NEWS in BRIEF

Rajya Sabha passes

the (IIIT-PPP) Bill 2017 Rajya Sabha passed the Indian Institute of Information Technology Public Private Partnership (IIIT-PPP) Bill 2017. The bill has already been passed in Lok Sabha. MHRD told that this bill is required to grant degrees to the students IIITs set up in PPP mode. It will also grant statutory status to the fifteen IIITs established in PPP mode and declare them Institutes of National Importance.

Web Portal for supply

of NCERT Textbooks NCERT has started a web portal for supply of textbooks to schools and individuals to ensure better distribution of textbooks across the country and to also address the apprehensions, on the part of schools and parents, regarding unavailability of NCERT textbooks. The schools will be able to log on to the portal, by entering their respective Boards' affiliation numbers and other details, till 8th September 2017 for placing their orders for the session 2018-19. The Web Portal can be accessed at

.

New thinking on Adult

Education The government is thinking of involving school students in improving adult literacy and pushing literacy rate (currently at 75%) in the country. “We are thinking of training children from class 6-12 on a module after which they can go home and teach their grandparents and parents. This model will be certainly make both the children and adults happy as it will be a nice thing in their relationship,” union HRD minister Prakash Javadekar said this at an event in Jaipur.

www.ncertbooks.ncert.gov.in

RNI No. UTTENG/2010/37634Vol 7 No 9

magazine

THE INDIA EDUCATION LANDSCAPE UPDATE August 16 2017

www.curriculum-magazine.com

ith over 27 lakh engineering seats W( a b o u t ) 5 0 %

lying vacant across various engineering colleges in the country, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the regulatory body for technical education, has decided to close those college that fail to attract students and operate at less than 30% of their admission intake. Those technical colleges having less than 30 per cent admissions in last five will start closing down from next academic year if AICTE action goes as planned.

“In the past few years, the AICTE has been actively working on reducing the

quantity of engineering institutions across the country due to increased institutes and poor demand and falling quali ty education. The regulatory body has also reduced the penalty for closing down an engineering institution that was a deterrent for many colleges which were willing to shut in the midst of poor demand.” said Anil D Sahasrabuddhe, Chairman

AICTE in New Delhi while speaking at an event on August 11. There are 10,361 engineering institutions in the country, that are approved by AICTE, with a total intake of 37,01,366. Apart f rom closing several colleges the AICTE has now focused towards life skills and solving real life problems. The numbers of jobs are diminish-ing in the country. To help job c r e a t i o n , A I C T E h a s formula ted a Nat ional Student Startup Policy to propel youth start tech-based enterprises. The aim is to achieve this by promoting technology-driven student start-ups and to create 1 lakh technology based student start-ups and a million employment opportunities in the next 10 years.

In its efforts to remain relevant and globally acceptable, NAAC has taken cognizance of the changing trends in higher education, stakeholder perceptions and feedback, besides the avalanche of experience gained from its accreditation exercise involving more than 11,132 institutions till July 2017. Over the last few months, NAAC has conducted several rounds of stakeholder interactions, a National Workshop and Meetings of several Working Groups for the preparation of the Manuals for Universities, Autonomous Colleges and Affiliated Colleges. The draft framework was pilot tested on select Higher Education Institutions (HEI's) across the country. A National Consultation on the Revised Accreditation Framework was held on 25th April,

t a national consultation Ameet organized by RTE Forum, a collective of national e d u c a t i o n g r o u p s a n d networks in New Delhi on July 22, a study of 10 states made by CRY (Child Rights & You) and Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) made it clear that under provisioning of public school education is a big factor in poor quality of education. The undercurrent was that financing of education has gone out of debate and is missing fom public discourse.

We were struggling for “evidence so far to tell the government that you are under spending on educa t ion

because whenever we tried to convince finance ministry before budget or otherwise they would give under utilization and other argu-ments to push us on back foot. This evidence can now help advocacy groups to be more effective on demanding adequate financing,” said Komal Ganotra, Director, Policy Advocacy and Research at CRY India (Child Rights & you).

s per the CBGA analysis, Athe whole narrative of education is circling around quality with little focus on financing. Hence the focus of education policies is eventu-ally shifting from input based

to outcome based. The NITI Aayog in its action agenda for three years has strategized its action agenda for school education keeping 'improve-ment in learning outcomes' as central objective without taking into consideration the things contributing to quality like enabling school environ-ment, teachers equipped with capacit ies and learning materials to facilitate learning in class rooms, efficient review and moni tor ing mechan ism a long wi th equitable and stimulating curricular and pedagogic processes are key to ensure quality education.

contd on P3

Engineering colleges having less than 30 percent

to start shutting down from next year

admissions in last 5 years TAKING EDUCATION TO

THE CENTRESTAGE

The Festival of Education, Jaipur:

In a truly inspirational benchmark of celebrating the power of education and bringing education narrative into public and governance discourse , Rajasthan led the way by staging the first ever Festival of Education in India at Jaipur Exhibition and Convention Centre, Jaipur over two days on August 5-6.

Report on P3

but nobody is talking it has co-relation with Quality, Under provisioning of Public Education

Accreditation Framework NAAC launches Revised

Under provisioning of Public Education has co-relation with Quality,

Contd on P5Contd on P5

News Updates

2

Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam Annual Lecture Series

Dr. Abdul Kalam Centre for Policy

Research and Analysis to come up

at IIM ShillongThe IIM Shillong fraternity marked the second Death Anniversary of the 'People's President' with the 2017 edition of the Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam Annual Lecture Series. Padma Vibhushan G. Madhavan Nair, former Chairman, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) delivered lecture on the theme “Space and Society: the Indian scenario”.He spoke at length about the history of human space endeavor, and about its progression from the days of 12-inch rockets to the technological marvels of the day. He took the attendees through ISRO's developmental journey from infancy to modern day glory. Recalling Dr. Kalam's contribution to the nation, he under-scored how the former DRDO Chief who later became President adopted a different approach towards work, and towards fulfilling his commitment to the society. Harkening back to the days when the two worked together, Dr. Nair talked about the former President's exemplary leadership qualities, and his sense of ownership. “It is the dream that comes to you while you are awake that is important”, he said, while reminiscing about Dr. Kalam's religious commitment to his work. Instituted in 2016, the Annual Lecture Series was conceived to honor the legacy of the late former President. Launched in conjunction with a host of other initiatives, it aims to provide a platform for distinguished luminaries to share their perspec-tive on building 'a better planet' in keeping with Dr. Kalam's vision for societal development. Dr. Amitabha De, Director, IIM Shillong, used the occasion to revealed plan to set up Dr. Abdul Kalam Centre for Policy Research and Analysis. He told about partnering with the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), the North Eastern Council (NEC), and various State Governments in the region for setting up this Centre, which will be housed in the institute, and will work towards designing developmental models for tourism, business process outsourcing, logistics, handicraft, handloom, and horticulture in the region.

PwC Academy: Educational busi-

ness of PwC debuts in IndiaPwC launched PwC's Academy in India, the educational business of the firm on July 26 in Mumbai. PwC's Academy aims to offer a variety of training courses, based on the best practices of PwC's global network of firms. The customised training programmes will bring real life business experiences into the classroom, making learning more effective and practical. To begin with, PwC's Academy in India will focus on courses for professionals and students in the areas of finance and accounting. This will help organisations in meeting the challenges resulting from rapidly changing regulatory and financial reporting landscape of corporate India. Commenting on the launch of the PwC's Academy in India, Sanjay Tolia, Partner & Leader – Markets, PwC India said, “India has a large talent pool which needs the relevant training to be employable. Within the field of corporate reporting and

regulations, we have seen many important changes resulting in India adopting global best practices. The recent adoption of substantially converged global IFRS standards in India, i.e. Indian Accounting Standards (Ind AS) is a significant change. Therefore, we decided to start with offering related courses. Over the next couple of years, we aim to diversify the course offerings to include other areas of business.”

Research centre to address data

sciences and artificial intelligence

at IIT-M

Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions (RBEI) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on August 4 with the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) to set up the Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (RBC-DSAI). The mission of the RBC-DSAI is to create societal impact through multidisciplinary interactions with government, academic, research and industrial collaborators on core challenges in Data Science (DS) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). The Centre will receive funding up to the tune of INR three to four crores per year, for five years. Speaking about the upcoming Centre, Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi remarked, “IIT Madras has been nurturing its interdisciplinary Data Sciences and Artificial Intelligence research group for more than three years now. The launch of this Centre in partnership with, and generous support from, RBEI is an affirmation of the rapid growth and impact of the group's research and teaching activities. I am confident the RBC-DSAI will become a globally acknowledged Centre working at the cutting edge of various aspects of machine learning, data science and artificial intelligence, leading to work with high social impact." The Robert Bosch Centre will undertake foundational research in many areas of AI and Data Science, namely, deep learning, reinforcement learning, network analytics, interpretable machine learning, and domain aware AI. The areas of activity includes research projects, knowledge management and dissemination, developing prototypes, outreach projects, and setting up collaborative facilities and laboratories among others. The Centre's mandate requires interaction with industry and other universities, including international student and faculty exchanges. The objective is to advance scientific innovation for societal benefit.

11th Edition of Young Astronomer

Talent Search (YATS) launched in

Bhubaneswar The 11th edition of the Young Astronomer Talent Search (YATS), an annual competition organised for the school children of Odisha to create awareness on space science and astronomy, was launched by Badri Narayan Patra, minister for school and mass education who also holds the ministry of science & technology in the state on August 2, 2017. The theme for this year's YATS is 'India's contribution to space science'.Organised by Tata Steel in association with Pathani Samanta Planetarium since 2007, YATS promotes the contribution of Samanta Chandra Sekhar Harichandan Mahapatra who is popularly known as Pathani Samanta, the legendary astrono-mer of Odisha in the field of astronomy. It seeks to identify and

promote the talent of high school students in the field of space science by providing platforms to express and test their knowledge. The format of the competition comprises an essay competition for students of standards IX-X and an open quiz on space science for students of standard VII-VIII. The theme has been decided to celebrate the strides India has made especially recently in the areas of space science and astronomy. Indian is making an impact globally in this field and there has been a renewed vigor that this area is witnessing in current times. The essay topics are derived from the theme. The top two winners from each participating district will be invited the Grand Finale to be held on December 12-13, 2017 at Pathani Samanta Planetarium in Bhubaneswar. During this event, top 20 winners of YATS 2017-18 will be selected after a final round of evaluation and felicitated on the occasion. Later in May 2018 they will be taken by Tata Steel on an exposure visit to one of the facilities of ISRO.V V Yadav, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, Government of Odisha, Kailash Chandra Sahoo, Director of Pathani Samanta Planetarium, Arun Misra, Vice President, Project Gopalpur, Tata Steel and Managing Director, Tata Steel SEZ, Sarvesh Kumar, Chief, Brand Management & Strategic Communications, Tata Steel and Manikanta Naik, Chief Resident Executive, Tata Steel were also present on the occasion.

Database holds Earth's 2,000-year

climate historyClimate scientists will be able to more accurately study Earth's temperature changes, thanks to a global database compiled with the help of a Victoria University of Wellington and GNS Science researcher. The database has been released on July 28 in the Nature Scientific Data journal by a large international team of scientists. Associate Professor Bertler says the database—which expands on a version released in 2013—provides a rigorously assessed compilation of temperature reconstructions for the past 2,000 years. “The database gathers information on past temperature based on evidence from a number of sources including tree rings, corals, glacier ice, and marine and lake sediments,” she adds.

Cambridge English launched new

exam center in MumbaiCambridge English Language Assessment (part of the University of Cambridge) inaugurated Ryan Global School as a new exam center on 04th August 2017. The Cambridge English exams for schools are categorized for various age groups within K-12 will help and further enhance the speaking, writing, reading and listening skills contributing to development of student's personality. These exams are accepted in thousands of organizations worldwide and will be a value add to their resume in their college/university applications to study abroad as well. These exams open doors to higher education, improve employment opportunities, and increase choice for study or work. With a Cambridge English Certificate, the student will be able to prove his/her English language skills to universities, employers and governments around the world. The grand launch event was presided by Liam Vint, Deputy Director Global Network, Cambridge English Language Assessment. Dr Snehal Pinto, Director, Ryan Global Schools was also part of the launch event. The inauguration witnessed Students, Teachers, Parents, Academicians and the expert team from Cambridge English Language Assessment. This collaboration will benefit lakhs of students studying in this chain of schools from major cities of India like Mumbai, New Delhi, Punjab, Rajasthan, Indore, Gujarat, Bangalore, Chennai and many more. The school has its off shore campuses in Sharjah and Abu Dhabi. This collaboration will spread over to all these schools across the country.

Curriculum August 16, 2017

SHRM India conference 6th SHRM India Annual Conference & Exposition 2017 will be held on 14-15 September 2017 at Hotel Taj Palace, New Delhi. Speakers for the conference this year include Sean McGrath, VP HR, World Bank Group; DR. Brad Shuck, Associate Prof. Organizational Leadership & Learning - University of Louisville, Kentucky; Jonathan Alles, MD, CEO - Hatton National Bank PLC; Ajeet Bajaj, MD - Snow Leopard Ventures; Rohit Thakur, HR Managing Director, Accenture in India Geography; Dr Sripada Chandrasekhar, Global head of HR at Dr. Reddy's laboratories; P.V Ramana Murthy, Sr. VP & Global Head, HR - Taj Hotels Resorts & Palaces, Srikanth Balachandran -Global CHRO - Airtel to name a few.

