‘Why HSC if you sat for CBSE school exam?’

Shibu Thomas TNN
Mumbai: “You have exercised your option (for school exams) with open eyes,” the Bombay High Court on Monday reminded a CBSE student who had sought orders that would allow her to apply for the online admissions to first year junior college.

“If you wanted to take admission in a good college, why did you take the option of school exams?” asked a division bench of Justice D K Deshmukh and Justice Rajesh Ketkar.

The court was hearing a petition filed by Shruti Mathuria, a student of Rajhans Vidyalay, who scored 93% in her Standard X exams in CBSE. She had approached the court saying her chances of admission to top colleges in Mumbai had been affected due to the controversy over board exams versus school exams. Mathuria’s lawyer Aniket Nikam said the school had issued a letter to students saying both board exams and school exams would be treated on par. He sought time to furnish the document.

But the judges said that if they wanted an adjournment, the girl’s parents would have to pay a Rs 10,000 fine for wasting the time of the court. Arguing his case before the bench, Nikam said: “This is a question of the careers of thousands of CBSE students.” The judges replied: “Don’t think you are a leader for the students,” said the HC.

The state’s advocate said this year that around 1.24 lakh students had applied for admissions online. “Already, 50% of the admissions are finalized, and the first list will be out on Tuesday,” the advocate said. In fact, in August 2010 a circular had been issued laying down the difference between school-based and board exams. Nikam had argued that students were given to understand that both exams would be treated at par: “The papers for the school exams are set by the board, vetted by the board and even the mark-sheet is issued by the board.”

To which, the judges asked: “If you have appeared for CBSE exams, why do you now want to go for the state board?” The next hearing is scheduled on July 13.

School Versus Board Exam T he CBSE had introduced a new system of examination called comprehensive and continuous education (CCE) where 60% of the marks would be awarded by the school and the remaining 40% would be based on internal school exams or board exams depending upon what the student opted for. Students who appeared for school exams instead of the boards cannot participate in the online admission s to state-run colleges. They will get the chance to apply to junior colleges only once the online process is completed.

Life of pi over?

‘Tau’ may set calculations aright

London: The humble “pi” may have had its day. Mathematicians are campaigning for the most important number in the world to be replaced with alternate value “tau”. They are claiming that the number — the constant which references the circumference of a circle to its diameter — is wrong and it should be replaced with tau, the ‘Daily Mail’ reported.
The mathematicians have said that while 3.14159265, the number’s value, is not incorrect, it is the wrong figure to be associated with the properties of a circle as a matter of course. Tau has a value twice that of pi of 6.28.
“For all these years, we have been looking at the wrong number when we have been looking at pi. Pi simply isn’t the most natural number that we should associate with a circle. The proper number is 2pi, or tau,” Kevin Houston at the University of Leeds told ‘TheTimes’ newspaper. The number has long been seen as being essential to many mathematical formulae as well as being vital to equations in science and engineering.
It is used when calculating the circumference of a circle by multiplying the diameter by the value of pi, while its area can be deduced by multiplying pi by the square of its radius. However, mathematicians campaigning for its replacement argue that since so many formulae require the use of tau that may be used as the main circle constant instead.
“Mathematicians don’t measure angles in degrees, we measure them in radians, and there are 2pi radians in a circle. That leads to all sorts of unnecessary confusion. If you take a quarter of a circle, it has a quarter of 2pi radians, or half pi. “For the number of radians in three quarters of a circle, you have to think about it. It doesn’t come naturally. How much simpler it’d be if we just used tau instead of pi. The circle would have tau radians, a semicircle would have half tau, a quarter of a circle a quarter tau, and so on. You don’t have to think,” Dr Houston said.
Pi was first given its name in 1706 by mathematician William Jones. Ancient Egyptians and Babylonians are believed to have known approximate value of pi. PTI

VALUE JUDGMENT?

PRIVATE EDU

Govt plans law for self-financed schools in state

Yogita Rao TNN

Mumbai: The government is in the process of formulating a Self-Financed Schools Bill, opening a window for organizations to set up private schools in the state.

