Odisha HRD

New Kendriya Vidyalayas (Central Schools) to come up in Aska, Bhanjanagar and Digapahandi: Samaja

Update 2 on July 12 2010: Orissadiary gives the locations of 11 of the schools.They are:

… one school each in Kutra in Sundargarh district, in Cuttack city, in Bhanjanagar in Ganjam district, in Mayurbhanj town, in Sonepur, in Deogarh, in Jajpur, in Digapahandi of Ganjam District, in Aska of Ganjam district, in Nuapada, in CISF in Cuttack district. Besides, … Prabhakar said.

Update: As per http://www.c2clive.com/latestnewsdetail.php?id=1354 in total Odisha will have 12 new Central Schools. They will be in the districts of Mayurbhanj, Cuttack, Ganjam, Subarnapur, Deogarh, Jajpur, Nuapara and Sundargarh. Earlier in https://www.orissalinks.com/archives/4222 we listed the districts in Odisha that did not have Central Schools. These new schools will cover that list except the district of Kendrapada.

7 comments June 23rd, 2010

Two Ekalavya Schools to come up in Malkangiri and Nuapada; Total in Odisha goes to 13

Following is an excerpt from a report in Pioneer.

… the Union Tribal Affairs Ministry has already showed green signal for setting up of two such schools one at Malkangiri and another at Nuapada. Presently, there are 11 such schools in the State of which 10 are operating in tribal areas and the rest one has been set up Ramfilo in Jajpur district.

It is to be noted here that education is imparted to students from Class VI to +2 in these residential schools. There are 210 seats each in both +2 Science and Commerce streams of these schools. The Central Governments provides Rest 12 crore for establishment of each such school.

June 23rd, 2010

Board of Seconadry Education, Orissa Annual H.S.C Exam. Result 2010 (Top 100)

Following is from http://orissaresults.nic.in/MeritList2010.html.

3 comments June 20th, 2010

Kalinga Bharati Residential College shines in the +2 performance: top three in science and topper in commerce are from this college

The website of this college is http://www.kalingabharati.org/. This year students from this college have done extremely well in +2 results. Only BJB College’s performance is close to them. While earlier it used to be a contest between BJB and Ravenshaw, this year Ravenshaw has bitten dust and its place has been taken by this college.

In particular its performance in +2 is as follows:

• In +2 Science, 16 of the top 20 ranks are from this college, including the topper and 3 from the top 2 ranks.
• In +2 Commerce, the topper is from this college.

Upon further browsing their web pages I am of the opinion that this college will be a trendsetter and pioneer in Odisha. Just look at their faculty listed at http://www.kalingabharati.org/FACULTY_LIST.HTM.

Based on this faculty I am going to go out on a limb and predict that this year there will be at least 10 students from this college in the IIT JEE top 1000.

I hope some of the other private +2 colleges will immediately copy from this college and assemble a similar faculty and beat Kota at its own game and send more Orissans to IIT and other top institutions.

As per Dharitri the +2 Science topper from Kalinga Bharati, Kiity Jain (a girl) is from Khariar in Nuapada district and the +2 Commerce topper Bhabani Acharya (also a girl) is from Semiliguda in Koraput.

23 comments May 19th, 2010

Top 20 in Plus 2 arts in 2010

Following is from http://orissaresults.nic.in/artst20.html.

The list has 27 students. The top colleges/schools from where these students come from are:

