Draft of ECCE policy gives primacy to early childhood learning

The Centre has batted for evolving a national policy aimed at promoting optimal development and active learning capacity of all children below the age of six years in the country.

The draft of the proposed Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Policy came up for discussion here at a gathering of eminent child experts, policy makers, senior government officials from Child Development and Education departments and representatives from non-government sector.

Addressing the gathering, Woman and Child Development minister Krishna Tirath said the major planks of the draft policy are universal access, equity and quality and strengthening capacity building.

She emphasised that the provisions of the policy will be governed by a strong quality framework.

The policy seeks to universalise the provisions of ECCE for all children mainly through Integrated Child Development Services, which has a network in all nooks and corners of the country.

Special plans will be developed for the most marginalised and vulnerable groups besides repositioning of anganwadi centre (AWC) as a vibrant child-friendly centre with adequate infrastructure, financial and human resources.

The recommendations of the day-long consultation included creation of a conducive environment for private sector involvement to achieve access, quality and equity, espousing an approach of convergence between policy, curriculum, training and other relevant standards and strengthening of institutional capacity building.

It also called for closely working with the Human Resource Development Ministry to address the specific problems of the disabled and linking of early childhood education with Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.

Mumbai students forced to pick centres in Haryana, Assam

Chaos reigned on the first day of the registration process for the first ever National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for post-graduate medical aspirants. After the website meant for online registrations crashed several times on Thursday, city students were forced to pick centres in Uttarakhand, Ranchi and Haryana because centres in Mumbai and Maharashtra had filled up fast.

Around 8,000 medical students from the state usually take the PG entrance test. The state test was scrapped and NEET introduced this year. The website mentioned that centres would be allotted on a first-come-first-serve basis. As there were only seven centres in the state and four in Mumbai, students rushed to book their seats online. Students reached the bank from where they were supposed to collect vouchers as early as 4.30 am and waited till 9.30 am for the bank to open.

Since the online test is between November 23 and December 6, students were hoping to get a slot towards the last few days. A student said, "The server crashed at least three or four times while I tried to register. We continued trying to register for three to four hours, but with no luck. It is a three-stage form filling process and the server crashed erratically at any point. When I finally managed to complete the process, city and Pune centres were full."

Another student said, "By 10 pm, most places across the country were filling up fast. With no centres in Gujarat and Rajasthan, I was forced to choose Uttarakhand."

Some students who logged in early on October 5 easily managed to get seats in Mumbai centres. A student said, "Some of my friends who filled the form around 3 am, did get a seat allocation in Mumbai. We have been told that the process was much easier on Friday and students managed to fill up the forms in 15 minutes. Now as per the rule, slots and centres once chosen cannot be rescheduled or cancelled. Why then should the authorities claim that the system worked on first-come-first-serve basis?"

Most of the students who filled it up on Thursday to be on the safe side have ended up with centres in Ranchi, Haryana, Jharkhand, Assam, etc.

Officials from Prometric (who are conducting the online exam for National Board of Examination) remained unavailable for comment. According to a release issued by the Prometric, around 38,000 candidates registered for the test within 24 hours.

Prometric India MD Soumitra Roy said, "Scheduling instructions have been shared by NBE before the start of the registration window, and candidates were reminded at the time of online scheduling. Prometric continues to increase available seating for current test dates to address heavy registration demand. As a result of demand in individual areas, not all sessions may be available and candidates should select another session if their first choice is not available."

Jharkhand Academic Council asks schools to create e-mail ID for benefit of Inter students

The Jharkhand Academic Council (JAC) has directed all government schools which will conduct secondary examinations in 2012-13 to create an e-mail ID and submit it to the council as soon as possible. In a letter issued to all secondary schools, the JAC said the schools must immediately submit their e-mail IDs so that the registration procedure for the secondary examinations can be completed on time.