Lead Story

3 Curriculum August 16, 2017

LIST OF TOP 10 INDIA RANKINGS 2017

ENGINEERING

Overall:1.Indian Institute of Science, Banglore,2.Indian Institute of Technology, Madras3.Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay4.Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur,5.Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi,6.Jawahar Lal Nehru University, New Delhi,7.Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur,8.Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati,9.Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, 10.Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi,

1.Indian Institute of Technology, Madras,2.Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay3.Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur4. Indian Institute of Tchnology, New Delhi

3. Banaras Hindu University4.Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Banglore5.Jadavpur University, Kolkata, West Bengal6. Anna University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu7. University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad,8. University of Delhi, Delhi9. Amrita Vishwa Peetham, Coimbatore10. Savitribai Phule PuneUniversity, Pune,

1. Miranda House, Delhi, Delhi2.Loyola College, District Chennai3.Shri Ram College of Commerce, New Delhi,4Bishop Heber College, District Tiruchirapalli, Tamil Nadu5.Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College,New Delhi6. St. Xavier's College, Kolkata, West Bengal

COLLEGES

minister herself who almost sat through the two-day event and was much engaged with the proceedings.The festival of education, Jaipur, managed to generate a genesis of collaborations and co-operations from both international and national delegates resulting in a pact with British Council to provide integrated support in s p o k e n E n g l i s h , establishment of University of Yoga in Rajasthan by yoga artist Bharat Thakur as well as S h a n k a r M a h a d e v a n ' s promise to open his first academy in the state. His Highness Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan - Minister of Culture and Knowledge Development, UAE, who was the chief guest at the inaugural ceremony of this high profile event announced introduction of an exchange program for cultural learning and knowledge between Rajasthan and UAE whereas South Hampton University, UK is all set to work with Rajasthan in providing Wi-fi facilities in the dark areas. Hosted at the iconic Jaipur Exhibition and Convention Centre spread over an area of over 4 lakh sq ft on the outskirts of Jaipur city, the inauguration and plenary session was addressed by Minister of Culture, Youth and Community Development of the United Arab Emirates His Highness Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan, union HRD minister Javadekar, Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhra Raje, Rajasthan School Education minister, Vasudeo Devnani Member of UK's House of Lords and Deputy Chair of British Council Baroness Usha Prasar, and Sunny Varkay, CMD GEMS education. Union HRD Minister Prakash Javdekar while underlining the importance of education said that the countries focusing on research and innovation will prosper as prosperity based on natural resourced had i ts own constraints of time. He also informed 24 states were on b o a r d o n p r o p o s e d amendment on 'no detention

policy' under RTE Act. He also said that Rajasthan is emerging as a model state in school education arena. He also revealed his plans to make country's population fully literate by training class 6-12 students to teach at home. Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak while calling education a national resource said that education had potential of enabling the world end all economic inequalities and discriminations. He said that only education could save a society from differences and establish multiethnic cultures. It would be the best idea for ensuring prevalence of peace, stability and prosperity in the world. Vasundhra Raje said that given the geographical and demographical circumstances of the state, providing quality education to the children here it was a big challenge. Accepting this challenge, her government brought big changes in the educational set-up and made it learning based. She said that teachers were important for making of any nation and they should adopt themselves to the upcoming changes. For this, t h e g o v e r n m e n t w a s improving their skills and capabilities by providing them training for new teaching methodologies and syllabi. Raje said that realizing the fact that mere degrees were not enough for the youth to upsurge in life, the state government had focused on skill training along w i t h b a s i c e d u c a t i o n . Rajasthan was amongst the top state in providing skill education to its youth. Also, two new skill universities had been established here, she said. She invited the private sector establishments to invest for development of bas ic infras t ructure in education. CM launched also an education CSR portal Gyan Samkalp.The closing ceremony an experiential musical night, indeed welcoming the change and marking the beginning of an active state was hosted by the effervescent actress and model – Gauhar Khan. The

F es t i va l o f Educa t i on celebrated the genius of all kinds, proposes to empower talents and thus plans to churn out each student's maximum potential. Even so was every activity at the ceremony including a performance by the Shillong Chamber Choir with their Vande Matram symphony. Dancing on the t h e m e o f O n e Yo u n g Rajasthan, were the school students choreographed by Dharmesh Yelande. The winners of the Battle of Bands – 'The Musafirs' were also a w a r d e d b y K i r a n M a h e s h w a r i , H i g h e r Education Minister Rajasthan , f o l l o w e d b y t h e i r presentation. Promoting young talent was one of the priorities of this festival. Recognizing hard work and innovative thinking were a set of awards to the winners of the Big Data Challenge Competition by H i g h e r E d u c a t i o n Department beginning with 1st winner bagging a Rs. 1 Lakh. To rejoice the success of this event came in Sona Mohapatra with her band and stormed the stage with her voice.

The eminence of a dedicated men to r was d i s cus sed thoroughly in the event with all delegates re-iterating the fact that teachers have more than half the responsibility of chang ing the s t a t e o f education. In the light of the same, a special Teachers Contributions Awards by the S e c o n d a r y E d u c a t i o n Department took place where teachers from across the state were recognized for their outstanding benefaction in schools. Sangia Sharma,Kota; Rajendra, Bikaner; Om Singh Bhakti, Kumar Mkicha, Chandauli (for excellent services); D. Ravikumar, Chittorgarh, Shravan Kumar, Bundi; and Amar Lal Sharma, Bhilwara were among those a w a r d e d b u G o v e r n o r Kalyan Singh.Overall, the Festival of Education beginning at Jaipur was a benchmarking event.

T h e f e s t i v a l h e l d i n partnership with Dubai-based GEMS Education (esb 1959, now a subsidiary of Varkey Group Limited founded and managed by Sunny Varkay and valued at over $ 4 billion and runs school chains, t e a c h e r t r a i n i n g a n d consultancy and is present in over 19 countries including India encompassed almost aspect that comes under effective education and learning- from inspiring students through compelling talks by prominent leaders to influencing parents to let children follow their passions. This festival trumpeted the need for quality education, teacher dedication and a provision of a holistic environment where students with all their capabilities f l o u r i s h a n d b e c o m e contributors to national development. “I strongly believe that the two-day Jaipur education festival has given us the confidence and conviction to become agents of lasting changes in our education system that will ultimately go on to determine our future and that of our na t ion , “sa id Amreesh Chandra- Group President, GEMS Education.The festival of education around the theme of One Young Rajasthan is being adopted by the state on lines of Jaipur Literature Festival and unlike the lit fest, this festival will travel to different regions of the state every year as the government also wants to showcase the state and its educational achievements. The next edition will take place in Udiapur.With several expert and key note speakers including union ministers –Prakash Javadekar (HRD) and Rajiv Pratap Rudy (Skills) addressing various sessions in the deftly planned a n d h i g h v o l t a g e extravaganza filled event as per organizers had a footfall of nearly 1.8 lakh people which included a good number of delegates from abroad and nationally besides school students, parents and teachers from some parts of the state. The state government was represented by the chief

from P1

TAKING EDUCATION TO THE CENTRESTAGE

The Festival of Education, Jaipur:

Sona Mahapatra

Amreesh Chandra

HRD minister, Javadekar

CM Raje with Sushmita Sen

Shillong Chamber Choir

Curriculum August 16, 20174

UPES students win innovation

challenge at IIGP 2.0 Two teams from UPES Dehradun that participated in the University Challenge of India Innovation Growth Programme 2.0 (IIGP) are amongst the top finalists. As winners each team has received funding of INR 10 lakhs to build prototypes of a submersible unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and space debris management system. IIGP 2.0. is a joint initiative of the Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India; Lockheed Martin Corporation; TATA Trusts; Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSTF); Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI); MIT Energy institute; IIT Bombay; IIM Ahmedabad to accelerate innovative Indian technologies into the global markets using world class commercialization strategies and business development assistance. A six member team of UPES students will now be working to develop a prototype of low-cost Submersible Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Using highly advanced technologies including artificial intelligence and image processing techniques this prototype can be launched from an underwater platform, fly in air to perform certain mission and return to the underwater platform. Given its submersible capabilities this UAV prototype will also be able to withstand corrosive underwater environment. The six team members are Rajat Singhal, N Adthiyian, S.M Hamza Hasan, Vaibhav Bhatia from B.Tech Avionics Engineering, Cris Thomas from M.Tech Aerospace Engineering and Vertika Saxena from B.Des Product Design. The other winner of IIGP 2.0 University Challenge from UPES is Siddharth Ojha, a B.Tech Avionics Engineering student, who will be developing a prototype of symmetrical hyperloop for the management of space debris in low earth orbit. Space debris is a big problem that will only get worse with time. Space junk is beginning to litter space and satellites can potentially fail from collision with debris.

IET South Asia 'Present around the

World' (PATW) competition resultShubham Saraff, a 3rd year student of Vellore Institute of Technology, Chennai has been declared winner of the IET South Asia 'Present round the World (PATW) 2017 finals. Shubham’swinning presentation focused on the topic “Neuron that shape our Civilization” .He was awarded a cash prize of Rs. 40,000 (£ 400) and will now compete in the global finals to be held in London during November this year for a cash prize of Rs. £1,000 (approx. Rs. 100,000/-). Kshipra Rajhans, 4th year student from K K Wagh Institute of Engineering Education & Research, Nashik was declared runner up for her presentation on the topic “Smart City” and was awarded with the cash prize of Rs. 30,000 (£300). This year, the competition witnessed participation from engineers across India and Sri Lanka vying for the top honors. The jury included Gangaraj H S Deputy Chief Engineer BMRC, Chinari Badrinath Prusty, Director Risk and Finance IT, Credit Suisse, G Uday Shankar, CEO of Brand Equity and Vivek Saxena, MD Career Modifiers. PATW is a global presentation competition for students, graduates and young professionals aged 18-30 years and aims to provide a platform to showcase and explore their talent and innovative thinking.Shekhar Sanyal, Country Head and Director, IET India said “ Being a go-to source for engineering institutions, the IET conducts competitions like PATW which helps provide a unique platform for students and young professionals to showcase their presentation skills and in turn contribute to their holistic development. We are really happy about the response we have received for this competition over the years.”

InQuizitive Minds announcedKestone, and CL Educate announces the fifth edition of their nationwide quiz for students, 'InQuizitive Minds,' an innovative quiz platform earlier known as Young India Challenge. Unlike previous four editions, the quiz this year is expected to happen at a larger scale targeting 9 million students from +15000 schools and +5000 colleges across 100 cities. To multifold its reach and gain further steam, this year InQuizitive Minds has roped in veteran cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle as its brand ambassador. The winners will be awarded cash prize worth INR 1 Lakh along with mentorship and learning opportunities, whereas, first and second runner-ups will get cash prize worth INR 50, 000 and INR 25, 000 respectively. Overall, INR 10 Lakh worth of cash rewards will be given to participants in this edition of InQuizitive Minds spread over 5 months. City/Regional rounds will be held in September and October followed by the finals in November 2017. This challenge is open to all enterprising youngsters who love quizzing and are k e e n t o e x p l o r e t h e i r p o t e n t i a l . R e q u e s t t o explore@inquizitiveminds.com

English Language Literary contest –

Pen to Publish 2017Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing has announced the launch of the Pen to Publish contest that recognizes literary excel-lence in English language. The winning author will receive a prize of ? 10 lakh, a print publishing deal with Westland Publishing for this winning work and 1-on-1 mentoring by a popular author. The winner will be announced in early 2018 at a popular literary festival. The winner will be selected based on several criteria, including creativity, originality, commercial viability and quality of writing. Five finalists will be short-listed and one final winner will be selected from this group. The judging panel for the contest includes international best-selling authors Joan Collins, Chetan Bhagat and Ashwin Sanghi. It also includes best-selling KDP author Sundari Venkatraman and V.K. Karthika, who is a publisher with Westland.Authors can participate in the contest by publishing their books using Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). KDP is a fast, free and easy service for authors to self-publish their books in digital format to a global audience and receive up to 70% royalties on the sale of their eBooks.

Texas Instruments (TI) 'India

Innovation Challenge 2017' TI has announced the launch of the second edition of India Innovation Challenge Design Contest (IICDC2017), with registrations for the contest opening on July 20th, 2017 at www.ti.com/iicdc. The last date for registration is September 10, 2017 will be TI will continue the collaboration with the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) and Department of Science and Technology (DST) to nurture innovation and consistent with the goals of the Make in India program. In the year long journey, IICDC 2017 will include an intense mentoring program for students. During IICDC 2017, TI will provide resources and in-depth technical training program throughout the contest. DST will provide INR 3.5 crores to the student start-ups for prototyping and seed funding. NSRCEL at IIM Bangalore will provide business mentoring and incubation support. MyGov, the government's online portal, will be extended to the participants for registra-tion.

Third edition of Mitsubishi Electric

Cup Opens for registrationIndia's biggest national-level automation competition for

students is back with its third edition. Mitsubishi Electric India, a leading player in Factory Automation, has announced that registrations are now open for the Mitsubishi Electric Cup (ME Cup) which will be held again this year after extremely successful previous versions in the last two years. http://www.mitsubishielectric.in/fa/mecup/. The last date for online registrations and submission of proposal is September 1, 2017. A maximum of two teams per institute can register for the event. Like the previous two years, this year as well ME Cup has an intrinsic theme that will serve as a base for participants to create their models. The theme for this year is 'Innovative Solutions for Smart Manufacturing' under which students will be required to independently design and produce a complete set of devices and models by using Mitsubishi Electric factory automation products.

'Motilal Oswal's Think Equity Think

QGLP Contest'To educate the young generation on equity and process based

equity investing, Motilal Oswal Asset Management Company has partnered with The Red Brick Summit 2017, the flagship Annual Symposium of IIM Ahmedabad to create a unique initiative – the 'Motilal Oswal Think Equity Think QGLP Contest'.The contest provides a great forum for B-school students to test their stock-picking skills, present the same to a distin-guished panel, and win attractive cash prizes along the way.As part of the contest the participants from various Business Schools need to familiarise themselves with the QGLP stock picking methodology. Using the methodology, they need to pick a stock and give a rationale for the same in the prescribed format. The various entries would be shortlisted by senior fund managers at MOAMC and the top 10 entries would get a chance to present their investing idea at The Red Brick Summit 2017.The contest is open to all students currently studying in B-schools across India. The last date for receiving entries is September 7, 2017. The top 3 investing ideas as adjudged by the panel would get prize money of INR 5 lakh, INR 3 lakh and INR 1 lakh respectively.

Scholarship as a gift to 10 IITians On the Occasion of 25-years completion of FIITJEE in June 2017, they dedicate a revolutionary service to the Genius of India – IIT Genius Scholarship. Through this scholarship, 10 students from each class VII to XII will be bestowed with the honour of IIT Genius title and would get their education at any Indian Insititute of Technology (IIT) with 100 % sponsorship covering all institutional expenses including hostel, tuition fee, books fee and reasonable personal expenses. Selection of students for this award will be based on IIT Genius Test and followed by an interview where 30 students from each class VII, IX, X, XI and XII will be called for interview at Delhi or Hyderabad. Exam Date: August 27, 2017 details: www.fiitjeelogin.com).

