The Department of Pre-University Education (DPUE) has directed its officials to be on the lookout for fake marks cards from different state boards presented by students. Every year, during the admission season, there are several cases of students producing fake marks cards of Class X and XII to obtain eligibility certificates or migration certificates.

The state government has taken up the exercise of studying the syllabi adopted by schools affiliated to international boards to check if they are of the same standards followed by the state board. The study will look into the curriculum of International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE), offered by the Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) in the UK, and the International Baccalaureate (IB) programmes offered by IB organisation, headquartered in Switzerland.

Bengaluru Dr B R Ambedkar School of Economics (BASE), which was proposed on the lines of the London School of Economics, will begin its maiden academic session on August 28 with its first batch of students in the Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Economics. The institute is still in the making but the course structure and syllabus is almost ready and admission of students has been completed. The first batch will have 31 girls and 19 boys, who were selected after holding a Common Entrance Test (CET).

Heeding to the demand of students, the state government has decided to increase the reservation for students of Karnataka domicile from 30% to 50% in the institution seats in private medical and dental colleges.

Uncertainty over possible restrictions on foreign students entering the USA, by the new government, has led to a decline in the number applicants to universities there. Colleges, however, are still welcoming students from India and other countries, said Michael J Schoenfeld, vice-president for public affairs at Duke University, in an interaction with Deccan Herald.

Students of state board schools in Karnataka may have to wait for at least two months for their textbooks this year. Printers have run into a shortage of paper, and complain the government took too long to give them work orders. In all, 511 titles have to be printed, adding up to nearly six crore books.

Besides seeking good education, young students from Africa come here in the hope of having an international experience, learning about a new country, its culture and people. Unfortunately, most of them end up being cheated by agents and even the local experience is unlike what they expect. “The agent said India would be a good place to study, so I came here, even though I didn’t know anyone. They told us that we would get part-time jobs here, like students do in the US but there are no jobs for us,” a student from Nigeria, who wished to remain anonymous, said.

Many parents who were eager to get their children seats in private schools through the Right to Education Act quota were disappointed to find that their applications were not being accepted because their children were born a few days early or late. The Aadhaar-linked online software to apply for 25% of seats in non-minority private schools does not accept applications which do not fall within the age limit set by the department of public instruction.

Come December, these runners are going to lace up their well-worn shoes and sprint to give millets, the forgotten superfood, a push among urban consumers. ‘Miles for Millets’ is a campaign to increase awareness on this homegrown grain by Mera Terah Run collective, a group of volunteers who run for a cause. Conceived in 2014 by Jagdish Damania, an IT professional, Mera Terah run started as a journey to run 13 half-marathons in 13 days, travelling by rail and raising funds for various NGOs. Their effort was even appreciated by the Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu in a letter addressed to them.

Hour-long tests followed by interviews in which the students are asked a series of questions to determine their readiness for a course. These are not for those seeking admissions to college but for children as young as five and six years old. According to the Right To Education Act, no screening process is allowed but schools in Bengaluru continue the practice.

The attack on a doctor by Uttara Kannada Member of Parliament Ananth Kumar Hegde in January 2017, brought the focus back on the vulnerability of medical personnel. This report looks at the implementation of existing laws, concerns of doctors and solutions adopted by hospitals to deal with such attacks.

As filmmakers from across the globe take part in Bengaluru International Film Festival (Biffes) 2017, students from the state’s film institute scramble to get a decent education. Students of the Government Film and Television Institute (GFTI) in the city are approaching filmmakers to draw their attention to the problems in the institute. “The rest of the world has moved on from film cameras, but in our college we have only such outdated equipment. We do not have a single digital camera,” said Shameer Ahammed, a second year student of sound recording department.

As the clamour rises against private schools charging excess fees, the District level Education Regulating Authority (DERA), which has the authority to hear such complaints, has not been able to address the issue for want of reform. The authority in Bengaluru (Urban) district, under the chairmanship of the deputy commissioner, has met only four times in the academic year 2016-17. The number of complaints received in the same period has risen to 66.

Nearly four months after the Ayurveda unit was opened at Kidwai Memorial Institute of Oncology in the city, patients who visit the unit have to return disappointed as there are no medicines to treat their illness. Until medicines are supplied, the few patients who visit the unit have to make do with advice about lifestyle and diet changes they can adopt. Sometimes, they are prescribed reasonably-priced medicines which they can buy from other pharmacies.

With integrated pre-university colleges coming under the scanner yet again, colleges and students are questioning the rules of the department of pre-university education (DPUE). After a complaint from a parent about two such PU colleges in the city, which offer coaching for competitive exams along with the PU syllabus, the department is preparing to take action against others. “We will form teams of officers who will inspect such colleges on a case-to-case basis. If they are teaching subjects outside the prescribed syllabus, we will take action,” an official of DPUE said. However, colleges and students in the city say that the integrated approach is beneficial and the department’s rules are outdated.

The department of Higher Education has written a letter to the Vice-Chancellor of Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU), asking him to take appropriate action against its affiliate Bangalore Institute of Technology (BIT) in a 2015 case of collecting excess fee from a student. The letter dated August 23 from the Principal Secretary (Higher Education) asks VTU to take action based on a report submitted to the government by the chairman of the Admission Overseeing Committee, which has the authority to recommend action against institutions which violate admission procedures.

After decades spent working on structures of complex biomolecules, Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry 2017, Prof Joachim Frank now hopes to add to his achievements by becoming a published fiction writer. Prof Frank, who is currently a professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia University, New York, gave his first public lecture after winning the Nobel at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS), Hesaraghatta, on Wednesday.

When someone is admitted to hospital, doctors not only have to worry about tackling the illness, but they also have to ensure the person is not infected by fellow patients. According to the World Health Organisation, out of every 100 hospitalised patients in developing countries, 10 will be affected by at least one hospital-acquired infection (HAI). Researchers at the Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering Lab of the Indian Institute of Science have developed a method to combat HAIs by giving aluminium surfaces the ability to keep bacteria away and even kill them.