The bill aims to give private organizations permission tostartschoolson a self-financed basis. The bill, which may be tabled during the monsoon session, will lay down norms that such schools will have to follow. These institutions will never get any grants from the government.

The need to formulate such an actstemmedfrom the fact that private organizations seek permission from the state to set up new schools. Though they agree on the criteria of not getting grants from the government, they later apply for the same. The state had been, in the past, dragged to court for denying grants to such schools. As a result, the school education department wants an act to be formulated, which will ensure that such cases do not come up every year.

If the private organizations agreetothe norms,then the state will help provide them recognition and affiliation. School education minister Rajendra Darda said, “The government has done a mapping of the state to find out the areas where there are no schools. We will ensure that every area in the state has at least one school. After the condition is fulfilled, if there are any parties interested in setting up schools in addition to the existing ones, they will have complete access. The actwilllaydown the norms to run such schools.”

Darda said: “The private unaided schools at some point or the other come to the state seeking grants. Last year, one of the associations dragged the department to court for using the word ‘permanent’ unaided for them. We are hoping the new bill will ensure that such schoolsdo notseek grants at a later stage.”

New species

STUNNING DISCOVERIES: More than 1,000 new species have recently been found on the Melanesian island of New Guinea. Among these are (clockwise from top) a large green tree-dwelling frog, a monitor lizard, a rainbowfish and a blue-eyed spotted Cuscus

Primary school to be extended up to Std V

Hemali Chhapia TNN

Mumbai: For a long time, schools stuffed our children with more than they could digest. Suddenly, there is a feeling that chapters from history and maps of the world were introduced a year too early for generations of kids.

The Union human resources development ministry has now decided to take a massive correctional step. Indian schools will extend the primary class to include standard V. And elementary schooling will stretch for an additional year, instead of closing at class VII. This translates to more than just an internal rejig within the two school units—primary and secondary. For one, social studies will now be introduced in class VI. Ditto with science and environmental sciences.

“School subjects have evolved through their own complicated histories. However,educationists the world over believe that learning in the first five years of schooling should be integrated without subject-specific compartmentalization, and teaching children to study concepts at earlier ages in an attempt to prepare them to ‘compete’ in the world is counterproductive,” said a note from the HRD ministry.

Education ministers have been asked to shift from a seven (4+3) to an eight year (5+3) elementary education cycle by the next academic year. “It is important to provide agerelevant curricula and learning systems to our children,” said ministry officials.

LEARNING THEIR LESSONS

• Elementary education cycle will shift from 4+3 to 5+3 from next year

• Social studies will now be introduced at standard VI, as also the subjects of science and environmental sciences

• State governments will add class VIII to their elementary schools, allowing students to avail of free education for one more year

‘Govt is dumbing down edu’
Mumbai:Several states have entry-age school admissions in class I at age 5, rather than age 6. “Children in these states thus face the double burden of ‘heavy’ curriculum on account of early entry into the schooling system, as well as introduction of upper primary subjects at class V itself,” said a note from the Union HRD ministry.

The ministry feels it has an implication on the learning quality; and the faulty architecture often sees a high failure rate, adding to the pile of students who drop out.

Most teachers felt that the government was dumbing down education in the guise of easing pressure. “We introduce social studies at the third standard. And in the current method, the system is running smoothly. Children need to have their bearings in place—they need to know the north from the south and the local history,” said a principal of a private Mumbai school.

For a lot of state government schools, an additional class in the elementary cycle will mean expanding their overall infrastructure. Just as in Maharashtra, state governments have invested heavily on elementary schools (currently till class VII); there are not as many public schools at the secondary level, forcing many children to join private institutes.

“Close to 90% of the madhyamik schools are in the private sector. Bringing class VIII to the elementary system will mean not just adding classrooms, but recruiting teachers and providing mid-day meals,” said V Radha, state acting school education secretary.

10 planets discovered outside solar system

Space Bodies Detected When They Passed In Front Of Their Stars

London: An international team, including scientists from the University of Oxford, has discovered 10 new planets. Amongst them is one orbiting a star perhaps only a few tens of million years old, twin Neptunesized planets, and a rare Saturn-like world, a release by the University of Oxford said on Wednesday.