Scholarships worth Rs. 11 crore

from MindHourMindHour — one of India's fastest growing EduTech startups — is set to provide scholarships worth Rs. 11 crores to students as a part of their YCQ (Your Champion Quotient) to be held between the months of July and October this year. The YCQ is a quiz contest from classes 5 to 10 that will enable students to partake in this scholarship process. ShakunJethi, Poonam Sharma and BidhayakBhowal, the region heads of Delhi, Noida and Gurugram respectively will take the sponsorship initiative ahead by partnering with 200+ schools in the Delhi and NCR regions.

News Updates

Be extra sensitive towards students and parents regarding

revised fee payment: FICCI Arise FICCI Alliance for Re-Imagining School Education (FICCI Arise), a collegium of members representing various facets of the education ecosystem comprising of reputed independent schools, eminent educators, foundations, think tanks, technical experts, and the civil society, has urged schools across India to exercise restraint and be extra careful in dealing with the students and parents on issues relating to fee management. Referring to reports from a section of the press where parents allege harassment of their children due to delays in payment of revised fees, Prabhat Jain, Chairman, FICCI Arise urged schools to refrain from undertaking any such actions relating to payment of fee hikes which can have an adverse impact on the students. He said, "The need of the hour is to provide them extra support and care to navigate through uncertainty so that they can continue to focus on their education. At this juncture, it is important for schools to provide prompt and transparent communication to parents, who are concerned and committed to finding an amicable solution without compromising on the quality of education." Fee hikes are just a symptom of a larger issue that has gestated over the years. Administrators need to handle it carefully and with empathy. We should also rigorously hold to account a handful of schools that indulge in unethical practices and cause damage to the reputation of the entire private education sector. Any such misuse of autonomy must be strictly dealt with. At the same time, regulation should be minimal so that good schools can focus on delivering quality education rather than getting caught in a web of complex regulations.

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The five-point evidence put forth in the study include lower budgets for school education, no uniformity on per student cost between different types of government schools, huge gaps between in fund approved by MHRD on SSA to states and finally allocated by the min i s t ry o f f inance , a continuous decrease in SSA budget by the MHRD of which more than 60% is financed through education cess and a study of 10 states (Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, M a h a r a s h t r a , O d i s h a , Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh) showing u n d e r f u n d i n g o f v i t a l c o m p o n e n t s o f s c h o o l education. The analysis reveals that inter se allocations have been stagnant over the past four years. After implementation of RTE in 2010, the school education has just increased by 0.2%tage point. In fact the estimated Rs 2.31 lakh Cr r ecommended fo r RTE implementation in five years which comes to about Rs 45,000 Cr a year has not been adhered to.The study also found huge disparity among states on per child expenditure on school education. Only Goa and Kerala spend more than the Kendriya vidyalay (Rs 32,263 per year), while as a number of s ta tes inc luding Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and UP spend less than Rs 10,000.

5

Lead storyII

An interesting observation made in the study is that the ministry of MHRD is not able to keep its commitment to states. The approvals agreed to in PAB (program approval board) for SSA becomes much less and in some cases half in the approved outlays from the finance ministry. For instance in 2016-17 the PAB approval for SSA (central share) was Rs 46,702 Cr but in budget allocation, it was Rs 22500, which is 48.2 % of the former. The study shows it was a pattern for all the 10 states it studied. The study also after looking at NSS data wondered if indeed elementary education was free in India as even a rural household is spending Rs 965 out of pocket for a child studying in a government school. The figure for unaided schools is quite high. “While the collection of cess began as a measure to inject a d d i t i o n a l a m o u n t s t o supplement government's own support, it grew to be more of a substitute. A CAG audit report shows that SSA budget for 2014-15 (Revised estimated) had been reduced by Rs 5256 Cr against the budgeted provision of Rs 27,575 cr due to lower collection of cess,” says the report adding that with the implementation of GST, how the education cess will be used is not yet very clear. Closing balance of cess will not be carried forward in GST as it is not covered by the definition of 'eligible duties

and taxes' under GST Act. In this scenario, the question arises whether it would be prudent to plan for soliciting 60% of SSA budget from collection of education cess? Based on government data, the study shows there is a shortage of more than five lakh teachers at elementary level and at the same time 14 % of government secondary schools don't have the prescribed minimum six teachers. Recruitment of additional teachers has not kept pace with the rapidly growing enrolments. It also reveals that expenditure on teacher training by the selected sates except for Bihar (which spends 1.6 of education budget on this) is abysmal or negative. 17% of DIETs do not have their own building, 40% don't have hostel facility and many faculty position in them are vacant all over. Inadequacy of provisioning in DIETs impedes capacity development at sub-district levels, thereby adversely affecting the process of curricular reforms, onsite academic suppor t , and supervision and monitoring. According to Prof Praveen Jha, professor of economics at JNU, while advocating for adopting education financing on unit cost bottom upwards says all available benchmarks are inadequately designed to provide an escape route to government. The message being sent is that if govern-ment can't do it; let's give to private sector while as nobody

realizes that we end up paying more as society for the same service through indirect taxes and subsidies. “The issue of universalization of education has not been raised in CABE after 2009-10 and finance has been kept out of debate. We need to arrive at a unit cost in a bottom up approach if we want adequate provisioning for education, which is critical for quality of education,“ he adds. In view of Prof R Govinda, former VC of NUEPA, the country's economists have failed to make an impact with education and most of people fail to understand that school is a place where teacher engage with children. He said we need give a human face to what inadequacies mean and how it impacts our children. According to Prof Krishna Kumar, former director of NCERT, today there is a contrast between 2002 and 2009 when RTE received support from all quarters. That momentum unfortunately didn't throw up leadership in states and today education ministry in states is seen as the most unwanted. He recom-mended that we need to galvanize states and don't get bogged down by the word 'national' in the policy. He suggested constitution of state level education advisory committees much like the CABE and recovery of institutions. “Our contact with past literature has become feeble. The advocacy has lost its teeth. We need to study how Kothari commission and other committees worked and what are unfinished tasks from them,” he added. The problem is the government and others don' t consider the real problems as problems, how will they accept the challenge of solving them? There is vast gap between rhetoric and reality. Let's hope as Ambarish Rai, national convener of RTE Forum put it, make realize the government and society that education is indeed a priority so that adequate resources are available besides a change in the mindset. Autar Nehru

Curriculum August 16, 2017

2017 at New Delhi which was inaugurated by union HRD minister Prakash Javadekar and was attended by eminent academicians and educationists. The Revised Accreditation Framework which became operational in July 2017, is ICT enabled, objective, transparent, scalable and robust. The new framework is a subtle combination of System Generated Scores (SGS) with a combination of online evaluation (70%) and Peer evaluation (30%) which would usher in high level of transparency. The Revised Framework is more ICT intensive and 'outcome based'. The current grading pattern of NAAC (A++, A+, A, B++, B+, B, C, D) would be continued for accreditation. A system of applying minimum qualifiers for achieving a grade has been designed and will be implemented. For example, Universities should score a minimum of 3.01 in Criteria 1, 2 and 3 for achieving a “A” “A+” “A++”grade. New procedure of Assessment and Accreditation (A&A) to Monitoring of Private Universities have also been adopted. and is being implemented w.e.f. July 2017. NAAC has introduced an additional step, wherein the data submitted by Institution are subjected to a Data Verification and Validation (DVV) process. The new process has also provision for imposing severe penalties on Institutions submitting fraudulent data.To avoid submission of fraudulent data by the Institutions for accreditation, NAAC has made it mandatory for the Institutions to upload the information provided to NAAC on their website and retain the information on their website until completion of the validity period of accreditation and provide access to all the stakeholders. Institutions are instructed to videograph the whole assessment exercise and submit the same to NAAC and also upload on its website. A Complainants Management Committee has been established which looks into the complaints especially those received after accreditation for initiating necessary action.

Central RTE 'outcomes' RulesThe Government informed the Parliament that in order to focus on quality education, the Central RTE Rules have been amended on February 20, 2017 to include reference on class-wise, subject-wise Learning Outcomes. The Learning Outcomes for each class in Languages (Hindi, English and Urdu), Mathematics, Environmental Studies, Science and Social Science up to the elementary stage have, accordingly, been finalized and shared with all States and UTs. These would serve as a guideline for States and UTs to ensure that all children acquire appropriate learning level. The students learning assessment will be according to the Learning Outcomes developed by NCERT. The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) conducts periodic national surveys of learning achievement of children in classes III, V and VIII and X. Four rounds of National Achievement Survey (NAS) have been conducted so far for class V and three rounds for classes III & VIII. These reveal improvement in learning achievement levels of pupils, in identified subjects from first round to fourth round. From current year onwards, Government has decided to conduct National Achievement Survey where district will be the sampling unit. The students learning assessment will be according to the Learning Outcomes developed by NCERT..

Single non-lapsable corpus fund for Secondary

and Higher education from Cess The Union Cabinet has approved creation of a non-lapsable pool in the Public Account for secondary and higher, education known as "Madhyamik and Uchchtar Shiksha Kosh" (MUSK) into which all proceeds of "Secondary and Higher Education Cess" will be credited. The funds arising from the MUSK would be utilized for schemes in the education sector which would be available for the benefit of students of secondary and higher education, all over the country.

from P1

Under provisioning of Public Education has co-relation with Quality, but nobody is talking

NAAC Accreditation Framework

from P 1from P 1

Interview

6

this chapter of festival which I

have been working on. She

said she will be happy to

partner with you but she

wanted the 'festival of

educat ion ' a Rajasthan

government property and not

that she hosts the first and then

next time it will go to some

other state/city. Because she

also wanted to use the fest of

education to showcase land

and people of Rajasthan that

is why there was beautiful

baton designed which was

passed on to mayor of next

host city, Udaipur. She made

it a property like Jaipur lit fest

except that unlike lit fest

which doesn't travel across

Rajasthan, she wanted this

education fest to travel so that

along with education she

would highlight the regional

deve lopmen t , r eg iona l

flavour and culture of those

places to global people

coming there. Therefore e this

partnership evolved and there

is no tenure to it. Year after

year travel across the only

criteria to chose a city is it

should have basic infra to

showcase and host the fest on

the a large scale and at least

have a neighbouring city that

can offer hotel and other

infrastructure. And GEMS will remain a

partner. If yes, for how

many years?Yes, GEMs will be a partner in

subsequent festivals editions

and we have an MoU on that.

There is no tenure to this

collaboration.

This collaboration goes

beyond this festival?Apart from this, we are a

couple of more things.

Festival of Education is one.

Second we said, we'll adopt

your government schools and

better manage them or work

towards that end. So, we said,

we'll adopt 50 schools. We

have also adopted five DIETs

(district institute of education

and training) for improving

them. They said, the central

library of Jaipur, which is in

bad shape needs support. So,

we will revamp this central

library of Jaipur both with

intellectual investment and

physical investment so that it

becomes a place of learning

and teaching. And fourth, we

shall take part and participate

in platforms that create,

e n h a n c e a n d i n n o v a t e

t e a c h i n g / l e a r n i n g a n d

therefore this festWhat kind of investment is

going into this?In terms of fest and library

revamping, all carry financial

commitment from us but at

the same time government is

an equal partner. In so far as

the adopting schools or

DIETS is concerned, it is a

CSR activity for us and only

difference here is that while it

is a practice to involve

corporate under CSR, in this

case we are a corporate

working in education. All along there is an invest-

ment perspective to bring in

and invest in all categories of

schools not only senior

schools, but mass market

schools, affordable schools.

We (GEMS education) are

aggressively investing across

India and have an agenda to

invest in all categories in

India and Rajasthan is no

exception.Are you talking to other

state governments as well

on similar lines as in

Rajasthan? We are approaching and in

talks with various govern-

ments but everywhere the

connotation is different and it

not same but essence of

relationship is that can we as

the world's as a largest private

education company partner

with your state in enhancing

teacher training, enhancing

and transforming public

schools, create an environ-

ment that at large helps India

itself to become as the next

intellectual capital of the

world and basically encour-

ages the innovation and in

teaching/learning. Whether

this fits into government own

agenda, that is secondary but

yes we are in conversation

with various governments

and I am not naming them but

you will soon hear announce-

ments coming. And you are confining

yourself to school education

segment only?Absolutely.Do you feel this is the kind of

rather elusive PPP model

that this country has been

looking for years now?I think so. What is 'festival of

education'? it is a PPP. Most

states are open to PPP model

and it is not PPP in one

perspective but in many

perspectives. My feeling is

people are open to it in teacher

training, ICT, technology, in

creation of incubation centres,

enhancing teaching and

school management across

India and that is a positive

change in mindset. C o m i n g t o G E M S

Education plans for India.

What is the roadmap that

might have drawn for

growth in India?Our road map is very clear

now. In India we have two

kind of school, GEMS schools

and other is dream schools,

The way India is doing now,

the mantra for India is

affordable India, quality

affordable India. Be it

housing, debts financing or

education. In doing so, we

have been market a market

leader and fortunately our

chairman Sunny Varkay has

the insight to look into what

India has to offer in the

coming 5-10 years. We have

150 affordable schools

running across India in 12

states. Now our idea is while

so many people are coming

up with premium schools, we

want to cater to the affordable

school segment. We want to

go develop a model that only

becomes operational and

provides quality in tier two or

C cities but at tehsil and

village level. That is what our

road map and that is what

India needs. That is a huge

deficiency of schools to the

tune of 40,000k schools and

Amreesh Andrew Chandra, within less than a year after joining as Group President,

GEMS Education, India, pulled off the first ever Festival of Education with Rajasthan

government in Jaipur (on Aug 5-6) with great success. Chandra, coming from the UP's

Gorakhpur and an economics masters from Christ Church College, Kanpur and having

worked with several governments internationally as a consultant is also incidentally the

only educationist to have received the honor of Freeman of the City of London. His family

owns St Paul's school in Gorakhpur. Autar Nehru spoke with Amreesh Chandra soon

after the conclusion of 'festival of education'. Excerpts:

Curriculum August 16, 2017

which will take good number

of years to make couple and

require a couple of billion

dollars spent. It will be all kind, it will be

acquisition, venture partners,

adopting schools, working

with govt schools, sharing

infra, etc. The segment of

growth for GEMS in India is

going to be 70 percent in

affordable schooling and 30

percent in premium mid

market segment. A personal question, what

made you to choose GEMS

Education? There are couple of reason. I

know the chairman and group

for good last 10 years. The

passion of the man in building

and creating enterprise only

on school education and

becoming biggest in the world

is exemplary and second to

none in world. I found in him

the commitment, passion and

canvas that matches the

canvas what I wanted to work

in the field of education in

India. I come from a small

town of Uttar Pradesh,

Gorakhpur. My parents have

been teachers as you know

and we run our own schools

there (St Paul's School). And

having been a teacher myself

for five years, coming from

small town, seen these big

canvases, working with

governments internationally, I

have that kind of expertise to

work and create a team for Mr

Varkay in India that fulfils a

vision that is very close to both

of our hearts .