JAC chairperson Laxmi Singh said there was a provision for students to improve their mistakes in the registration forms for secondary examination filled by them. "As they (students) are unable to see the original form submitted by them, so they do not know their mistakes. We have planned to put up all the forms that will be filled manually by students on the JAC website so that the students can check them and re-fill the form correctly. The corrected form will be submitted in the schools and the principals will send those forms to JAC in bulk. We will accept the corrected forms only from the IDs provided to us." Singh said.

The new JAC proposal will definitely help those students who are unsure about the form they filled and unable to see the copy even after visiting their school several times.

Manoj Kumar, a student of matriculation at Zila School, said: "It is a very good idea adopted by the JAC and if it is implemented properly we can be assured that we can correct the form if necessary it and resend it."

The principals of the schools have also appreciate the step taken by JAC. They, however, feel the option of submitting the refilled forms only once may create problems.

NG High School principal Tej Narayan Yadav said, "It is a very good proposal. But as we are supposed to send all the corrected forms only once, the students who had made any mistake while in filling the form a second time will not be able to correct it."

Singh says this was just the beginning of computerization. "In future all communications with the respective schools will be through the e-mail ID provided by them and all the information related to examinations will be given to the schools on the same ID, thereby, making the work easier and expeditious," she said.

B-Schools hike stipends by 20% despite meltdown

Despite fears of an uncertain economic environment, students of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) expect a rise in stipends by 15-20 per cent during summer placements this year.

With leading companies showing a continued interest in hiring interns in spite of a meltdown, students are optimistic of drawing attractive offers. Nitin KV, recruitment coordinator with IIM Lucknow, said, "Besides long time recruiters, there are a lot of first timers as well. We expect that the stipends, particularly in consulting, marketing and general management sectors, will increase by 15-20 per cent this year."

IIM Ahmedabad is also looking forward to a robust summer placement season. "Students are looking forward to a good summer placement as we had attractive offers during final placements in March," a member of the student placement committee, said. Students are also looking forward to winding up the placement season early this year by considering domestic companies over their international counterparts. "Diversity of Indian companies offering internships has increased. Students are quite inclined towards domestic companies, which offer better roles," said professor Kulbhushan Balooni, chairperson-placements at IIM Kozhikode.

Of late, business schools have also seen a spike in students opting for startups over leading brands.

"Students are not tempted by salary packages now. A large chunk wants to join startups, which offer them varied, larger roles and allow them to contribute more to the growth of the organization as compared to traditional roles offered by established companies," said Balooni.

Demand for startups is also an indication that students are keen on taking up entrepreneurship amid slowdown. About 75 per cent students at IIM Kozhikode have expressed interest in interning at startups. In order to attract more startups, IIM Kozhikode is not charging placement fees from these ventures.

"Students are aware of the expected low hiring in multinationals and are keen on broader roles in startups. We have been trying to reach out to several alumni who are running their own start-ups for guidance," said Vibhu Kapoor, coordinator, placement committee at IIM Indore.

Nessa Illumination Technologies, an Ahmedabad-based startup, which hired two students from IIM Ahmedabad for business development activities, is also in talks with IIM Kozhikode. "A lot of systems are not in place in a startup and these students can help us with marketing, an area where they can impress the clients very well," said Akshat Khare, founder, Nessa.

The summer placement process at institutes begins in the first week of November. Xavier School of Management (XLRI), Jamshedpur has also seen a spurt in new sectors like ecommerce and technology this year. However, XLRI is expecting only a single digit percentage rise in stipends this year.

"Companies are a bit reserved in terms of hiring and we are not aiming at the stars this year. We do not see companies in finance sector making many offers," said placement coordinator at XLRI.

Govt working on guarantee scheme for educational loans: RBI

In a bid to remove problems faced by students in obtaining education loans, government was working on a scheme under which it would extend guarantee for advances upto Rs 7.5 lakhs, Reserve Bank of India governor D.Subba Rao said on Wednesday.

"There are grievances of students not getting loans or encountering problems...Understanding that there is a problem, the government is now working on a guarantee scheme," he told students here at an interactive programme organised by RBI and ABP News.

