Majority of parents who seek their wards' entry in any reputed school are now left with one single question: "What is the age limit, three or four?"

The confusion has its origin in Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal's proposal earlier this year that the age limit for nursery admission can be increased from three to four years.

Many parents believe schools should act according to the Minister's proposal. But the fact is that the proposal has not yet been transformed into action.

Unaware of the reality, worried parents are now seeking advice from their friends and counterparts on social networking sites and other online forums.

"My son's date of birth is 14 Dec 2006. Is he eligible for nursery admissions this year?" asks Chitra in a posting on admissionsnursery.com, a popular online forum where parents share their angst and experiences related to kids' admission.

Source:The Outlook Confusion Over Age Limit in Nursery Admission Season

"We have decided to waive off three months' hostel fee as the students are already overburdened by the escalating rents in private accommodations. We have also decided to give a waiver to the physically challenged students," said Tanvir Aiejaz, warden, Ramjas College Hostel.

The college hostel committee will decide the amount of waiver by next week.

Aiejaz said other colleges such as Shri Ram College for Commerce, Kirori Mal, Hindu and Hansraj have also decided to support the decision.

College hostels will be used as accommodation for the relatives of the athletes coming to the Capital for the Games.

Source: Hindustan Times By Mallica Joshi Fee waiver for students forced to vacate hostels for Games

The National Sample Survey has found out that over 81 lakh children aged 6 to 13 years remain out of school and that most of them are girls.

The human resource development ministry has told the finance ministry it wants to set up 1,073 new Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas. These are residential upper primary schools meant mainly for tribal, Dalit, backward-class and minority girls in blocks where the rural female literacy rate is below the national average and the gender gap in literacy wider than the national average.

India now has 2,573 Kasturba Vidyalayas while 1,073 educationally backward blocks do not have such schools. An estimated Rs 2,365 crore will be spent to open the new schools.

A meeting of the finance ministry's expenditure finance committee discussed the proposal on July 28, an official told The Telegraph.

Source: The Telegraph By BASANT KUMAR MOHANTY 1000 girls' schools for backward belts

Delhi Public School, sector-45 in Gurgaon, which had started its admission process from August 2, has stopped it midway.

Parents who reached the school on Wednesday for an interaction or to pay fees were told that the school had "suspended the admission process till further guidelines from the government".

The school sold the forms from August 2 to 10 and interaction with parents started from August 11.

The school website mentioned, "As per the latest government instructions regarding RTE, there are some changes in method of admitting children in various classes.

Source: Hindustan Times By Joyeeta Ghosh School stalls admission, waits for RTE guidelines

To be located at Gothra Tappa Khori village in Rewari district, this will be the state's second Sainik School, which train young boys for a career in the defence forces by preparing them for the National Defence Academy (NDA).

The new school will be constructed at a cost of Rs.250 million.

Haryana Finance Minister Ajay Singh Yadav on Saturday said that classes 5th and 6th for the new Sainik School had already started from the premises of a government primary school in Rewari town and the first phase of the building of the school will be ready by March 2011.

Yadav said that once the new school has its own campus, it will accommodate 600 students.

Haryana already has a Sainik School at Kunjpura in Karnal district, 150 km from here. That school, among the first Sainik Schools started in the country in 1961, celebrated its golden jubilee last month with President Pratibha Devisingh Patil attending the ceremony.

Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and former Army chief Gen. Deepak Kapoor are alumni of the Kunjpura Sainik School.

The selection ois to be made on the basis of an entrance examination scheduled for August 21. An official from the centre said, Coaching is provided in the areas of general studies for prelims and mains, essays, optional papers in history, political science, law and public administration, geography, economics, sociology, Urdu, Hindi, Persian and Arabic.

Students can download the form from Jamia's website http://jmi.nic.in.

The government has acquired 15 acres of land for each of the campuses and the initial funding would be done by the state governments, she said at the annual Convocation of the IIMCs here.

Apart from this, the existing PG diploma course at the IIMCs in Delhi and Dhenkanal is also being made into a two-year one and the institute has approached the UGC to recognise it as a degree course.

"The issues relating to management and regulation of schools responsible for promotion of education are so important for development that it cannot be left at whims and caprices of private bodies, whether funded or not by the Government," the bench said in its order deciding on disclosure of service records of a teacher employed at a private school. Bindu Khanna, a teacher at Pinnacle School at Panchsheel Enclave, had filed an RTI application with Education Directorate seeking to know her service records. But despite orders of the Directorate to provide the details, the school maintained that it was a private body and hence the Act was not applicable on it.

 The school cited sections of the law which exempt the disclosure of personal information. The Commission said various clauses of Delhi School Education Rules, 1973 say that "all records" of a private recognised school are open to inspection by any officer authorised by the Director or the appropriate authority at any time. The records provided to Education Department by the schools can be accessed by an RTI applicant, it said. "Information which a public authority is entitled to access, under any law, from private body, is 'information' as defined under Section 2(f) of the RTI Act and has to be furnished," the Commission said in its order rejecting the claims of the School.

Source: ibnlive.in.com Pvt schools information can be accessed under RTI: CIC

In a written reply to the Lok Sabha, HRD minister Kapil Sibal informed that 434 Model schools have been sanctioned for 12 states so far in the economically backward blocks.

According to the information given to the lower House, Punjab and Tamil Nadu are the only two states which have submitted the amount utilization certificates to the centre.

Other states for which funds have been sanctioned are Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Nagaland, West Bengal and Gujarat.

The scheme, launched in November 2008, envisages setting up 6,000 model schools in every block 'as a benchmark of excellence' across the country with 3,500 of these being in educationally backward blocks.

Another 2,500 of these schools are to be built in the public-private-partnership mode.

"The objective of setting up the schools in public-private-partnership mode is to enhance access to quality school education through private investment to augment the efforts of the government," Sibal said.

"Most of the graduating students found work opportunities with different broadcasting stations like All India Radio and theatre groups while some of them also interned at DU's community radio station in north campus," said Dr Mamta Bhatia, OSD, Campus of Open Learning at Keshavpuram. The classroom sessions were delivered by DU's continuing industry training partner, R K Films and Media Academy, New Delhi.

Admissions are now open for the new session for courses in radio jockeying and TV news reading, theatre acting and presentation, 2D and 3D animation at the Campus of Open Learning, Delhi University. The last date to submit the application form is July 31, 2010. The classes are scheduled to begin from August 8, 2010.

The admission forms for the courses may be obtained from the Campus of Open Learning located at C-2, near Keshavpuram Metro Station or may also be downloaded from http://col.du.ac.in/PDF/MetLifeApplicationForm.pdf

All the students of the colleges and departments of University of Delhi are eligible to apply for these courses. Students of School of Open Learning (SOL) and Non-Collegiate Women's Education Board (NCWEB), University of Delhi, will be given preference. Ex-students of DU and students joining DU from 2009 session may also apply.

Further details may be obtained from 9312237583 or 011-27181469.