to 1:00 PM for PGTs and from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM for TGTs. For  Principal posts from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM on 11.05.2012. The centres  shall be constituted depending upon the number of applications received  and will be communicated in the Hall Ticket through website.

9. The details of eligibility criteria, rule of reservation, structure and syllabus  for each category of post shall be made available in the website in  ‘INFORMATION BULLETIN’.

Click here for details. . .

Click Here for Go.Ms.No 254 dated 03-12-2011 On  SCHOOL EDUCATION DEPARTMENT – MODEL SCHOOL – Creation and sanction of 12,351 posts at State, District and 355 Model Schools under Central Sponsored Scheme for ‘setting up of Model Schools’ 2011FIN_MS254

INFORMATION BULLETIN : NOTIFICATION FOR RECRUITMENT OF PRINCIPALS, POST GRADUATE AND TRAINED GRADUATE TEACHERS -2012 FOR MODEL SCHOOLS

In the last couple of months, two studies of learning outcomes in India—the PISA study and the Quality Education Study by Wipro and Educational Initiatives—have exposed the abysmal learning levels in our schools, including some of our best schools. The 2011 ASER report has come at an opportune moment and helps crystallise our attention on the state of outcomes in education. As the 7th annual report, the latest ASER report not only provides us with a wealth of data about the current realities but also indicates the trends in enrolment as well as learning outcomes over the past 7 years.

One of the important trends visible from the ASER reports over the years is the fact that private school enrolment has been increasing inexorably across the country.

For further reading:

These insights flow from research on the neurological foundations of learning. In “Efficient Learning for the Poor: Insights From the Frontier of Cognitive Neurosceience”, educationalist Helen Abadzi shows that human short-term memory works well for up to 12 seconds. So, within 12 seconds, a person should be able to read a sentence (or complete grammatical unit), process its meaning, and classify and file it within his or her mental library (what experts call “cognitive networks”).

In a separate work, Abadzi writes “people must be able to read one word per second, or per 1.5 seconds at the outside, to be functional readers. If they read more slowly than that, they find that they have forgotten the beginning of their sentence by the time they reach the end.” Children struggle to decode letters of a new language. If they cannot read fast enough, then all their mental attention is taken up in decoding the letters, and no attention is left for grasping the meaning of the text.

FOR MORE READING

FOR FULL TEXT:

The three students, including a girl, allegedly ragged a junior student Monica Shailesh on October 15. Monica, a first year student, had alleged that she was subjected to ragging by some seniors when she was standing at the college counter for registration.

After she filed a complaint, the college disciplinary action committee inquired into it and found that the three were responsible for the incident.

‘Strict action was taken against the students on the instruction of Science and Technology Department,’ an official said.

Motihari Engineering College is one of the six government-run engineering colleges in Bihar.

‘We are worried that after the execution of the ‘no detention policy’ under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RCFCEA), the quality of education is likely to deteriorate. With all kinds of reservations and apprehensions, the Tripura government would apply the ‘no detention policy’ from this year itself,’ Tripura education minister Tapan Chakraborty told reporters.

Citing a possible fall in the quality of education, the Tripura government had earlier said that the ‘no detention policy’ would not be implemented in the state.

Principal Secretary (school education) Banamali Sinha said the Tripura government on a number of occasions communicated to the central government its misgivings about implementation of the ‘no detention policy’, but so far no response was received from the centre.

Minister Chakraborty said that many state governments, including West Bengal, have also expressed similar views about the ‘no detention policy’.

‘The Tripura government told the Centre that the act can be suitably modified to treat those students suitably who are totally irregular or not at all suitable for promotion from one class to the other at the elementary level,’ the education minister said.

According to the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RCFCEA), 2009, no students up to the eighth standard in a school should be held back or expelled from school till the completion of elementary education.

Li Xingning’s childhood dream came true this Christmas, when she opened a ‘Human Library’ where books were real people. It was Beijing’s first human library, with dozens of readers and six ‘living books’ exchanging their life stories and ideas, China

Daily reported.

In a human library, the books are real people engaging readers in a direct dialogue. And, a living book is the person who has chosen to be a representative of a certain group.

‘Here we get to know people who have interesting life stories to share, and also understand who they are and why they live in a particular way,’ said Li.

Li, an architect by profession, hoped her library would serve as an interactive platform to promote mutual understanding among people.

The human library concept originated in Denmark in 2000, and the idea has since spread around the world to over 45 countries. In China, such libraries have sprouted in Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Yu, one of the living books, has been living a vagabond’s life for nine months, travelling from southwest China’s Yunnan province to Beijing, with little money and a guitar.

‘I just want to tell them that once outside our comfort zone, we may find the beauty of life that we’ve never imagined before.’

The library also has an online version, where people from outside Beijing can share their stories.

Li said the ‘living books’ were chosen as they followed their dreams. Every day one human book will be available in the library. But readers aren’t allowed to ‘the living book’ out.

The nationwide language proficiency test is applicable to all who use Mandarin in daily life, for academic purposes or at work, including foreigners, the China Daily reported.

The test, called Hanyu Nengli Ceshi (HNC) in Chinese, was held at selected 13 venues in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Jiangsu, Hunan, Yunnan and Inner Mongolia.

Examinees were tested for their listening comprehension, speaking, reading and writing skills. Except for the writing part, the exam was carried out online.

The test has been designed to test a person’s language skills on scale of one to six with Level 1 being the most basic and Level 6 the most advanced. Examinees will get certificates at corresponding levels and an assessment report about their strengths and weaknesses in proficiency in the Mandarin.

Organisers of the test contacted the examinees comprising mostly college students, a few faculty members, civil servants and middle school students.

Supported by China’s education ministry and the State Language Commission, the National Education Examinations Authority (NEEA) oversaw this non-compulsory and non-profit test.

The test is likely to be held twice a year in future at more venues, said a NEEA official.

According to a 2010 report on language’s condition in China, issued by the education ministry in May, Chinese students were found to have poor writing and other practical skills in Mandarin.

The report cited a survey among college students in Beijing, which showed 30 percent had failed in a mock HNC test.

In his inaugural speech at a function to mark the 125th birth anniversary of eminent mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, the prime minister said there was a ‘general perception that pursuit of maths does not lead to attractive career possibilities’.

‘This perception may have been valid some years ago but today there are many new career opportunities available to mathematicians and the teaching profession itself has become much more attractive in recent years,’ he said.

He declared 2012 as the National Mathematics Year and Dec 22, the day Ramanujan was born, as Mathematics Day.

‘The mathematical community has the duty to find ways and means to address the shortage of top quality mathematicians in the country. It must reach out to the public, especially in the modern context where mathematics has tremendous influence on every kind of human endeavour,’ he said.

Stating that mathematics can be regarded as the mother science, Manmohan Singh said natural sciences have had a symbiotic relationship with mathematics.

‘Life Sciences did not seem to have much use for mathematics till about a hundred years ago, but lately mathematical interventions have had tremendous impact on biology,’ he said.

A noted economist himself, Manmohan Singh said: ‘The work of many of the Nobel laureates in Economics is highly mathematical.’

‘Aryabhata in the fifth century, followed by Brahmagupta in the next are recorded to be among the all-time great mathematicians. And we taught the world to think of zero as a number and the modern way of representing all numbers with 10 symbols,’ the prime minister remarked.

He said Indian mathematics continued to remain in the forefront after Aryabhata almost for a thousand years and cited Madhava to have discovered the essentials of Calculus.

After a long gap, it was during the second decade of 20th century that the country could once again stake claim to producing world class mathematics and that was because of Ramanujan, he said.

Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal, also precent at the occasion, said Ramanujan’s life shows that it is not necessary to have a regular university degree.

Union Ministers G.K. Vasan, Jayanthi Natarajan, V.Narayanasamy were also present at the function.

In his inaugural speech at a function to mark the 125th birth anniversary of eminent mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, the prime minister said there was a ‘general perception that pursuit of maths does not lead to attractive career possibilities’.

He declared 2012 as the National Mathematics Year and Dec 22, the day Ramanujan was born, as Mathematics Day.

‘The mathematical community has the duty to find ways and means to address the shortage of top quality mathematicians in the country. It must reach out to the public, especially in the modern context where mathematics has tremendous influence on every kind of human endeavours,’ he said.

The West Bengal University Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2011, was passed in the assembly Friday, with state Education Minister Bratya Basu advocating that it would bring more transparency in the appointments of vice chancellors and pro-vice chancellors of the state varsities and would provide a free hand to the academics in taking decisions.

But the opposition is unimpressed.

‘It is an immature allegation that we had politicised education and this bill will free it from politics. It is nothing but a farce,’ said Sudarshan Roy Choudhury, former state higher education minister and CPI-M leader.

‘If they are ruling out students from bodies like courts and councils of the universities, then they should also ban students from entering universities. How will they stop political associations of principals and teachers?’

According to the bill, the vice chancellors (VC) would be appointed by a three-member search committee. The bill has empowered the chancellor or governor to remove the VC but has provided the vice chancellors the final say in teacher recruitment.

‘The bill has been drawn up in haste just like other decisions taken by this government. There should have been more intense discussions on the bill. It has curbed the democratic rights of the students,’ said Kshiti Goswami, state secretary of Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP).

The students, both at graduate and post-graduate levels, will be accommodated in the lower bodies like academic council but there will be no representation of students in the higher decision making bodies.

‘Though theoretically the bill is good, technically there are lot of questions. It is a known fact that whoever becomes a VC or pro-VC gets close to the ruling party. Then how can you depoliticise education?’ asked Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhuri, a political scientist.

Sibal dedicated the centre to the nation. Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy praised the efforts of the previous Left government to ensure that the centre was set up. ‘When we took over the government, we also did our bit and finally it has become a reality,’ said Chandy.

The AMU special centre is being set up here as part of the plans to set up five such AMU centres in the country.

The first batch of classes for MBA and LLb have already commenced at a temporary centre near the new campus.

During the previous Left government’s tenure, Indian Union Muslim League, an ally of the Congress, was insistent that the new centre be set up near Panakkad, which is the headquarters of the party.

But last year, the Left government took the lead and got full possession of the 336 acres at Cholamalla in Malappuram district, which has the largest Muslim population in the state.

At Saturday’s function, Sibal also laid the foundation stone for the new campus. Five hostels for men and three hostels for women would come up soon.

The central government has sanctioned Rs.200 crore for the AMU centre. Its campus is expected to be ready in five years, and will have facilities from pre-school to a full-fledged medical college.

The state government will spend Rs.100 crore on the development of the campus.

(JULY 2011) Results) 

APTET – 2012 Notification Details (pdf)

 DOWNLOAD HALL TICKET FROM HERE. . 

 DOWNLOAD HALL TICKET FROM HERE. .

 DOWNLOAD HALL TICKET FROM HERE. . .

If you forget the reference Id You can get Hall ticket with your Name and Date of Birth 

Candidates can download their Hall Tickets from the website at http://aptet.cgg.gov.in from 24.12.2011. In case any candidate could not download the Hall ticket she/he should contact the Director, APTET-January 2012, O/o the Commissioner and Director of School Education, A.P., Saifabad, Hyderabad – 04 between 10.30 AM and 5.00 PM on all working days between 28.12.2011 and 06.01.2012 in person only giving details of the journal number of the fee paid, reference number of the application submitted, a copy of the printout of the Application form and one photograph (same photograph as pasted on the application form). Request for issue of duplicate Hall Ticket will not be entertained after the examination in any case.

DATE OF EXAMINATION
PAPER TIMINGS DURATION
08 – 01 – 2012 (Sunday)     I               09.30 AM to 12.00 Noon 2.30 Hours
08 – 01 – 2012 (Sunday)      II     2.30 PM to 5.00 PM 2.30 Hours

ANDHRA PRADESH STATE TEACHER ELIGIBILITY TEST
APTET– JANUARY 2012 INFORMATION BULLETIN

IMPORTANT NOTES:
1. Candidates can apply for APTET – January 2012 to be held on 08-01-2012 (Sunday)
‘ONLINE’ only through APTET website http://aptet.cgg.gov.in

2. Steps to be followed in submission of application on line.
i. The candidates shall at first download the ‘Information Bulletin’ free of cost from
the APTET website http://aptet.cgg.gov.in, go through it carefully and satisfy
their eligibility for appearing for APTET, January 2012.

ii. The candidate after satisfying herself/himself about the eligibility criteria for
APTET shall pay a fee of Rs.300.00 through APONLINE or e-Seva between
31-10-2011 and 25-11-2011 towards submission of application online and for
the conduct of examination.

iii. At the APONLINE or e-Seva Centres, the candidate has to give the required
preliminary data (i.e. Name of the candidate, Date of birth, Gender, whether the
candidate belongs to A.P. and mobile phone number).

iv. On receipt of fee at APONLINE or e-Seva the candidate shall be issued a
‘Journal Number’ with which she/he can proceed with submission of
application online. (Issue of Journal Number does not mean that the
candidate has completed submission of application online. It is only a
confirmation of the fee received).

v. The candidates shall follow the procedure of submission of online application as
given in the ‘Information Bulletin’ and User Guide and also as per the
instructions provided online while filling up the online application form. The
Candidate should be ready with photograph of size 3.5X3.5cms before filling in
on-line application.’

vi. Paste the photograph on a white paper and sign below (sign in Black Ink only).
Look for the sample at point 15 (v) of the Information Bulletin. Ensure that the
signature is within the box. Scan the required size containing the photograph
and signature. Please do not scan the complete page. The entire image
consisting of photo along with signature is required to be scanned and stored
in *.jpeg format on local machine. Ensure that the size of the scanned image is
not more than 50kb. If the size of the image is more than 50 kb, then adjust the
settings of the scanner such as dpi resolutions, number of colors during the
process of scanning.

a. Applications with no photo/ unclear photo/ inadequate size
photograph will be rejected. Hall-Ticket will not be issued to
such candidates. Hence, after pressing the ‘UPLOAD’ button check
if the photo is of required size, clear and is of the same candidate
of whom the details are to be filled in the application. If the photo
is smaller in size, not clear or does not belong to the candidate
press ‘BACK’ button below the photograph on the application form
and restart with scanning of the photograph.
b. Complaints relating to mismatch of photograph and
candidate details will not be accepted after submission of
application at any cost.

vii. Initial steps to be followed before filling Online Application Form
11. Go to http://aptet.cgg.gov.in
2. Click on Application Form
3. Click on the dialogue box (i.e., WELCOME TO ONLINE
APPLICATION)
4. Confirm the next dialogue box (i.e., Fields marked with ‘*’ are
compulsory)
5. Enter your Journal Number issued by APONLINE or e-Seva, the
date of payment of fees and Date of birth. Candidates who have
appeared for APTET, July 2011 conducted on 31.07.2011 should
also give the Reference ID number of that test.
6. At the field ‘Attach your latest photograph’ Click on Browse
button and attach your photograph and your signature stored on
the local machine.
7. Tick the declaration and enter the verification code.
8. Press Upload
9. The application will be opened.
10.When the application form is opened check if the photo is of
required size, clear and is of the same candidate of whom the
details are to be filled in the application. If the photo is smaller in
size, not clear or does not belong to the candidate press ‘BACK’
button below the photograph on the application form and restart
with scanning of the photograph.

