Education

"Right to Education is a beacon of hope for us as we wish to see our children get educated," says Sita*, a daily wage worker. Her child has secured admission in a private matriculation school in Chennai on a seat reserved under the Right to Education, or RTE, Act. "We cannot afford the fees of private schools. I did not study, but I want to see my child educated, and climb up the ladder of life." The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act or Right to Education Act (RTE) is an Act of the Parliament of India…

Yuvan Aves is a nature-educator, naturalist, writer and activist based in Chennai. He is the Founder-Trustee of Palluyir Trust for Nature education and Research, and along with his team of young naturalists, conducts a number of immersive learning experiences for children and young adults. These include walks and workshops in various geographies and biodiversity areas in Chennai. This type of teaching and learning has been termed as ‘nature based learning (NBL)’, which Yuvan explains, is a self guided, real world learning experience. Yuvan's team makes a range of NBL material and curricula for Chennai schools to apply. In an interview…

With the outbreak of COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdowns, schools in Chennai run by the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) saw record high enrolment of new students. Across the 281 schools run by the civic body in the city, the total number of students increased from 90,394 in 2020-21 to 1,13,793 in 2021-2022, a 10-year high in enrolment. Many of these students moved from private schools to GCC-run schools in the middle of the pandemic. Loss of jobs for parents during the lockdown, the government declaring 'all pass' for all class students, and private schools demanding the same fee even for…

"There is a huge difference between learning online and in person," says R Niranjana, a mother of two. "Of course, there was a time when staying at home was essential but now, when everything is opening up, for the sake of the child, parents must send their young children to preschool.” While many countries kept kindergarten and primary schools open even during the worst days of the pandemic, India had ordered a total lockdown of all educational institutions, including preschools. Many such institutions completely shut down. Now, as most COVID-related precautions are being lifted, Bengaluru's preschools are cautiously reopening their…

“When we look at undergraduate admission exams across the world, from Gaokao (the National College Entrance Exam in China) to SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test), we see fierce competitive tests with high-end arrangements to avoid malpractice and cheating,” said Priyanshu Kumar Jha, a student at Kendriya Vidyalaya, Jamnagar who has taken the JEE mains and the CUET exam for under graduate college admission. “But only in India do we see such important exams being taken so casually”. The Common University Entrance Tests -Under Graduate (CUET-UG) exam centres allocated to students kept changing till the very last minute, and there were computer…

It is only after paying Rs 10 lakh as fees that one becomes an engineer from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. In contrast to this, I completed my B Tech in 2013 from a government college in Kerala for Rs 26,000. IITs have turned into a gated community of the elites, serving those who can afford their exorbitant fees and filtering out those who can't. The fee hike by IIT-B in July is a testament to that. Soon after the fee hike, the deputy director assured us that all our questions would be answered in an open house…

"In my class, if a girl got her periods, two other girls stood behind her as human shields, so that nobody would see her holding a sanitary pad in class. If someone saw her with a pad, she feared being judged,” recalls 19-year-old Keerthana Srinivasan. This attitude is all too common among young people shielded from learning about themselves and their bodies. "Pads are not missiles to be afraid of!," says Sharath Sathya, founder of Karpom Karpipom, an NGO working towards sex education in schools. Keerthana finished Class 12 in 2020 from a school in Chrompet sans any kind of…

Over the last three decades, India has seen an increase in internal migration, from 232.11 million in 1991 to 314.54 million in 2001 and to 455.78 million in 2011. The total number of migrant children, between the census of 1991 and 2011, grew from 44.35 million to 92.95 million. As per these figures, one in every five internal migrants is a kid. A majority of whom do not get access to basic education.  Dilip Kumar Anurag, 37 from Bilaspur, Chattisgarh, who came to Bengaluru about a year back, lives in a kucha shack with his wife and two of his…

In an earlier article, we investigated the pervasive pattern of unfilled seats reserved under the Right to Education (RTE) Act. Here, we spend an evening at an RTE verification centre in suburban Mumbai, talking to parents and a member of the RTE verification committee about the admission process. On the afternoon of May 27th, I met 3 mothers waiting in worry to secure admission for their children to different private schools. They were at the Gilbert Hill MNP Urdu School for the verification of their documents. This was no routine admission step; their children were among the select few that…

It has been eight years now since we started down this path without setting any goals to reach anywhere. It was our son Nihar’s choice to learn at home by making things and working on projects rather than only through books. He proposed that to us, when he entered Class 4, as he felt that he wasn't finding enough time to do the things he wanted to do. As parents, we valued his need to be free from systems and structures and to be motivated by his innate sense of wonder and curiosity. Today, he is 18 and a co-founder…