• Ravenshaw Jr College Cuttack (Ranks 1, 3, 5, 16)
• BJB Junior College Bhubaneswar (Ranks 2, 8, 14, 17 )
• Women’s College Baragarh (Rank 3)
• Rajendra College Balangir (Rank 4)
• Babaji Sahu College Gajabandha, Sonepur (Rank 6)
• Govt. Junior College Phulbani (Rank 7)
• Nigamananda Mahila Mahavidyalaya Charichhak Puri (Rank 8 )
• Anchalika Mahavidyalaya Hatadihi Keonjhar (Rank 9)
• SSDA College Sankhamari Cuttack (Rank 9)
• Govt. Women’s junior College Balangir (Rank 10)
• NC Junior College Jajpur (Rank 11)
• RD Women’s Jr College Bhubaneswar (Rank 12, 20)
• LN Mahavidyalaya Jamsuli Balasore (Rank 13)
• Saheed Mahavidyalaya Barapur Bhadrak (Rank 15)
• SCS College Puri (Rank 15, 16)
• Anchalika Mahavidyalaya Baripada (Rank 18)
• Maharshi Bhubaneswar (Rank 19)
• FM Jr College Balasore (Rank 20)
• Angul Mahila Mahavidyalaya (Rank 20)

May 19th, 2010

Top 20 in Plus 2 Commerce in 2010

Following is from http://orissaresults.nic.in/comt20.html.

There are 29 students in the top 20 list. The top colleges from where these students come from are:

• KBR College Cuttack (the topper)
• Ravenshaw Junior College Cuttack (Ranks 2, 6, 15, 19, 19)
• Rairangpur College (Ranks 3, 17)
• VN College, Jajpur Rd (Rank 4)
• Belpahar College (Rank 5)
• Rourkela Municipal College (Ranks 7, 11, 18)
• Nimapara College (Rank 7)
• BJB College (Ranks 8, 14, 14, 14)
• UN College Adaspur Cuttack (Rank 9)
• FM Junior College (Ranks 10, 11, 14)
• MPC College Baripada (Rank 12)
• RD Women’s College Bhubaneswar (Rank 13)
• AC & A College Sunabeda (Rank 15, 20)
• Khallikote College (Rank 16)
• Govt. College Bhawanipatna (Rank 18)
• NC College Jajpur (Rank 20)

May 19th, 2010

Top twenty in plus 2 science in 2010

Following is from http://orissaresults.nic.in/scit20.html.

There are 53 students in the above list. The top junior colleges/schools from where these students come are:

• 16 are from KBR College Cuttack, including the topper and 3 from the top 2 ranks
• FM College Balasore (ranks 2, 17, 19, 19)
• 24 are from BJB College Bhubaneswar, but none from the top 2 ranks
• Irodov College Bhubaneswar  (rank 11)
• Royal College Bhubaneswar (ranks 13, 19)
• Ravenshaw Junior College Cuttack (ranks 15 )
• Saraswati Vidya Mandir Nilakanthanagar Berhampur (rank 15, 18)
• Vikash Junior College Baragarh (ranks 17, 19)
• Jupiter +2 Science College (rank 19)

The performance of KBR College (Pira Bazar, Jagatpur, Cuttack) is extremely impressive. (Before today, I had not heard of it.) the performance of the older colleges, especially Ravenshaw is disappointing. Except BJB, Ravenshaw and FM, none of the other older colleges (such as Khallikote College, SCS College, GM Junior College, Govt. College Rourkela, RD Women’s college, Sailabala Women’s college etc.) are in the above list.

My guess is that there is not much teaching going on in the traditional colleges and the performance in BJB is perhaps only due to the top students going in there.

14 comments May 19th, 2010

Education through entrance tests: Excerpts from an interesting article by Profs. P. Jalote and A. Singh

Prof. Jalote is the Director of IIIT Delhi and is on leave from IIT Delhi. Previously he taught at IIT Kanpur and University of Maryland. Prof. Singh is a professor at Auburn University, Alabama. Both are alumni of IITs. Following are excerpts from their article in Economic Times.

… The difficulty of cracking these tests have led to the booming coaching industry — it seems the vast majority of students appearing in these exams undergo some form of coaching for them. This impact of coaching has been decried by many. In academic circles, it is a common complain that coaching is allowing even average students to crack the exams, and how exams ought to be changed so that deserving students can clear even without coaching.