11.Confirm that the photograph is yours and that it is as per the
given specifications.

12.Fill in the application form as per the instructions given in the
User Guide and Information Bulletin and those offered while filling
the Online Application Form.

13.After filling all the details press PREVIEW button. This will display
the details submitted by you

14.If you find all the details correct press SUBMIT other wise press
EDIT and resubmit the information.

viii. On submission of application form online the candidate shall be given reference
ID number which should be kept carefully for any kind of future

correspondence. Submission of application can be considered to have been
completed only on receiving reference ID number.

ix. On completion of submission, the candidates shall take a printout of the
application and store it for future use. Candidates should not post the printout
of the application to APTET office.

x. In case of any clarifications before, during or after submission of application
online the candidates may contact the Help Desk at Telephone Numbers
CGG:7702922003, 7702922004 between 10.30 a.m. and 5.00 p.m on all
working days from 31-10-2011 to 26-11-2011.

xi. The candidates can also post their complaints pertaining to their application only
online at http://aptet.cgg.gov.in between 07.11.2011 to 28.11.2011. Complaints
relating to photograph will not be entertained.

xii. In any case applications will not be received in any kind of manual form.

xiii. Candidates can download their Hall Tickets from the website at
http://aptet.cgg.gov.in from 24.12.2011. In case any candidate could not
download the Hall ticket she/he should contact the Director, APTET, O/o the
Commissioner and Director of School Education, A.P., Saifabad, Hyderabad –
04 between 10.30 AM to 5.00 PM on all working days between 28.12.2011
and 06.01.2012 in person only giving details of the journal number of the fee
2paid, reference number of the application submitted, a copy of the printout of
the Application form and one photograph (as pasted on the application form).
xiv. Request for issue of duplicate Hall Ticket will not be entertained after the
examination in any case.

3. For latest updates, please check at APTET website http://aptet.cgg.gov.in/
3APTET – BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE

1. The implementation of the Right of Children to free and compulsory education (RTE)
Act 2009 requires the recruitment of a large number of teachers across the country in a time
bound manner. In spite of the enormity of the task, it is desirable to ensure that quality
requirement for recruitment of teachers is not diluted at any cost. It is therefore necessary to
ensure that persons recruited as teachers possess the essential aptitude and ability to meet
the challenges of teaching at the Elementary level Classes (I to VIII).

2. In accordance with the provisions of sub-section (1) of section 23 of the RTE Act, 2009
the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) had vide Notification dated 23
rd August,2010 laid down the minimum qualifications for a person to be eligible for appointment as ateacher in classes I to VIII. It had been inter alia provided that one of the essential

qualifications for a person to be eligible for appointment as a teacher in any of the schools
referred to in clause (n) of section 2 of the RTE Act is that she/he should pass the Teacher
Eligibility Test (TET) which will be conducted by the appropriate Government in accordance
with the Guidelines framed by the NCTE. Accordingly, Government of Andhra Pradesh has
issued guidelines for conducting Teacher Eligibility Test in A.P. vide G.O.Ms. No. 51, School
Education (SE.GENL-II) Dept., Dated 16 – 04 – 2011. Subsequently, two more G.Os. G.O.Ms.
No. 70, School Education (SE.GENL-II) Dept., Dated 06 – 06 – 2011 and G.O.Ms. No. 102,
School Education (SE.GENL-II) Dept., Dated 28 – 07 – 2011 are issued.

3. The rationale for including the TET as a minimum qualification for a person to be
eligible for appointment as a teacher is as under.
i. It would bring national standards and benchmark of teacher quality in the
recruitment process;
ii. It would induce teacher education institutions and students from these institutions
to further improve their performance standards;
iii. It would send a positive signal to all stakeholders that the Government lays special
emphasis on teacher quality.

4. SCHEDULE OF EXAMINATION:
DATE OF EXAMINATION
PAPER TIMINGS DURATION
08 – 01 – 2012 (Sunday) I 09.30 AM to 12.00 Noon 2.30 Hours
08 – 01 – 2012 (Sunday) II 2.30 PM to 5.00 PM 2.30 Hours

5. ELIGIBILITY:
The candidate at the time of applying for APTET-January 2012 should be having the minimum
qualifications prescribed for a teacher for category I to V classes (Paper – I) and VI to VIII
classes (paper-II) as given below.

45.1. Minimum Qualifications for Classes I-V for candidates already in possession of
Respective Teacher Education Course Certificates:
Intermediate / Senior Secondary (or its equivalent) with at least 45% marks and pass in
2 – year Diploma in Elementary Education
OR
Intermediate /Senior Secondary (or its equivalent) with at least 50% marks and pass
in 4-year Bachelor of Elementary Education (B.El.Ed.)
OR
Intermediate /Senior Secondary (or its equivalent) with at least 50% marks and pass
in 2 – year Diploma in Education (Special Education)*
Note: 1 Relaxation of 5% in minimum qualifying marks at Intermediate / Senior Secondary
level is admissible for SC/ST/ Differently abled Candidates.
5.2.) Minimum Qualifications for Classes VI-VIII for candidates already in possession
of Respective Teacher Education Course Certificates:
i. B.A. / B.Sc./B.Com and pass in 2 – year Diploma in Elementary Education.
OR
B.A. /B.Sc./B.Com with at least 45% marks and pass in 1 – year Bachelor in Education
(B.Ed).
OR
B.A. / B.Sc./B.Com with at least 50% marks and pass in 1 – year B.Ed. (Special
Education)*
OR
Intermediate /Senior Secondary (or its equivalent) with at least 50% marks and pass in
4-year Bachelor in Elementary Education (B.El.Ed.)
OR
Intermediate /Senior Secondary (or its equivalent) with at least 50% marks and pass in
4-year B.Sc. Ed or B.A. Ed.
Note: 1. Wherever applicable relaxation of 5% in minimum qualifying marks at
Intermediate / Senior Secondary level is admissible for SC/ST/ Differently abled
Candidates. Relaxation of 5% in minimum qualifying marks at BA/B.Sc/B.Com is
admissible for SC/ST/BC/Differently abled candidates.
2. If the candidate has not secured the requisite % of marks in Bachelor’s Degree
(B.A / B.Sc. / B.Com / but secured in Post Graduate Degree of relevant school
subjects she/he will be eligible for applying for Paper-II. Relaxation of 5% is also
applicable in this regard as well for candidates belonging to SC /ST / BC /
Differently abled candidates.
ii) In addition to above, candidates possessing Language Pandit Training Certificate
are also eligible. The qualifications are as follows:
Telugu Pandit B.A. (Telugu Literature) or BA (Oriental Language-Telugu) or
Bachelor of Oriental Language Telugu or a graduate degree with
optional subject Telugu or MA (Telugu) and pass in Telugu Pandit
Training Certificate.
Hindi Pandit A graduate degree with optional subject Hindi or Bachelor of Oriental
Language Hindi or Praveen of Dakshina Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha
or Vidwan of Hindi Prachar Sabha, Hyderabad of any other
equivalent recognized qualification in Hindi (BA standard) by the
Government of A.P. or M.A., Hindi and pass in Hindi Pandit Training
Certificate
5Urdu Pandit BA (Urdu Literature) or BA (Oriental Language Urdu) or Bachelor of
Oriental Language Urdu or Graduate Degree with optional subject
Urdu or M.A. (Urdu) and pass in Urdu Pandit Training Certificate.
Other Languages
(Bengali, Gujarathi,
Kannada, Marathi,
Oriya, Sanskrit, Tamil)
A Graduate Degree in the Language concerned and pass in Pandit
Training in the Language concerned or B.Ed with Language
concerned as one of the methodologies
* A diploma/degree course in teacher education recognized by the National Council for
Teacher Education (NCTE) only shall be considered. However, in case of Diploma in
Education (Special Education) and B.Ed. (Special Education), a course recognized by the
Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI) only shall be considered.
* Intermediate qualification of Board of Intermediate Education of A.P. or Senior Secondary
Education of a Recognized Board only will be considered. So also the Bachelor’s Degree of a
University Recognized by UGC only will be considered.
5.3. Minimum Qualifications for Classes I-V for candidates pursuing Respective
Teacher Education Courses (2010-11 or earlier) :
Intermediate / Senior Secondary (or its equivalent) with at least 50% marks and
pursuing 2 – year Diploma in Elementary Education and appearing for final year
examinations on or before 07.01.2012
OR
Intermediate /Senior Secondary (or its equivalent) with at least 50% marks and
pursuing 4-year Bachelor of Elementary Education (B.El.Ed.) and appearing for
final year examinations on or before 07.01.2012
OR
Intermediate /Senior Secondary (or its equivalent) with at least 50% marks and
pursuing 2 year Diploma in Education (Special Education)* and appearing for final year
examinations on or before 07.01.2012
Note: 1 Relaxation of 5% in minimum qualifying marks at Intermediate / Senior
Secondary level is admissible for SC/ST/ Differently abled Candidates.
5.4) Minimum Qualifications for Classes VI-VIII for candidates pursuing Respective
Teacher Education Courses (2010-11 or earlier):
i. B.A. / B.Sc./B.Com and pursuing 2 – year Diploma in Elementary Education and
appearing for final year examinations on or before 07.01.2012
OR
B.A. /B.Sc./B.Com with at least 50% marks and pursuing 1 – year Bachelor in Education
(B.Ed) and appearing for final year examinations on or before 07.01.2012.
OR
B.A. / B.Sc./B.Com with at least 50% marks and pursuing 1 – year B.Ed. (Special
Education)* and appearing for final year examinations on or before 07.01.2012
OR
Intermediate /Senior Secondary (or its equivalent) with at least 50% marks and
pursuing 4-year Bachelor in Elementary Education (B.El.Ed.) and appearing for final
year examinations on or before 07.01.2012
OR
Intermediate /Senior Secondary (or its equivalent) with at least 50% marks and
pursuing 4-year B.Sc. Ed or B.A. Ed. and appearing for final year examinations on or
before 07.01.2012
6Note: 1. Wherever applicable relaxation of 5% in minimum qualifying marks at
Intermediate / Senior Secondary level is admissible for SC/ST/ Differently abled
Candidates. Relaxation of 5% in minimum qualifying marks at BA/B.Sc/B.Com is
admissible for SC/ST/BC/Differently abled candidates.
2. If the candidates has not secured the requisite % of marks in Bachelor’s Degree
(B.A / B.Sc. / B.Com / but secured in Post Graduate Degree of relevant school
subject she/he will be eligible for applying for Paper-II. Relaxation of 5% is also
applicable in this regard as well for candidates belonging to SC /ST / BC /
Differently abled candidates.
ii) In addition to above, candidates pursuing Language Pandit Training (2010-11 or
earlier) are also eligible . The qualifications are as follows:
Telugu Pandit B.A. (Telugu Literature) or BA (Oriental Language-Telugu) or
Bachelor of Oriental Language Telugu or a graduate degree with
optional subject Telugu or MA (Telugu) and appearing for final year
examinations of Telugu Pandit Training Certificate on or before
07.01.2012
Hindi pandit A graduate degree with optional subject Hindi or Bachelor of Oriental
Language Hindi or Praveen of Dakshina Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha
or Vidwan of Hindi Prachar Sabha, Hyderabad of any other
equivalent recognized qualification in Hindi (BA standard) by the
Government of A.P. or M.A., Hindi and appearing for final year
examinations of Hindi Pandit Training Certificate on or before
07.01.2012
Urdu pandit BA (Urdu Literature) or BA (Oriental Language Urdu) or Bachelor of
Oriental Language Urdu or Graduate Degree with optional subject
Urdu or M.A. (Urdu) and appearing for final year examinations of
Urdu Pandit Training Certificate on or before 07.01.2012
Other Languages
(Bengali, Gujarathi,
Kannada, Marathi,
Oriya, Sanskrit, Tamil)
A Graduate Degree in the Language concerned and appearing for
final year examinations of Pandit Training in the Language concerned
or B.Ed with Language concerned as one of the methodologies on or
before 07.01.2012.
* A diploma/degree course in teacher education recognized by the National Council for
Teacher Education (NCTE) only shall be considered. However, in case of Diploma in
Education (Special Education) and B.Ed. (Special Education), a course recognized by the
Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI) only shall be considered.
* Intermediate qualification of Board of Intermediate Education of A.P. or Senior Secondary
Education of a Recognized Board only will be considered. So also the Bachelor’s Degree of a
University Recognized by UGC only will be considered.
6. STRUCTURE AND CONTENT OF APTET:
a) All questions in APTET – January 2012 will be Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs),
each carrying one mark, with four alternatives out of which one answer will be
correct. There will be no negative marking.
b) There will be two papers of APTET-January 2012.
(i) Paper I will be for a person who intends to be a teacher for classes I to V.
(ii) Paper II will be for a person who intends to be a teacher for classes VI to VIII.
c) A person who intends to be a teacher for both levels (classes I to V and classes VI
to VIII) will have to appear in both the papers (Paper I and Paper II).
7d) Paper I (for Classes I to V); No. of MCQs – 150;
Duration of examination: 2 ½ hours
Structure and Content (All Compulsory)
S.No. Subject
No. of
MCQs
Marks
1 Child Development and Pedagogy 30 30
2 Language I 30 30
3 Language II (English) 30 30
4 Mathematics 30 30
5 Environmental Studies 30 30
TOTAL 150 150

i) The syllabus for Child Development and Pedagogy under Paper- I is based on
the syllabus of D.Ed curriculum focusing on Educational Psychology of Teaching
and Learning in Classes I to V and above. The syllabus also focuses on
understanding the characteristics, needs and psychology of diverse learners,
interaction with learners and the attributes and qualities of a good facilitator of
learning.