Tell us, how was the 'Festival

of Education' conceived and

How did the Govt of

Rajasthan come round the

idea and accepted it?Essentially this conversation

began with the honourable

chief minister (Vasundhra

Raje) with a couple things on

my mind when I was working

on a concept of festival of

education in India and the

idea was to promote India as a

knowledge hub in the world.

And promote within India a

state which has some basic

criteria, showed aggressive

and positive movement

towards improving education

in which Rajasthan by far was

a leader. No other state is close

to it when it comes to

transformation of public

schools, the kind of attention

paid to schools, their results,

attendance and enrolment ,

push for parent teacher

meetings, efficiency of

teachers, etc. So that is how

our relationship began with

the government of Rajasthan

a n d m e a n t i m e G E M S

happened (joined GEMS

Education as group president

in India) with me. Mr Sunny

Varkay is is dear friend I know

for a very very long time, we

agreed to work together. That

was how it was a good

culmination of three different

people passionate about

education working towards

building India as the next

knowledge hub coming

together.So, I told madam (CM) I have

GEMS Education will aggressively invest in all categories of schools with affordable segment accounting for 70 percent in this growth agenda

AMREESH ANDREW CHANDRA, Group President, GEMS Education, India,

interaction and emotional

needs— to understand how

effective learning can take

place in a classroom. A

student's emotional well-being

is directly proportional to their

academic performance, and

hence, small data use becomes

imperative. However, only

when links between big data

and small data have been

looked into can we devise

ways for students to attain

success.

Large sets of

data that are analysed using

computer algorithm is called

big data. The data is often so

large and complex that

processing them by conven-

t i ona l da t a p roces s ing

applications is not possible.

Three Vs— volume, velocity

and variety—could help us

understand the vastness of big

data. Years before technology

had made inroads into the

education sector, large bodies

of data like student enrolment,

teacher qualifications, etc

were handled manually.

Technology has taken off from

there, and the process of

collecting and maintaining

data is easier and faster now.Analysis of the data set yields

patterns in human behaviour.

With the help of educational

technology, we can map

BIG DATA:

students' understanding,

gauge gaps in their learning

and devise ways to enhance

their learning further. It

might become difficult for

teachers to provide individu-

alised assistance to each

student. Thus, big data can

facilitate adaptive learning

and improve l ea rn ing

outcomes. This could also

help teachers point out

students' learning gaps to

parents more scientifically

and effectively.However, the statistics and

analytics fail to provide

insights about emotions and

classroom relationship,

which play a huge role in how

teaching and learning is

carried out in classroom.Let's see how small data can

help us.

While big

data deals with an array of

data consisting of student's

demographic background,

their performance and their

learning patterns, small data

dea l s w i th s eeming ly

irrelevant subjects like

students' emotional and

social well-being, their

interests and passions and

relationship with their peers

and teachers. The main

difference between small

data and big data other than

SMALL DATA:

the difference in their size is

the way they are collected.

Small data is primarily

collected based on observa-

tions and recordings made by

human beings. In education

sector, self-assessment by

students and participatory

notes made by teachers on

learning process are ways to

collect small data.Group activities and forma-

tive assessments could help

teachers increase interaction

in class and build their

relationship with students.

Teachers should be given

more independence to plan

their lessons and assessments

to effectively collect small

data. This would also nudge a

student to reflect on their

learning. A student's own

opinion can help teachers

unravel the small gaps in

learning all the more.Thus, while big data indicates

whether a student learns a

topic or not, small data helps

teacher understand why few

students learn better than

others.Unfortunately, the practice of

collecting and analysing

small data has not seen much

success . However, the

ensuing revolution in the

e d u c a t i o n s e c t o r h a s

propelled policymakers to

pay heed to this aspect of data

mining too because under-

standing small clues can

uncover big trends. For

instance, if educators ignore

miniscule details like how

much time students spend

outside the classroom and

only look into the parameter

of absent and present, they

would never be able to

uncover why an increase in

attendance percentage fails to

improve learning outcomes.

7

Special series

Curriculum August 16, 2017

HE OBSESSION Twith big data began as

we entered the new

millennium over a decade

ago. Both firms and individu-

als, alike, came to understood

the importance of collecting,

maintaining and analysing

data sets. From following

w e a t h e r f o r e c a s t s t o

Facebook news feed showing

stories based on past likes and

shares, big data analytics has

pervaded all aspects of our

waking life. Like any other

sector enthusiastic about

latest technological develop-

ments, the education sector,

too, has adopted big data and

its analysis zealously. Now,

technology can predict how a

teacher would perform even

be fo re they en te r t he

classroom, based on their past

tenure, qualification and the

huge sets of data already

present in the repository

indicating the performance of

previous recruits in a similar

post.T h i s i s a n a g e o f

personalisation, in respect to

both to teaching and learning.

Therefore, trends and patterns

might fall short in yielding

good learning outcomes.

Hence, educators are now

increasingly resorting to

small data to delve deeper into

student's behaviour— social

Spacial

special Not just whether a student learns a topic or not, we should

also be able to point out why a few learn better than others

WorldSkills Competition at Abu Dhabi! WorldSkills Competition this year which will be held from 15th to 18th October at Abu Dhabi. With 77 countries competing in Skills from Brick Laying, Carpentry, Painting to Fashion Technology, Floristry, Beauty Therapy, Cooking, Hairdressing to even something as complicated as Information System Cabling and IT Networks Systems Administration, you name it and the Skill is there to compete in!

By Beas Dev Ralhan

CEO & Co-founder,Next Education India Pvt. Ltd.

Under arrangement with Next Education

Small Data is as Important as Big Data in K-12 Sector

“LINGAYA'S JOURNAL OF PROFESSIONAL STUDIES” ( ISSN 0975-539X )

Calling Papers for Volume 11 / Number 01/ July – December 2017 The Lingaya's University is publishing the LINGAYA'S JOURNAL OF PROFFESSIONAL STUDIES. It is an national peer reviewed, journal for the enhancement of research in various disciplines of Engineering and Technologies, Management, Basic sciences, widely Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Humanities and social sciences widely Sociology, Political Science, History, Economics, law, Architecture, Education, Psychology, Library & Information Science, Communication, Computer Science/ Information Technology, Pharmacy, English, Environment, Nano science etc. The aim and scope of the journal is to provide an academic medium and an important reference for the advancement and dissemination of research results that support high-level learning, teaching and research in various fields.Kindly send your paper / manuscript to us by mailing to Chief Editor, Lingaya's Journal of Professional Studies, Lingaya's University. E-Mail: lingayas.journal@gmail.com Chief Editor, Lingaya's Journal of Professional Studies, Lingaya's University, Nachauli, Jasana Road, Faridabad- 121002, Phone No. +91-129-2598200-05, 2598274.

The Gorakhpur hospital tragedy involving deaths of

more than 30 children between August 9 and 11 that

rose to 85 till August 15 in Gorakhpur's largest

government hospital ( Baba Raghav Das Medical

College ) among several issues is also a validation of

the view that public education & research continues

to be a blind spot for the people in government. That

a Japanese encephalitis endemic region is so ill-

prepared and lacks the public sanitation is certainly a

national shame. Last year, reportedly aid to Centre

of Excellence in Encephalitis Research at Sanjay

Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences

(SGPGIMS) in Lucknow was stopped, which

tantamounts to canceling such an important research.The continued neglect of education including

medical education over a period of time leads to

decline in standards. This can be seen world over. It

had happed to Britain as well but over the past two

decades, the country has a radical improvement

because now every Prime Minister there understands

that ownership of public education for government is

a top priority. India in the last decade or so has moved dangerously

to a system of education where the understanding of

quality has been narrowed down to a few

measureable notions and which is unfortunately

being reinforced by myopic vision of the current

government as well. The broader concept of quality

education that would include churning out organic

intellectuals, critical thinkers, problem solvers,

upholders of constitutional ideals and values and

eventually bring peace and good psychological order

to the society is being replaced by a philosophy of

outcomes meaning thereby: Are we producing

industry ready youth or for that for big capital?

While as education should be such that youth can

adapt to environment and change. The bench

marking of regulations and norms is mediocre in our

country and yet instead of setting right kind of

standards the onus of quality educaiton is being

shifted on students. Mental and physical well-being of children is not a

concern, otherwise why would schools not get the

unequivocal attention of the state. These are

learning/teaching environments. But now the

thinking in the government is inputs are immaterial,

the attention must go on outcomes. Don't you need

quality tools, quality teachers and quality

infrastructure for that? How would you provide for

learning opportunities to those children who form the

largest population group scoring within 30-70%

bracket? Why piecemeal approach to vocational

education and not main streaming it?And upon all these, cuts in education budget continue

to happen without a fuss despite the fact that

provisioning of resources is critical for quality of

education. . Still, you still claim to be delivering

development to a nation of youth!

SERIES A of powerful cyber attacks stormed

the world when Petya malware on 27 June 2017 i n f e s t e d w e b s i t e s o f Ukrainian organizations, including banks, ministries, newspapers and electricity firms. Similar infections were reported in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. Similarly, the WannaCry ransomware was a worldwide cyber attack which targeted computers running the Microsof t windows operating system by encrypting data and demand-ing ransom payments in the bitcoin cryptocurrency. The attack began on Friday, 12 May 2017, and within a day was reported to have infected more than 2, 30,000 comput-ers in over 150 countries. In the Indian context, a recent study reveals that there is a sharp increase in the number of cyber crime incidents recording a jump of over 100 percent in 2015 from 2014. The number has grown from 71, 780 in 2013 to 1.49 lakh in 2014 to about 3 lakh in 2015. However the government data states that the number of cyber crimes reported during 2014 , 2015 and 2016 (provisional data) stood at 9,622; 11,592; and 12,317, respectively. The study conducted by IIT Kanpur and shared with the Parliament's committee on finance has raised serious concerns about cyber insecurity. Though

Europe and USA are among the most affected of cyber crime, India is seeing an alarming rise in such cases posing serious threat to our security. Today 1.5 billion people a c r o s s t h e w o r l d a r e connected through internet network making it a global village. At the same time, hackers around the world are using this as a means to fulfil their covert motives. Cyber crime in past few years delimiting itself from mere few instances have affected the whole country with increasing number of online fraud cases like a recent social trading web work scam o f R s . 2 4 2 c r o r e s i n Ghaziabad district of Uttar Pradesh. Common people are being deceived and cheated on frequent basis across the country through use of cyber platform. Thus, both global a n d n a t i o n a l p i c t u r e underlines the issue of cyber security.Cyber cr ime basical ly includes trolling, theft of information, sexual crime, pornography, virus attack etc. T h e s e c r i m e s c a n b e categorized into two forms- a) hacking, virus worms and DOS a t tack in which computer is used as medium while the other one b) uses computer as a weapon for IPR violation, terrorist activities, fraud through credit cards, lot teries, pornography and morphing etc. Terrorists have found computer mouse as a new arm tool to create panic by provoking religious and political extremism. Such fanatic organizations are deploying a techno-savvy and technically qualified p rofess iona l s in the i r

criminal affairs. A cyber attack is defined as any type of o f f e n s i v e m a n o e u v r e employed by individuals or any organization that targets c o m p u t e r i n f o r m a t i o n systems, infrastructures, computer networks, and/or personal computer devices by various means of malicious acts usually originating from an anonymous source that either steals, alters, or destroys a specified target by hacking into a susceptible system.Since IT Acts in different countries have their own set of regulations, controlling such cyber crimes become much more intricate. IT Regulation Act in our country was promulgated way back in 2000, but it has proved ineffective and toothless in checking cyber threats and creating any kind of deter-rence. In the above context, the central government has formed an expert group to prepare an action plan in order to check this menace of cyber crime. Based on the recom-mendations of the group, the government has come up with the proposal of Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) and Rs.400 crores has been allocated to establish this advanced centre with the main objective of curbing online trolling, sexual assault and other forms cyber crime. This c e n t r e w o u l d p r o v i d e assistance to the enforcement agencies in online cases of inquiry. Moreover, the government has also made agreements with other nations to create secure and reliable cyber space for the consum-ers.The government has initiated several programmes for people's participation in

achieving the fully digitalised economy. The study pointed out that since the government is pushing the Aadhar-based financial transactions, the security of Aadhar database against unauthorised usage needs to be addressed and checked carefully. Pointing out that post-demonetisation, digital wallets such as PayTM and BHIM have gained significance, while at the same time country had seen cyber attacks which compro-mised more than 3 million ATM and debit cards through Hitachi-engineered ATM machine hacking. The study has suggested for urgently upgrading its defences by setting up a cyber security commission on the lines of Atomic Energy Commission. In the present scenario, government is pushing reforms for digitization and cashless economy to control black money and corruption. In this backdrop, it is important to take note of risks and insecurity attached with the digital transactions as cases of online frauds have become order of the day. The digital payments also open the channels of cyber crimes by hacking of unique passwords and more so in the socio-economic background of people who are less aware of the precautions that one should take during transac-tions. The government can come up with the digital literacy awareness programs with the help of professional technocrats for assisting common people especially belonging to rural sections to p romote sa fe cash less transactions. The vigilance, awareness and caution are the keys to ensure security from cyber threats.