It should be clearly understood that the success of coaching is not due to the nature of the exams, but due to the low acceptance ratio in these exams. With these low accept rates, it is irrelevant whether the nature of exam is such that coaching will help or not.

… Anybody who thinks that coaching can be made redundant by reforming the admission tests is living in a state of denial.

There is another aspect of coaching that deserves attention. Coaching is big business: by some accounts, coaching for IITs is bigger than IITs themselves in terms of turnover. Consequently, it is able to attract good teachers by offering high salaries. One hears about IIT/IIM grads teaching in these coaching institutes, but one cannot come across an IIT/IIM graduate as a teacher in a school — even elite schools do not have this distinction. So, in many coaching centres, the quality of education is superior to that of schools, particularly with respect to the entrance test subjects. As the business success depends on how well they help the students do in the entrance exams, their teaching, as measured with respect to success in these exams, continues to improve and they take great care to improve it.

So, we have the following situation. Coaching institutes will continue to thrive as long as the accept ratio remains small. And coaching business will ensure that its teachers and teaching processes are well-equipped to impart training to students to do better at the competitive exam.

This situation, undesirable thought it is, can, however, be converted into an opportunity to improve education. As coaching institutes focus on the entrance tests and the syllabus for them, it provides a power to these exams in that whatever they put as syllabus or as expected knowledge, the coaching institutes will ensure that students get good at that. Even for those students who do not undergo coaching, these exams are highly influential — students learn/ study for these exams with a mission and dedication that they don’t show for anything else.

IF THESE large exams were to be oriented such that preparation for them will make the foundations for the key subjects much stronger and will force the students to really understand the subjects better, the coaching industry will ensure that this knowledge is imparted to students. That is, the syllabus and expectation is potentially a strong force on what students learn in the 2-3 years they prepare for the entrance exams, through coaching or on their own.

If this learning can be strengthened, then even if the students do not get through in these exams — which the vast majority will not — the preparation for them will give them strong foundations in some key subjects. This can be leveraged by other institutions.

… So, instead of fighting coaching by making exams like JEE harder and more theoretical every year, such large exams can leverage the competition for the larger good of improving the education and preparedness of students.

If these exams are thought of as a potential tool in the armory of the country for fighting the poor education standards, rather than just for admitting students into these institutes, then they can favourably impact the lakhs of students who attend JEE, and not just of the selected few thousands who actually enter the IITs, whose skills will be upgraded anyway to top levels by the top quality education that they will be provided. By doing so, institutions like the IITs and the entrance exams they have, will be making a solid contribution to improving the workforce in the country , as they have done in creating the top-level manpower.

I agree with the main point in the above mentioned article. Earlier I wrote my views on coaching at https://www.orissalinks.com/archives/4178.

However, there is an issue with respect to many students not being able to afford coaching. Couple of things that the governments may do are:

• Provide coaching in some government schools such as Navodaya Vidyalayas.
• Provide other avenues for good coaching such as attempts to replicate the Super 30 in Bihar by other governments.
• Bring coaching classes and the +2 level under the ambit of RTE and require that certain percentage of the students there are from poorer background.
• Provide scholarships to poor students to be able to afford good coaching.

2 comments May 16th, 2010

A single place to apply to 53 degree colleges in Odisha; extended from a similar initiative with respect to junior colleges (+2) that was done last year

The review of the processes of admission in Orissa, has led the Higher Education department, formulate a strategy for the admission process…

3 comments May 15th, 2010

Takshila School to open in Bhubaneswar; advertises for teacher positions

The webpage http://www.takshilaschools.in/ mentioned in the ad below is not functional yet. However, a webapge with a similar logo is functional at http://www.takshila.net/. Following is the ad obtained from a report in breakingnewsonline.

2 comments May 12th, 2010

DAV Colleges in Odisha

India has several DAV Colleges and Schools. A listing of them can be obtained from http://www.davcmcdircol.org/index2.aspx. Some of their top colleges in India are DAV  College Chandigarh and Hansraj College Delhi. They currently have 4 colleges in Odisha.

