General Awareness

GENDER/ HEALTH/ EDUCATION - January 2019

Jan 2019

Jul 31, 2020

New Education Policy 2020

The Union Cabinet cleared a new National Education Policy (NEP) proposing sweeping changes in school and higher education.
An NEP is a comprehensive framework to guide the development of education in the country. The need for a policy was first felt in 1964 when Congress MP Siddheshwar Prasad criticised the then government for lacking a vision and philosophy for education. The same year, a 17-member Education Commission, headed by then UGC Chairperson D S Kothari, was constituted to draft a national and coordinated policy on education. Based on the suggestions of this Commission, Parliament passed the first education policy in 1968.
A new NEP usually comes along every few decades. India has had three to date. The first came in 1968 and the second in 1986, under Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi respectively; the NEP of 1986 was revised in 1992 when P. V. Narasimha Rao was Prime Minister. The third NEP was released under the Prime Ministership of Narendra Modi.
The NEP proposes sweeping changes including opening up of Indian higher education to foreign universities, dismantling of the UGC and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), introduction of a four-year multidisciplinary undergraduate programme with multiple exit options, and discontinuation of the M Phil programme.
In school education, the policy focuses on overhauling the curriculum, "easier" Board exams, a reduction in the syllabus to retain "core essentials" and thrust on "experiential learning and critical thinking".
In a significant shift from the 1986 policy, which pushed for a 10+2 structure of school education, the new NEP pitches for a "5+3+3+4" design corresponding to the age groups 3-8 years (foundational stage), 8-11 (preparatory), 11-14 (middle), and 14-18 (secondary). This brings early childhood education (also known as pre-school education for children of ages 3 to 5) under the ambit of formal schooling. The mid-day meal programme will be extended to pre-school children. The NEP says students until Class 5 should be taught in their mother tongue or regional language.
The policy also proposes phasing out of all institutions offering single streams and that all universities and colleges must aim to become multidisciplinary by 2040.

Jul 30, 2020

IIT Gandhinagar Concludes First Ever Pan-India Workshop for Women in Computing

The third edition of the ACM India Grad Cohort, a pan-India virtual workshop for women in computing, hosted by the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN), was a three day online event held in July 2020.
The workshop was co-organised by IITGN, ACM-W India Council (the Association for Computing Machinery's India Council on Women in Computing), and the ACM India Council, and was supported by Google and TCS.
The three-day online event received an overwhelming response as over 200 women graduate students from the field of computing registered for the workshop, and over one hundred participants attended each of the 16 sessions.
The workshop was outlined with interesting interactive sessions with experienced women researchers from the field of Computer Science & Engineering from across the world with an aim to help Indian women graduate students in the field of computing deal with various situations through their graduate years and beyond.

Jul 26, 2020

Maharashtra Cuts Syllabus for Classes 1 to 12

The Maharashtra government announced to cut down the syllabus of classes 1 to 12 by 25 per cent due to the outbreak of the coronavirus.
According to Varsha Gaikwad, Minister Of School Education, Maharashtra, even due to the coronavirus outbreak in the state, the academic year 2020-21 has started from June 15 and the ministry has taken various alternative methods to reach out to students.
Earlier this month month, Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank had rationalised the syllabus for classes 9-12 of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) up to 30 per cent by retaining the core subjects.

Jul 25, 2020

Mahindra Group Launches University for Interdisciplinary Learning

The Mahindra Group launched of Mahindra University (MU) to drive interdisciplinary learning, integrating the study of science and technology with humanities, ethics, philosophy and design, with the group's executive chairman Anand Mahindra as its chancellor.
As part of the immediate road map, the university will launch the School of Management (2021-22), School of Law (2021-22), Indira Mahindra School of Education (2021-22), School of Media and Liberal Arts (2022-23) and School of Design (2023-24). MU includes the Ecole Centrale School of Engineering that was set up in 2014.
The 130-acre, multi-disciplinary campus in Hyderabad will offer undergraduate, post graduate and PhD courses. It will operate as an autonomous university, with its contemporary curricula being curated to fully leverage emerging technologies like data science, blockchain and data analytics.
Mahindra University is part of the Mahindra Educational Institutions (MEI), a not-for-profit subsidiary of Tech Mahindra. The university is being planned to be a platform to balance education with real-world experience through entrepreneurial projects to solve complex challenges facing society. Apart from US- and Europe-based universities, they are actively seeking partnerships with Japanese universities to leverage their expertise in technology and design, said Mahindra.

Govindan Rangarajan New IISc Director

Professor Govindan Rangarajan was appointed as the new director of the 111-year-old Indian Institute of Science (IISc) located in Bengaluru. According to an official statement from the premier institution, the new appointment is in the wake of incumbent Director Prof. Anurag Kumar superannuating from his service on July 31.
Prof. Rangarajan obtained an Integrated M.Sc. (Hons.) degree from the Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani, and a PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park. He then worked at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, USA, before returning to India in 1992. Prior to his current appointment, Prof. Rangarajan was the Chair, Division of Interdisciplinary Research at IISc comprising 10 departments and centres.
Prof. Anurag Kumar, was appointed as the Director of the Institute on August 1, 2014.

Jul 24, 2020

NITs and Centrally-funded Institutes to Drop Class 12 Marks Criteria

Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal said that the Central Seat Allocation Board has decided to drop the Class 12 marks criteria for admission to undergraduate courses in National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and all other centrally funded technical institutions this year due to the ongoing battle against coronavirus pandemic.
As per Pokhriyal, apart from qualifying JEE Main, the eligibility is to secure a minimum of 75 per cent marks in Class 12 Boards exams or rank among the top 20 percentile in their qualifying examinations.
JEE Main 2020 qualified candidates will now only need to obtain a passing certificate in class XII examination irrespective of the marks obtained.

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