HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar on Monday said the much-awaited National Education Policy’s (NEP) “zero draft” is ready and will be implemented by the end of 2018.
“The draft of the policy is ready. We are giving it the final shape,” said Javadekar, briefing the media over the achievements of HRD Ministry in the last four years of Modi regime.
Other than NEP, Javadekar also said increased autonomy for higher education institutions, enhanced focus on innovation and research, and changes in no-detention policy were among the major initiatives taken by the HRD Ministry. NEP has failed to meet the deadline with six extensions given to three different committees each under new chairmen. Javadekar had scrapped the NEP draft committee formed by his predecessor Smriti Irani.
The Minister said 33 new initiatives have been taken in the last four years to strengthen the educational system. “Revolutionary changes have been made by the Ministry as it is committed to providing affordable and quality education for all,” he said. Javadekar refuted the allegations that the government was working to curtail the autonomy of IIMs and other institutes of eminence.
“Till the time the research output of the country will not increase, the country will not progress and hence the increased focus on research and innovation. Atal Tinkering laboratories and Hackathon have been very good initiatives in this direction,” he said.
For inculcating innovative skills in school students, 2,400 Atal Tinkering laboratories have been sanctioned at the cost of Rs 20 lakh each. Facilities such as 3D printing, robotics and artificial intelligence are available in these labs.
“A special campaign to build separate toilets for girl students was taken up on mission mode and has resulted in reduction of drop-out rate of girl students and more concentration in classrooms,” the minister said. “While passing of the IIM Bill was to grant more autonomy to quality institutes, major reform was ensured in the education sector by granting graded autonomy and efforts to create 20 world class institutes,” he added.
The Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) Bill was passed by Parliament in 2017. The Centre has also scrapped the no-detention policy, which will allow schools to detain students till Class 8, if they fail in annual examination.
On the controversy over the conduct of Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET) in 20 Indian languages, Javadekar said it will continue. The HRD Minister said that he has issued directive following criticism of CBSE’s decision to remove 17 languages including Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Gujarati and Bengali from the list of options for CTET. DMK leader Kanimozhi took to twitter to express her anger at the CBSE’s earlier decision to drop languages which she said will come as a blow to speakers of several regional languages.