Latest news with #NationalInstituteofOpenSchooling
Indian Express
4 hours ago
- General
- Indian Express
Against All Odds: Inside a school with no bells, benches or books; just learning through observation
When children arrive at Gokul learning centre in the morning, they don't rush to find their assigned seats as there are no benches to sit on, no uniforms to straighten, and no morning bell to signal the start of classes. Instead, the day begins with the gentle notes of traditional Indian music floating through the air. Dr Jyotsna Pethkar, founder of Gokul and a medical practitioner, had a simple dream. 'During my schooling, I always felt I could have experienced open classrooms and explored topics beyond textbooks,' she explains. Thirteen years ago, she decided to make that dream a reality. Today, Gokul operates like no other conventional school. There are no rigid timetables, no heavy textbooks to carry, and no pressure of scoring high marks. Yet, students here learn everything from mathematics, science, economics, to languages and social studies, but in a different way. 'Our focus is on observation-oriented learning,' Pethkar says. 'We don't follow the structured pattern you see in conventional schools with separate lectures for each subject.' Instead of opening textbooks, Gokul's day starts with something far more exciting: current affairs discussions. The first hour and a half is dedicated to talking about what's happening in the world. When a news story like the Iran-Israel conflict comes up, it doesn't stay just a news item. The discussion naturally flows into the history of the region, the geography of the countries involved, how it affects India, what people there eat, how their economy works, and much more. 'Students love this way of teaching because it's interesting,' Pethkar explains. 'One topic connects to another, and before they know it, they've learned history, geography, economics, and international relations, all from a single news story.' Indrayani Chavan, who also teaches at Gokul and is an Indology expert, has seen how this approach transforms learning. 'All students participate in the discussions, listen carefully, and get their concepts cleared. There's no need for rote learning, so students learn without stress.' Unlike most traditional schools, Gokul believes in preparing children for life. The school day runs from 9 am to 2:30 pm with a brief recess. In these hours, children are engaged in various areas such as cooking, first-aid training, communication, astronomy sessions, field visits, debates, painting, sports, and dance, among others, alongside their regular academic tasks. 'We have limited intake, so as to focus on each child,' Chavan explains. 'Through periodic evaluation, we get an idea about each student's interests and likes. This makes it easier for parents to decide about their child's future.' The school admits students between ages 6 and 14. After completing their time at Gokul, students enroll with the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) for their tenth standard board exams and then continue to colleges of their choice. Moreover, one of the advantages noticed is the reduced stress on their children. 'I used to be in conventional school till fourth grade, where I was forced to learn Science, Math and other subjects while I loved painting. After admission to Gokul, I used to be guided by domain experts and invested the majority of my daily time in painting, which landed me in the National Institute of Fashion Technology in Bengaluru,' says Vedika Gadgil, first-year student at NIFT. 'There was no pressure for higher percentages. Children get adequate rest and can spend time honing essential skills in art, sports, and other areas. Even they excel after getting into the competitive entrance exams as learning has been concept-based, focused on understanding through field visits, and practical experience in addition to theoretical touch,' Vedika adds. Over 13 years, six batches of students have passed from Gokul, and the results have been encouraging. 'Students develop better clarity in thoughts and decision-making, which makes it easier for them to choose their careers,' Chavan says. Speaking to The Indian Express, Shraddha Mokashi, a school psychologist, says, 'As a parent, I have noticed my daughter is more confident, asks better questions, and has a genuine curiosity about the world around them. She loves cricket, and since she's not required to attend coaching classes she can train for at least 4 hours daily in the sport.'