Based on the claims in their web page, the DAV School of Business Management seems to be doing very well. 

Currently there are four DAV Public Schools in the Bhubaneswar area. 

• DAV Chandrasekharpur
• DAV Unit 8
• DAV Pokhariput
• DAV Kalinganagar

There are many DAV Schools in rest of Odisha. This includes

• DAV School Berhampur
• Four DAV Schools in Cuttack city (Raja Bagicha, CDA, Gandharpur, Alisa Bazaar)
• DAV School, Basanti Colony Rourkela
• DAV School Sovarampur Balasore
• DAV School Paradeep
• DAV Talcher Thermal
• DAV MCL
• DAV Jharsuguda
• DAV Burla
• DAV Badambagarh, Cuttack
• DAV Brajarajnagar
• DAV Sundergarh

See http://www.adhyapak.com/schools/orissa/orissa_schools2.html for a bigger list.

May 3rd, 2010

National Institute of Open Schooling

Its webs site is http://www.nios.ac.in/. Following is information from that page.

The National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) formerly known as National Open School (NOS) was established in November,1989 as an autonomous organisation in pursuance of National Policy on Education 1986 by the Ministry of Human Resource Development(MHRD), Government of India. NIOS is providing a number of Vocational, Life Enrichment and community oriented courses besides General and Academic Courses at Secondary and Senior Secondary level. It also offers Elementary level Courses for 14+ age group through its Open Basic Education Programmes (OBE).Government of India through a gazette notification vested NIOS with the authority to examine and certify learners registered with it upto pre degree level courses.

Academic programs it offers are given in the page http://www.nios.ac.in/AcadPC.htm. They are:

Open Basic Education: Open Basic Education (OBE) Programme providing a elementary education at three levels, for school drop-outs and neo-literates, out of              school learners through Accredited Agencies.

– Secondary Course equivalent to Class X
 

– Senior Secondary Course equivalent to class XII

– Vocational Education

NIOS has established an International Centre for Training in Open Schooling (ICTOS)

Training Packages for ODL functionaries

 NIOS HQ is in NOIDA. It has regional centers in Delhi, Hyderabad, Guwahati, Pune, Chandigarh, Kolkata (with a subcenter in Bhubaneswar), Patna, Kochi, Jaipur, Bhopal, Allahabad (with a sub-center in Dehradun).

It has study centers across the country and across Orissa. The list is available at http://www.nos.org/nosresults/nos/searchai.html.

Odisha should push for having a regional center.

April 25th, 2010

Number of model schools in the first phase to be 3500 (1000 more than what was previously approved)

For additional background and the list of 123 EBBs in Odisha see https://www.orissalinks.com/archives/1689. Following is from the PIB http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=60782.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs today approved the setting up of 1000 additional model schools as a benchmark of excellence in Educationally Backward Blocks (EBBs) through State Governments, thereby taking the total number of model schools to be set up through the State Governments to 3500.

The financial requirement for setting up 2500 schools under State Governments, which were approved by CCEA in November 2008, was estimated as Rs.9322 crore during the 11th Five Year Plan, of which the central share is Rs.7457 crore. Requirement for additional 1000 schools (current proposal) has been estimated to be Rs.3304 crore with the Central share of Rs.2478 crore. Thus the estimated Central share for establishing 3500 schools in the Government sector is Rs.9935 crore during the 11th Five Year Plan. 

Each school will have 560 students, the total beneficiary for 3500 schools therefore being 19.60 lakh students. The programme will be implemented through the societies set up by the State Governments for this purpose. 

The present proposal is meant for 3500 EBBs in 27 States/UTs, although the model school scheme will cover 6000 blocks in all States/UTs. 

The salient features of the Scheme are as follows: 

(i) Every EBB will be eligible for one model school under State Governments. 

(ii) These schools to have classes from VI to XII or from IX to XII. 

