In preparation for online delivery of question papers in the future, the Department of Pre-University Education (DPUE) will be creating a question bank for all subjects of the Science, Commerce, and Humanities streams. The question bank will be exhaustive and cover every subject of both first and second year PUC. It will have a variety of one-mark, two-mark and five-mark questions.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

The state government will attempt to create education complexes on a pilot basis in the coming academic year, said primary and secondary education minister Tanveer Sait. “We will start one Urdu school in each taluk, with support from the minorities department, and one Kannada medium school. The schools will be in two stages of Class 1 to 8 and 9 to 12,” Sait said, speaking to DH. Cluster-level surveys for the implementation of the pilot have been undertaken and training of teachers has begun, he said. Existing infrastructure will be used for the purpose. He was participating in a workshop and convention on education organised by Karnataka State High School Assistant Masters’ Association on Monday.

The state government will attempt to create education complexes on a pilot basis in the coming academic year, said primary and secondary education minister Tanveer Sait. “We will start one Urdu school in each taluk, with support from the minorities department, and one Kannada medium school. The schools will be in two stages of Class 1 to 8 and 9 to 12,” Sait said, speaking to DH. Cluster-level surveys for the implementation of the pilot have been undertaken and training of teachers has begun, he said. Existing infrastructure will be used for the purpose. He was participating in a workshop and convention on education organised by Karnataka State High School Assistant Masters’ Association on Monday.

The decision of the Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board (KSEEB) to provide the question paper and answer booklet separately in this year’s SSLC exam has caused anxiety among high school teachers. “In a hurry, the students may write the wrong question number against their answers or forget to write numbers for sub-questions. They may stand to lose marks for such errors,” said the headmaster of a private school in Bengaluru.

The unexplained closing of several branches of the TreeHouse playschool chain in the city has left parents in a fix, with three months to go this academic year. The playgroup, headquartered in Mumbai, has 18 branches in the city, according to its website. In December, several branches closed early for the Christmas vacation without any explanation, arousing the suspicion of parents.

Traditional classrooms with one-way transfer of knowledge from teacher to student will slowly become a thing of the past. Alternative forms of education, which encourage exchange and interaction, are now entering the pre-school space too. A hybrid between homeschooling and conventional pre-schools, Playjam is one such experimental method for early-learners. Run by George Supreeth, Smitha Shivaswamy, Mubarrah Khan and Aditya B M, Playjam sessions are weekly meetings where parents and children explore concepts from a wide-range of topics.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

High school students in remote villages of Karnataka will soon get a chance to explore planets, galaxies and the universe right on their school premises. Mobile planetaria will go from school to school as part of a project by the Department of Science and Technology. Bringing the stars to the students will be customised vans carrying domes and telescopes. One van will travel in each of the four revenue divisions over a period of three years.

A civil contempt petition has been filed against the Deputy Commissioner of Bengaluru Urban district in the high court for not heeding to the court’s judgement passed on June 28, with regard to fixing fees in private schools. The petitioners are nine students, studying in private schools in the city, who have appealed to the court to take action against DC V Shankar who is the chairperson of the District-level Education Regulating Authority Urban District (DERA).