Current Affair 1:

Ministry of Education to release a detailed Report on Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) 2020-21

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Ministry of Education will be releasing a detailed report on Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) 2020-21 on school education of India.

Findings:

Students and Teachers in schools:

• In 2020-21 total students enrolled in school education from primary to higher secondary stood at 25.38 crore. There is an increase of 28.32 lakh enrolments as compared to the 25.10 crore enrolment in 2019-20.
• Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) which measure the general level of participation has improved in 2020-21 at all levels of school education compared to 2019-20.  Level wise GER in 2020-21 as compared to 2019-20 are:  92.2% from 89.7% in upper primary, 99.1 % from 97.8% in elementary, 79.8% from 77.9% in secondary and 53.8% from 51.4% in higher secondary respectively.
• 6.96 lakh teachers are engaged in school education during 2020-21. This is higher by about 8800 in comparison with number of teachers in school education in 2019-20.
• In 2020-21 the Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR) stood at 26 for primary, 19 for upper primary, 18 for secondary and 26 for higher secondary, showing an improvement since 2018-19. The PTR for primary, upper primary, secondary and higher secondary was 28, 20, 21, and 30 respectively during 2018-19.
• In 2020-21 over 12.2 crore girls are enrolled in primary to higher secondary showing  an increase of 11.8 lakh girls compared to the enrolment of girls in 2019-20.

Non-teaching staffs

The number of non-teaching staffs has also improved over the years. Total non-teaching staffs during 2020-21 stood at 15.8 lakh as compared to 12.37 lakhs in 2018-19. Among, the non-teaching staffs, number of accountants, library assistants, laboratory assistants, head clerks, LDC/UDC staffs has grown from 5.79 lakh to 7.8 lakh by adding 2.05 lakh from 2018-19 to 2020-21.

School Infrastructure:

• Schools with functional electricity have made impressive progress during 2020-21 with net addition of 57,799 schools provided electricity. Now 84% of the total schools have functional electricity facility in comparison with 73.85% in 2018-19 showing remarkable improvement of 10.15% during the period.
• Percentage of the schools with functional drinking water has increased to 95.2 % in 2020-21 from 93.7 % in 2019-20.
• Percentage of the school with functional girl’s toilet facility has increased to 93.91 % in 2020-21 in comparison with 93.2 % in 2019-20 by adding the facility in additional 11,933 schools during the year.
• Number of schools having functional computers increased to 6 lakhs in 2020-21 from 5.5 lakh in 2019-20 showing an increasing of 3 %. Now, 40% of the schools have functional computers.
• Number of schools having internet facility increased to 3.7 lakh in 2020-21 from 3.36 lakh in 2019-20 with an increase of 2.6%.

About:

About Unified District Information on School Education (UDISE)

Introduction:

The Indian school Education System is one of the largest in the world with more than 15 lakh schools, nearly 97 lakh teachers and nearly 26.5 Crore students1 of pre-primary to higher secondary level from varied socio-economic backgrounds. The system strives to maintain standards and uniformity across the country while giving ample scope for the country’s diverse culture and heritage to grow and flourish.

A robust, real time and credible information collection mechanism is an essential prerequisite for an objective evaluation of the system, based on which specific interventions for improvement can be designed.

Unified District Information on School Education (UDISE) initiated in 2012-13 integrating District Information System for Education (DISE) for elementary education and Secondary Education Management Information System (SEMIS) for secondary education is one of the largest Management Information Systems on School Education.

What was the problem with UDISE system?

Under the UDISE system, the schools fed the data manually at the school level in paper version of the Data Capture Format (DCF). These paper DCFs were computerised at block level or at district level, collated at State/UT level and thereafter shared with the Central Government to build a national database.

With an aim to overcome the limitations of the UDISE system, the Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSEL) has developed the UDISE+ system with many unique features and introduced it from the reference year 2018-19.

 

Current Affair 2:

Scientists develop energy-efficient hydrogen production by urea electrolysis

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Indian Scientists have designed an electrocatalyst system for energy-efficient hydrogen production with the help of electrolysis of urea. The urea electrolysis is helpful towards urea-based waste treatment with low-cost hydrogen production. This can be utilized for energy production towards our country's benefits.

The energy requirement for production of hydrogen through water electrolysis can be reduced by 70 % through urea electrolysis. The energy-intensive counterpart of water splitting, oxygen evolution, can be replaced with urea oxidation in urea electrolysis. The low-cost, earth-abundant Ni-based catalysts are widely applied for this process.

The main challenge associated with urea oxidation is retaining the prolonged activity of the catalyst as the strong adsorption of the reactive intermediate (COx) on the active site, referred to as catalyst poisoning, causes activity loss.

In the end, Scientists have developed this Nickel oxide (NiOx) based system for producing hydrogen from electro-oxidation of urea.

The urea electrolysis is helpful towards urea-based waste treatment with low-cost hydrogen production. India is one of the top countries by urea production, and it produced 244.55 LMT of urea during 2019-20. The nitrogenous fertilizer industries generate a high concentration of ammonia and urea as effluents. This can be utilized for energy production towards our country's benefits.

Current Affair 3:

Kerala High Court: Medical Services’ fall within ambit of Consumer Protection Act, 2019

 

During the hearing of a petition in Dr Vijil & Ors vs. Ambujakshi T.P & Anr., the bench headed by Justice N. Nagaresh held that medical services will come under the purview of section 2(42) of the consumer protection act, 2019.

The bench was hearing a petition filed by a group of doctors to declare that complaints under medical negligence and deficiency of services do not come under the jurisdiction of the consumer fora under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019.

The counsel for petitioners argued that the draft consumer protection bill included the health sector under section 2(42) but was removed in the enacted bill.

The new law, despite medical service/profession being declared to be included in ‘service’ under old Consumer Act removed it from the newly enacted section 2(42) of the Act, 2019. This shows the intention of the Parliament not to include medical service/profession under the ambit of the new consumer protection act, 2019. Also, the lack of experts except at the National Commission level in consumer protection courts adds weight to this argument.

 

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