Education

The new building of Government Higher Primary School, Nallurahalli which has remained unoccupied from last five years. Pic: Murugaraj Swaminathan Even after years of construction, the building of the Government Higher Primary School, Nallurahalli in Whitefield remained unoccupied. Inaugurated with much fanfare five years ago, the school building which is supposed to shelter students, turned out to be a dumpyard for builders. Eight classrooms in two blocks of the school were used by local contractors to dump the cement sacks, concrete blocks and other waste materials. However, the situation is going to change soon. You will hear the chitter-chatter of…

117 children of waste pickers in Bangalore received scholarships worth Rs 2,16,450. The scholarship programme, initiated by Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment at the Union Government level, is extended to all pre-matriculation students, who are children of parents engaged in ‘unclean occupation’. When the scholarship programme was rolled out, the government had not included waste picking as an occupation in the eligibility list. The consistent efforts of the Alliance of Indian Wastepickers led to the inclusion of waste pickers as well. Many organisations across India pursued the case of inclusion at both the state and municipal level. In Karnataka,…

A Mathematics teacher at Corporation Malleswaram High School teaching a 9th standard class. Pic: Shamsheer Yousaf What can we do to improve public schooling, tangibly? Ever since the terrible PU results came out showing more children failing than passing, I've got a lot of letters asking what can be done about this. To my understanding, we need to do at least the following three things, to have any chance of intervening swiftly in the lives of millions of children. Increase the funding levels for education I know we are perfectly capable of wasting money, but even so, without proper investment…

PNLIT is delighted by the performance of our three students in the II P.U.C. exams. All of them got over 70% with Deepubai getting 75%, Sadiqa 71% and Ramya 72%.    Living in the hutments on the lake bund, they joined PNLIT's Classes at the Lake program (Teach program) three years ago. Thanks to V.P. Karthik, now pursuing PhD at IIT, Chennai, Anisha Kaul and Swathi Jayakumar, the girls' performances were beyond their own expectations in Std 10 as well.    Our volunteer teachers not only coached them but also encouraged them to dream big. Deepu wants to do engineering and is…

The inaugural session at BNM Pre University College. Pic: B.PAC The Bangalore Political Action Committee (B.PAC) in association with Full Circle and One Bengaluru for Lakes, on November 15th kickstarted the Green Ambassador program for college students, with the emphasis to create interest and awareness on urban environmental issues. The 6 months internship program will train participants on issues related to waste, water and energy management. The students will undergo 6 hours of classroom training, after which they will commence the field activity which will be completed in the following 5 months. B.PAC will mentor these participants during the field…

Karnataka Education Department has notified the formula for school fee structure for private (unaided) schools in Karnataka, in accordance with Karnataka Educational Institutions (Regulation of Certain Fees and Donations) Rules, 1999. While the rationalisation of the fee structure can benefit the parents—especially poor and middle class families, why are private schools opposing the structure? Citizen Matters brings you some clarity. The Department of Education issued a notification on September 30th 2014, and invited the public and school managements to submit the objections before October 30th 2014. The deadline was extended later, the last date now being November 10. School fee…

  Here is the story of a frog: A scientist decided to test the resilience of a frog. He placed the frog in cold water and gradually increased the temperature of the water. Surprisingly, the frog just lay there, completely oblivious to its changing surroundings—till it was boiled to death! A spate of incidents in Bangalore schools Bangalore witnessed a brutal rape of a two-year-old by a bus-driver a few months back. A furore arose; a few activists wrote about it and protested. And then Bangalore was once again riddled with shock in July 2014, when a 6-year-old was raped…

Pic: Wikimedia commons With more and more cases of sexual assault on children getting reported from schools, the State Government is under fire. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Home Minister K J George expressed their helplessness on Friday (October 31, 2014), and requested for the cooperation of the managements in private schools and the public in helping the government in reducing such incidents. K J George, Home Minister Home Minister K J George went on to say that sexual assault on students in private schools cannot be stopped by the government, as it was practically not possible for the police to…

On 26th September 2014, over 200 National Service Scheme (NSS) volunteers from Government First Grade College, Yelahanka attended a five-hour workshop on Lake Conservation. The workshop was organised by Mr Govindraju, Program Co-ordinator NSS and conducted by members of Yelahanka United Environment Association (YUVA) - Mr Ravi Gangadharan, Mr Jagadeesh Giri and Mr Jagadeesh KT, supported by Ms Deepa. Mr Muniraju, Corporator of BBMP Ward 4 and Dr HR Prabha, Principal of the college were present at the event. YUVA members spoke on how lakes can solve the problem of water shortage and excess rainfall which floods the city. They presented the methodology adopted…

Namma Bengaluru Foundation CEO Sridhar Pabbisetty and Director of Child Rights Trust, Vasudeva Sharma speaking at the press conference. Pic courtesy: NBF Child safety and security is the need of the hour in Bengaluru, with the recent spate of unfortunate incidents of child abuse reported. Child-safe Bengaluru Initiative is working on preventive and corrective measures to protect child safety across various spaces that involves children. As a part of the Initiative, an interactive discussion on child safety and preventive action has been planned by Namma Bengaluru Foundation, on 6th September, 2014, with Child Psychiatrists, Child Rights Activists, Policy makers, Legislators,…