Time of India
3 days ago
- General
- Time of India
DM inspects girls' shelter home, instructs officials to improve facilities
Kanpur: Responding to requests from the Government Girls' Shelter House, district magistrate Jitendra Pratap Singh directed the probation officer on Thursday to arrange various types of skilled training for the girls to become self-sufficient. During a random visit to the Swaroop Nagar Girls' Shelter Home, the district magistrate interacted with the girls, inquiring about their studies, interests, needs, and future plans. He instructed the superintendent to ensure all girls receive a safe and supportive environment. He also emphasized the importance of timely health check-ups, cleanliness, and quality food. The district magistrate inspected the kitchen, residential rooms, toilets, and other facilities, noting cleanliness and issuing instructions for improvement. He expressed concern over education, stating that qualified teachers should be arranged and classes conducted for the regular education of the girls. The district probation officer announced that efforts are being made at the govt level to arrange open education through NIOS (National Institute of Open Schooling) to enable the girls to continue their studies regularly. During the inspection, the district magistrate observed the girls making rakhis and appreciated their creative work. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Stylish New Mobility Scooters Available for Seniors (Prices May Surprise You) Mobility Scooter | Search Ads Search Now Undo The girls also tied 'raksha sutra' to him with affection. Meanwhile, before Raksha Bandhan, the district magistrate's camp office was filled with emotions and joy as special children from Pushpa Khanna Memorial Center, Nawabganj, arrived to tie rakhi to the DM. Singh interacted affectionately with the children and presented them with a basket of sweets and chocolates. Stay updated with the latest local news from your city on Times of India (TOI). Check upcoming bank holidays , public holidays , and current gold rates and s ilver prices in your area.
Hindustan Times
5 days ago
- General
- Hindustan Times
Students found absent without valid leave record may not be allowed to appear in board exams: CBSE
NEW DELHI: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has warned schools that students found absent without valid leave records during surprise inspections were liable to be treated as non-attending or dummy candidates and would not be allowed to appear in the board examinations 2026. (instagram/cbse_hq_1929/) CBSE has decided to bar students enrolled in 'dummy schools' – where pupils are enrolled on paper but skip regular classes to focus on private coaching for engineering and medical entrance examinations. 'We have amended our examination bylaws to prohibit such students from appearing in the board exams, requiring them to take the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) exam instead,' a senior CBSE official said. CBSE exam controller Sanyam Bhardwaj on Monday told principals and heads of schools affiliated to the board to inform students and parents about the mandatory 75% attendance requirement criteria and the potential consequences of not meeting this criterion. 'Leave without a written request will be considered unauthorised absence from the school,' Bhardwaj said in his letter to the schools. According to rules 13 and 14 of the CBSE's examination bylaws, students must have at least 75% attendance to be eligible for board exams. A relaxation of up to 25% is allowed only in exceptional cases like medical emergencies or participation in national-level events, with proper documentation. Bhardwaj told the schools in the letter that students must submit a leave application along with valid medical documentation immediately after availing the leave in case of medical emergencies and inform the school of their absence with a valid reason, and only in writing for other reasons. '...If it is observed at the time of sudden inspection of the schools by CBSE that students are absent without proper leave records, it will be presumed that they are not attending the schools regularly and may be treated as non-attending/dummy candidates. CBSE shall not allow such students to appear in the Board examinations,' the letter said. Bhardwaj also said schools with incomplete attendance records or evidence of irregular student attendance may face strict action, including disaffiliation and the affected students could also be barred from appearing in board exams. CBSE has directed schools to maintain accurate daily attendance records, signed by the class teacher and school authorities, and keep them ready for inspection. The board has also directed the schools to inform parents in writing if a student frequently misses classes or falls short of the attendance requirement, warning that non-compliance may lead to disqualification from board exams. Bhardwaj warned the schools that no changes to attendance records will be allowed after schools submit shortage cases, and stressed that regular attendance was crucial for both exam eligibility and student development. According to information available on CBSE's website, the board has 31,075 affiliated schools. On July 31, CBSE conducted surprise inspections at 15 schools in Delhi, Chandigarh, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and Andhra Pradesh to verify suspicions that they were violating affiliation norms by enrolling 'non-attending' or dummy students in Classes 11 and 12. In January, the Delhi High Court called the dummy schools a 'fraud' and directed the Delhi government and CBSE to take action against them. CBSE counsel informed the court that action had been taken against over 300 'dummy' schools across the country. CBSE also withdrew affiliation from 21 schools in Rajasthan and Delhi in November last year, following a significant number of non-attending students in Classes 9 to 12 during surprise inspections in September. The board also downgraded the affiliation of six schools in Delhi.