ii) In Andhra Pradesh, the following languages are offered under Language I viz.,
Telugu, Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarathi, Kannada, Marathi, Oriya and Tamil.
Candidate has to choose one of these 9 languages under Language I under
APTET. Those candidates would have compulsorily studied in that language
either as medium of study or as first language at least up to Class X as stated in
the eligibility criteria above.

iii) In respect of Andhra Pradesh language II under APTET shall be English for all
candidates irrespective of medium of the school to which they intend to seek
employment.

iv) The syllabi for Mathematics & Environmental Studies are designed on the basis
of topics of Classes I to V of state syllabus. The difficulty standard of questions
will be upto X class level. The test items in Mathematics and Environmental
Studies will contain MCQs not only on content but also on pedagogy. In
Mathematics 24 MCQs will be on content and 6 MCQs on pedagogy. Similarly in
Environmental Studies 24 MCQs will be on content and 6 MCQs on pedagogy.

v) The syllabi for Language I & II shall be based on proficiency in the language,
elements of language, communication and comprehension abilities (standard up
to Class X level).
8e) Paper II (for classes VI to VIII); No of MCQs – 150;
Duration of examination: 2 ½ hours
Structure and Content
S.No. Subject
No. of
MCQs
Marks
1 Child Development and Pedagogy 30 30
2 Language I 30 30
3 Language II (English) 30 30
4 Mathematics and Science
OR
Social Studies
60 60
TOTAL 150 150

i) The syllabus for Child Development and Pedagogy under Paper II is based on
the syllabus of D.Ed / B.Ed curriculum focusing on Educational Psychology of
Teaching and Learning in Classes VI and above. The syllabus also focuses on
understanding the characteristics, needs and psychology of diverse learners,
interaction with learners and the attributes and qualities of a good facilitator of
learning.

ii) In Andhra Pradesh, the following languages are offered under Language I viz.,
Telugu, Urdu, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Oriya, Tamil, and Sanskrit. Candidate
has to choose one of these languages under Language I. Candidates with
Language Pandit Training Certificate should only choose that particular
Language as Language-I of TET Paper-II.

iii) In respect of Andhra Pradesh language II shall be English for all candidates.
iv) For Paper II Science & Mathematics sectors questions will be as follows:

Subject No. of MCQs
Mathematics 30 MCQs
Physical Science 14 MCQs
Biological Science 16 MCQs
TOTAL 60 MCQs
v) For Paper II Social Studies portion the syllabus will cover the sectors namely,
History, Geography, Civics and Economics.
Subject No. of MCQs
History and Civics 30 MCQs
Geography and
Economics 30 MCQs
TOTAL 60 MCQs
vi) For Paper II the syllabi for APTET-January 2012 of Mathematics & Sciences,
Social Studies are based on topics of Classes VI to VIII with difficulty standard
of questions upto Secondary Level.
9vii) The syllabi for language I and II shall be based on proficiency in the language,
elements of language, communication and comprehension abilities standard up
to Secondary Level.
viii) Candidates can download the Syallabi for Paper I and II for each subject notified
on website http://aptet.cgg.gov.in

7. MEDIUM OF QUESTION PAPER:
The question paper shall be bilingual i.e., it shall be English followed by the Language I chosen
for all languages except for Sanskrit. For Sanskrit it shall be Telugu followed by Sanskrit.
8. PASS CRITERIA OF APTET- JANUARY 2012:
APTET January, 2012 Results will be declared within four weeks from the date of conduct of
test. The criteria for considering pass in APTET is as follows:
Community Pass marks
i) OC 60% Marks and above
ii) BC 50% Marks and above
iii) SC/ 40% Marks and above
iv) ST 40% Marks and above
v) Differently abled (PH) ** 40% Marks and above
**Note: 1. Physically Handicapped with at least 40% handicap only will be considered in
respect of Visually Handicapped and Orthopedically Handicapped.
2. With regard to Hearing Impaired, minimum 75% handicap will be considered under
PH category
It is to be noted that if a candidate has been allowed to appear in the Andhra Pradesh Teacher
Eligibility Test it does not imply that the candidates’ eligibility has been verified. However
qualifying the APTET would not confer a right on any person for recruitment / employment as it
is only one of the eligibility criteria for appointment. The eligibility shall finally be verified by the
concerned recruiting agency/ appointing authority.
9. Weightage to APTET scores in the selection in District Selection Committee
(DSC) recruitment in Andhra Pradesh
20% weightage will be given to APTET scores in the ensuing Teacher Recruitments of the
State Government i.e., 20% weightage is for APTET score and 80% weightage for written test
in Teacher Recruitment Test (TRT) for drawing up selection list, if the candidate is eligible
otherwise as well.

10. EXEMPTION FROM PASSING APTET:
Teachers who were appointed before NCTE notification, dated 23-8-2010 by DSC or by any
competent authority in Government / local authority as per Recruitment Rules prevalent at that
time are exempted from appearing for APTET Exam. However, teachers working in private
schools whose appointments are not approved by competent authority in Government are not
exempted from passing APTET. Such teachers of private unaided schools can appear at
APTET conducted by either State Government or CTET conducted by Central Government. In
respect of non approved teachers working in private aided schools, they should invariably
appear at APTET conducted by the State Government only.

11. MARKS MEMO/CERTIFICATE – VALIDITY PERIOD:
10The Marks Memo/Certificate of APTET, January, 2012 shall be made available on APTET
website only.

There is no restriction on the number of attempts a person can take for acquiring APTET
Certificate. A person who has qualified APTET may also appear again for improving his/her
score. In accordance with the NCTE guidelines the APTET certificate shall be valid for a period
of seven years from the date of examination.

12. EXAMINATION CENTERS

APTET shall be conducted in all the 23 districts of the state. Candidate can choose any
Examination Centre (District) of his choice. However, when the capacity of any particular
Examination Centre (District) gets exhausted that particular Examination Centre (District) will
not be displayed in list of examination centers given in the online application form. In such case
the candidate has to choose Examination Centre (District) of his choice from the remaining list
available. Under no circumstances, the Centre once allotted shall be changed. District
Educational Officer shall be the Officer responsible for the conduct of examination in the
District under the overall supervision of the District Collector.

13. HALL TICKET:

Candidates can download their Hall Tickets from the website at http://aptet.cgg.gov.in from
24.12.2011. In case any candidate could not download the Hall ticket she/he should contact
the Director, APTET-January 2012, O/o the Commissioner and Director of School Education,
A.P., Saifabad, Hyderabad – 04 between 10.30 AM and 5.00 PM on all working days between
28.12.2011 and 06.01.2012 in person only giving details of the journal number of the fee paid,
reference number of the application submitted, a copy of the printout of the Application form
and one photograph (same photograph as pasted on the application form).
Request for issue of duplicate Hall Ticket will not be entertained after the examination in any
case.

14. FEE
The fee towards submission of application online and for the conduct of examination is
Rs.300.00. for only Paper I or only Paper II or both. Candidates shall pay the fee through
APONLINE or e-Seva centres between 31.10.2011 and 25.11.2011 and submit online
application at the APTET website http://aptet.cgg.gov.in between 01.11.2011 and 26.11.2011.

15. PROCEDURE FOR APPLYING ONLINE
i. The candidates shall at first download the ‘Information Bulletin’ (free of cost)
from the APTET website http://aptet.cgg.gov.in, go through it carefully and
satisfy their eligibility for appearing for APTET, January 2012.
ii. The candidate after satisfying herself/himself about the eligibility criteria for
APTET shall pay a fee of Rs.300.00 through APONLINE or e-Seva between
31-10-2011 and 25-11-2011 towards submission of application online and for
the conduct of examination.

iii. At the APONLINE or e-Seva Centres, the candidate has to give the required
preliminary data (i.e. Name of the candidate, Date of birth, Gender, whether the
candidate belongs to A.P. and mobile phone number).
iv. On receipt of fee at APONLINE or e-Seva the candidate shall be issued a
‘Journal Number’ with which she/he can proceed with submission of
application online. (Issue of Journal Number does not mean that the
11candidate has completed submission of application online. It is only a
confirmation of the fee received).

v. The candidates shall follow the procedure of submission of online application as
given in the ‘Information Bulletin’ and also as per the instructions provided
online while filling up the online application form. The Candidate should be
ready with photograph of size 3.5X3.5cms before filling in on-line application.’
vi. Paste the photograph on a white paper and sign below (sign in Black Ink only).
Look for the sample above. Ensure that the signature is within the box. Scan
the required size containing the photograph and signature. Please do not scan
the complete page. The entire image consisting of photo along with signature
is required to be scanned and stored in *.jpeg format on local machine.
Ensure that the size of the scanned image is not more than 50kb. If the size of
the image is more than 50 kb, then adjust the settings of the scanner such as
dpi resolutions, number of colors during the process of scanning.
a. Applications with no photo/ unclear photo/ inadequate size
photograph will be rejected. Hall-Ticket will not be issued to
such candidates. Hence, after pressing the ‘UPLOAD’ button check
if the photo is of required size, clear and is of the same candidate
of whom the details are to be filled in the application. If the photo
is smaller in size, not clear or does not belong to the candidate
press ‘BACK’ button below the photograph on the application form
and restart with scanning of the photograph.
b. Complaints relating to mismatch of photograph and
candidate details will not be accepted after submission of
application at any cost.

vii. Initial steps to be followed before filling Online Application Form
1. Go to http://aptet.cgg.gov.in
2. Click on Application Form
3. Click on the dialogue box (i.e., WELCOME TO ONLINE
APPLICATION)
4. Confirm the next dialogue box (i.e., Fields marked with ‘*’ are
compulsory)
5. Enter your Journal Number issued by APONLINE or e-Seva, the
date of payment of fees and Date of birth. Candidates who have
12appeared for APTET, July 2011 conducted on 31.07.2011 should
also give the Reference ID number of that test.
6. At the field ‘Attach your latest photograph’ Click on Browse
button and attach your photograph and your signature stored on
the local machine.

7. Tick the declaration and enter the verification code.
8. Press Upload
9. The application will be opened.
10.When the application form is opened check if the photo is of required size, clear and is of the same candidate of whom the details are to be filled in the application. If the photo is smaller in size, not clear or does not belong to the candidate press ‘BACK’ button below the photograph on the application form and restart with scanning of the photograph.
11.Confirm that the photograph is yours and that it is as per the given specifications.
12. Fill in the application form as per the instructions given in the User Guide and Information Bulletin and those offered while filling the Online Application Form.
13.After filling all the details press PREVIEW button. This will display the details submitted by you
14.If you find all the details correct press SUBMIT other wise press EDIT and resubmit the information.
viii. On submission of application form online the candidate shall be given reference ID number which should be kept carefully for any kind of future correspondence. Submission of application can be considered to have been completed only on receiving reference ID number.
ix. On completion of submission, the candidates shall take a printout of the application and store it for future use. Candidates should not post the printout of the application to APTET office.
x. In case of any clarifications before, during or after submission of application online the candidates may contact the Help Desk at Telephone Numbers CGG:7702922003, 7702922004 between 10.30 a.m. and 5.00 p.m on all working days from 31-10-2011 to 26-11-2011.
xi. The candidates can also post their complaints pertaining to their application only online at http://aptet.cgg.gov.in between 07.11.2011 to 28.11.2011. Complaints relating to photograph will not be entertained.
xii. In any case applications will not be received in any kind of manual form.
xiii. Candidates can download their Hall Tickets from the website at http://aptet.cgg.gov.in from 24.12.2011. In case any candidate could not 13download the Hall ticket she/he should contact the Director, APTET, O/o the Commissioner and Director of School Education, A.P., Saifabad, Hyderabad – 04 between 10.30 AM to 5.00 PM on all working days between 28.12.2011 and 06.01.2012 in person only giving details of the journal number of the fee paid, reference number of the application submitted, a copy of the printout of the Application form and one photograph (as pasted on the application form). xiv. Request for issue of duplicate Hall Ticket will not be entertained after the examination in any case.
Step wise detailed instructions for filling online application are given in the ‘ÚSER GUIDE’ available on the website http://aptet.cgg.gov.in.
• Request for change / correction can be made online at the complaint box on the website http://aptet.cgg.gov.in. Candidates will be given opportunity to submit their complaints regarding online application only once
• Fee once remitted shall not be refunded under any circumstances.
• It is to be noted that if a candidate has been allowed to appear in the Andhra Pradesh Teacher Eligibility Test it does not imply that the candidates’ eligibility has been verified. However qualifying the APTET would not confer a right on any person for recruitment / employment as it is only one of the eligibility criteria for appointment. The eligibility shall be, finally, verified by the concerned recruiting agency/ appointing authority.
• Furnishing of false, wrong or inaccurate information may lead to cancellation of the test result and even prosecution in appropriate cases.
• No request for re-checking, re-assessment, re-evaluation or scrutiny of OMR answer-sheets will be entertained.

16. LEGAL JURISDICTION
All disputes pertaining to the conduct of APTET- January 2012 shall be subject to jurisdiction of State Government only.

