Education - Current Affairs for July, 2016

Council of Scientific & Industrial Research has been ranked 12th in the world among government institutions in the world improving the position after rank 14 for 3 consecutive years, according to Scimago Institutions Rankings 2016.

• Overall rank of CSIR also improved from 110 to 99th position.
• CSIR leads the country and is the only Indian organisation to be among the top 100 international institutions.
• Scimago ranking is a classification of academic and research related institutions ranked by composite indicator combining three different sets of indicators based on research performance, innovation outputs and societal impact measured by web visibility.

Medical Council of India has granted permission to start 17 colleges in the nation including three government institutes in Karnataka.

• This adds 2150 seats to the MBBS field this year.
• Apart from Karnataka's three, Maharashtra, Telangana and UP will get two institutes each while Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, and Uttarakhand will get one each.
• The country has 439 medical colleges with 59,288 MBBS seats.
• The highest number of medical colleges are in Karnataka.

Government of India has planned to establish an All India Institute of Homeopathy at Narela New Delhi marking the creation of the first post graduate and doctorate research in this area in the country.

• Civil works of three new institutes All India Institute of Ayurveda New Delhi, North Eastern Institute of Ayurveda and Homeopathy and North Eastern Institute of Folk Medicine were also completed.
• The institutes will be operationalised in 2016-2017.

Haryana, Karnataka and TN have expressed serious reservations to the PMO that census based assessment of learning outcomes should be done at school level.

• Haryana and TN made a strong pitch for sample based assessment and showed how to improve the system.
• NCERT has also expressed reservations about the census based assessment.
• It has been argued that the census based assessment would not provide the kind of data which is needed.
• Sample based assessment of Class III, V and VIII students in Tamil, English and Maths showed that TN in 2012-2013 was easy to administer and could also be used to draw conclusions with ease.
• Census based survey has become a gigantic exercise with the focus moving away from lessons.

Symbiosis Institute of Skill Development has signed 4 MoUs including Telecom Skill Sector Council for telecom skills, Abhi Impact Solutions Pvt Ltd for logistics and transport management skills, Rajasthan Beauty Institute for beauty and wellness skills and Ghulam Nabi Azad College, Akola for teaching student logistics, retail, marketing skills and more.

• The MoU is aimed at enhancing the employability of students and ensuring they are suitable to serve Small, Micro and Medium enterprises of the region in their respective industries.

Acclaimed international political scientist Dr. Varun Sahni has been chosen to be the new Goa University VC, according to chancellor Mridula Sinha’s office.

• He is currently serving as professor and chairperson at the Centre for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament in JNU.
• Current GU VC is Dr. Satish Shetye.
• Committee headed by Dr. Mashelkar had recommended the names of the GU VC to the chancellor.
• Sahni had earlier served as Reader in Latin American Politics at GU. He has also served as the VC of Jammu University.

India has expanded the base in the rankings with 17.6 percent of the 250 universities from the nation, and its highest ranked university, Indian institute of Sciences Bengaluru fell a single place from the previous year’s ranking.

• 6 of the top 10 Indian universities also lost position while India had one fewer university in the top 20 when compared to last year’s rankings.
• India has 8 universities in the top 50, same as Russia and one more than Brazil among the BRICS Nation.
• Quacquarelli Symonds are global higher education analysts which release a ranking of the best universities in the BRICS nations each year.

Startup Village in Kochi has launched a digital incubator for student startups- Start in College making it the first of its kind in the entire world.

• Incubator has been receiving applications and Startup Village is India’s first PPP model technology incubator which has supported more than 500 startups and created 3000 jobs during 2012-2015.

More than half of the total disabled population in India is now literate, according to new numbers released by the Census 2011 show.

• Literacy rate among disabled has risen from 49.3 percent in 2001 to 54.5 percent in 2011.
• This is considerably lower than the literacy rate of the country which is pegged at 74 percent.
• Rural and urban areas saw the rise of 4 percentage points in literacy rate of the disabled.
• Among the urban disabled, around 68 percent are literate while the number is at 49 percent for disabled in rural areas.
• The difference between literacy rates of males and females is more so in rural areas - 72 percent of disabled males and 61 percent of disabled females in urban areas are literate-marking a difference of 9 percentage points.
• In rural areas, the difference stands at 20 percentage points as 58 percent of disabled males and 38 percent of disabled females are literate.

The HRD Ministry’s power to appoint a chairperson of the Central Board of Secondary Education, the Appointment Committee of the Cabinet headed by PM Narendra Modi on 14th July appointed Rajesh Kumar Chaturvedi as the new CBSE head.

• CBSE has been without a chairperson since December 2014.
• Chaturvedi is an IAS officer of 1987 batch.
• He belongs to MP cadre.
• He has never worked in the education sector before this.
• He will be appointed through the central staffing scheme and not through the search-cum-selection committee method.
• This is after the second time that the name of the CBSE chairperson has been recommended by the HRD Ministry and rejected by the ACC.

IIT Mumbai has chosen Khadi as the convocation robe after Gujarat University.

• Popularity of Khadi has fascinated them to place an order for 3,500 uttarias or angavastrams made of honey comb towel cotton Khadi for use by students at the time of Institute’s convocation. It is a significant development.
• This shows that Khadi is gaining ground in every sphere of life.

Kendriya Vidaylaya CRPF Amerigog, Guwahati has won the National Youth Parliament Competition for 2015-2016 organised by the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs.

• Winners of the competition for KVs who were felicitated include Ambala, Delhi, Jaipur and Maudrai.

Prashikshak was launched to strengthen District Institutes of Education and Training (DIETs) and bring quality teachers into the Indian school education system.

• ‘Prashikshak’ was launched through Video Conference with DIET Principals across 6 States
• This is the first initiative of its kind in India