Printed, Published and Owned by: Avtar Krishen Kaul, Saraswati Colony, Smith Nagar, PO- Prem Nagar, Dehradun (Uttrakhand)-248001 and Printed at Microsoft Technoprint India Private Limited, 37 Old Cannaught Place, Dehradun (UttraKhand) and Published at Saraswati Colony, Smith Nagar, PO- Prem Nagar, Dehradun (Uttrakhand)-248001,

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Curriculum August 16, 2017

Dr. Nitesh Dhawan, Public Servant and Author

KEY COMPONENTS OF SMART CITIES INCLUDE:

§At least 10 percent of the total energy require-ment of the smart city should be based upon solar energy source.

§Waste water recycling and reutilization of rain water with adequate supply of water.

§Solid waste management and sanitation.

§Rain water harvesting.

§Effective information technology networks and digitization.

§Minimum of 80 percent buildings should be energy saving and eco-friendly.

Cyber insecurity is a serious threat to digitisation in India

Cyber insecurity is a serious threat to digitisation in India

Public Education blind spot

Spotlight

Curriculum August 16, 2017 9

h e e n t e r t a i n m e n t Tb u s i n e s s w o r l d i s r e inven t ing i t s e l f and disrupting the basic and most important necessity of human beings, 'Fun'. Is it because of the advancement of Virtual reality or the consumers' requirement is fast changing and demanding? What is the current scenario and what will be the future of it? Convergence happens when two or more things come together to form an all together a new whole thing, like the convergence of corporates, mobility and internet has created virtual workplaces . The word 'Convergence' comes from the prefix con-, meaning together, and the verb verge, which means to turn towards. In the games entertainment and

cinematics industry we are witnessing a high scale convergence in play. The a r t i c l e a d d r e s s e s t h i s phenomena and related aspects that are the core.Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, a German philosopher, cultural critic, and poet, rightly said 'In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.' Video games have grown up with us, from 'Super Nintendo' to 'Final Fantasy' to 'The Martian VR Experience'. What has changed is the level o f i m m e r s i o n . T h e immersiveness is a relative term, what was immersive and exciting yesterday must evolve today to stay relevant. The consumers ' human natural tendency is to explore and experience new and engaging content every next time. Technology has been supportingly pushing the b o u n d a r i e s o f n e w e r experiences in gaming, entertainment and cinema. Every movie or a game or any story form becomes so much fun and engagement that it br ings a load of fan-f o l l o w i n g . C o r p o r a t e s immediately need to encash the opportunity by converting and packaging characters, story line and assets into a franchise. This builds loyalty, for example the movie: 'The

Martian'. In the movie Mark Watney, an a s t ronau t , becomes stranded on Mars after his team assume him dead, and must rely on his ingenuity to find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive. With minimum supply, Mark struggles to keep himself alive. Someone who has seen and liked the movie will now want to experience the same experience what Mark has faced at Mars. An entertain-ment consumer needs are now not limited to 'watch' what is happening on the screen but it has evolved to immersive demands to experience and really (virtually) live the moment. There are engage-ment creators like Ted Schilowitz, who heads Futurist 21st Century Fox's Innovation Labs, a division that provides supplementary and immersive interactive con ten t f rom ex i s t i ng cinematic projects. Fox's Innovation Labs is responsi-ble for developing “cinematic virtual reality” for the consumers' who are ready for new experiences around the blockbuster films. As far as the Martian VR gameplay goes, this has delivered an engaging visually impressive experience. You can feel yourself in the Watney's space suit and the helmet's covering

the view, merging with your own VR headset fading the real and virtual boundary throughout.Hundreds of games and movies have impacted human l i v e s b y m o u l d i n g u s psychologically through their engaging storylines. There are researchers who might think videogames and movies are not the “correct” medium. But an overwhelming research also shows that gaming and entertainment media can impact children, and adults too, in positive ways and that may be in the best interest of society as well. Game based learning enhances meta-cognitive skills and emotional stimulations, building the ability to think about one's o w n t h i n k i n g ( s e l f -realization). Gamemakers and filmmakers must fast learn technologies and the secrets of producing immersive content. The new-fun architects and developers need to produce that ultimate footage, with a feel of the material and virtual environ-ment. New developments in virtual and augmented reality are there to make sure to keep audience engaged with the expansion of gaming and cinema in fast growing virtual-digital world.

Young victims of cyberbullying twice as likely to attempt suicide and self-harm, study findsChildren and young people under-25 who become

victims of cyberbullying are more than twice as likely

to enact self-harm and attempt suicide than non-

victims.And the perpetrators of cyberbullying are also more likely to experience suicidal thoughts and behaviours, researchers say. The study, which is a collaboration of a number of researchers from across the UK, including the University of Birmingham, looked at more than 150,000 children and young people across 30 countries, over a 21-year period.Their findings, published on open access in PLOS One, highlighted the significant impact that cyberbullying involvement (as bullies and victims) can have on children and young people.The researchers say it shows an urgent need for effective prevention and intervention in bullying strategies. Professor Paul Montgomery, University of Birmingham said: “Prevention of cyberbullying should be included in school anti-bullying policies, alongside broader concepts such as digital citizenship, online peer support for victims, how an electronic bystander might appropriately intervene; and more specific interventions such as how to contact mobile phone companies and Internet service providers to block, educate, or identify users.“Suicide prevention and intervention is essential within any comprehensive anti-bullying programme and should incorporate a whole-school approach to include awareness raising and training for staff and pupils.”A number of key recommendations have been made:

ŸCyberbullying involvement should be considered by

policymakers who implement bullying prevention (in addition to traditional bullying) and safe Internet use programmes;

ŸClinicians working with children and young people and

assessing mental health issues should routinely ask about experiences of cyberbullying;

ŸThe impact of cyberbullying should be included in the

training of child and adolescent mental health professionals;

Ÿ Children and young people involved in cyberbullying

should be screened for common mental disorders and self-harm;

ŸSchool, family, and community programmes that promote

appropriate use of technology are important;

ŸPrevention of cyberbullying should be included in school

anti-bullying policies, alongside broader concepts such as digital citizenship, online peer support for victims, how an electronic bystander might appropriately intervene; and more specific interventions such as how to contact mobile phone companies and Internet service providers to block, educate, or identify users; and

ŸSuicide prevention and intervention is essential within any

comprehensive anti-bullying programme and should incorporate a whole-school approach to include awareness raising and training for staff and pupils.The study also found a strong link between being a cyber-victim and a perpetrator. This duality was found to particularly put males at higher risk of depression and suicidal behaviours.The researchers highlighted that these vulnerabilities should be recognised at school so that cyberbullying behaviours would be seen as an opportunity to support vulnerable young people, rather than for discipline. It was recommended that anti-bullying programmes and protocols should address the needs of both victims and perpetrators, as possible school exclusion might contribute to an individual's sense of isolation and lead to feelings of hopelessness, often associated with suicidal behaviours in adolescents.

The Disruptive Convergence: Games, Cinema and Virtual Reality

Dr. Suneel Sharma

Director,

SP Jain School of High Technology, Mumbai.

edX Launches New Popular CoursesUC San Diego “The Science of Parenting” course;

Everyone has an opinion on parenting – where babies should sleep, what they should eat, and whether parents should spank, scold, or praise. What's more, the media often offers support for whichever opinions appear most popular at any given time. This leaves those of us who like to base our decisions on firm, provable facts feeling dizzy.“The Science of Parenting” addresses this confusion by moving beyond the chatter and opinion surrounding parenting, and by looking directly at the science. Parenting itself is far from a science. One goal of this course will be to provide a survey of important scientific findings spanning a range of topics that are central to the lives of parents: diet; sleep; discipline; learning; screen time; impulse control; vaccination This course will show how this type of error – common in the scientific literature – can explain a significant amount of the confusion present in the media and general public. We will discuss how to avoid the same error when evaluating science, and how to use the sum of available evidence to inform decision making.

Taught by a distinguished team of professors at Columbia University's Data Science Institute, this program is perfect for anyone who wants to understand basic concepts in data science without getting into the weeds of programming. Aimed at organization leaders, business managers, health care professionals and anyone considering a career in data science, this program will steep learners in the fundamentals of statistics, machine learning and algorithms. It will also introduce emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) , or wirelessly connected products, and techniques that allow computers to summarize mountains of text, audio and video. Concrete examples provided throughout the program will ensure that learners fully grasp and master key concepts.

Columbia University's “Data Science for Executives” course

Virtual Reality Program

10

India Skills/Entrepreunership

Indian workforce prefers to be

entrepreneurs; MNCs still most

favoured employers: SurveyAs being your own employer provides more exciting opportunities, 83% of the Indian workforce says they would love to be an entrepreneur, reveals the findings of Randstad Workmonitor survey. A vast majority of male (81%) and female (85%) respondents said this and globally, 53% of the survey respondents had this opinion. Also, according to the survey results, entrepreneurial ambition among the workforce is highest in India, with 56% of the overall survey respondents indicating that they are considering leaving their current job to start their own business. This preference does not change regardless the gender. However, it is interesting to note that workforce in the age group of 45-54 years (37%) are hesitant to start their own business as compared to the workforce in the age group of 25-34 years (72%) and 35-44 years (61%). 67% of the total respondents said if in case they actually lose their current job, they would like to start their own company. On the contrary, though 76% considered entrepreneurship to be really attractive, they thought that the risk of failure is too big for them. 86% of the survey respondents indicated that the ecosystem to run a startup was favorable in India and 84% of the respondents were of the opinion that the Indian Government actively supports new startups in the country and provides a favourable entrepreneurial climate. 80% of the survey respondents from India also agreed that due to globalization, small businesses have a hard time surviving now. Presenting the survey insights, Paul Dupuis, MD & CEO, Randstad India said, “A stable business environment, market oriented reforms like raising of FDI caps, implementation of GST, and key initiatives like Make in India and Digital India are fostering a new aspiring and ambitious Indian. One who is eager to create and nurture his/her own venture rather than join a company. This shift is clearly reflected in our survey findings and augurs well for the country's growth agenda. A robust SME ecosystem driven by aspiring entrepreneurs has historically seen higher growth for the formal sector, and has a knock-off effect on the evolution of other companies in the ecosystem”. “However, the need of the hour is to address critical bottlenecks that are acting as deterrents to both entrepreneurial and enterprise growth. Improving the ease of doing business, passage of labor friendly reforms and bridging the skill gap deficit for the burgeoning Indian workforce will enable a conducive entrepreneurial ecosystem while helping larger organizations make the most of India's enviable demographic dividend”, he added.SME, MNC or Start-Up ? A vast majority of 84% prefers to work for a multinational company, reveals the survey findings. Almost equal number of male (85%) and female (82%) respondents stated this. Globally, 55% of the total respondents have a preference for MNCs. 76% of the workforce from India stated that they would like to work for a startup, whereas 69% indicated that they would prefer to work for a small or medium enterprise or a privately managed company.

N S D C - G o o g l e M o b i l e S k i l l

Development program The National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) took a giant step towards scaling up the mobile developer ecosystem in India along with Google India by creating an Android Skill Development Program. The two entities will work together to impart mobile development training on the Android and web platform to scale and improve the quality of mobile App development ecosystem in India. Under the initiative, NSDC will introduce a specific course with a scope to train developers to create applications for the mobile platform that can be used on smartphone and tablets

running on Android operating system. The 100-hour duration course is designed to be delivered by NSDC's partner agencies, outside the formal education system. NSDC and Google India will also work together to focus on up-skilling Android trainers under the program. Announcing the collaboration, Manish Kumar, MD & CEO, NSDC said, “This is a timely association considering promising development in the telecommunication and IT sectors and their importance for economic progression of the country. The collaboration aims to accelerate mobile skill training and create opportunities for youth in the country.” Peter Lubbers, Head of Google Developer Training said, “We believe India is uniquely placed to innovate and shape the internet experience of billions of users who are and will come online on the mobile platform. By building a world class curriculum and making it easily accessible to millions of students and developers in India, we want to contribute to the Skill India initiative.” As per a study conducted by IMaCS (the management consulting arm of rating agency ICRA) on behalf of NSDC, India is likely to have an incremental requirement of 24.4 crore skilled people by 2022 in 21 high growth sectors. Liberalization, privatization and globalization has initiated all round reforms in many sectors. It is a fact that the growth of the country as a progressive and knowledge based economy will only be possible when there will be development and expansion in the telecommunication and IT & ITES sectors.

MeritTrac Employability

Enhancement ProgramTesting and Assessment Company,MeritTrac Services, on July 26 launched a unique employability enhancement program, 'AceTrac', as a solution to positively impact the stagnant employability quotient of the graduates. AceTrac is a comprehensive employability enhancement program that will assess candidates on employability skills at regular intervals during the graduation study of a student. AceTrac provides developmental inputs and detailed feedback to students by benchmarking them against the industry hiring standards and help them prepare better.AceTrac is a three-stage program comprising of diagnostic, review and final employability assessments. The diagnostic assessment will assess students in the first or the second year of graduate education and generate personalized feedback on strengths and areas of improvement. The prevailing level of student'semployability is benchmarked against the industry standards. The feedback from the assessment will be used as an input for designing training interventions. In six to twelve months after the diagnostic assessment, the students undergo a review assessment. Their improvement is analyzed and training needs are fine-tuned. The final employability test is undertaken few months before the graduation or the placement season. The continuous assessment, feedback and training guarantees improvement and readiness for workplace.Gopal Devanahalli, CEO of MeritTrac Services said, “Numerous education reform initiatives in India have resulted in a surge in the Gross Enrolment Ratio. This coupled with a high number of educated youth and a substantial shift in the job landscape has made the employability and the right kind of employability critical. As a responsible stakeholder, MeritTrac believes that it has an active role to play in making the future of India employable. With its years of experience, MeritTrac has a clear understanding of what the corporates want and the state of talent pool in academic institutions. We believe that AceTrac will complement India's skill building initiatives by systematically enhancing job-readiness of candidates thereby making them gainfully employable.”