17. PROCEDURE FOR CONDUCT OF EXAMINATION OF APTET , January 2012: Procedure for conduct of examination and instructions for use of the Test Booklet and Answer Sheet are as under. Candidates are advised to go through them carefully before going for the Examination.

a. The examination rooms / hall will be opened 30 minutes before the commencement of the test. Candidates should take their seat immediately after opening of the examination hall.

b. The candidates should adhere to the instructions given on the Hall Ticket. Further, the candidate must show, on demand, the Hall Ticket for admission in the examination room / hall. A candidate who does not possess the Hall Ticket issued by the APTET Office shall not be permitted for the examination under any circumstances by the Test Centre Superintendent.

c. A seat indicating Hall ticket number will be allocated to each candidate. Candidates should find and occupy their allotted seat only. If any candidate is found to have changed room or the seat on her/his own other than allotted, her/his candidature shall be cancelled and no plea would be accepted for it.

d. A candidate who comes after the commencement of the examination shall not be permitted to sit in the examination.

14e. Candidates are not allowed to carry any textual material, calculators, Docu Pen, slide rules, log tables, and electronic watches with facilities of calculator, printed or written material, and bits of papers, mobile phone, pager or any other device, except the Hall Ticket and Black Ball Point pen inside the Examination room / hall. If any candidate is in possession of any of the above items, her/his candidature will be treated as unfair means and her/his current examination will be cancelled. She/he will also be debarred for future examination(s) & the material will be seized.

f. No candidate, without the special permission of the Centre Superintendent or the Invigilator concerned, will leave her/his seat or Examination Room until the full duration of the paper is over. Candidates should not leave the room/ hall without handing over their OMR Answer Sheets to the Invigilator on duty.

g. Candidates are advised to bring with them a cardboard or a clip board on which nothing should be written, so that they have no difficulty in writing responses in the OMR Answer Sheet even if the tables provided in the examination room/hall do not have smooth surface. They should also bring their own Ball Point Pens (Black) of good quality. These will not be supplied at the examination centre.

h. Smoking in the Examination Hall/Room is strictly prohibited.
i. Tea, coffee, cold drinks or snacks are not allowed to be taken into the examination rooms during examination hours.

j. Five minutes before the commencement of the paper, each candidate will be givenOMR Answer Sheet. Immediately on receipt of the OMR answer sheet the candidates shall check their particulars pre printed on side 2 of the OMR answer sheet. In case of any discrepancy the OMR answer sheet should be shown to the invigilator. If the data is wrongly printed the candidate should make necessary corrections in the nominal roll. In case OMR answer sheet is damaged, folded or not properly printed buffer OMR answer sheet will be given wherein the candidate has to fill the Hall Ticket Number, Name, Fathers name, Paper Number, Question Paper Medium, Language I offered and Test center name.

k. The test will start exactly at the time mentioned in the Hall ticket and an announcement to this effect will be made by the invigilator. The candidates will write and shade the Test Booklet code on the OMR answer sheet. In case the candidate does not shade the test booklet code her/his OMR answer sheet will not be valued. OMR answer sheet with discrepancy in written and shaded Test Booklet code will also be not valued.

l. During the examination time, the invigilator will check Hall Ticket of the candidate to satisfy herself /himself about the identity of each candidate. The invigilator will also put her/his signature in the place provided on the OMR Answer Sheet. The candidate will also put her/his signature at the appropriate box of the OMR Answer Sheet in the presence of the invigilator with Black ball point pen.

m. The candidate will check that the Test-booklet contains as many number of pages as are written on the top of the first page of the Test Booklet. She/he should also check whether all the pages are printed properly. The candidate shall not remove any page(s) from the Test-Booklet and if she/he is found to have removed any page(s) from her/his Test Booklet, she/he will be presumed to have resorted to unfair means and shall be liable for action under provisions of Act, 25 of 1997 on prohibition of mal practices in examinations in Andhra Pradesh besides initiating criminal proceedings. After checking 15the pages of test Booklet candidate shall read instructions given on the top of the Booklet and adhere to them scrupulously.

n. Unfair Means: Candidates shall maintain perfect silence and attend to their Question Paper only. Any conversation or gesticulation or disturbance in the Examination Room/ Hall shall be deemed as misbehavior. If a candidate is found using unfair means or impersonating, her/his candidature shall be cancelled and he/she will be liable to be debarred for taking examination either permanently or for a specified period according to the nature of offence. If any candidate is in possession of any item(s) as mentioned in note (e) above, her/his candidature for current examination will be cancelled and also liable to be debarred for future examination(s). Further APTET is covered by ACT No.25 of 1997 of Prohibition of Malpractices in Examinations of Andhra Pradesh State Legislative Assembly. If any candidate or any person commits any offence in Exam/Test she/he will be liable for severe action including criminal proceedings.

o. A bell / signal will be given at the beginning of the examination. A bell / signal will also be given before the closing time when the candidate must stop marking the responses.

p. The candidates must sign on the Attendance Sheet at the appropriate place.

18. ROUGH WORK:
The candidate will not do any rough work on the OMR Answer Sheet. All rough work is to be done in the Test Booklet itself, in the space provided.

19. CHANGING AN ANSWER IS NOT ALLOWED

• The candidates must fully satisfy themselves about the accuracy of the answer before darkening the appropriate circle as no change in answer once marked is allowed. Use of eraser or white/correction fluid on the Answer Sheet is not permissible as the Answer Sheets are machine gradable and it may lead to wrong evaluation.
• The candidate is permitted to carry the Test Booklet and preserve it till the results are published.

21. IMPORTANT DATES OF APTET – January -2012
1. Payment of Fees at AP online or e-Seva 31.10.2011 to 25.11.2011
2. Download of APTET Information Bulletin 31.10.2011 onwards
3. Online submission of applications through

http://aptet.cgg.gov.in

01.11.2011 to 26.11.2011
4. Grievance and Help Desk Services 31.10.2011 to 08.01.2012
5. Receiving of complaints (only online) pertaining to
Online applications
07.11.2011 to 28.11.2011
6. Issue of Hall Ticket 24.12.2011 onwards

7. Schedule of Examination
Paper-I
Paper-II
08.01.2012 (Sunday)
9.30 am to 12.00 noon
2.30 pm to 5.00 pm
8. Declaration of Results 28.01.2012, latest by 04-02- 2012

Counsel appearing for the city government told the bench of Acting Chief Justice A.K. Sikri and Justice Siddhartha Mridul that since the renovation work is taking time, an immediate arrangement for office space at Vikas Bhawan in Civil Lines has been made for the committee, headed by the retired judge.

Assuring the court of providing a permanent office to the committee within a month, counsel said: ‘The committee can start working from next week (Monday) from this place. After renovation is complete, office space at Vasant Vihar would be provided to the committee on a permanent basis.’

The court then requested the committee to start work at Vikas Bhawan office from Monday, till it gets a permanent office.

Facing a problem in its working, the committee had earlier written to the high court to provide it an office at a suitable place, staff including accountants, computers, website and email.

Earlier, the same bench had given direction for setting up of a committee to audit the accounts of each of the schools to ascertain if the hike was required. The bench authorised the committee to scrutinize the accounts of minority schools as well.

‘If the committee finds that the hike was not required, the schools are bound to return the money to students with 9 percent interest rate,’ the bench had said in a 143-page verdict Aug 12.

The committee also comprises J.S. Kochar, a chartered accountant, and an official from the directorate of education, to be nominated by the Delhi government’s chief secretary.

The bench had made it clear that the city government’s 2009 notification will be treated as an interim measure but it would be subject to the scrutiny.

The court suggested to the city government to create a permanent regulatory authority, either by amending the Education Act or by enacting a new legislation, to resolve the issue of periodic hikes in tuition fee.

It also suggested to the central government to frame a national policy on fees for unaided schools.

The court was hearing a PIL which had alleged that despite CAG’s indictment of 25 private schools for accounting malpractices including faking losses, the city government has allowed them to hike tuition fees.

The government notification, which was issued on Feb 12, 2009, had said that any school, which was charging a monthly fee of Rs.500, will be allowed to hike it by Rs.100. Likewise, any school charging a monthly fee of Rs.1,000 will be allowed to effect a maximum hike of Rs.200.

Schools with a monthly fee of Rs.1,500 were allowed to hike tuition fees by Rs.300 and those having a fee structure ranging from above Rs.1,500 to Rs.2,000 were allowed to hike it by a sum not more than Rs.400.

The rest of the schools with monthly fees of more than Rs.2,000 were allowed by the notification to hike it by only Rs.500.

The Delhi cabinet had approved the hike ranging from a minimum of Rs.100 to a maximum of Rs.500 in the schools to ease their financial burden due to hike in teachers’ salaries as per the Sixth Pay Commission’s recommendations.

The incident took place in Donglu Middle School in Pudong Tuesday when maths teacher Yang ordered 20 students to slap their faces after they made noise in the class, reported Shanghai Daily.

Those who slapped lightly were ordered to slap harder, students told the Oriental Morning Post.

Some parents said on microblog Weibo.com that ‘Yang should resign for his shameful behaviour that violated the basic principles to be a teacher’.

However, some students defended their teacher.

‘I don’t think that Yang has done anything wrong,’ said a 13-year-old student on a microblog.

‘We students will be the victims to suffer losses if he no longer teaches us.’

While teachers and students groups have demanded an independent investigation into the incident, university vice chancellor D.N. Jauhar told IANS, ‘It was planted… The whole issue has been hyped by the media’.

Protesting students, however, blame the vice chancellor for being insensitive. ‘One girl fell and was unconscious for half an hour as security people pulled and pushed people, using force,’ said Ajay, a student leader.

Since Monday, when the incident took place, the university campus has been in turmoil with protest marches, rallies and fasts.

Each day, agitating students have been coming up with innovative methods of protest. Last week, donkeys and buffaloes were paraded with name tags on the campus.

Ever since Jauhar took charge of the university a year back, he has been entangled in one controversy or another.

From charges of mass copying, bungling in examinations, late results, forged marksheets, leaked question papers, the list of allegations against thne university is indeed long.

With over 250 affiliated colleges from Noida to Lucknow and almost three lakh students enrolled, the institution has failed to keep pace with the changing times. ‘The university like the state of Uttar Pradesh, must be split in several parts,’ says retired teacher Ratan-ji.

Around 12,000 students are waiting for their marksheets or results. Hundreds of students crowd university counters to get marks changed or corrected.

‘Till we get the corrected marksheets, how will we get admission in the next class,’ asks Geeta of the Samajwadi Yuvjan Sabha.

Students from RB Degree College have been agitating for the past fortnight, demanding declaration of results. When a delegation went to meet the vice chancellor, the members were forced out and scolded.

The vice chancellor on his part says, ‘When I took over, the university was in a total mess. I have been trying hard to restore sanity and a degree of efficient working, but these things take time.’

‘Students groups and other interest groups keep trying to build pressure and get things done. I have stood my ground with integrity and transparency. Conditions will improve, I am sure,’ he said.

The education ministry Thursday launched the eaktovka.sk. website, where people could access a total of 26 digitised textbooks and compulsory-reading books as well as download 65 audio-recordings.

The word ‘aktovka’ means ‘schoolbag’ in Slovak, reported Xinhua.

Education Minister Eugen Jurzyca said: ‘We hope that pupils will be able to study even in places where they don’t bring their textbooks, such as during the holidays at their grandma’s, but also that teachers will have an easier time putting together various textbooks or their sections on, for example, physics or chemistry.’

Jurzyca said around 92 percent of households with school-going children who own personal computers and 70 percent of those which have access to the internet would visit the website.

Slovakia, also known as the Slovak Republic, has a population of around 5.4 million. It was part of Czechoslovakia till 1993, when the country was bifurcated into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

The representatives formed the National Independent School Alliance (NISA) to focus on the Right to Education (RTE) Act which, they said, threatens some three lakh such schools with closure due to lack of resources.

Calling for amendments in some provisions of RTE Act, the alliance’s national coordinator R.C. Jain said: ‘We welcome the RTE but some of the provisions of the law seem to be hastily drawn.’

NISA co-coordinator Rajesh Malhotra said: ‘Left as it is, the act will affect more than 90 million students in almost three lakh BPS in the country.’

‘The government should try to support us but on contrary, the RTE threatens our very existence,’ he added.

Representatives also lambasted the stringent criteria for private schools, regarding the infrastructure and teachers’ eligibility, as the schools who do not fulfill the criteria, face steep penalties and closure.

R.C. Rose, the state representative from Rajasthan, told IANS: ‘This act doesn’t consider the diverse geographical conditions of the remote and marginal areas of the country.’

Agreed Manipuri delegate Sem Haokip: ‘In the areas where we work, infrastructure like playgrounds and libraries are not practical.

‘How are schools in remote and tribal areas going to find highly qualified teachers and pay them according to the Sixth Pay Commission pay-scales,’ he asked.

A total of 30,943 candidates will appear in 65 subjects in the examination, which will begin at 9.30 a.m. and go on till 4 p.m.

The university has made preparations to conduct the examinations at 45 centres, out of which 32 centres are outside Jamia campus in different parts of the city.

‘The historic Right to Education (RTE) Act can not be the comprehensive solution to the country’s education-related issues,’ said researcher Geeta Gandhi Kingdon at a School Choice National Conference in the capital.

According to experts, the states are facing a slew of obstacles ranging from generating resources to ensuring admission of children in age-appropriate classes.

Listing the inefficacy of RTE, Kingdon said: ‘RTE is pointless as it squanders public money on untried educational methods.’

Dilip Modi, chairman, Spice Communications, said there was a lack of debate on RTE which left some questions unanswered.

‘Ideally, the policy should be socially desirable, economically viable and politically acceptable.’

Former chief secretary of Gujarat, Sudhir Mankad, presented the government’s point of view and said that nothing could be perfect, but RTE was a good policy.

Enforced on April 1, 2010, RTE Act makes education free for the children from 6-14 years of age.

The one-day conference brought together several experts on education to discuss and debate key issues and educational reforms.