The Hindu
24-07-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
Exposing children early to concept of disability is the way to go
In a significant move toward inclusive education, the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD), in partnership with the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) and the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), recently signed a landmark tripartite memorandum of understanding (MoU). The goal: to reform school curricula so that children — able-bodied or otherwise — are exposed early to the concept of disability, and gain a foundational understanding of the rights enshrined in the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act, 2016. This move sends a clear and urgent message: if we want inclusion in our buildings, streets, workplaces, and public spaces, we must first build it into our textbooks. It's a long-overdue recognition that inclusion is not a regulatory requirement to be complied with; it's a cultural norm that must be taught, modelled, and absorbed. And nowhere is this shift more urgently needed than in the fields of architecture, engineering, and urban development — professions that literally shape the world around us. What this project to reform school-level education acknowledges, the built environment sector in India still fails to grasp: inclusion is not a checkbox; it cannot be coerced; it has to be inculcated. Take the example of Delhi, it continues to be a city where persons with disabilities are systematically excluded by design. According to a 2016 access audit conducted under the Union government's Accessible India Campaign, nearly 30% of government buildings in the capital lacked ramps, 82% of public toilets were inaccessible, and 94% of healthcare facilities were not designed with people with disabilities in mind. These figures are not just numbers — they represent an everyday denial of rights. Despite growing awareness, the fundamental issues of coordination, enforcement, and mandatory design education remain unresolved — leaving Delhi's built environment far from inclusive. An afterthought The root of the problem is that the people designing and constructing these buildings — engineers, architects, developers — often have little to no training in disability inclusion. Stakeholders implementing the Unified Building Bylaws (UBBL), a comprehensive set of regulations and guidelines for the construction, alteration, and maintenance of buildings within the National Capital Territory of Delhi, frequently point to a significant knowledge gap. Unlike fire safety, which enjoys a secure place in engineering and architectural curricula and is baked into compliance processes, accessibility is treated as an afterthought — if it appears at all. Two of India's most competitive and prestigious programmes illustrate this gap with uncomfortable clarity. The in computer science and engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, despite its centrality to digital product and systems design, includes no foundational training in accessible technology or inclusive design. The program at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, one of the country's top institutions for urban design, often treats accessibility as an elective or a niche specialisation, not as a non-negotiable design principle. These courses represent the aspirational apex of technical education in India. If the engineers and architects coming out of these programmes are not trained in disability inclusion, what can one hope for broader systemic change? Most crucially, it's not that India lacks a legal framework for accessibility. Quite the opposite. The RPwD Act, 2016 — specifically Sections 40 and 44 lay out clear obligations for accessible infrastructure. The Harmonised Guidelines, 2021, provide detailed technical standards. Delhi's UBBL, in chapter 11, lays down clear accessibility requirements for public-use buildings — sloped ramps, tactile flooring, accessible toilets, appropriate signage, and more. These essentially accessibility mandates are echoed in varying details in the Harmonised Guidelines and Space Standards (2021) and the National Building Code, respectively. Delhi's Master Plan, 2041 even commits to building inclusive recreational spaces and public infrastructure. And yet, even after the Supreme Court's landmark judgment in Rajive Raturi vs Union of India (2024), which ruled that accessibility standards must be mandatory, not optional, implementation remains patchy. Because the real bottleneck isn't the law — it's the capacity to apply it. As one stakeholder in one of our consultations, succinctly put it: 'Engineers don't know what's expected of them. And no one teaches them.' Developers, despite their central role in shaping the built environment, are not even mentioned in UBBL's accountability frameworks, in terms of the compliances they have to meet and the penalties in cases of non-compliance. And technical professionals including engineers and architects across the board rarely receive training in accessibility compliance. The result? Projects that, at most, check some legal boxes without meeting real-world needs. Buildings that pass inspections but fail people. There is an increasing temptation to correct this through penalties. But penalties cannot substitute education. The RPwD Act, 2016 does contain provisions for penalising non-compliance: Section 89 prescribes a fine of up to ₹10,000 for a first offence and ₹50,000 to ₹5 lakh for subsequent offences for any person who contravenes provisions of the Act, including accessibility mandates. The enforcement mechanism under the UBBL also leans heavily on punitive penalties while offering little in the way of structural accountability or institutional clarity, which should ideally include training, capacity building, accessibility licensing requirements, among others. Under the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, 1957, unauthorised construction — including deviations from sanctioned