Education Briefs

Manipal Education-MeritTrac merger

The Manipal and Bangalore-based Manipal Education Group (MEG) has acquired a majority 70 percent equity stake in MeritTrac, India’s largest skills assessment/testing company, for a sum of Rs.52.5 crore. This transaction will result in the merger of Manipal’s Pariksha Online assessment/testing portal with MeritTrac. The combined entity will be known as MeritTrac and will become the clear leader in assessment in both offline and on-line formats across the education spectrum. With a total workforce of over 450 people, the combined entity will conduct over 2 million assessment tests per year.

"The Manipal Group believes in leveraging strategic tie-ups and investments for growth. The investment in MeritTrac is consistent with this philosophy, and will fuel the growth of this sector in India. This transaction also affirms our leadership in the area of higher education services," said Ranjan Pai, chief executive of the Manipal apex level holding company Manipal Education & Medical Group, speaking on the occasion.

Speaking on behalf of MeritTrac, Madan Padaki co-founder and director of the company was equally enthusiastic about the future of the merged entity. "We are very excited to begin a new era in the history of MeritTrac. Between MeritTrac and Pariksha there are tremendous complementarities, which will lead to significant achievements and result in creating a much larger platform for meeting the demands of the fast-growing assessments/testing market. We will also be able to leverage MEG’s existing network of operations across India and globally," said Padaki.

CRY America has changed its name to Child Rights and You America Inc. The change was announced at a media conference in New York on May 2. CRY America is an active partner of Child Rights and You (CRY), India. The key speakers at the media conference included Shefali Sunderlal, president, CRY America; Ingrid Srinath, chief executive officer, CRY India; businesswoman Meera Gandhi and Nandan Maluste, trustee of CRY India.

"Millions of children across India are excluded from the rights most American children take for granted — education, healthcare, protection from exploitation and abuse. Charity alone is woefully inadequate to the task of ensuring sustainable change on any significant scale. Unless we address the root causes of this situation — endemic poverty, gender bias, class and caste divides and misgovernance — we will only be scratching the surface of the problem. CRY’s experience in thousands of rural, tribal and slum communities over 28 years has proven that the rights approach is the only one that makes a sustainable difference," said Srinath explaining the rationale for the change of nomenclature.

Shefali Sunderlal, president of CRY America endorsed the change of names of CRY India and its US counterpart. "The relief approach treats children as objects of sympathy needing our help, while the rights approach reiterates that we are only giving children what they are entitled to as citizens. The change of name underscores our belief that children’s rights cannot be compromised. We believe that each one of us can make a difference and that together, we will create a movement that irrevocably changes children’s lives."

Over four years CRY America has transformed the lives of more than 80,000 children by supporting 16 not-for-profit organisations in India and the US.

The Bangalore-based BNM Institute of Technology (BNMIT) in association with the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIIT-B) is organising a two-day National Workshop on Wireless Communications on August 17-18 at the J.N. Tata auditorium of the Indian Institute of Science. Prof. S. Sadagopan, director of IIIT-B, will deliver the keynote address.

"The objective of this workshop is to provide a platform for academicians, scientists, engineers and industrial entrepreneurs to discuss the latest advances, developments, technology trends and challenges in the field of wireless communication. This workshop is supported by the government of Karnataka’s departments of IT, biotechnology and science and technology, as well as the Advanced Computing and Communication Society," says Dr. K. Ranga, principal of BNMIT.

According to Ranga, brainstorming technical sessions at the two-day workshop will feature presentations by subject experts from IISc, IITs, IIIT-B, ISRO, Wipro Technologies, IBM, Microsoft, Motorola, D-Link, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, SiRF India, ARC, ACS and others.

For registration and booking of stalls, delegates and companies contact Prof. T.J. Rama Murthy at 98453 57806 or e-mail: slskumar@rediffmail.com.

A debate on the merits and demerits of sex education in schools was jointly organised by EducationWorld and Oxford Bookstore in Bangalore on May 11. The speakers for and against the motion ‘Resistance to sex education in school is ill-advised’, were Dr. Shekar Seshadri professor of child and adolescent services at the National Institute of Mental Health & Neurosciences (NIMHANS), and M.N. Sriram, president of the All India Democratic Students Organisation (Karnataka), respectively.

Dr. Seshadri argued that against the backdrop of the raging HIV-AIDS epidemic and growing incidence of child abuse in India, it is important for children to be given age appropriate sex education for their safety as also to enable them to make responsible choices. "Responsible sex education should not only stress the mechanics of sex but encompass the entire gamut of sexual experiences including love, affection, eroticism and care and concern for the object of one’s attention. Sex education on these lines is not only advisable but necessary for the well-being and healthy development of children," he said.

On the other hand Sriram said AIDSO is not opposed to sex education per se but doesn’t approve of the textbooks prescribed for school students. "The material developed by National AIDS Control Organisation and Unesco for teaching the subject in schools is recklessly written and is likely to prompt risky sexual experimentation and immorality. It needs to be recast and written responsibly," he argued.