Hearing a plea challenging the Delhi government’s guidelines on admissions by schools, the court said it would decide the issue Jan 6.

NGO Social Jurist had moved court against the order of the government permitting unaided private schools to proceed with the admission of children aged three years and above in pre-school class.

‘Sheikh Hasina and Indian Vice President Hamid Ansari have already given their consent to attend the Tripura Central University’s ninth convocation Jan 12,’ university vice chancellor Arunoday Saha told IANS.

He said: ‘Hasina has agreed to receive the honorary Doctor of Literature (honoris causa) and it would be conferred on her at the convocation.’

Besides Saha, Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar and Governor D.Y.Patil have separately visited Dhaka and invited Hasina to visit the northeastern state which shares boder with Bangladesh.

Sarkar, along with Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, Mizoram’s Lal Thanhawla and Meghalaya’s Mukul Sangma accompanied Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on his Sep 6-7 Bangladesh official visit.

‘Hasina is keen to visit Tripura. Now the Tripura University in consultation with the Indian and Bangladesh governments is giving final touches to the schedule of Hasina’s visit,’ Sarkar told reporters.

‘Hasina’s visit to Tripura would also boost trade and economic relations between the northeast region of India and neighbour Bangladesh,’ Sarkar said.

‘On behalf of Tripura, huge ceremonial reception would be given to the Bangladesh premier and the Indian vice president during their visit,’ he added.

A senior official said that Hasina was expected to hold a high-level meeting with Tripura chief minister and other top Indian officials in Agartala to finalise strategies to boost trade between Bangladesh and India’s northeastern states.

This will be the first visit of any Bangladeshi prime minister to northeast India.

Hasina, according to the official, will stay here Jan 12 and leave for Dhaka the next day.

During the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war, over 1,600,000 Bangladeshi nationals had taken shelter in Tripura alone.

Bangladeshi freedom fighters, ‘Mukti Bahini’, had set up more than 16 base and training camps in various parts of Tripura to fight the Pakistani forces.

‘Hasina may visit one or two spots of these base and training camps in Tripura,’ the official said.

Saha said: ‘This is for the first time that the Tripura University would confer the honorary D.Litt on any person after the university was set up in 1987.’

The petition, filed by Ikrar Khan, says the decision to ban the students’ union elections of the university from March 2006 was unreasonable.

Khan has alleged that the authorities had continued to collect a fee of Rs.50 per student without any union elections being held in the last few years.

The petition says that Jamia authorities in 2006 dissolved the elected student union without giving any reason.

A bench of acting Chief Justice A.K. Sikri and Justice Rajiv Shah Endlaw recused itself from hearing the plea. The matter will come up for hearing before another bench Jan 9, 2012.

]]> http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/court-moved-to-lift-ban-on-jamia-millia-students-union-poll/feed/ 0 http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/now-pursue-a-foreign-degree-from-home/ http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/now-pursue-a-foreign-degree-from-home/#comments Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:35:00 +0000 India Current Affairs http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/now-pursue-a-foreign-degree-from-home/ New Delhi, Dec 20 (IANS) Indian students desiring foreign education can fulfil their dreams right from the comfort of their homes, courtesy online courses launched here Tuesday by Laureate International Universities — a network of higher education institutes.

Master and professional level courses in management, health and human services, public policy and other streams are available from Laureate’s three flagship varsities – Liverpool (Britain), Walden (US) and Glion (Switzerland).

According to Norman Bloomberg, chief operating officer (global products and services), Laureate, the courses being offered are designed specifically for working professionals.

‘After applying online, the aspirant would be able to chat with our advisors who would help him to choose the right programme. Our programmes are aimed at working adults with work experience,’ Bloomberg told IANS.

Enrolled students would be taught through videos and weekly assignments.

‘We have partnered with the Pearl Academy of Fashion and are also in talks with some corporates,’ he added.

The district headquarter town of Phulbani, about 200 km from state capital Bhubaneswar, has been experiencing less than six degrees Celsius temperature since the past few days.

The minimum temperature was recorded at less than three degrees Celsius in some interior places of the district this week, district collector Rajesh Prabhakar Patil told IANS.

‘We have asked all the schools in the district to re-schedule their school hours,’ he said.

Patil said the school authorities have been asked to hold day-classes in place of morning classes from tomorrow (Wednesday).

The Bhubaneswar meteorological centre said the cold wave conditions would continue to prevail in the interior parts of the state during the next 48 hours.

Surrounded on three sides by the Tamsa river, the villagers of Muslimpatti, 20 km from Azamgarh city and 250 km from state capital Lucknow, established a girl’s high school 10 years ago with public donations to provide quality education to girls near their homes.

The village has a population of 7,000 consisting of 60 percent Muslims and 40 percent Hindus. Over 50 percent men are out of the village due to business, service and education.

‘Earlier, it was a dream to educate our daughters, but now it is a reality,’ Hasan Arif, who played a key role in establishing the school, told IANS.

‘Ninety percent girls are educated here. You can’t find a single home which doesn’t have at least one educated woman, ‘ the 72-year-old graduate in agriculture from Deen Dayal Upadhyay University in Gorakhpur added.

The Muslimpatti Junior Niswan High School was established in 2000 with Rs.8 lakh collected through public donations. The nearest schools were just five kilometres from the village but due to the co-education system and safety fears, parents rarely sent their daughters there.

Arif said, ‘Here girls are more interested in education. A school bus does come, but sending them far was not safe.’

There is no way to connect 60 villages, including Muslimpatti, to state highway 34 and 30 and educational institutions. Villagers walk across a bamboo bridge each year but it is hard to cross.

Villager Naeem Ahmad felt ‘the only option was to send them 12 km away to Beenapara, an educational hub in Azamgarh, but it is hard to cross the Tamsa river.’

‘Our legs used to shake while crossing the bridge. We had to stay home in the rainy season due to the floodwater over the bridge,’ said Nazia Bano who completed her Class 10 from Beenapara.

Even now, there is no school for boys and they have to go through the same bridge for education.

Several personalities like Gen Mirza Sultan Ahmad Beg, who was a judicial member in the Uttar Pradesh Board of Revenue in 1948, and Mirza Aslam Beg, ex-chief of the army staff of the Pakistan Army, hailed from this village.

Arif wants to make the school, which is now till Class 10, grow up to Class 12 but is facing several challenges like lack of resources.

‘We have laid the stone here. Let us see what happens. If our daughters are educated, then at least they can teach their own children,’ he added.

The teachers’ salary is less than Rs.2,000 each per month. Mirza Shabbir, manager of the school, said: ‘We don’t have the earnings to pay teachers much.’

Salman Sultan, a resident of Muslimpatti who teaches chemistry and also heads the computer science department in the Shibli National Post Graduate College in Azamgarh, is hopeful about the future of the village but wants a change in the attitude of people.

‘I am hopeful for my village, which was once the most educated village in Azamgarh district. However, this requires a change in the lethargic and indifferent attitude of villagers,’ said Sultan.

(Abu Zafar can be contacted at abuzafar@journalist.com)

‘We have registered a case of sedition, defamation and criminal conspiracy against those officials of the board of school education J and K responsible for supervision and publication of a picture in one of the board’s Urdu text books depicting policemen as ‘Zalim’ which means cruel.

‘We have started questioning of those responsible and law will take its course,’ a senior police officer told IANS here.

In one of its vernacular text books titled ‘Baharistan-e-Urdu’, which is part of the prescribed course, the state education board has described a person in uniform with a bamboo stick as ‘cruel’.

Board authorities said they were making inquiries as to how the picture got into the text book and instructions has been issued to delete the picture from the text book.

Approaching the Delhi Court, NGO, Social Jurist said that the order of Delhi’s directorate of education (DoE) was violative of an earlier judgment of the high court which said no child, below the age of four years, would be admitted for formal schooling.

‘The matter is likely to be heard by Acting Chief Justice A.K. Sikri and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw on Dec 21,’ said the NGO’s counsel Ashok Agarwal.

The NGO, in its plea, said: ‘The petitioner by the present application is seeking stay of the order dated Dec 16, 2011 of the Delhi government, to the extent it permits unaided recognised private schools of Delhi to conduct admission to pre-school (nursery) as entry level class in the academic session 2012-13.’

Agarwal, through the PIL, has alleged the government failed to prevent ‘unaided recognized private schools from admitting children below 4 years age in formal school.

‘The government also failed to ensure the schools of Delhi have only one year pre-primary class in formal schools where children of 4+ age are admitted directly and are not promoted from Nursery/Pre-school,’ said the plea.

Seeking to ban the pre-school (nursery) class, where ’3+ kids are being admitted’, the NGO has said that formal education should start with the pre-primary class where 4+ kids be admitted.

The petition alleged that the government’s order, was issued ‘in haste and in great disregard to the orders having been passed by this court in the PIL and also with a view to frustrate the present proceedings’.

The NGO also alleged that the government did not bother to wait for the ‘outcome of the hearing of the PIL’ and allowed the private schools to conduct admission to pre-school (nursery) class as entry level class.

The NGO has raised apprehension that the act of the government would lead to continued admission of children below four years in pre-schools, ‘treating it as an entry level for the academic session 2012-13 and thereafter promoting them to next class that is pre-primary class and in the next academic year of 2013-14′.

Earlier, the city government had told the court that it has approved and accepted the recommendations of the Ganguly Committee report on admission of toddlers.

The human chain spelt out the words ‘Junk The Junk Food’.

‘This is not a fight against a type of food, it’s our children’s fight against the processed food industry,’ said Father J.A. Cavalho, head of the school.

Addressing the students, he explained how several brands of snacks contain banned substances such as Mono Sodium Glutamate (MSG).

‘This is an engineered system. Due to these substances, our body grows habituated to such foods and craves for more of such junk food,’ he said.

Anuradha Dey, a biology teacher, said it was a lifestyle issue and lifestyle changes were needed to correct it.

‘Lifestyle diseases like high blood pressure and diabetes are becoming prevalent in 13-19 years’ age group due to excess consumption of junk food. Even in our school, some children face these issues,’ Dey told IANS.

Members of the Student Parliament, a students’ body for self-governance in the school, shared their own experiences with junk food and how the campaign had changed their views about the issue.

‘I don’t eat junk food. And nowadays, I am trying to convert my younger sister too,’ Mallika Arora, a Class 11 student, told IANS.

Another student Sugandha Sharma said: ‘I love food but I have become more proactive about my food choices.’

The event also involved a street play on the adverse effects of junk food and a T-shirt painting competition. A postcard writing drive was also organised.

Uday Foundation, a non government organisation working for children’s health, had filed a petition against the irregularities and absence of guidelines in Delhi school canteens regarding the food being served.

‘A team of our students will go to the high court on Wednesday to present the postcards to the chief justice and make him aware of the children’s wishes,’ Father Cavalho added.

The National Museum of Contraceptives would probably be built in Rudong county in Jiangsu province, the Shanghai Daily reported.

According to the Modern Express newspaper, the museum would include a 10,000-square-metre display hall, an education centre and a contraceptive-themed park.

The proposed museum would also tell the story of contraception in China through the ages and detail the achievements of birth control in Rudong County, government officials told the newspaper.

However, teenagers receive military training at a base in the county, and the plans to build the museum have run into controversy.

Nearby residents said it would be ‘inappropriate’ to build the museum there.

‘Most of visitors to the base are teenagers or younger children, and I don’t think a contraceptive museum and theme park is suitable for them,’ said one resident.

The newspaper, however, said very few people visit the area near the base, with the exception of the teenagers sent by their schools to receive military training.

Some people supported the museum, arguing that teenagers would learn about sex education by visiting the museum.

‘Some Chinese parents find it awkward to teach their children about sex, so the museum may help them in this task,’ said a blogger named Maomao on Weibo.com.

The students were from the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed bin Sultan Al Qasimi, crown prince and deputy ruler of Sharjah, government officials and families of the graduates attended the ceremony.

University chancellor Samy A. Mahmoud said the university has become an ‘academic beacon’ with a role to build a knowledge-based society and develop the nation and its human resources.

‘The Patna district administration has ordered all schools to close from Dec 19 to 25 to provide relief to children from the intense cold,’ officials said here.

Patna District Magistrate Sanjay Kumar said that in view of the cold wave, all schools will remain closed till Sunday next.

An intense cold wave is sweeping Bihar with Gaya recording a minimum temperature of 5.2 degrees Celsius and Patna registering a low of 6.6 degrees Celsius Friday.

The weather has affected normal life in the state.

According to Met officials, chilly north-westerly winds have swept the state though the minimum temperature has increased since Sunday.

Dense fog has disrupted air and rail services with several flights delayed and long-distance trains running late.

Trainee teachers are required to pass the online tests to qualify for their chosen profession. But many of them are joining schools despite having repeatedly failed straightforward online tests of their basic skills, the Daily Mail reported.

Eight percent of the candidates needed to take three or more re-sits before they passed the literacy test, a number that increases to 10 percent for the numeracy test. According to figures released by the department Of education, some teachers took more than 10 attempts before finally passing.

One teacher sat the literacy test a total of 36 times before finally passing, while another candidate had 39 attempts at the numeracy test, it has been revealed.

The tests, taken on a computer at a registered teacher training centre, are designed to ensure all teachers have the basic skills required to carry out their duties, such as working out class grades or writing report letters.

As per this year’s figures, a total of 6,740 teachers needed to re-sit the literacy exam and 6,440 had to have a second go at the numeracy test. Of these, 760 required five or more attempts at the literacy paper, with 40 logging 10 or more attempts to pass.

In the numeracy test, 1,290 teachers made five or more attempts to pass the computer test, with 160 taking up the exam 10 times or more.

The literacy test checks applicants on their punctuation, grammar, comprehension and spelling on words such as ‘available’, ‘immediately’, ‘receipt’, ‘argumentative’ and ‘accommodates’.

Armed guerrillas surrounded and blew up the school in Sarkanta village in Jamui, about 200 km from here, officials said. According to police officials, Maoists used a JCB machine also to raze the building to the ground.

