Assam
Youth mentoring programmes
Addressing 200 serving and retired civil servants of the Assam cadre in Guwahati on October 22, chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal launched ‘Arohan’, a mentoring programme for the state’s aspirational youth.
The chief minister underlined the programme’s importance in guiding youth to fulfill their career goals and appealed to the bureaucracy to aid the programme with dedication. “All serving IAS, IPS and IFS officers of the state should inspire youth to aim big and become worthy citizens of the country,” he said.
Present on the occasion, education minister Dr. Himanta Biswa Sarma also reminded the audience of the state government’s ‘Gunotsav’ programme under which serving and retired officers are enabled to visit government schools and monitor their functioning, participate in school activities and even join students for the free mid-day meal.
Tamil Nadu
Cellphone usage breach
Seven teachers of three government and aided schools in Erode district have been issued showcause notices for using mobile phones in their classrooms, in breach of a 2007 government order. This was disclosed to the media by chief educational officer (Erode district) P. Ayyanan, on October 20.
“During a surprise inspection carried out in some schools recently, teachers were found using mobile phones in classrooms during official school hours. This is against the directive given to all headmasters of state government and aided schools to strictly prohibit the use of mobile phones during class hours,” said Ayyanan, adding that a notice had also been issued to headmasters in this connection.
Haryana
Women’s safety directive
Chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar has directed the state government’s public transport ministry to provide special single sex buses for girl students in higher and technical education institutions across the state.
Presiding over a meeting to review the functioning of the transport, housing and prisons ministries/departments on October 13, the chief minister underlined that provision of safe and convenient transport facilities for women college and university students is a top priority of the government.
He also directed the transport ministry to construct well-lit bus stops in the vicinity of education institutions for the convenience of students, and urged officials to draw up a plan to ensure that all undergrad students acquire learner’s driving licenses before they graduate.
Odisha
Czech award for Samanta
The Metropolitan University of Prague (MUP) — the oldest and largest private university in the Czech Republic — has conferred an honorary doctorate degree on Achyuta Samanta, founder-director of the Bhubaneswar-based Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT, estb. 1992) and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS, estb. 1993).
Samanta was awarded the honour at the graduation ceremony of MUP for integrating quality education with human values and social service, said a KIIT communiqué issued on October 16. Since its inception, this is the first time MUP has conferred an honoris causa degree, it added.
Jammu & Kashmir
Child protection initiative
The education ministry has deputed a team of officials to sensitise students, teachers and heads of 14 selected education institutions about child protection and abuse issues.
The objective of this campaign is to spread awareness about issues related to child abuse, child protection, psychological sensitisation of students and teachers and assessment of guidance and counselling needs, said a government communique issued in Jammu on October 4. “The officials will gather feedback from the field to collate information about best practices,” it added.
Delhi NCR
Smart India Hackathon
In a novel initiative, the Union human resource development ministry has scheduled a ‘Smart India Hackathon’, a 36-hour non-stop digital programming competition, for January 2017. Student teams in 33 centres countrywide will compete to solve cyber-security problems faced by Union government ministries.
“The aim of this initiative is to harness the creativity and technical expertise of students in technology institutes to think out of the box and devise innovative and disruptive technology solutions for some of the daunting problems faced by government ministries,” a senior ministry official informed the media in New Delhi on October 6.
Recently, V.S. Oberoi, higher education secretary in the HRD ministry, wrote to his counterparts in other ministries asking them to identify 30 cyber- security problems which will be addressed by the student teams.