NSDF, NSDC and BSF together to

skill retiring BSF personnelWith the aim of providing skill development training to serving, retired and family members of BSF personnel serving, retired or martyrs; Border Security Force (BSF),

National Skill Development Fund (NSDF) and National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) entered into an agreement for a duration of five years. The NSQF complaint skill development training will be provided to the BSF personnel's and their family member at multi-skill development centres run by BSF, as part of the Skill India Mission. The MoU will foster employment opportunities and acceptability by the industry thereby facilitating their resettlement through a second career. The MoU has been signed to assist retiring/ retired BSF personnel to acquire additional skills aligned with the National Skills Qualifications Framework (NSQF) and to the Qualification packs (QPs) – National Occupational Standards (NOSs) developed by the Sector Skill Council (SSCs) in order to enhance their acceptability by the Industry and thereby ensuring smooth transition to their second career post their retirement. Schools adopted by the BSF at the Area of Deployment for civic action Programme will be facilitated by NSDC to make the schools training NSQF compliant for carrying out Training activities. As a part of the project, BSF will set up the Multi Skill Development Centers in three Training Centres, 14 frontiers across 46 sectors & 186 Battalions (BNs) on the Indo-Pak and Indo-Bangladesh borders. BSF in consultation with SSC and NSDC also plans to set up exclusive centers for people with disabilities.The Retired BSF personnel having relevant aptitude can be utilized to fill the existing gap of trainers and assessors that are required in the field of Vocational Training or Skill Development based on Trainer and Assessor certification and guidelines set forth by relevant Sector Skill Councils. To maintain a skilled profile of the serving personnel Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) will also be conducted to make an assessment of thei r potent ia l in the f ie ld of expertise/experience as per the Trade.

AasaanJobs launches Education

vertical ( ), HR marketplace

connecting employers, consultants and job seekers, has launched its Education recruitment vertical on its platform. Since the last quarter, AasaanJobs has witnessed a 47.65% growth among registered employers from the education sector. It witnessed over 235 registered employers as on March 31st, 2017, which rose to 347 employers as on July 31st, 2017. AasaanJobs is providing job roles in Education sectors across multiple cities in India. The job profiles that are included under the new Education vertical are: professors, teachers for various subjects or co-curriculars, admin staff and business development executives.

Placement drive for 12th pass in

Haryana NSDC and the Haryana State Government organized placement drives for 274 students, who opted for vocational training at the school level and completed their 12th standard. These students were trained on NSQF Level 4 under the vocationalisation of Secondary & Higher Secondary Education (VSHSE) program launched by MHRD in 2012. More than 378 eligible candidates applied for job opportunities in various sectors i.e. Automotive, Beauty & Wellness, IT-ITeS, Healthcare, Sports, Retail and Security. The placement drives were organised in five different locations - Jind (Hisar), Karnal, Ambala, Rohtak and Gurgaon covering 100 schools across 21 districts. NSDC through its SSCs and training partners, roped in 40 recruiters including large corporates such as Max Hospital, VLCC, Dr. IT, Lilliput, Lovely Salon, Healers at Home, Vishal Mega Mart, Portea, Nisa Security, G4S, Easy Day, Shopclues, Café Coffee Day, Big Bazaar, Bajaj Auto Finance, SV Edusports and Pasco Maruti workshop.

AasaanJobs www.aasaanjobs.com

Curriculum August 16, 2017

On marking the completion of three years of the current government, union skills minister, Rajiv Pratap Rudy on June 6 claimed that MSDE has trained more than 1.17 crore aspirants in various s k i l l s t h r o u g h M S D E schemes and programs since the inception of Skill India. This is apart from the numbers contributed through skill development schemes and initiatives under other Central Ministries.The minister said, “Skill India is a silent revolution that is underway and is a joint i n v e s t m e n t t h a t t h e government along with the private partners, is making for the future growth of the country. It is a path that needs to be tread very carefully since it involves the future of our youth. What we sow today i s wha t we wi l l r eap tomorrow. We have hence taken the first two years, to set our base right and align the skill ecosystem to national s t a n d a r d s o f s k i l l qualification.” K P Krishnan, Secretary, MSDE said, “Vocational Education is one of the point amongs t the 52 i tems mentioned in the Concurrent list under 7th schedule of the Constitution of India which means that the States have to primarily drive this mandate within the State, along with Centre's support. The Centre's support comes in the form of funding, alignment with national standards etc. We have aligned short term trainings with the State Skill Development Missions; and World Bank schemes like SANKALP are also being implemented at the State level. Our efforts will cover the last mile very soon.”The officials also stated that

it is trying to move away from the supply driven skill development scenario to demand driven one, so that we do not have skilled youth who are unemployed in India

KEY ACHIEVEMENTS

LISTED BY MSDE Ÿ26.5 lakhs candidates trained

u n d e r P ra d h a n M a n t r i

Kaushal Vikas YojanaŸ Prior learning of more than

4.82 lakh people (13000

Rubber Tappers, More than

250 Railway Porters and 1500

Employees of Rashtrapati

Bhawan) Ÿ480 Pradhan Mantri Kaushal

Kendras announced, would be

model centres for skilling in

each district,162 are already

been established.Ÿ1381 new ITIs have been

opened with more than 5 lakh

s e a t s a n d t h e e n t i r e

ecosystem of ITIs have been

reinvigorated and reenergisedŸMore than 1 crore people

have been trained under

NSDC's short term skilling

ecosystem since its inceptionŸTo cater to the increasing

demand for drivers, MSDE

also launched Driver Training

institutes across the nation.

There is a target to open 50 of

them by end of 2017. ŸSpecial schemes like Udaan

in J&K and others in North East

have brought avenues of

growth and opportunities to

youth in these focused

regionsŸ4 new ATIs have been

upgraded into India institute

of skills modelled after ITE

SingaporeŸ MSDE focuses on bringing

heavy quality focus in skills

through adhaar alignment,

strengthened monitoring and

better curriculum. It is also

supported by world bank

schemes like strive and

NVIDIA CONDUCTS WORKSHOPS

on AI SKILLS GAPNVIDIA on July 27 conducted the latest in a series of workshops aimed at training a new generation of Indian AI developers. Over the next 12 months NVIDIA workshops will touch around 100,000 developers working on AI and data science-related problems at 250 institutions in the country.The full-day workshop took place at IIT Gandhinagar and was attended by 100+ students. It's part of the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute, a global initiative that provides training on the latest techniques for designing, training, and deploying neural networks across a variety of application domains. Deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence in which software learns from data, is credited with igniting the 'big bang' of AI. Over the last several years, deep learning has turned AI from sci-fi gimmick to indispensable computing tool. Science and industry is deploying deep learning to solve their most challenging problems, so the skills to apply this computing approach are in high demand. By providing hands-on training led by subject matter experts, NVIDIA is helping to Indian developers with these skills.The workshop enabled students access widely used open-source frameworks as well as NVIDIA's latest GPU-accelerated deep learning platforms. Modules included: 'Image Classification using DIGITS', 'Object Detection Using DIGITS' & 'Network Deployment using TensorRT'.

THE MUTHOOT GROUP gets into

skilling, partners with Centum The Muthoot Group, one of India's leading business conglomerates with a family business legacy of over 800 years and financial services arm of over 130 years, launched its Muthoot Skill India project in association with Centum Foundation, the CSR arm of Centum Learning, a Bharti Group company, to impart employability linked skill development training to the underprivileged youth in Haryana. The first Muthoot Skill India Centre was also inaugurated on the same day in Tigaon Village of Faridabad. The centre has been built in an area of over 4000 sq. ft. and is equipped with all state- of the –art equipment required for conducting trainings.Under the project, free of cost skill training will be provided to 500 underprivileged individuals in courses like Sewing Machine Operator, Call Centre Executive and General Duty (GD) Assistant/Nursing Assistant in the villages of Faridabad.M G George Muthoot, Chairman, The Muthoot Group said " This initiative is an important part of The Muthoot Group's larger vision of enriching lives of the masses while contributing back to the society. This project is also special to us because it supports and strengthens our commitment to the growth of our nation.”

Vocational Training at ATDC

Chandigarh Apparel Training & Design Centre (ATDC), India's Largest Quality Vocational Training Provider for the Apparel Industry has signed an agreement with GROZ-BECKERT Asia Pvt. Ltd. in order to launch the CSR Initiative for Vocational Training at ATDC Chandigarh. An agreement was signed between Gurpreet Kaur, Registrar, Academic Affairs on behalf of ATDC and Y.P Sharma ,GM ,F&A on behalf of GBA, in the kind presence of Dr. Anton Reinfelder, MD, GROZ-BECKERT Asia Pvt. Ltd.Under this CSR initiative, GROZ-BECKERT ASIA, will be sponsoring the training of five students under B.Voc degree course (three-years undergraduate course) to be conducted at ATDC Chandigarh and Ten Students under ATDC vocational Institute (AVI)'s one year Diploma course to be conducted at ATDC Ludhiana. Dr. Darlie Koshy, DG & CEO, ATDC remarked, “It is to be noted that more than 85% of our students are girls / women and they require all the support to come to the forefront of the Society. The more our girls / women get empowered through

wage & self-employment, the families will benefit and in turn the Country will progress rapidly. Therefore, the support which M/s GROZ-BECKERT ASIA PVT. LTD. is extending to the students will greatly help and motivate more and more students to join our Vocational Programmes which focus on 'employability', 'GROZ-BECKERT ASIA PVT. LTD.' known for Technology Leadership has set a laudable example and we appreciate this gracious gesture which need to be emulated by more companies in this sector so that new opportunities for career advancement and personality development of students & women' girls in particular can be enabled. ”

S k i l l s o f t a n d M I T S l o a n

Management Review tie up, a corporate learning company, has partnered with

(MIT SMR, platform and content leader that bridges the gap between academic research and daily practice) to curate the journal's best leadership assets and deliver them to its 40 million users. This key collaboration kicks off a series of new, innovative content partnerships that will empower Skillsoft's Leadership and Business Skills learners with professional training from the industry's top experts. Presented through the highly engaging and intuitive Percipio platform, users will be able to access everything from MIT SMR's general leadership articles, to Frontier articles that focus on the intersection of business management practice with technology, collaborative research reports, as well as webinars and videos. Content will be optimized for all devices and operating systems, and will be accessible via video, audio and written content for varied learner styles and needs.

Dr. Vivek Bindra's Leadership

funnel workshopDr. Vivek Bindra, motivational speaker and leadership consultant recently trained about 60 entrepreneurs/businesses with a singular objective to develop their skills and understand the loopholes in their business models to scale it up to new heights in a 3 day training program called Leadership Funnel: Go Deep! Grow Steep!It is an inimitable program focusing on 'Mindset over Skillset' and 'Belief over Behaviour' approach of Organizational Leadership. It is a blueprint for moving the high performing organsational leaders through a well-planned pipeline that prepares for success at each phase. Today, every leader is

SkillsoftMIT Sloan Management Review

investing his time, energy and money in honing their existing skillset. Very few understand that if the mindset is adjusted, the skillset will automatically be improved. Hence, this program has two important aspects – Skillset and Mindset.

TPSDI plans to train over 54,000

people by 2020 TPSDI (Tata Power Skill Development Institute) has drawn a plan to train over 54,000 people by 2020. TPSDI which has set up five training hubs in five locations in the country leveraging the facilities of Tata Power which includes Shahad – Mumbai, Maharashtra; Trombay – Mumbai, Maharashtra; Maithon – Dhanbad, Jharkhand, Mundra – Kutch, Gujarat and Jojobera – Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, provides modular training courses that are purposefully designed to be market driven and employment oriented across a wide range of skills especially in the power and allied sectors.

New Wage Code Bill to jolt formal

job creationUnion cabinet on July 26 cleared the labour code on minimum wages, which if passed in its entirety by the Parliament will be particularly disastrous for small-scale industries. The bill will hamper formal job creation in the country. Creating a minimum wage barrier of Rs. 18,000/- will negatively impact entry level jobs at many industries across automobile, construction and real estate, e-commerce, logistics, educational services, FMCG, FMCD, healthcare and pharma, hospitality, industrial manufacturing and allied sectors, media and entertainment and retail and telecom.The impact of this will be the highest at the entry level jobs because that is where the salary is less than Rs. 18,000/-. The economics of wages in tricky however is largely dependent on demand and supply of talent and the cost of living. It is unfair to apply a universal minimum wage across different States with varying demographics and across different roles. The bill if passed will place considerable burden on the employers as they will not be able to pass on this sudden rise in cost to customers. This entry barrier will mean that either the businesses will not be able to mushroom or be competitive. Therefore it is highly likely that now these entry level jobs will move back to the informal sector. Employers could have absorbed this increase in wages to some extent if prioritization was done focusing on reforms that reduce cost of compliance by making it presenceless, paperless, cashless and increase

11

India Skills/Entrepreunership

Curriculum August 16, 2017

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The 'Baadshah' of Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan, the gorgeous Anushka Sharma and director Imitiaz Ali visited SGT University to promote their new film 'Jab Harry Met Sejal' on August 4 where a joyful crowd of over enthusiastic students gave them a super star reception and danced with them.The event proceeded with the dance steps of Shah Rukh & Anushka on 'Tu Butterfly banke..' followed by the 'chale tu Phurr Phurr...' song synched with students musti and footsteps . The star also performed on 'Radha' & 'Beech Beech Mein'. It was exciting to see the students perform the steps along with the stars. The event picked up the pace as Shah Rukh delivered few of his best dialogues. Later, Shah Rukh motivated the students and said he was too from a middle class delhi based family. But he is very thankful to his parents for expending on his quality based study. He further added he scored only 51% in English subject in Board Exam but now wherever he speaks in English very fluently. He urge the students you guys need to be grateful to your parents as they're sacrificing a lot for you. Now it's your responsibility to work hard, study hard, and don't bother about the results proved yourself in this world to make your parents proud.