According to police, the rebels demolished the building to protest against combing operations launched by security men in the area, he said.

Four days ago the rebels had badly damaged a middle school building in Gaya district.

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Yes, the institute offers customized services based on unique requirement of the clients. The selection strategies are customized based on the understanding of underpinning requirements of the clients. Expertise and experience of 25 years in the psychometrics and selection assures success of manpower augmentation.

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The institute has experience backed by strong network strength and supply chain management to conduct the paper pencil based test all over the country in over 150 cities/towns for about three lakh candidates in one session. Paramount importance is given to safety, secrecy and security of the test material as also fair, impartial and smooth conduct of the examination and seamless logistics.

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IBPS is an academic institute and offers guidance to PhD students registered with SNDT University in the management subject. The institute has an enriched collection of books, journals and periodicals, in the library. The expert guidance and supervision of the faculty members steer the students to carry out research activities in the right direction. The institute also conducts national and international workshops, conferences and seminars and provides platform for exchange of knowledge in the area of Psychometrics, Assessment, Human Resource Management, Banking and Finance and other general management topics.

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Apparently not pleased with the latest position of the central government, a bench of Justice H.L. Dattu and Justice C.K. Prasad said: ‘We don’t want to be party to any such decision. First you notify the rules for common entrance tests and then you don’t want to implement it.’

As Additional Solicitor General Harin Rawal and MCI’s senior counsel Amarandra Sharan sought more time to switch to a common entrance test, Justice Dattu said: ‘It is for you to conduct the NEET or not conduct it, it is not for us.’

‘Orders are passed at your convenience. Draft regulations had already been filed. Now you say you will not do it in 2012-13. This court will not be a party to the postponement.’

While allowing the government to take any executive action it wanted to take, the court said: ‘You do whatever you want, we will not be party to it.’

The court’s response came when Rawal drew the court’s attention to the divergent positions taken by several state governments for agreeing to participate in NEET for under graduate medical course involving MBBS and BDS.

The additional solicitor general withdrew the central government’s application after the court made it candidly clear that it was not going to pass any order.

Despite the rebuke by the Court, it was evident that central government would delay the holding of NEET for MBBS and BDS courses by academic year 2013-14.

Its application said that the chief ministers of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Assam have sought to be exempted from the NEET for 2012 as the students of their states would require some more time to switch over to the new system and get fully acquinted with the syllabus prescribed by the MCI.

The court was told that Maharashtra, Gujarat and Goa has shown readiness for the NEET from the academic year 2013-14 where as Andhra Pradesh is inclined to join the NEET but has sought exemption for two years.

Kerala, the application said, has shown its willingness to join NEET with a rider that ‘all its reservation policies in admission to medical courses may be allowed to be followed.’

On the other hand, Assam has expressed reservation in respect of the minimum eligibility marks as provided under the NEET and said that it should be ‘allowed to add grace marks in order to ensure that adequate number of students from the state are selected for seats earmarked for the state in medical colleges’.

However, West Bengal has expressed preference to continue with a joint entrance examination board for all the colleges in the state, but would be ready to join the NEET for undergraduate medical courses if it was assured that Bengali language would be one of the media for the examination.

‘In awarding this degree the university not only records its deep appreciation for his contribution to the field of economics but it honours itself,’ said Jamia Vice-Chancellor Najeeb Jung speaking to a packed house at the M.A. Ansari auditorium.

‘We had planned to honour Professor Sen at our convocation held last month but he was not available. So, we held this special convocation ceremony,’ Jung later told IANS.

Praising the 91-year-old university, one of the country’s oldest, Sen said that Jamia was a union of education and tradition.

‘I am delighted to receive this honour,’ added the economist who was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in economic sciences and Bharat Ratna – the highest civilian award in India – the following year.

‘Jamia is a place of great education. It’s a confluence of south Asian Muslim history, national heritage, and a global academic institution,’ Sen later told IANS.

Jamia Millia Islamia, an institution originally established at Aligarh (Uttar Pradesh) in 1920 became a central university by an act of parliament in 1988.

This is the highest package offered to a Kanpur IITian and one of the highest in India so far.

‘Pocket Gems is into mobile application development for Android and iOS. The interviews held in Kanpur were completely technical,’ Narain told IANS.

‘I had some background in Android which could have appealed to them. It’s a startup, so has only around 100 employees. They’ve visited all the IITs and recruited a few students from each,’ he added.

Narain attributed his success to his schooling in Chennai, Hyderabad, New Delhi and Agra. ‘All schools are different and gave me a new experience and changed my world view for the better,’ he said.

A directive by the admissions office has warned that some students were culturally sensitive to traditional greetings. It says that ‘suitable body language’ was just as welcoming, the Daily Express said.

However, most tutors termed the fiat ‘ridiculous’, saying the politically correct decree treats them as ‘social misfits’.

‘It seems to be totally bonkers. We know when to shake someone’s hand and when not to. All this seems to be stupid and pointless and could make interviews even more awkward,’ one academic said.

Another said: ‘This is ridiculous. It would be obvious if someone objected to handshakes and we would know what to do. We don’t need instructions.’

A directive sent by the admissions office has warned that some students are ‘culturally sensitive’ to traditional greetings. It says ‘suitable body language’ is just as welcoming, according to the Daily Express.

However, most tutors have termed it ‘ridiculous’, saying the politically correct decree treats them as ‘social misfits’.

‘It seems to be totally bonkers. We know when to shake someone’s hand and when not to. All this seems to be stupid and pointless and could make interviews even more awkward,’ one academician said.

Another said: ‘This is ridiculous. It would be obvious if someone objected to handshakes and we would know what to do. We don’t need instructions.’

‘I do not want to hear that the minorities are not represented enough in the service sector. We will create the infrastructure for your education and training and you will have to utilise them. I want to see you in higher posts,’ she said.

The Sachar Committee report revealed that Muslim representation in government service in the state was much lower than their share of population.

Inaugurating the new building of the Aliah University here, Banerjee said that apart from establishing training centres especially for the minority community, a large number of madrasas (Islamic seminaries) will be opened in the state.

‘I have a dream to create many madrasas. I want to see you grow and develop so long as I am here. I am not here to stay for always. So I urge you to utilise all the governmental facilities and ensure your development,’ she added.

The National Union of Students said students were taking on the ‘dangerous’ work to cope with the cost of going to university, with fees going up to 9,000 pounds from 2012, the Daily Telegraph reported.

The union said many others turned to gambling or were taking part in medical experiments to earn money.

‘In an economic climate where there are very few jobs, where student support has been massively cut, people are taking more work in the informal economy such as sex work,’ the union’s national women’s officer Estelle Hart told BBC Radio 5.

‘It’s all dangerous unregulated work, simply so people can stay in education,’ she said.

The university syndicate meeting held here Tuesday accepted the report of its sub-committee cancelling the PhD registration of Arun Kumar.

The sub-committee, which looked into the registration papers of Kumar following a direction from the Kerala High Court, found that he did not have the mandatory qualifications to apply for a PhD.

Speaking to IANS, Varghese Perayil, a member of the syndicate sub-committee, said Kumar did not meet the requirement for a PhD registration.

‘Three years back he managed to get the registration, but following media reports that he did not meet the eligibility, the then syndicate cancelled the registration. Kumar approached the high court which asked the present syndicate to re-examine the case,’ said Perayil.

He added that the mandatory requirements for a Phd registration is the applicant should have either seven years teaching experience or should have cleared the national eligibility test.

‘We found out that he has neither of the two and we decided to cancel his PhD registration in Bio-informatics. It was a unanimous decision to cancel his registration,’ added Perayil.

Meanwhile, sources close to Kumar said he will go in appeal against the decision at the high court.

Kumar works as additional director at the state-owned Institute of Human Resources Development here. The Kerala assembly has also appointed a nine-member committee of legislators to probe whether rules were flouted when, during the tenure of Achuthanandan as chief minister, Kumar was appointed as director of a state-run IT institute early this year.

Kumar is to be asked to appear before the committee to give his version.

In yet another case against Kumar, the Vigilance department has found evidence to link him with controversial and now jailed ‘godman’ Swami Amritananthachaithanya alias Santosh Madhavan in a land deal.

]]> http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/notice-to-government-on-plea-against-aligarh-varsity-head/feed/ 0 http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/china-bars-teachers-from-using-harsh-words/ http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/china-bars-teachers-from-using-harsh-words/#comments Tue, 13 Dec 2011 09:42:35 +0000 India Current Affairs http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/china-bars-teachers-from-using-harsh-words/ Beijing, Dec 13 (IANS) China has barred teachers from using harsh language and words that may belittle students.

The Ministry of Education has published a series of professional standards for teachers in kindergartens, primary schools and middle schools, including the ban on harsh language and words.

The draft of the professional standards also asks teachers to effectively communicate with their students and establish positive teacher-student relationships, reported Xinhua.

The standards will attach a special emphasis on teachers’ moral performance and ethics, according to a statement posted on the ministry’s website Tuesday.

The professional standards say that the teachers should always be student-oriented, regard the lives and safety of their students as a top priority and acquire the necessary knowledge and skills to deal with possible emergencies.

The standards for primary school teachers require them to protect students’ interests and encourage their curiosity. For middle school teachers, the standards require them to encourage students to think independently and promote the students’ ability to innovate.

The draft was prepared hearing the opinions of 1,000 experts, school and kindergarten principals and teachers.

China issued a code of ethics for primary and middle school teachers in 2008, asking teachers to ‘take care of their students’ safety’.

The code was created after a heated public debate about teacher-performance triggered by Fan Meizhong, a middle school teacher in southwest China’s Sichuan province. The teacher ran to save his own life when an 8.0-magnitude earthquake struck Wenchuan county May 12, 2008, leaving his students behind in the classroom.

The teachers have been joined in by college managements and other non-teaching staff.

The strike call has been given by the Joint Action Committee of the Non-Government Colleges Management Federation, the Federation of Associations of College Principals, the Punjab and Chandigarh College Teachers’ Union (PCCTU) and the Federation of Non-Teaching Employees of Punjab.

December examinations of nearly 170 private colleges, which thousands of students were to take, were the immediate casualty of the strike. The exams slated for Dec 13, 14 and 15 have been postponed by college authorities till the agitation continues.

Earlier this month, the teachers had gone on cease work and sit-in strike besides taking mass casual leave.

PCCTU president Jagwant Singh said the strike was called after the Punjab government’s failure to accept its demands, including that for implementing an already announced pension and gratuity scheme for hundreds of college teachers.

‘The Punjab government has failed to implement its own notification of December 2001 on a pension and gratuity scheme for teaching staff. Punjab is the only state where college teachers do not have a pension and gratuity scheme,’ Jagwant Singh said.

The demands also include lifting of ban on recruitment, implementation of revised pay-scales on the basis of parity with those working in government colleges, he said.

The PCCTU has been observing a two-hour strike in all colleges since early November to press its demands.

Jagwant Singh said teachers would hold candlelight processions Tuesday followed by protests outside residences of Punjab ministers and legislators Wednesday and road blockade Thursday.

The commerce, industry and textiles ministry will announce NIDs in Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana to push the growth of regional design and train more youngsters as designers, said Pradyumna Vyas, director of the National School of Design in Ahmedabad.

‘We produce nearly 400,000 engineers and 100,000 managers every year. In contrast, we hardly produce 1,000 industrial designers to address the growing need to make design competitive,’ Vyas told IANS at the CII-NID Design Summit Dec 8-9 in the capital.

The new NIDs are expected to become operational in the next five years. ‘The new NIDs will cater to regional requirements – and combine traditions with industry to meet global needs,’ he added.

‘Sustainable design that carries forward a balanced and aesthetic equilibrium between our social, economic and environmental structures is where design innovation in current time rests,’ Vyas said.

The Twelfth Five-Year plan will give a boost to the process of commercialising indigenous designs from regions and make it commercially viable.

Designer Nachiket Thakur is one such ‘dual knight’ of design who exemplifies this inclusive trend in new Indian design.

As founder-president of Pune-based Vishwa Bamboo, he promotes bamboo craft from the Satara, Sangli, Kolhapur and Nasik regions of Maharashtra as industrial products – for corporate and lifestyle use.

Thakur has created 150 bamboo and clay products, of which 15 are mass manufactured on shop-floors. The craftspeople provide the design and a tech team assembles them in the works.

He also heads the design at Mahindra Composites where he innovates on user-friendly hardware design.

‘Traditional and industrial designs have been seeing a parallel growth of late. One has dexterity while the other has skill – but strangely, both are learning from each other. Craftspeople are realising the need for standardisation of designs and their crafts for mass use,’ Thakur told IANS.

Explaining why traditional crafts were facing a growth block, he said: ‘Craftspeople are generally happy with their work so long as they get a good price for it.’

‘They do not look beyond the scope of the ordinary – and livelihoods. People like me who are working in the crafts sector educate them to customise the products – by making them industrially manufacturable to ensure that the quality of the first product and the 1,000th product is the same,’ he said.

Man-made crafts cannot be mass produced without qualitative variations, Thakur pointed out.

The design environment in India is also changing – as grassroots, traditional and industrial design try to meet on common ground to set up new linkages.

‘An entire eco-system for product development is taking roots in India with various entities (like design, production, innovation and resources) coming together to create one Indian design,’ Sunil Sudhakaran, the owner of Bangalore-based Icarus Design, told IANS.

The design incubation centres – education and support centres for design innovators and entrepreneurs – are an example, he said.

The NS Raghavan design and product incubation cell at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in Bangalore helps young innovators and designer-entrepreneurs from the grassroots develop viable start-ups with mentoring, marketing support and resource generation, Sudhakaran said.

‘Several engineering colleges across India have set up incubation centres to educate and guide innovators,’ he said.

The Design Clinic – a micro-level design intervention programme between the National Institute of Design and the commerce, industry and textiles ministry – has been helping micro, medium and small-scale industries to increase their competitiveness by exposing entrepreneurs to design-related thinking, intervention and application since February 2010.

