Education Community

A gender equity curriculum will be incorporated into the curriculum for students in all government schools in Odisha in order to change their views, aspirations, and behaviour. The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-Pal), South Asia, and the women’s rights organisation Breakthrough inked a memorandum of understanding with the School Education Department on Monday in Bhubaneswar. According to a formal statement, the curriculum includes interactive class discussions to educate adolescent boys and girls to consider the culturally embedded gender norms, roles, and discriminatory practises. By August, it will be included in the social studies curriculum for both boys and girls in classes 6 – 10 at more than 18,000 elementary and 5,000 secondary schools. J-Pal South Asia executive director Shobhini Mukerji said, “Adolescence presents a crucial window of opportunity to change even deeply-rooted norms and instil more progressive gender attitudes.” Breakthrough will collaborate with the department to integrate the curriculum into the syllabus, contextualise it, educate teachers, gather teacher feedback, hold workshops, and involve parents in the process. To make sure the programme is meeting its goals to produce insights for long-term, high-quality government implementation of the curriculum, J-Pal will carry out independent monitoring activities. “Gender equality is very important. We are working on it.” School Education Minister Samir Dash said. Positive gender attitudes, parental support for daughters’ education, an improvement in the sex ratio, and higher rates of female labour force participation are all anticipated outcomes of the programme. The project intends to offer girls options for their education and employment, keep them in school for a greater number of years, reduce dropout rates, and raise the age of marriage and first childbirth. Sohini Bhattacharya, the chief executive officer of Breakthrough, emphasised that gender perceptions are developed at a young age. “Therefore, we need to ensure that children, especially those between the 10-15 years, have access to the right information related to gender equality, legal rights, and healthy gender behaviours,” Bhattacharya stated. The state’s sustainable development goals (SDG) of gender equality and high-quality education would be more easily attained with the support of the Gender Equity Programme. Principal secretary, school education secretary department, Bishnupada Sethi said, “We’ll have wide-ranging topics that will be covered in schools as part of this programme in our continued efforts to build a gender-equal world.” Source: PTI

Prof. Ashok Banerjee has been appointed as the new director of IIM Udaipur as of today. IIM Calcutta faculty member Prof. Banerjee succeeds Prof. Janat Shah, who has led the organisation since its establishment in 2011. Prof. Banerjee is a chartered accountant who also possesses a PhD from Rajasthan University in addition to an MCom from Calcutta University. According to a release from IIM-U, the new director has extensive expertise as a senior professor in the field of finance and control. His areas of interest for study include sentiment analysis, Fintech, and high-frequency finance. From 2012 until 2015, he served as the Dean of New Initiatives and External Relations at IIM Calcutta. He worked as a professor at IIM Lucknow before moving on to IIM Calcutta. On the boards of companies in the financial and technology sectors, he also serves as an independent director. IIM Calcutta Innovation Park, which is recognised by the Department of Science & Technology as a Technology Business Incubator, was established at IIM Calcutta during Prof. Banerjee’s tenure as Dean. The Financial Research and Trading Laboratory of IIM Calcutta was established by Prof. Banerjee, who also served as its coordinator. At IIM Calcutta, he played a key role in launching the International Finance Conference in 2009. Now known as the India Finance Conference, it is jointly put on by IIM Calcutta, IIM Bangalore, and IIM Ahmedabad. Following the completion of Prof. Janat Shah’s second term, Prof. Banerjee was appointed. He was in charge for 11 years in all, starting with the first term and continuing for an additional year in between. IIM Udaipur has become a highly regarded and recognised institution under Prof. Shah’s leadership. The fourth IIM and youngest B-School to receive ACCSB or EQUIS accreditation was IIM Udaipur. In 2021, it became the youngest B-School in Asia and only the third IIM to be ranked in the prestigious FT Global Top 100 MIM Rankings for a third consecutive year.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has announced that starting on Friday, more than 23,000 higher education courses, including programmes on artificial intelligence (AI), cyber security, and early childhood care, would be offered for free on a new web portal. The portal aims to bridge the digital divide and improve access to higher education in rural areas of the nation. As part of the National Education Policy-2020’s second aniversary, it will be unveiled on Friday. In order to offer these courses starting with the upcoming academic session of 2022–2023, the UGC has partnered with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to integrate the e-resources with their more than 7.5 lakh Common Service Centers (CSC) and Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) Centers. According to UGC Chairman M Jagadesh Kumar, “as part of its efforts in making higher education accessible to all, the UGC has been constantly working in making digital resources available to students in English as well as regional languages.” The CSC aims to provide individuals, particularly those in rural India, access to digital technology and to e-government services right at their doorstep. More than 5 lakh CSC/SPV centres are operational throughout the nation, while about 2.5 lakh CSCs and SPVs are in use in gram panchayats. “The CSCs and SPVs are being managed and operated by entrepreneurs who belong to the local community and referred to as village level entrepreneurs (VLEs). VLEs operate the centres to earn their living by delivering online services. These centres have computers and internet connectivity,” Kumar stated. There are 23,000 postgraduate courses in addition to 25 non-engineering SWAYAM courses and 137 SWAYAM MOOC courses in emerging fields. These can be accessed for free on the UGC portal. Source: PTI