Shiv Nadar University Signs MoU

with CENJOWSShiv Nadar University and the Centre for Joint Warfare Studies (CENJOWS) have signed a MoU to collaborate academically on matters related to international relations, regional and global security. Dr. Rupamanjari Ghosh, Vice Chancellor of Shiv Nadar University and Lt. Gen Vinod Bhatia, CENJOWS Director signed the MoU in New Delhi on July 24. The event was attended by members of the Government, the armed forces and academia.International security concerns as well as changing requirements in the light of technological breakthroughs necessitate rightsizing of the armed forces and efficient use of the resources. This was the dominant theme at a panel discussion which was organised prior to the signing of the MoU. The panel discussion comprised members of the Shekatkar Committee, which was created by the Government of India to suggest measures to enhance the combat capability of the armed forces and reforming the defence budget. The Committee submitted its report in December 2016 and several of its recommendations are reported to have been accepted for implementation. In addition to Lt Gen Shekatkar and Lt Gen Vinod Bhatia, Lt Gen Sanjay Kulkarni and Mr. R. Chandrashekhar – also members of the Committee – participated in the discussion. The members talked about important aspects of the report. In his concluding remarks, Chancellor Dr. Balakrishnan reaffirmed the Shiv Nadar University's appreciation and gratitude to the armed forces for their services to the country. He also reiterated the University's philosophy and commitment to creating knowledge and solutions that serve

national needs. This was the first public discussion on the report and the members thanked Shiv Nadar University for taking the initiative to inform the general public about its importance.

6th Annual Convocation Ceremony

of Jindal Global University401 students awarded degrees on successful completion of graduate and post graduate courses.O. P. Jindal Global University (JGU) held its 6th annual convocation at the Siri Fort Auditorium in Delhi where degrees, gold medals and awards were conferred upon 401 graduating students. The spectacular event, which was also a celebration of the University's Founder's Day, saw Dr. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, Judge, Supreme Court of India, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, union skills minister and Shikha Sharma Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Axis Bank addressing a gathering of over 2000 students, parents and faculty members. Dr. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud highlighted that gender neutral parenting. , “While we have made progress over these few years, it is perhaps time for us to introspect as to why violent crimes against women are not abating. There must be an attempt to create safe spaces so that women can be equal participants in public life. Measures must be undertaken to make workplaces safer and public transport more accessible. To my mind what needs to change is our mind sets. Gender neutral parenting and sensitization is the need of the hour and I hope that your generation can be the required change,” he said. Enunciating the importance of the ideas of liberty and equality in democratic systems, Dr. Justice Chandrachud observed, “Liberalism demands acceptance of our human differences and the ability to mediate them through democratic institutions. It demands acceptance of multiple, perhaps incompatible truths. Please remember that constitutional democracy does not necessarily result in constitutional liberalism. Democracy is all about the accumulation of power, majoritarian power. Liberalism is all about the decentralization of power.” Addressing the students, JGU Chancellor, Naveen Jindal, called on the graduating students to make conscious efforts to build the India of their dreams, he said, “As 'Jindalites' I encourage and entrust each and every one of you in the Class of 2017 with the responsibility to share a little of your time and your energy to make a difference in society, to empower those who need a helping hand, a little support, a few words of encouragement. Always feel responsible for what's happening around you and do your bit to make a change. Do your bit to make the India of your dreams.”

IMI hosts 'Ted X' International Management Institute (IMI), New Delhi, on August 7 hosted a 'Ted X' session at their campus for the second year. The theme for this year's 'Ted X' session was 'Zoom Out' and nine speakers from diverse backgrounds took part in it and included Bollywood director Rakesh Omprakash Mehra, actor Divya Dutta, senior journalist Prabhu Chawla and the star of the day 14 year old Anwesha Mishra who is a winner of an international spelling bee competition and now is working towards helping children from her native place Orissa to get proper education.The event was inaugurated by Prof. Debashis Chatterjee (Director General, IMI), who remarked that this fight to zoom out is about movement from darkness to light; from 'Tamas' to "Jyoti' from the apparent to the real. "We must put emphasis on cleansing our lenses of perception". "For every Arjun there is a Krishna and for every Chandragupta there is a Chanakya, we need to broaden our perceptions and consider the infinite reality"Puja Marwaha, CEO, NGO 'Child Rights and You' highlighted the alarming increase in child trafficking and majorly focused on the importance of education in the society. Dr. Neharika Yadav who is a dental surgeon by profession and a super biker

by passion said, "People get inspired not because of a lady driving a bike, but because of how I manage to shift between my Dentistry and Bike-riding”, she said. The event was attended by over 100 people which included students of IMI.

Sharda University unveils its

Entrepreneurship ClubSharda University, Greater Noida has announced the launch of a new Entrepreneurship Club. Envisioned as a platform for Shardans who dream of making it big in the world of new-age start-ups, the club will provide students with the necessary tools to develop their entrepreneurial skills through innovative and interactive methods of practical training. Commenting on the initiative, Dr. Mridul Dharwal, Associate Professor, Sharda University said, “With a booming start-up ecosystem in the country, there is heightened interest in the field of entrepreneurship education. What better way could there be than providing hands-on experience to students belonging to an increasingly global generation. By giving students and faculty members an opportunity to be a part of the club, we offer a vision to createa platform to discover their skills and attributes..”

Great Lakes Gurgaon Convocation

2017 Great Lakes Institute of Management, Gurgaon held its 6th Annual Convocation for the class of PGPM 2016-17 and PGPM (Energy) 2015-17 recently at the Air Force Auditorium, Subroto Park, New Delhi on July 20 . The event also witnessed the commencement ceremony of the new batch PGDM (17 -19) in the presence of Chief Guest, Ajay S. Shriram, Chairman & Senior Managing Director, DCM Shriram Ltd. & Guest of Honor Dhruv Shringi, Co-Founder & CEO of Yatra.com. At this year's convocation ceremony, 124 students got graduation certificates, out of which 93 students were from PGPM 2016-17 (Post Graduate Program in Management) & 31 students were from PGPM-Energy (Post Graduate Program in Management-Energy) 2015-17 in presence of Dr. Bala V Balachandran, Founder, Dean and Chairman, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Mr. Mohan Lakhamraju, Vice-Chairman, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Dr. Himadri Das, Director, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Gurgaon, faculty, students and parents. As a part of the convocation ceremony, a number of academic honors were handed to the meritorious students. In the PGPM Energy batch, gold medals were awarded to Malay Nigam for academic excellence and for being the best outgoing student. In PGPM batch, gold medals were awarded to Afzal Anwar and Shatabdi Kalita for academic excellence, and Ashish Ranjeet Singh for being the best outgoing student

16th Convocation of IIIT H heldInternational Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-Hyderabad) celebrated its 16thconvocation ceremony on 12th August 2017. It graduated 473 students, the largest ever, with a record number of 84 research students, including 16 Ph.Ds. G V Prasad, CEO, Dr Reddy's Laboratories, was the chief guest at the ceremony and delivered the convocation address. Prof Raj Reddy, Chairman, Governing Council of IIIT-Hyderabad presided over the ceremony.Gautam Vepa, B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) was awarded the IIIT gold medal in recognition of his outstanding academic performance. Programme gold medallists were Gautam Vepa (B.Tech, CSE); Priyadarshi Rath, B. Tech, Electronics and Communication Engineering (ECE); Gaurav Mishra, BTech in CSE and MS by Research in CSE; Mohit Sharma, M.Tech in CSE; Arvinder Singh, M.Tech in VLSI & CE and Kaustav Sengupta, M.Tech in Computer Aided Structural Engineering (CASE).

12

Campus Buzz

Curriculum August 16, 2017

Star cast of 'Jab Harry Met Sejal' at

SGT University

Qlik Academic Program Expands in IndiaQlik®, a leader in data analytics, has announced the expansion of the Qlik Academic Program to cover 50 education institutions across 25 cities in India. The initiative will enable more Universities to improve the value of their offerings by teaching marketable data skills, and also help students advance their analytical and data literacy skills within every academic discipline.Offering free, full-year subscriptions to Qlik software, the Qlik Academic Program is open to any accredited university-level institution worldwide, for-profit and non-profit colleges alike. The Qlik Academic Program will be made available to students enrolled in renowned higher education institutions like IIM Bangalore, IIM

called OX360 which identifies each learner's strengths and weaknesses and generates learning paths based on individual learner's behaviour, personalising the learning to each individual student. Pearson India and NUS

Business School executive

education business

programPartnering for the first time, Indian arm of Pearson, the world's learning company and the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School on July 27 launched the Emerging Leaders Management Acceleration Program (ELMAP), a blended executive program for young business professionals in India. Commencing on 14 October 2017, this unique business management program brings together business skills and superior content from

without inspiring the next generation. At CERN, we have many educational programmes for students providing hands on training and scientific research. This is an inspirational setting where the whole world is coming together to work on mega projects, collaborating with each other, sometimes not even speaking the same language; but speaking the same language of science.”

International Achievement by Class IXth

student of DPS R K Puram SchoolPranav Gupta of Class IX-B of DPS RK Puram has secured the first rank at the annual S t a n f o r d ' s P r o c o ( A Programming Competition in which high school, university and college students pursuing c o m p u t e r e n g i n e e r i n g participate). Pranav was among qualifiers from likes of MIT, Stanford and UCLA and secured the top position.. Pranav knows eight main

p r o g r a m m i n g l a n g u a g e s - HTML,RUBY,PYTHON,C++,C#,JAVA,S QL and C. Moreover Pranav has consequently participated and won several competitions at Google, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Berkley Institute. He aims to study CE (Computer Engineering) from MIT in future.

Asia's Top Digitally Skilled Student

from India Prince Sumberia, an engineering student from Model Institute of Engineering and Technology Jammu & Kashmir, won the Asia Digital Skills Challenge, the Asia's largest digital skills competition held in Singapore on July 20. The challenge was organized by ICDL Foundation, an international non-profit that works on improving digital literacy around the world.Prince Sumberia won the competition beating finalists from 6 other countries –Singapore, The Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Bhutan and Vietnam. The students were tested on their core digital skills tests including Online Collaboration, IT Security and Advanced Spreadsheets.In the lead upto the Asian challenge, Prince was the joint winner with Josuto Rudopra from Nagaland where over 3000 students from 26 Indian cities participated in the national finals in India. The two were invited to Singapore by ICDL to participate in the Asia Digital Skills Challenge 2017.

Workshop on Negotiations EO Gurgaon organized a workshop on Negotiations by Professor Dr. Dishan Kamdar, Senior Associate Dean, Indian School of Business, Exclusively for EO members. ?The idea behind the workshop was to make the members learn the different components of emotional intelligence at work, exercise effective influence, handle difficult conversations and create energy and enthusiasm to foster meaningful change. This workshop helped develop skills for successfully managing complex negotiations and learn key lessons that one should take away in terms of mindsets and skills that should help the entrepreneurs master in distinguishing themselves as a leader.

Eduluk.com Virtual Education Fair Eduluk.com, Delhi-based education startup providing discovery and analytics platform is bringing for the first time virtual education fair known as' Eduluk fair' connecting students & parents in higher education in India. This unique platform will showcase higher education institutions across India. Students can look for detailed Information about Institution including images and pictures of Institution,

13

Campus Buzz/Notices

Lucknow, IIM Indore, SP Jain School of Global Management, NIT Karnataka, NMIMS Mumbai, SCMHRD, Xavier Institute of Management Bhubaneshwar, IIFT, and IMT Ghaziabad, amongst others. With the expansion, over 850 universities in more than 65 countries are now participants of the program.

'AI-based' online learning

programmes VFS Edu Support Services Pvt. Ltd., the education services arm of VFS Global, has announced a partnership with award-winning UK-based Edtech Oxademy Technologies and its subsidiary Oxademy Business School to form the new global digital learning platform ' VFS-Oxademy will offer a first-of-its-kind knowledge-driven artificial intelligence (AI) cloud infrastructure

A delegation (third thus far) comprising of two students Mriganka Borah and Pratishruti Barman with faculties, Sushmita Chakraborty, Science Teacher and Biswajit De, National Faculty Coordinator for the Green Schools Alliance – Inddia from Maria's Public School, Guwahati, recently participated in the 9th Student Conservation Corps & Congress – Sc3, organized by Green Schools Alliance (GSA), at US Fish & Wildlife Service's National Conservation Training Centre (NCTC) at Shepherdstown, West Virginia, USA. The students were chosen through international conservation training camps at Maria's BraveHeart Campsite, Rajasthan.. There the team got an opportunity to interact and learn from prominent and recognized panel of speakers like Ian Cheney – Documentary Film-Maker, Pete Dominick – Media Personality, Susan Cohen, Lisa Hupp and Cameron Conaway – US Conservationists and Naturalists and Rob Watson – Entrepreneur and Pioneer of Green Buildings. The Indian Delegation team was also highly praised and commended for their collective performances among 125 Schools from US, Egypt, Cambodia and UK that attended the event. Student Conservation Corps & Congress (Sc3) is a 7 day training program held annually at the National Conservation Training Centre (NCTC), the top environmental and

NOTICES

conservation training facility in the USA. The program is graced with the presence of world renowned experts, naturalists, scientists and conservationists. Participants had an opportunity to learn and study environmental, social and economic interconnections to address biodiversity and natural resource conservation challenges affecting their generation in the ever challenging, changing world. “Our school believes in learning beyond the classroom – Nature as our classroom, we strive to set up a platform where students and teachers from educational institutions from all over India can come together and start working for a productive outcome to fight global warming”, said Tanweer Nellie Ahmed Tanweer, Founder & Managing Trustee, Maria's Public School, Guwahati, Assam. Maria's Public School, the GSA national coordinator also introduced two new schools to GSA - Delhi Public School, Raipur and Greenwood High International School, Bangalore.

Virtual science seminar on the

Higgs boson Particle Ashoka University in association with the Life Lab Foundation, hosted a virtual science seminar “The God Particle”. The seminar gave high school students and teachers an opportunity to delve into the realm of High Energy Physics, learn about cutting-edge research and gain access to advanced research facilities through a virtual visit. The event saw participation from over 700 students across 35 schools, such as Doon School, Dehradun, Neerja Modi, Jaipur, Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, Shri Ram School, Vasant Valley and Delhi Public School, R.K. Puram. The seminar included insightful sessions by renowned scientists from the European Organization for Nuclear Research - CERN and faculty members from Ashoka University. Dr. Mick Storr, retired member, CERN and Dr. Archana Sharma, senior scientist at CERN took the students on an incredible journey to learn about the origin of the Universe, the 'World's greatest experiment' and the Nobel Prize winning 'God Particle' study. Dr. Archana Sharma, said, “CERN is working at the frontiers of science, technology and innovation. We are opening new doors, pushing envelopes, opening new vistas of knowledge and working together with industries. We cannot do that

NUS to offer in-depth understanding of various functional areas of Management and Leadership.