(iii) These schools to have norms and standards equal to or better than Kendriya Vidyalayas

(iv) Medium of instruction and affiliating board will be decided by the State Governments. 

(v) 75% of the recurring and non-recurring cost, subject to scheme norms, will be borne by the Central Government except for special category states, for which the sharing pattern is 90:10. 

The major impact of the scheme will be to open up access to quality secondary education to talented rural students. The scheme is expected to provide a major fillip to availability of good quality schools in rural areas, thereby nurturing talent in such areas. These schools are expected to act as pace-setting institutions and to have a demonstration effect on neighbouring schools.

April 24th, 2010

Regional Institute of Education Mysore offers 6 yrs M.Sc Ed integrated program. What about RIE Bhubaneswar?

Following is an excerpt from a report in Times of India.

The MSC Ed, an integrated six-year course (12 semesters), introduced in 2008 is the right way to master teaching skills. Offering quality teacher education programmes is the Regional Institute of Education that include innovative pre-service and in-service teacher training programmes and relevant research, development and extension activities.

The institute started as Regional College of Education in 1963, changed the name in 1994. It is one of the five such institutions established by the National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT), New Delhi. The other institutes are located at Ajmer, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar and Shilong.

Prior to the six-year course, there was a two-year MSC Ed course for those who had completed BSC Ed, said Regional Institute of Education Principal GT Bhandage. "It had a good response and the students from all over the country would appear for the entrance exam. This course was conceived essentially to meet the demand of the higher secondary level in specific subjects like physics, chemistry and mathematics. Students who have passed out from this course were absorbed by Navodaya and Kendriya Vidyalaya," added Bhandage.

In 2008, MSC Ed course was introduced after completion of II PUC or equivalent. The idea was to catch them young and train them with pedagogic skills and develop adequate content competency crucial to a teacher education programme, said Bhandage.

The six years integrated course is a combination of BSc and MSC. The first four years, students study physics, chemistry and mathematics while in fifth and final year they can choose a specialization subject.

After completion of the course one can get into Higher Secondary Schools or can do research.

… The admissions are made on all India basis through an entrance exam. The selection will be based on the performance in the qualifying exam and entrance exam.

For details log on to www.riemysore.ac.in or call 514515/ 2514095.

RIE Mysore has a website at www.riemysore.ac.in. I have not been able to find a web site for RIE Bhubaneswar. I wonder if RIE Bhubaneswar offers such a course.

Considering the implementation of RTE, there is a big need for more and better trained teachers and educational administrators (headmasters, principals, vice-principals, etc.). To achieve that the government of India should upgrade the RIEs to National Institutes of Education and make them Institutions of National Importance. This will attract the attention of more good students towards a teaching and teaching administration career. The government should incraese the number of seats and number of programs in these institutes and intrdoce programs for creating top-notch Educational administrators.

1 comment April 14th, 2010

Prof. Damodar Acharya Committee reportedly proposes to scrap IIT JEE and other entrance exams

Update: Following are excerpts from a follow-up Telegraph report which mentions about the committee’s recommendation to have wide-spread consultations before making the changes.

But it has advised caution in implementing the reforms. The panel has suggested detailed consultations and workshops with the state governments, other top engineering institutions like the National Institutes of Technology, and private universities.

The recommendations of the panel can be fine-tuned based on the outcome of the consultations, the team led by IIT Kharagpur director Damodar Acharya has suggested. The panel is likely to meet soon and may draw up a schedule for the consultations at that meeting.

… At a meeting of the panel in Chennai on March 16 with representatives of state and central school boards, some participants suggested that rural students be given more opportunities than urban students. The participants proposed two attempts for urban students and three for rural students.

The panel and the HRD ministry will also need to convince state governments that the move to end state-specific engineering tests is not against their interests.

Following is an excerpt from a report in Telegraph.

… The panel, appointed by human resource development minister Kapil Sibal, has recommended replacing the four-decade-old IIT-Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) and myriad other engineering entrance examinations with a common test modelled on the US-based scholastic aptitude test (SAT).