The planets were detected using the CoRoT (Convection, Rotation and Transits) space telescope, operated by the French space agency CNES. It discovers planets outside our solar system — exoplanets — when they ‘transit’, that is pass in front of their stars.

Out of the 10 new exoplanets (CoRoT-16b through to 24b and c) seven are hot Jupiters some of which are unusually dense and/or on unusually elongated orbits, and one is in orbit around an unusually young star. The announcement also includes a planet slightly smaller than Saturn, and two Neptunesized planets orbiting the same star.

Suzanne Aigrain of Oxford University’s department of physics, lead UK scientist for CoRoT, said: “CoRoT-18b is special because its star might be quite young. Finding planets around young stars is particularly interesting because planets evolve very fast initially, before settling into a much steadier pattern of evolution”.

She added: “If we want to understand the conditions in which planets form, we need to catch them within the first few hundred million years. “After that, the memory of the initial conditions is essentially lost. In the case of CoRoT-18, different ways of determining the age give different results, but it's possible that the star might be only a few tens of millions of years old.

If this is confirmed, then we could learn a lot about the formation and early evolution of hot gas giant planets by comparing the size of CoRoT-18b to the predictions of theoretical models.” PTI

CELESTIAL TRANSIT

Graft in conflict zone

Red zone schools teach how to mint money

Show Ways Of Fudging Attendance To Swindle Govt Funds

Supriya Sharma TNN

Dantewada (Chhattisgarh): ‘Phoolon se nit hasna seekho, bhawaron se nit gaana ... Learn to smile from the flowers, and sing from the bees).’ The cheerful lines of a popular Hindi rhyme are seen on a bright wall poster inside the bleak confines of a village school in Dantewada. But the lines are wasted. There is not a soul in sight, except a thin wiry man who introduces himself as Roshan Kumar Kharashu, shikshakarmi, grade 2, the teacher in charge of Gufadi primary school. “This is mahua season. The children are skipping school to help their parents pick flowers,” Kharushu says. But a look at the attendance register shows all of them are marked present. Kharashu squirms, and moments later, like a child who has thought up an answer, says, “What can I do if people dont send their children to school? If I stop marking them present, they will close down the school and I will lose my job.”

You want to believe the man. He is just 27, and must have been really desperate for a job inDantewada, leaving behind the safety of his village, in the plains of Durg, close to Raipur. But then facts do not support him. No school was closed down in Dantewada. Even when violence rocked the place, and the civil administration withdrew from many interior places, 264 village schools did not close but shifted, close to the highways. The displacement has led to permanent upheaval in the lives of children, forcing them to travel long distances. But it has only made it easier for the education bureaucracy to make money. Narayanaswamy, an activist with the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, who has lived in Dantewada for five years, says the uprooting of schools from their original locations has made school wardens less accountable. “There’s a constant flux of children, who drop in and out of school, but the funds remain steady,” he says.

Every child is entitled to Rs 450 to Rs 950 as stipend, apart from books, uniforms, and three meals a day. No wonder there is an incentive to mark those absent as present. Even imaginative rules meant to ease the school crisis have only aided corruption. For instance, officials at the block level were empowered to sanction new schools and appoint teachers if enough children lacked access to an existing one.

In Manjhipara, last October, six men gather 228 children from interior villages that had no schools, or at least they claim they did. All were appointed as teachers, one was made warden, and the group was assigned a building to operate as a residential school. In March, when this correspondent visited the school, not more than 100 kids were present. Warden Man Singh Nayak conceded not more than 140 kids had attended classes that month. “They run away in the middle of the night,” he said. Why don’t they go looking for them? “It’s not safe to go to those villages,” says Roshan Yadav, a teacher. But what changed in just six months? Had they not gone to the same villages in October to bring the kids to school? There was no answer for this, or the more basic question: why were all 228 children still on the rolls?
(The series is concluded)

PLAYING WITH THEIR FATE