Masters Program for

technology professionals Edureka, has launched two new masters programs: Big Data Architect Masters Program and Cloud Architect Masters Program. The new program enables global learners to acquire future-proof skills through a repertoire of online courses, hand-picked by industry professionals, and aimed at unlocking lucrative technology careers.

DNB Courses in Gurgaon

and Patna units Paras Healthcare will be providing specialised post graduate education – DNB Courses for medical education at post-graduate levels..

Curriculum August 16, 2017

Green Schools Alliance (GSA) Indian delegation attends

global event in USA

14

Spotlight

Curriculum August 16, 2017

Prisoners in India have been given leading roles performing in Shakespeare plays as part of an innovative process aimed at rehabilitating offenders. The unorthodox recruitment strategy was uncovered as one in a series of stories showcasing the English playwright's impact in South Asia, which are currently being featured in an exhibition at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in the UK. Sairah Amin, an English Literature student at Birmingham City University (UK), found the story of the Rangayana Mysore theatre company who created the process and spend time travelling across prisons in India to find inmates who can perform in their plays, including 'Hamlet', 'King Lear' and 'Hamlet'. The practice is used to help prisoners engage with a range of emotions through their performances and encourage them to look at their offenses from a different perspective. An image of two inmates performing one of the Bard's most iconic scenes, where Hamlet discovers the skull of Yorick, is currently featured in the 'Shakespeare in South Asia' exhibition which runs until Friday 8 September at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon. The exhibition has been put together by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust supported by Dr Islam Issa, Senior Lecturer in Literature at Birmingham City University, as well as six of his students from the School of English. It highlights the significant impact of the playwright in that part of the world. Sairah Amin said: “I found the story compelling because it makes us feel hope. We can see that real people are behind Shakespeare's words and there is a real impact being made.” On the opportunity to act as a curating assistant for the exhibition, she said: “The experience forced me to think of Shakespeare differently. As someone with both Pakistani and Indian roots, I was finally able to see my own identity reflected in Shakespeare. This project was a refreshing chance to see myself within literature and also to tell the stories of minorities.”

a resident of a metropolitan city in India, Iyou would know first-

hand the problems that come with an overdose of motorized transport! Traffic congestion; pollution; the significant distance between your home and the nearest Bus stop or Metro Station; the difficulty of finding an auto rickshaw to take you there in the busy hassle of the morning hours – these are all real problems encountered by people like us every day and night.Now imagine a scenario where your daily commute to the metro station or bus stop in the morning (and vice versa in the evening) is covered by a rented bicycle, and a number of the above mentioned problems seem suddenly solved. A rented bicycle that you can pick up from a nearby station and deposit it at another station allows you cover a small but significant portion of your daily commute on a healthy and green mode of transport every day – this is what a Public Bicycle Sharing (PBS) system offers. To be fair this concept is not a completely new idea in India. A number of cities in India have toyed with the idea of installing large scale public bicycle sharing systems; a few are even in advanced stages of planning. However, unlike Europe and China which have already witnessed significant success of public bicycle

f you are sharing plans, India is yet to c o m e c l o s e t o t h e implementation of any such game changing idea.With its immense benefits that include reducing congestion, i m p r o v i n g l a s t m i l e connectivity and encouraging a wider use of a green and healthy transport, Public Bicycle Sharing systems can be a real time solution to the p r o b l e m o f e x c e s s i v e congestion in our metros. An added benefit would be the significant increase in physical activity of residents and the accruing health gains.But first let's give a look to how a PBS worksPublic Bicycle Sharing (PBS) systems are a flexible public transport service that involves the creation of a dense network of cycle rental stations. Users can take a cycle from any station and return it to any other station. PBS systems therefore encourage the use of cycles for short distance movement such as from nearby your home to the nearest bus stop or from a metro station to your workplace. The PBS s y s t e m a l s o o f f e r s a progressive fare structure in which your rental amount is minimal for the first few minutes after which it is directly proportional to the time rented.The network of cycle rental stations is planned in a way that they are strategically located near public transport centres,

industrial or corporate hubs and residential areas, making them easily accessible to the target population. They play an important role in promoting non-motorized transport especially for short commutes and residential neighborhoods. Rather than taking a cab or an auto rickshaw, residents can ride their way to neighborhood markets or areas for small daily errands. The system also significantly improves last-mile connectivity to public transport modes, thereby also encouraging people to use public transport, rather than cabs or their own vehicles.The PBS systems today use automated systems of service, monitoring and tracking and Smart Card Access for the user to the system. The Europe and China exampleThe first experiment at public bicycle sharing can be traced to Amsterdam in 1965 where by the name of “White Bicycles”, the system parked unlocked cycles across the inner city regions for anyone to use. In 2005 and 2007 respectively, French cities of Lyon and Paris launched the third generation PBS systems that were fully automated, and proved to be highly successful.The idea has gained much traction over the past decade. Growing concerns over traffic congestion and poor air quality has prompted several cities across the world to establish

city wide bicycle sharing systems. It's most notable use has been in cities of Europe and neighboring China. PBS systems are currently working in over 50 countries across over 600 cities, most of them in Europe. C l o s e r h o m e i n o u r neighborhood, the Chinese cities of Wuhan and Hangzhou boast of the world largest PBS systems with a bicycle network of 90,000 and 60,000 bicycles respectively. Back home, the Delhi Metro has also launched a bicycle sharing system to encourage the use of the eco-friendly transport in the highly polluted city.The Benefits run wide and deepReduced dependence on non-motorized transportThere is universal agreement today that increasing the use of non-motorized transport is essential to improving the quality of life in large cities. Reduced use of automated vehicles result in reduction in traffic congestion, allows greater space and freedom to pedestrians, encourages people to use public transport and gives much needed breathing space to congested areas of the city.I m p r o v e d l a s t m i l e connectivityFor residents of a city who live in residential areas that are farther to bus stops or metro stations, bicycle sharing systems allow for hassle free travel, and helps save time and dependence on local motorized transport. A greater outcome of this is that people are encouraged to use public transport and do not feel the need to own their own cars or vehicles.Improved air qualityThis is another significant gain to make for Indian cities by establishing PBS systems. Home to some of the world's most polluted cities which are reeling the impact of carbon emissions, India desperately needs to improve its air quality. This can only be done by reducing the everyday us of private automated vehicles and encouraging people to turn to green modes of transport.

Time to think seriously about Public

By Pankaj Munjal, Chairman and Managing Director Hero Cycles

Bicycle Sharing (PBS) system in Indian cities

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performance of Shakespeare plays

Indian prisoners

rehabilitated through

Awarded Prajodh Rajan and Vikas Phadnis of EuroKids International. , Co-founder & CEO Rajan and Vice-Chairman Phadnis were conferred with the Entrepreneur of the year Award 2017 at the 7th Annual Entrepreneur India Awards held in Delhi on 19th of July 2017.

Husien Dohadwalla received 'Edupreneur of the year 2017' award. Dohadwalla, a national and international educator and a part of the IB Educator Network (IBEN) for the Asia Pacific Region has been conferred the 'Edupreneur of the year 2017' in recognition for his immense contribution in the education sector by Assocham at an industry event held in Kolkata. The award was presented by the union Minister of State for Human Resource Development - Dr. Mahendra Nath Pandey.

Frankfinn receives

the Gold Award Frankfinn Institute of Air Hostess Training has received the Gold award for “Best Higher Vocational Institute for Skill Development”– 2017 at the ASSOCHAM INDIA Summit – Cum –Awards Ceremony on 9th August 2017. The Award was presented by Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Minister of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, & Dr. Jaswant Singh Yadav, Rajasthan's labor minister and Manish Kumar, MD & CEO, NSDC. William Daniel, MD, Frankfinn Institute of Air Hostess Training received the prestigious award on behalf of his institute. This award is a recognition of the quality of training being provided by Frankfinn Institute of Air Hostess Training through its Institutes spread over Pan India even in the smaller cities.Rajul Garg joins

PeopleStrong Board Rajul Garg, a renowned early stage investor in technology companies has joined PeopleStrong's board o f d i r e c t o r s , a s a n independent director

with school principals and directors, she was very direct in saying that music teachers are accorded a low status in t h e s c h o o l , w h i c h i s understood by students as music being unworthy to go about because the 'role models' are before their eyes. “Today, most of these music teachers are 'failures' who don't have self-esteem. They don't perform or are not allowed or encouraged to perform. Barring the annual day and one or two odd events during the year, they are absent from the minds of school community,” she added. According even a 10-min daily adherence to classic dance and music in school assemblies can work wonders

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Potpourri /News Extra

Celebrated Bharatanatyam dancer and dance education proponent, Geeta Chandran makes no bones about the lack of understanding on dance and music education by the school community in the country. According to her dance is not only a decorative art but an important tool of communication. “Dance is music, literature, yoga and poetry packaged in one and I feel appalled when people remark i t was a good performance and leave it there.” Speaking at the German Book Office (GBO) event on children literature, Jumpstart on August 4 in New Delhi, Chandran who is also Founder-President of Natya-Vriksha and has done a lot of successful experience to set c lassic dances free of regimental thought of school, said that the way music or dance is taught in schools at best will make them an appreciative audience in future and not performers. Recalling her interactions

for the children who are extremely stressed. Dance teachers need support from other teachers, if this has to become a movement in schools. And well-informed school managements is a key to dance and music education revolution that is more relevant than ever before. In the same event, another doyen, Devdutt ?Pattanaik, author and mythologist who has penned down several interesting stories in modern context said children need to be told that stories are not always good. There is both good and bad to a story and this much be told to children. JUMPSTART 2017 looked at learning from new, innovative perspectives to find ways to make it more i n t e g r a t e d w i t h l i f e experiences

Curriculum 16, 2017August

India took a major leap recently in documenting and preserving its language diversity with the People's Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI) launching the volumes on languages spoken across 10 states in India including N a g a l a n d , M a n i p u r , Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal P r a d e s h , H a r y a n a , Maharashtra, Assam, West Bengal, Bihar and Karnataka. These volumes have been p u b l i s h e d b y O r i e n t BlackSwan publishers. At a ceremony on August 3 in New Delhi 26 books/volumes were launched by former Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh in presence of several dignitaries, intellectuals, historians and academicians like Kapila Vatsayan, Asis

North Eastern Cultural and

Information Centre to be set up in

Delhi A North Eastern Cultural and Information Centre will be set up in Delhi soon. This was said by Dr. Jitendra Singh, DoNER MoS. He said that this will be a new gift to the people of North East (NE) India. Delhi Development Authority (DDA) had allotted a land measuring 5341.75 sqm. (1.32 acre) at Sector-13, Dwarka, New Delhi, at a cost of approx Rs. 6 crore, to North Eastern Council (NEC) for the purpose of construction of North Eastern Cultural and Information Centre. He said that this Centre will act as a cultural and convention/information hub of the North Eastern Region in Delhi. The Minister said that it will be constructed at par with the international standards and will have a library-cum-reading room with material on North Eastern Region, an art gallery showcasing the North East. The project is expected to be completed within 1-2 years and at a cost of approximately Rs. 50-55 crores, he added.

Uttar Pradesh to be Fully Open

Defecation Free by 2018 All 4480 villages on the bank of River Ganga in 52 districts and 5 states (Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand & West Bengal) were declared Open Defecation Free (ODF) under Namami Gange initiative at the Ganga Gram Sammelan held recently at Naini, Allahabad by Narendra Singh Tomar, Union Minister for Rural Development, Panchayati Raj and Drinking Water and Sanitation.He along with Uma Bharati Union Minister for Water Resources and Ganga Rejuvenation launched model Ganga Gram initiative under which 24 Namami Gange villages have been identified in the 1st phase (Uttarakhand – 3, Uttar Pradesh – 10, Bihar – 4, Jharkhand – 5, and West Bengal – 2) to make them Adarsh Ganga Grams. Ganga Gram is a joint initiative of MDWS and MoWR. The Gram Pradhans of these villages were administered oath for achieving the goal of Adarsh Ganga Gram by Sushri Uma Bharati.Speaking on the occasion, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath reiterated the commitment to make the entire Uttar Pradesh state ODF by December 2018 and stressed that SBM is among the top priority programs in the state.

Indian National Anthem video in

sign language The Indian National Anthem video in sign language featuring Amitabh Bachchan along with children with disability singing the National Anthem in sign language at the backdrop of the Majestic Red Fort was launched by Dr Mahendra Nath Pandey, union MoS for Human Resource Development at Films Division Auditorium on eve of this Independence Day. The film is conceptualised by Satish Kapoor, Founder Director, We Care Film Festival. We Care Film Festival produced the Film under the aegis of Brotherhood, an NGO. It is directed by Govind Nihalani and the music is scored by late Aadesh Shrivastava.

34 Palm Leaf Manuscripts Converted into

Printed Books Under the literary research programme conducted by Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences (CCRAS), an autonomous organization under Ministry of AYUSH, the ancient manuscripts including palm leaves are collected and digitized from time to time.A total of 3568 manuscripts have been collected. Out of these, 92 are palm leaf manuscripts. 34 manuscripts have been further converted into printed books

Nandi, Ashok Vajpayee, Major General (Retd.) L.K. Gupta, Chairman INTACH. PLSI, an initiative of Bhasha Research and Publication Centre , Vadodara , wi l l eventually bring out 60 such volumes by the end of 2018 to be published by Orient Blackswan. These volumes will be published both in Hindi and English. Some volumes will also be pub-lished in regional languages of India.Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Manmohan Singh, former Prime Minister of India, stressed the fundamental importance of languages to human society, saying that, “innovative research related to languages” needs to be encouraged . Dr. S ingh

appreciated Bhasha Research and Publication Centre for making efforts to preserve the Indian languages. Dr.G. N Devy, General Editor and Chairperson, PLSI said that “The central idea of this survey is to document and preserve 780 languages which are being spoken in India today. Today is the day of celebration of language diversity for the country and we will ensure that these languages survive the test of time and place.” Dr. Ganesh Devy also announced the next big project “Global Languages Survey” under which over 6000 languages being spoken in the world will be surveyed and documented.

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2nd edition of 'How to Start a Startup?'

780 Indian languages surveyed and documented

Dances, music teachers ignored by schools