plans — can attract criminal penalties such as imprisonment for up to six months, fines up to ₹5,000, or both. Furthermore, the UBBL states that professionals, including engineers and architects, 'run the risk of having his/her licence cancelled' in cases of misrepresentation or deviation, and allows for delisting and public naming on authority websites, with information forwarded to the Council of Architecture for further action. What results is a framework that focuses on punishment in theory, but lacks the practical tools to ensure prevention, detection, or redress. Enforcement exists on paper, but accountability dissolves in practice. Yet, despite these legal tools and even with express legal provision, enforcement on the ground remains weak, inconsistent, and often tokenistic. Meaning legal coercion is clearly not working. Courts have also recognised this gap. In Nipun Malhotra vs GNCTD (2018), the Delhi High Court explicitly cited the lack of sensitisation among authorities regarding the rights of persons with disabilities. The court stressed that such ignorance often stems from a lack of training and education in accessibility standards. Similarly, in a complaint regarding inaccessible market areas in south Delhi, the Delhi State Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities, tasked with the implementation of the RPwD Act and adjudicating disputes under the same, ordered that not just municipal engineers and architects but even contractors and masons should be given structured accessibility training. Inclusion must be inculcated This is precisely why the DEPwD's MoU with NCERT and NIOS must not be viewed as an isolated reform, but rather as a foundational template for deeper, structural transformation across professional education. While school curricula now embed inclusion as a civic value, that same commitment must extend to higher education — particularly in architecture, engineering, and planning. Institutions such as the All India Council for Technical Education, the Council of Architecture, and other regulatory bodies must integrate accessibility not as a peripheral topic or optional module, but as a core design competency. Students should graduate not only with the ability to calculate structural loads or design building façades, but with the sensitivity and skills to plan tactile pathways for the visually challenged and ensure ramps are not just technically compliant, but genuinely usable. Because accessibility is not only a matter of compliance; it is a matter of compassion. Unless professionals are educated to internalise this ethos from school through university, no volume of policies, laws, or litigations will rectify the physical and social barriers we continue to cement into our cities. This is particularly urgent now, as in pursuance of the directions of the Supreme court to delineate the minimum non-negotiable standards for accessibility of built environment, the DEPwD called for public comments on a fresh draft of the Built Environment Accessibility Rules in May 2025. As much as the public comments are being collated and incorporated, as a positive step in disability governance, without parallel reform in education, another set of rules will only add to bureaucratic saturation — an ever-expanding stack of paperwork that does little to change what gets built on the ground. To avoid repeating the cycle of well-meaning but toothless compliance, the rulebook must be matched by a textbook — one that does not impose accessibility as a compliance burden, but inculcates it as a first nature. Anchal Bhatheja is a Research Fellow, Disability, Inclusion and Access Team, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy; Views are personal
India Today
14-07-2025
- General
- India Today
CBSE asks schools to support open school board exams in October-November 2025
CBSE has asked its affiliated schools to assist in conducting the NIOS Public Examinations scheduled for October-November an official notification issued to school principals and heads, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) highlighted the importance of institutional support for the exams conducted by the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), which holds public examinations twice every year for Class 10, Class 12, and vocational board said, 'The next Public Examinations of NIOS is scheduled to be held in the month of October/November, 2025,' and emphasised that the infrastructure and cooperation of CBSE-affiliated schools are essential for smooth conduct of these REQUESTED TO REGISTER WILLINGNESS CBSE has instructed schools to express their willingness to become examination centres by filling out an online form available on the NIOS website: >> Examination Centre >> Register NowIn its official letter, CBSE stated, 'Your assistance will help NIOS in holding Public Examinations of its learners.'This initiative aims to ensure that learners registered with NIOS -- many of whom belong to disadvantaged or marginalised backgrounds -- can appear for their exams at accessible and properly managed PLAYS A VITAL ROLE IN INCLUSIVE EDUCATIONThe National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) is recognised as the largest open schooling system in under the Ministry of Education, NIOS provides flexible and inclusive educational opportunities to students who are unable to participate in the conventional schooling offers a wide range of academic options for secondary and senior secondary education, alongside vocational and life enrichment programmes, designed to meet the diverse learning needs of its student FROM CBSE-AFFILIATED SCHOOLS ESSENTIALBy contributing infrastructure and resources, CBSE schools play a critical role in helping NIOS conduct its exams October-November 2025 exams will mark another important cycle in offering accessible education to all CBSE's appeal, more schools are expected to come forward and partner with NIOS, reinforcing a shared commitment to inclusive and equitable quality education.- Ends