The scheme has a budget of Rs.73.58 crore ($14 million), of which Rs.49.08 crore is government contribution, a ministry spokesperson said.

The government has turned the spotlight on design education with aesthetics and innovations.

The National Design Policy version of 2011 is encouraging the creation of departments of design in all the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), National Institutes of Technology (NITs) as well as private colleges.

Under its objectives for the coming year, the policy is stressing on teaching of design in vocational, primary and secondary schools oriented to the needs of small-scale and cottage industries – under the theme ‘Designed in India, Made For the World’ to integrate India’s rich traditions, ethnicity with contemporary innovative processes.

(Madhusree Chatterjee can be contacted at madhu.c@ians.in)

‘Indian sociology is distinguished by its grounding in Indian reality and the diversity in its scope of research. Great names like G.S. Ghurye and M.N. Srinivas have been associated with it. Today, it is a subject of study and research in over 50 universities and in many research institutes,’ Ansari said.

He was speaking at the inauguration of the Diamond Jubilee Conference of Indian Sociological Society at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

He pointed out that as societies struggle to respond to challenges of inequalities, they call upon sociologists to decipher the problem and suggest remedies.

Abdul Quadir Jilani, MA (first year) was declared vice president and Hamad Nabi (Master of Social Work, first year) honorary secretary of the students’ union.

The result of the Students’ Union elections, held Saturday, were declared by the chief election officer, Prof. Mahmood S. Khan.

AMUSU was established in 1884 as a debating club on the pattern of Oxford and Cambridge Universities and this students’ body has produced great freedom fighters, leaders and statesmen like Dr. Zakir Husain, the Ali Brothers, Hasrat Mohani, and Sheikh Abdullah.

AMU Vice Chancellor P.K. Abdul Azis congratulated the victorious and contesting candidates and students at large for displaying restraint and bringing into successful culmination the entire process of Students’ Union election in a peaceful manner.

The election of the AMU Students’ Union was held as per the recommendations of the Lyngdoh Committee headed by former chief election commissioner J.M. Lyngdoh.

The 37th All India Sociological Conference is organised by the Indian Sociological Society to mark the beginning of the diamond jubilee celebrations which will be inaugurated by Vice President M. Hamid Ansari.

The conference will be held at the Jawaharlal Nehru University Dec 10-13.

‘It is the first ever such congregation of large number of sociologists. We are expecting over 2,000 teachers of sociology form across the globe. Participants from the US, Germany, Sweden, Indonesia, Vietnam, Bhutan and Bangladesh will discuss challenges of social transformation,’ said Anand Kumar, organising secretary of the conference.

The latest incident – woman teacher Barinder Pal Kaur, who with others was demanding permanent jobs, got mercilessly assaulted by Akali Dal village headman Balwinder Singh Sunday – has caught the Badal government on the wrong foot.

The village headman was caught on video camera slapping the hapless teacher repeatedly in the presence of several people, including Punjab Police officials.

The victim was only trying to reach Bathinda MP Harsimrat Badal, daughter-in-law of the chief minister and wife of Punjab Deputy Chief Minister and Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal, who is also Punjab’s home minister, to submit a memorandum seeking permanent jobs for teachers when she was assaulted by the ‘powerful’ village headman in Daula village of Muktsar district, 280 km from here.

Thanks to the patronage of the Akali Dal leadership, a case was registered against the assaulter only 30 hours after the incident. He was finally arrested over 48 hours later but bailed out by police within minutes as only bailable charges were pressed against him.

‘We are only demanding jobs and justice. But the way the Badal government is treating us, especially women teachers, is shameful,’ Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS) teachers union president Pritpal Singh told IANS.

‘He attacked me without any provocation. We only wanted to meet the MP to submit our memorandum when he attacked me,’ victim Barinder Pal Kaur said.

This is not the first time that EGS teachers and others are on the warpath with the Badal government.

Work in nearly 170 colleges across Punjab and Chandigarh has suffered in the last one month as coll

The designer, who opened the event Wednesday, rued the dearth of vocational courses and institutes that could train people in the specific skills required.

‘We must remember that in India, we are not training cutters and tailors. We are just training designers, so we are going to be short-staffed especially when it comes to cutters and tailors,’ Ferreira told IANS.

‘Being designers it’s our responsibility to showcase a collection better than the previous year’s and this is what I believe in. I make sure that I cut my clothes myself and give them proper shape as I believe the cut is the most important thing, especially for resort wear,’ he added.

Hailing from Goa, Ferreira says the state ‘should start training people. The only place where I see training happening is in south India where vocational guidance is being imparted. Goa needs a technical centre, especially since I heard we are opening an export hub here. I think we all need to start teaching the workers.

‘We do not pay any attention to the workers. We just take them as they are and that is really sad. This is the only reason that our quality is bad. It is most important to train people about resort wear.’

Ferriera presented 13 spring/summer trends inspired by African Mosaic cuts.

The collection was a mix of men’s and women’s wear in a plethora of colours with perfect cuts accentuating the designs. Some of the prominent shades were purple, green, indigo and beige, with asymmetrical designs.

‘The collection was all about Goa, resorts, comfortable clothes with pure fabrics like silks and cottons,’ the designer said.

When asked if Goa was the right destination to host the resort week, he said: ‘Goa is improving when it comes to fashion and style. Plenty of work is happening here and it is a superb destination for the India Resort Fashion Week as the tourism industry is picking up.

‘This year is phenomenal. The profile of tourists is changing because of boutique hotels and a better fashion market; so we are getting a much better quality of tourists which I think is a good thing for Goa,’ he said.

However, Ferreira says that timing of the event is not appropriate, adding: ‘Since it’s the first time, there is no point creating a fuss over it. A resort week mostly happens in March or May; so I think we will get it next year. It all depends on international buyers, how many buyers you are getting. I have already received buyers from different areas.’

The fashion week will end Saturday.

(Nivedita Sharma can be contacted at nivedita.s@ians.in)

The apex court bench of Justice A.K. Ganguly and Justice J.S. Khehar, while raising the upper age limit to 30 years, waived the requirement of 75 percent attendance for a candidate to contest elections to the JNUSU.

According to the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations in 2006, no student beyond the age of 28 years and having less than 75 percent attendance can be eligible to contest elections to students’ unions in any university.

The court did not relax the guidelines restricting the use of more than 5,000 pamphlets in elections. It allowed the use of photocopies of pamphlets in the JNUSU poll campaign.

The JNU favoured the students’s union and said that it was helpful in the working of the university. The university endorsed the position taken by the students’ union.

The JNU students had sought the relaxation of two Lyngdoh Committee recommendations on the grounds of it being essentially a research university where attendance was not mandatory.

In October 2008, the Supreme Court stayed elections to the JNUSU as the university did not have any attendance criteria.

While staying the JNUSU elections in 2008, the apex court issued contempt notice to the JNU vice-chancellor and registrar of the university for their failure to hold students’ union elections as per the guidelines of the Lyngdoh Committee.

An apex court bench headed by Justice A.K. Ganguly, while increasing the upper age limit to 30 years, waived the criteria of 75 percent attendance as a requirement to contest elections to JNUSU.

Based on the Lyngdoh committee recommendations in 2006, no student beyond the age of 28 years and having less than 75 percent attendance is eligible to contest elections to students’ unions in any university across the country.

JNU students had sought the relaxation of these two conditions on the grounds of it being essentially a research university where attendance is not mandatory.

In October 2008, the Supreme Court had stayed elections to JNUSU as the university does not have any attendance criteria.

‘It is a dangerous principle that stifles personal opinion,’ Swamy told reporters in New Delhi Thursday.

In a message on micro-blogging site Twitter, Swamy added: ‘I have been held accountable at Harvard for what I write in India. This means India studies’ Witzel and Eck are accountable in India. Healthy?’

Michael Witzel and Diana L. Eck are professors at Harvard.

Harvard had cancelled Swamy’s summer courses over his controversial article advocating destruction of hundreds of Indian mosques and disenfranchisement of non-Hindus in India.

After a heated debate, a meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Tuesday voted to remove two Summer School courses – Economics S-110 and Economics S-1316 – taught by Swamy, according to the Harvard Crimson, the campus newspaper.

Swamy received significant criticism for his op-ed article last summer in the Daily News and Analysis calling for the destruction of mosques, the disenfranchisement of non-Hindus in India who do not acknowledge Hindu ancestry, and a ban on conversion from Hinduism, Harvard Crimson said.

‘Swamy’s op-ed clearly crosses the line by demonising an entire religious community and calling for violence against their sacred places,’ Comparative Religion professor Diana L. Eck was quoted as saying.

Harvard has a moral responsibility not to affiliate itself with anyone who expresses hatred towards a minority group, she said. ‘There is a distinction between unpopular and unwelcome political views.’

Although Harvard chose to stand by Swamy in August in an effort to affirm its declared commitment to free speech, faculty members shot down his two courses, effectively removing him from Harvard’s teaching roster, the campus paper said.

Many faculty members determined Swamy’s article was not a product of free speech but of hate speech.

‘[Swamy's position on disenfranchisement] is like saying Jewish Americans and African Americans should not be allowed to vote unless they acknowledge the supremacy of white Anglo Saxon Protestants,’ said History professor Sugata Bose.

An apex court bench headed by Justice A.K. Ganguly, while increasing the upper age limit to 30 years, waived requirement of 75 percent attendance as a requirement to contest elections to JNUSU.

Based on the Lyngdoh committee recommendations in 2006, no student beyond the age of 28 years and having less than 75 percent attendance is eligible to contest elections to students’ unions in any university across the country.

JNU students had sought the relaxation of these two conditions on the grounds of it being essentially a research university where attendance is not mandatory.

In October 2008, the Supreme Court had stayed elections to JNUSU as the university does not have any attendance criteria.

The first Buniyadi Vidyalaya was established by the Mahatma himself in 1939 at Brindavan in Bihar’s West Champaran district.

But, since then, the ‘Mahatma ke school’, as they are popularly known in the state, have been struggling for survival. Major problems include shortage of funds and teachers.

In many cases, land meant for the schools are in illegal possession of others.

But all that may change soon.

An official in Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s office told IANS that Kumar has asked the officials concerned to come up with concrete plans to revive these schools within a year.

Last week, at an official function, Nitish Kumar had said he was shocked to know that that out of the 391 Buniyadi Vidyalayas in the state, hardly any was functional.

‘I am sorry for it, but I will not tolerate their neglect,’ he said.

He admitted that he had been advocating the idea to revive basic schools for the past six years, but it had failed to create any impact till date.

According to officials, Nitish Kumar has formed a committee consisting of three senior Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officials — the human resource development department’s Principal Secretary Anjani Kumar Singh and principal secretaries in the health and disaster management departments Amarjit Sinha and Vyasji, who would work on the revival plan.

State Human Resources Development Minister P.K. Sahi told IANS here that his department is working on resurrecting the schools.

‘Now, we will do it as per the chief minister’s directives,’ he said.

Sahi said the government has decided to improve the infrastructure of the Buniyadi Vidyalayas, about six of which were set up by the father of the nation himself.

The schools were started to impart basic education to boys and girls in rural areas. They were also meant to provide vocational training in spinning, carpentry, farming and weaving.

But successive state governments have allowed the institution to languish. Even the central government has not made any attempt to breathe life into them.

A few years ago, the Supreme Court took serious note of the plight of the basic schools in West Champaran district.

The court had then issued notice to the centre, the state government, the district administration of West Champaran and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to ensure proper functioning of the schools and preservation of the Gandhian heritage.

(Imran Khan can be contacted at imran.k@ians.in)

After a heated debate, a meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Tuesday voted to remove two Summer School courses – Economics S-110 and Economics S-1316 – taught by Swamy, according to The Harvard Crimson, the campus newspaper.

Swamy received significant criticism for his op-ed last summer in Daily News and Analysis calling for the destruction of mosques, the disenfranchisement of non-Hindus in India who do not acknowledge Hindu ancestry, and a ban on conversion from Hinduism, it said.

‘Swamy’s op-ed clearly crosses the line by demonising an entire religious community and calling for violence against their sacred places,’ Comparative Religion Professor Diana L. Eck was quoted as saying.

Harvard has a moral responsibility not to affiliate itself with anyone who expresses hatred towards a minority group, she said. ‘There is a distinction between unpopular and unwelcome political views.’

Although Harvard chose to stand by Swamy in August in an effort to affirm its declared commitment to free speech, faculty members shot down his two courses, effectively removing him from Harvard’s teaching roster, the campus paper said.

Many faculty determined Swamy’s article was not a product of free speech-but of hate speech.

‘[Swamy's position on disenfranchisement] is like saying Jewish Americans and African Americans should not be allowed to vote unless they acknowledge the supremacy of white Anglo Saxon Protestants,’ said History professor Sugata Bose.

Dean of the Summer School Donald H. Pfister explained that courses included in the Harvard catalogue are chosen by individual departments.

With a focus on admitting more students from rural areas in its undergraduate programme, the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University will start independent admission, the China Daily reported.

The school will enroll 30 to 50 students through its newly-launched independent admission programme in 2012.

‘Among them we hope to have 30 percent from rural areas, making 15 to 20 percent of the school total,’ said Gong Liutang, associate dean of the school.

Candidates selected from those attending the university’s independent admission programme – based on written examination and comprehension test scores – would be called for interview. One out of six will get admission to the school, known for drawing the country’s best students.

‘This is the first time that a school is involved in the independent recruitment programme,’ said Qin Chunhua, chief of the university admission office.

Rural students comprise less than 10 percent of the total numbers in the school at the moment.

In 2003, China’s ministry of education had started trial programmes of independent recruitment at some of the universities.

Referring to the drive to admit more students from rural areas, Cai Hongbin, dean of Guanghua School of Management, said: ‘We hope this contributes to education equity.’

‘The country’s education resources tend to be over centralised. Through this act, we hope to draw public attention to education equity.’