The panel has suggested that the IITs accord a 70 per cent weightage to board examination scores in picking students, ..

Scores in the common aptitude test that will replace the IIT-JEE will contribute the remaining 30 per cent weightage in determining which candidates are selected, the panel has recommended.

Unlike the current engineering entrance examinations including the IIT-JEE, the common aptitude test will not have questions on physics, chemistry and math, but will test students’ powers of logical reasoning and communication skills.

If the recommendations are accepted, the IITs will for the first time admit students based more on their board examination marks than on their performance in a special entrance test.

…The minister had announced in February that he was setting up a panel under IIT Kharagpur director Damodar Acharya to study proposed reforms to the IIT-JEE. The panel was appointed in March, with the directors of the IITs in Mumbai, Roorkee and Chennai as the other members.

…  The panel has recommended that the government develop a Comprehensive Weighted Performance Index (CWPI) to calculate a student’s overall score based cumulatively on his performance in the board examinations and in the common aptitude test. The report appears principally based on discussions at a meeting held with other government representatives, including Central Board of Secondary Education chairman Vineet Joshi and select state representatives in Chennai on March 16.

The HRD ministry is already working towards a plan to introduce a common high school curriculum in the sciences and math, cutting across the 35 boards — central and state — that govern Indian school education.

The common curriculum would make easier a comparison between the board examination scores of students from schools affiliated to different central and state government boards, Joshi had told the meeting.

The CWPI proposed by the panel is aimed at normalising any differences that remain between difficulty levels of school-leaving examinations under different boards.

There is a big danger that the above approach will make the XIIth exams a high stakes affair and bring it under the microscope with every aspect of it being scrutinized and judged by everyone. Most coaching classes may reinvent themselves and start coaching how to score more marks in the XIIth exam and the proposed SAT type exam. This approach may bring in bias favoring students from families with educated parents. English being a compulsory subject in XIIth, this may put students in rural areas and other areas where English is less used at a disadvantage.

So one has to wait and see how this will pan out.

My guess is if the above idea is adopted, it will go through some changes such as specific types of colleges may be allowed to give different weight to Class XII marks in different subjects. Some may introduce interviews or other tests.

One change that should be made is that when possible specialty branches should not be assigned to most  students (say 70-80% in any college/institute) immediately after they join a college/institute after the XIIth. That should be determined after a year in that college/institute based on the performance in that year. This will make the class XII exam less cutthroat and ensure that students after they get into a college/institute continue to give importance to academics.

One alternative idea may to test the proposed idea (of using class XIIth marks) on 50% of the seats for a few years before deciding whether to completely abandon the current approach or not.

7 comments April 14th, 2010

Eleven new Central Schools to come up in Odisha

Following is an excerpt from a report in Telegraph: 

The association’s board of governors has recommended the feasibility of 78 more Kendriya Vidyalayas (KV) as part of the process initiated by the HRD ministry for expanding the network of such central schools during the 11th plan period. The feasibility report included two KVs in Cuttack along with nine others across Orissa to address the educational needs of children of central government employees who are frequently transferred.

At present, there are 36 KVs in Orissa. While nine schools are in the project and defence sectors, the rest are in the civil sector.

The existing 36 Kendriya Vidyalayas are listed in http://kvsrobbs.org/DirectorKVs.html. As per that list the latest ones established in 2007 are in Rayagada, Parlakhemundi, Boudh, Malkangiri, Nawrangpur, Kandhamal, and Bhadrak. So the districts in Odisha that do not yet have Central Schools are: 

• Deogarh
• Jajpur
• Kendrapada
• Nayagarh
• Nuapada
• Sonepur

I hope the new ones will cover these districts.

See our earlier articles on this topic at https://www.orissalinks.com/archives/556, https://www.orissalinks.com/archives/550 and https://www.orissalinks.com/archives/227.

1 comment April 9th, 2010