Call to make Indian Legal Education Global

THE Indian legal education system may witness big changes in the coming years. On one hand, while realising the importance of globalisation, law schools have called for making Indian legal education globally relevant. On the other, they are planning to introduce changes to the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) to select students who have the skills to become international lawyers.

These plans were announced at seminars organised in Hyderabad and Delhi recently by US-based Institute of International Education (IIE), an international exchange organisation. The seminars brought together the US Law School Admission Council (LSAC) and the National Law Schools (NLS) of India. “Expansion in business across the world has generated a need for lawyers who are global in their approach. Legal education has to play a big role in creating such lawyers. We at our organisation believe in international exchange of ideas so we thought to facilitate exchange of ideas,” said Ajit Motwani, director, IIE India.

CHANGES IN CLAT

Entrance examinations are an important parameter to select the right candidate. And while CLAT is only a year old, LSAC has the experience of holding Law School Admission Test (LSAT) across US, Australia and Canada for nearly 60 years.

Veer Singh, vice-chancellor of NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, will be the convenor of CLAT 2009. Singh, while elaborating on the plans to introduce changes in the exam, said, “Approximately 1.5 lakh aspirants from three different countries take LSAT. They have proved their credibility in terms of fairness of content, testing candidate on logical and verbal reasoning and language comprehension. So, we want to learn from them the things that can make CLAT more reliable.”

When asked about the feasibility of applying a US testing method in India, Singh said, “We will not be replicating the LSAT, since CLAT 2008 had its own peculiar problems like local, gender and caste reservations. Besides, some take it online and some don't. So, we will consider all these factors before reaching any conclusion.”
Source:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Education/Call_to_make_Indian_Legal_Education_Global/articleshow/3540121.cms

Education urged to stem new wave of sectarianism

THE NORTHERN Irish public must look to the future and prevent a new wave of sectarianism among young people from becoming the legacy of the Troubles, a cross-Border parliamentary committee heard yesterday.

Seymour Crawford, Fine Gael TD for Cavan-Monaghan, told the committee that education initiatives and support services should be established to ease sectarian tensions growing among the youth of Northern Ireland.

Mr Crawford said enormous sectarian problems existed in both nationalist and unionist communities, which was an issue that must be rapidly addressed.

"I was quite frightened by some of the things I found in my own county recently," he said. "Many of these young people involved never witnessed the murder and mayhem and they don't realise what they're getting themselves into."

Mr Crawford was addressing a Joint Committee on Implementation of the Belfast Agreement in Leinster House, which was attended by TDs, Senators, MPs and the Commissioners for Victims and Survivors.

The commissioners, Patricia MacBride, Bertha McDougall and Mike Nesbitt, were appointed by the Northern Ireland Assembly to study the legacy of the Troubles.

Mr Nesbitt said the commissioners had identified education as a key area in attempting to repair damage caused by the Troubles.

The case for science education

WITH THE RELEASE of this year's troubling MCAS scores in science, it is obvious that the state must try harder to engage students in science education if it hopes to fill future life sciences jobs.

Last year, 20 percent of high school students taking the SAT in Massachusetts indicated that they planned on STEM (science, technology, engineering, or math) majors in college. That translates to roughly 12,400 students. But in 2006, there were more than 86,000 job vacancies in key life sciences occupations in the state, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University.

If Massachusetts high school students hope to fill this gap, consider the newly released 2008 science MCAS scores. Seventeen percent of high school sophomores failed. While that is better than the 25 percent who failed last year, it indicates that there is a long way to go to increase the scientific literacy of students.

The employment gap and the MCAS results leave the Commonwealth at a crucial juncture. The industry is growing and the demand for qualified employees will continue to rise. According to a new study by the University of Massachusetts' Donohue Institute - "Growing Talent" - 88 percent of Massachusetts life sciences companies expect modest or substantial growth in their Massachusetts workforce over the next two years, and no employers project a decline.

The New England Economic Partnership predicts that employment opportunities in the life sciences cluster will increase twice as fast as Massachusetts' overall employment growth. If students continue to lag behind in science comprehension, it puts the state's future economic viability at stake and will force companies to look outside the state lines to fill those jobs.

Educators know that students can learn only so much from a book. Hands-on situations drawn from the "real world" give science tangible context for students. For example, the BioTeach program, which provides schools with financial, professional, and educational resources to teach interactive biotechnology labs, brings the same lab equipment found at a biotech company into classrooms. A three-year evaluation of the program, conducted by the education research organization TERC, indicates that BioTeach helped teachers increase their knowledge of biotechnology and had a significant impact on student interest in the life sciences.

Research shows that the best time to recruit students to pursue education and careers in the STEM fields is before they enter middle school. That means before they hit their teens. How can young students decide they want to work in the life sciences if they don't know what that means or what those jobs look like?

To introduce life sciences to students at a younger age, the governor and Legislature introduced a promising program in the Life Sciences Bill. The plan is to develop a statewide system of mobile labs to provide interactive biotechnology experiences to schools that do not have access to needed scientific resources. The hope is to engage them, capture their imaginations, expand their knowledge of biotech career opportunities, and, ultimately, seed interest in pursuing a career in the STEM fields.

CAT Preparation

Gov. Tim Pawlenty toured the state Tuesday to roll out a set of sensible proposals intended to improve K-12 teaching, increase accountability for student performance and provide intensive summer school for students struggling with reading and math.

Together, the plans rightly focus on increasing the quality of teaching and learning with the ultimate goal of boosting student achievement. Some are proposals the governor has pushed for previously, while others expand on concepts his administration already has in place.

Ambitious reforms are needed in Minnesota. Although students generally score well in nationwide comparisons, wide discrepancies remain between white students and some students of color. In addition, only about 30 percent of state 11th-graders are proficient in math, and about a third need remedial math courses after entering college.

Called the "Teacher Transformation Act,'' the first initiative would set a higher entrance bar for admission to teacher preparation programs, create a program to recruit midcareer professionals to teach in high-need subject areas, and provide more continuous, real-time teacher training that is directly applicable to the classroom.

Pawlenty also proposes taking the pay-for-performance concept a step further than the current voluntary Q-Comp program, which only encourages district leaders to change their compensation models. Under the proposal, the state would require districts to use new money in teacher contracts for raises tied to student test-score performance.

To address school leadership and administration, the governor wants to expand participation in a national school leadership program for principals and revise standards for approving principal licensure.