While the national average of rural population in universities was about 50 percent, when it came to leading universities, it was less than 20 percent, said Xiong Bingqi, vice-chief of the 21st Century Education Research Institute.

‘This means the rural population now has growing chances to receive higher education, but the numbers are still limited in the best schools,’ he said.

The varsity’s Centre for Paramedical Sciences offers the course which aims to educate opticians and impart specific skills in delivering quality and consistent eye care to people enhancing existing skills for eye care professionals as well as opticians.

‘It shall thus create a sustainable resource to provide basic eye care and combat the prevalence of preventable blindness,’ said a statement by IGNOU.

‘The last date for submission of applications is Dec 15. A late fee of Rs.200 would be imposed between Dec 15 and 30,’ it added.

The Common Management Admission Test (CMAT)-2012 will be conducted online in 61 cities from 20^th February to 28^th February, 2012 and scores awarded will be used for admission in the post graduate management programs both at Degree & Diploma level, all over India for year 2012-13.

The respective Secretaries of the state dealing with technical education and Vice chancellors of the universities have been requested to advise the competent authority for admissions in their respective States & jurisdiction to use the merit list of CMAT-2012 for allotment of students in the AICTE approved management institutions for academic year 2012-13. The institutions and State governments are required to register online free of charge for opting to CMAT-2012 scores for admissions for academic year 2012-13. The minority institutions shall effect admissions as per the provision available for such categories.

Advantages accrued due to CMAT

• The National level test will be conducted online for nine days from 20th to 28th February in two shifts at 61 cities/locations.
• The common admission test will reduce the burden on candidates due to appearance in multiple tests.
• CMAT scores will help students get admissions in AICTE approved Institutes/University Departments in all management programmes catering to more than four lakh sanctioned seats of AICTE approved management institutions.

Further details of CMAT will be available on www.aicte-cmat.in

Important Dates for CMAT 2012

Pattern of examination for CMAT

There shall be negative marking for wrong answers, for each wrong answer 1 mark shall be deducted

Test Venues

The CMAT will be conducted in following cities from 20^th -28^th February, 2012

The centers in each of the above name cities will be notified on the website.

Admission Process

The Institutes and central admission authorities will use scores awarded to the students for allotment of seat in the registered management institutes.

‘I appeal to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee not to create an artificial conflict between strike and education. I would request her to postpone the date of the exam as the general strike has been called throughout the country and the date cannot be changed,’ said Dasgupta.

All the major trade unions of the country have called a 24-hour countrywide general strike Feb 28, 2012 — ahead of the presentation of the general budget.

The strike call has set off political controversies, with ruling Trinamool Congress blaming the Left for being insensitive to the cause of students.

Instituted by the Capital Foundation, the award was given away at a function here at which Supreme Court Judge Altamas Kabir was also present.

Jindal, an MP, is the founding chancellor of the O.P. Jindal Global University at Sonepat in Haryana.

The Bhagwati Award was also given to Arun Mohan, a senior advocate in the Supreme Court, in recognition of his ‘outstanding contribution’ to access to justice.

Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal and Law and Justice Minister Salman Khurshid were conferred the Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer Award at the same ceremony.

In his speech, Kalam stressed the need to address poverty, lack of education, ill health and other such challenges in rural areas worldwide.

The test, named Common Management Admission Test (CMAT) will be held by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) for admission to various management schools.

The fate of the Common Admission Test (CAT) that is annually held by the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) is not clear yet.

So far, admission to B-schools has been largely based on the results of CAT and Management Aptitude Test (MAT). A number of other exams are also held by different colleges and universities.

‘This initiative has been taken to address the issue of physical, mental and financial stress being imposed on the students through number of entrance examinations conducted by the institutions for admission to management programs in AICTE-approved institutions based on relevant judgments in the Hon’ble Supreme Court,’ a statement from human resource development ministry said.

The Common Management Admission Test (CMAT)-2012 will be conducted online in 61 cities from Feb 20 to Feb 28, 2012, and scores awarded will be used for admission in the post-graduate management programs both at the degree and diploma level, all over India for year 2012-13.

The ministry has also asked the respective secretaries of the state dealing with technical education and vice chancellors of the universities to use the merit list of CMAT-2012 for admission of students in the AICTE approved management institutions for academic year 2012-13.

Taking note of the Delhi director of education’s (DOE) submission that the financial position of the school is sound enough to do without such steep hike, Justice Hima Kohli said: ‘The Ramjas School, Anand Parbat, shall withdraw the arbitrary fee hike (Rs.400 per month per child) as the same is uncalled for in view of the financial strength of the school.’

The court said, however, that the excess amount already realized from the parents should be adjusted in the payment of fees over period of next one year so that there are no immediate financial pressures on the school.

Earlier, the court had directed the Delhi government’s education department to pass the order against the school to roll back the hiked fee in four weeks and inform the court by the next date of hearing.

The court was hearing a petition filed by a group of parents, through counsel Ashok Aggarwal, alleging that the school arbitrarily hiked the tuition fees for the year 2011-2012 academic session, which is violative of the high court’s earlier order as well as the government’s notification.

The court issued the direction after taking note of government counsel’s submission that the committee set up by the education department has found in an inquiry that the school violated the government’s April 2010 notification.

Justice Kohli also directed the school authorities to take Rs.1,900 as tuition fee from each student, which they charge at the beginning of the academic year.

The Delhi government in its report said that the school will be however, be at liberty to re-assess its requirement of fee hike, if any, after pressing into use the financial resources at its disposal.

Seven years ago, the number stood at one in 10 youngsters, meaning the number of children without books has trebled.

The latest report by the National Literacy Trust also shows boys are more likely to be without books than girls, The Telegraph reported Monday.

The study was based on a survey of 18,000 children aged between eight and 16.

Researchers found that children who are eligible for free school meals – a measure of poverty – are less likely to own a book than their more wealthy peers.

Children who do not own a book are almost three times more likely to have literacy levels below the norm than those who do own one, the study found.

Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literacy Trust, said the numbers of children without books were of ‘particular concern’.

‘We know there is a direct correlation between book ownership and children’s reading abilities,’ he said.

The survey was commissioned to mark the launch of the trust’s Christmas Gift of Reading fundraising appeal, Telegraph said.

The SFI and the TSU candidates defeated their rivals from the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), the student wing of the main opposition Congress, in 98 percent of the 527 seats in elections to 15 students’ councils Friday. The results were declared late Friday night.

‘Of the total of 527 seats in the 15 councils, the SFI won 517 seats, including all the posts of vice-presidents and general secretaries, while the NSUI bagged 10 seats,’ an official of the higher education department told reporters.

According to the official, the NSUI improved its tally as compared to last year.

At least 20 students were injured in clashes between various groups following the announcement of students’ council polls last month.

Schools minister Nick Gibb insisted the crackdown was vital to better the students’ maths skills.

‘They shouldn’t be reaching for a gadget every time they need to do a simple sum. Children can become too dependent on calculators,’ he was quoted as saying by The Sun.

The move will see a ‘shake-up’ of the maths examination faced by all 11-year-olds. A section that tests students on the use of calculators will be ‘axed’.

Gibb said calculators were partly to blame for one in five primary students failing to reach the expected level in maths in 2011.

‘Without a solid grounding in arithmetic and early maths in primary school, children go on to struggle with basic maths skills throughout their school careers.’

‘It also means they leave school without the knowledge to complete everyday tasks in their adult lives,’ he said.

Recent government figures say around 17 million adults have maths skills ‘no better than’ children as young as nine.

A bench of Acting Chief Justice A.K. Sikri and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw declined to give relief to the students saying: ‘It was the university policy decision. So the court cannot interfere with the decision.’

The petitioner students came from various professional colleges affiliated to the university and belonged to the 2009 and 2010 batches.

The petitioner alleged that the university had different criteria for promoting professional course students from colleges run by it and those studying in colleges affiliated to it.

‘These students are aggrieved by the credit system which has been evolved by the university as a criteria for promotion. The university has introduced a scheme that every student should have a minimum of 50 percent credit for the current year and overall 90 percent credit of previous years to get promoted to the next academic year,’ said the petition.

‘The credit System is not based on performance-based grading neither there were equal number of grades in each semester. These two aspects of the credit system make implementation of the System extremely arbitrary and leading to disastrous consequences,’ said the petition

The university maintained an extremely high pass marks of 50 per subject. The rationale behind such high pass marks was arbitrary, illegal and unconstitutional. There was no reassessment or revaluation, the petition said.

Patil said the industry is expected to touch $170 billion in the next two years and ‘as a result, Indian animation and gaming sector, deriving revenue from international production houses and game development companies, is on the cusp of significant growth’.

The president was speaking at the inauguration of the DSK Supinfocom’s campus at Hadapsar, on the outskirts of Pune, set up in collaboration with Supinfocom, France.

Patil expressed happiness that the DSK group had not forgotten its social commitments despite its business avatar.

She appealed to the group head, D.S. Kulkarni, to focus on basic problems such as bringing more rain-fed land in the rural areas under irrigation and in promoting renewable energy such as solar, wind and hydro by reducing the cost of these technologies.

The French ambassador to India, Francois Richier, said creation of the beautiful campus of 20 acres in less than two years can only be a product of men and women of vision.

He said digital technology and education are both fields of increasing cooperation between France and India.

Kulkarni said he had risen from an humble background and assured that he would strive all his life to make things better for the youth of the country.

Situated on a lush green 20-acre plot, DSK Supinfocom is India’s first and only international campus offering professional courses in the fields of animation, game and industrial design.

It is a joint venture between the Pune-based DSK Group and Chamber of Commerce & Industry of North de France, with the latter controlling the academics through a fully European team of trainers.

A bench of Acting Chief Justice A.K. Sikri and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw declined to give relief to the students saying: ‘It was the university policy decision. So the court cannot interfere with the decision.’

Minister of State for Human Resource Development D. Purandeswari, in a written reply, said: ‘The percentage of kids enrolling in primary education upped from 10.49 percent in 2007-08 to 11.03 percent in 2008-09 and reached 13.48 percent in 2009-10.’

According to Purandeswari, a similar increase was witnessed at the upper primary level where 8.54 percent students enrolled in 2007-08. It rose to 9.13 percent in 2008-09 and 11.89 percent in 2009-10.

As per the Census 2001, Muslims constitute 13.43 percent of the country’s population.

In the year 2007-08, Andhra Pradesh appointed 1,400 Urdu teachers followed by Chhattisgarh 426 and Himachal Pradesh 100. Punjab hired 42 Urdu teachers in 2009-10.

Minister of State for Human Resource Development D. Purandeswari, in a written reply, said: ‘As per information available with the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), 61 children infected by HIV were removed from schools.’

According to the minister, the incidents took place in Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Kerala, Gujarat, West Bengal and Maharashtra.

A maximum of 27 cases were reported from Andhra Pradesh followed by West Bengal 13 and Haryana 9.

‘Approximately 35 percent of the teaching posts are presently vacant in 15 IITs… a total of 212 faculty members have taken early retirement during the last decade,’ Minister of State for Human Resource Development D. Purandeswari said in a written reply.

‘No record of such members offering their services abroad was available,’ he added.

The minister said the IITs have been taking various steps to attract outstanding candidates for faculty positions.

‘The IITs can appoint Non Resident Indian (NRIs) and persons of Indian origin to permanent faculty positions. However, the foreign nationals are appointed on contract basis for a fixed tenure not exceeding five years.’

Speaking at an event in the central city of Avila, embassy First Secretary Wang Zhiwei also noted that the number of Spaniards studying in China had risen from 100 to 2,000 over the past eight years.

He noted that in 2007 China and Spain signed several agreements concerning the recognition of titles between the two countries and the organisation up to three forums of Chinese and Spanish university leaders, with the participation of 100 universities.

All that is the fruit of the ‘increase in exchanges’ between the two countries in different areas including architecture, engineering and, above all, tourism, as shown by the fact that each year about 1,000 Chinese students who want to study Spanish graduate.

Wang emphasized the fact that Spanish and Chinese are two of the world’s most important languages, and from that springs the collaboration between the two countries and between China and South America, something that has made it necessary for Chinese to study the Spanish language and learn about the Spanish culture.

Likewise, he also noted his countrymen’s ‘growing interest’ in Spain.

The number of Chinese tourists visiting Spain has been rising at a rate of around 25 percent a year, reaching 100,000 in 2010.

The teachers were given special, individual debit cards by the Union Bank of India (UBI) through which they were able to withdraw their salaries, said Kapil Patil, the legislator representing teachers’ constituency in the Maharashtra legislative council.

‘This has brought immense cheer to over 30,000 teachers in Mumbai today. Now, it will be implemented in phases across the state,’ Patil told IANS.

Patil said he had been pursuing the matter with the state government since the past few years to give teachers their salaries on time. Until now, the salaries were delayed by several days or weeks, he said.

In July this year, state Primary Education Minister Rajendra Darda agreed to the demand and an agreement was signed with the state-run UBI for disbursing teachers’ salaries online.

Besides the salaries, all teachers are entitled to benefits like a free Rs.200,000 insurance cover, loans and other core banking facilities, Patil said.

Speaking at a seminar here, the CBSE chairman said that the socio-economically backward sections are left behind when exams become the yardstick for giving scholarship.

‘The moment there are standardised exams, they can be managed through preparation. Here, the socio-economic situation of parents matters and those from poorer background are left behind,’ Joshi said.

‘CBSE also gives scholarships, but in absence of any other yardstick, we give it on the basis of exam results like AIEEE, of AIPMT. But in the process, those who need it are left out,’ he said, adding that a study was needed to look into this.

‘We need to do a study on this, I am only saying this on the basis of my interaction,’ he said.

The seminar organised by Britain-based education foundation Kusuma Trust, which provides scholarships to students from poor socio-economic background.

‘Children have one chance of a decent education. Scholarships facilitate and increase access to education and employment opportunities for young people from the most economically disadvantaged backgrounds, enabling them to realise their potential and break the inter-generational cycle of poverty’ said Dr Balwant Singh, CEO of the trust.