He said for loans upto Rs 7.5 lakhs where there was no third party guarantee or collateral security there would be guarantee given by the government.

"It is yet to be launched. Hopefully it would come and resolve some of these issues," he said replying to a question on the woes of students in getting educational loans.

On paper for loans upto Rs 4 lakhs there should be no collateral security or guarantee. "For good students and good institutions it is easier to get loans than for students not so good or institutions not rated so high," he said.

"But our endeavour is irrespective of level of achievements of institutions, they must have access to education loan upto Rs 4 lakhs," he said.

On inflation, he said "our endeavour, effort and expectation is that inflation will come down and will remain steady" so that it accelerate growth.

He also said RBI wanted to deepen penetration of banks either through bank branches or Business Correspondents since more than 50 per cent of the households in the country did not have bank accounts.

Noting that RBI and the government had initiated several steps towards financial inclusion with a view to ensuring that every household had bank accounts, he said it would become successful only when banks see it as a business opportunity.

Replying to another student, the RBI governor said the apex bank was playing a development role and had implemented steps for rural development including priority sector lending.

On security and safety of electronic transactions, he said "Securing security is shared responsibility. It is not the exclusive concern of RBI alone. It is responsibility of commercial banks and of the customers."

All the three should share the responsibility and work together to ensure that banking transactions especially electronic and mobile transactions were safe, he added.

Medical PG entrance aspirants sweat it out for forms

Applicants to post graduate courses in medicine and surgery had a tough time on Thursday as they queued up for procuring application forms for the entrance examinations. There was chaos and confusion as the mode of conduct of examination had been changed from this year with the National Board of Examinations entrusted with the task to conduct the tests. The entrance examinations for various MD and MS courses as well as post graduate diplomas are scheduled to be conducted between November-end and December. The applications forms for the diploma courses began to be distributed from Wednesday while forms for MD and MS entrance tests started to be issued from Thursday.

Hundreds of MBBS graduates and their parents waited for hours in front of the Axis Bank branch near the Lakshmi Mills junction in the city, which was the only centre from where students could get tokens on payment of fees. They had to upload a secret number then on the internet. Students complained that the bank did not have necessary facilities to cater to such a large crowd.

Dr N Sakthivel, who is taking entrance tests for both PG degree and diploma courses, said they had to wait for almost six hours to get tokens. "We were waiting from around 6am on both days," he said. Though the applications will be available for the next two weeks, students had come in large number on the first day itself as the number of centres in south India was limited, he said.

Dr H V Manjari, who waited till 12pm to get the application forms, complained that the entire process was disorganised. "There is only one centre in the city to issues applications. There are only few centres in south India which have been filled up in the early hours. Now the centres vacant are in Assam, Kashmir and other distant places," she said. Till the last year, the All India institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) used to conduct the entrance examinations. "They used to conduct it in a commendable manner," said Dr Vyshali Mohan another aspirant.

The number of centres for the examinations must be increased from the present 30. Around 2 lakh students appear for the examinations and there ought to be more centres, students point out.

However, bank officials blamed server problems for the chaos. "Extra counters were arranged, but the server got jammed. Similar problems were reported from other parts of the country also," a bank official said.

JEE Main Online application forms from Nov 1

The newly introduced Joint Entrance Examination (Main) for admission to various engineering colleges across the country will be conducted in April 2013 for the first time. The examination will be conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) which released a detailed document on examination earlier this month. The application forms for the JEE (Main) 2013 will be available online from Thursday, November 01, 2012. There will be no sale of paper application forms.

The CBSE has set up facilitation centers across the country which will help candidates complete their online application forms. 43 centers have been announced and more are expected to be added over the next few weeks. The services at these centers will be available free of cost.

The document with the details of the examination which was released recently confirmed that the offline mode of the examination will be held on April 07, 2013 and the online mode will be conducted between April 8 and 25, 2013. The document further stated that the blind candidates will be given an extra hour to complete the exam along with the help of writers. The document also revealed that a candidate will be allowed three consecutive attempts for the JEE (Main) examination.