The HRD Ministry on Saturday constituted a drafting committee for framing the New Education Policy headed by former Cabinet Secretary TSR Subramanian with other four members — former Delhi Chief Secretary Shailaja Chandra, former Home Secretary Sewaram Sharma, former Chief Secretary of Gujarat Sudhir Mankad and former NCERT Director Prof JS Rajput. The National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA), New Delhi will act as its Secretariat.
The HRD Ministry officials said the committee is expected to submit the Draft National Education Policy as soon as possible but not later than December 31, 2015. Along with the draft education policy, the committee will also submit a Framework for Action. The HRD Ministry has undertaken an unprecedented collaborative, multi-stakeholder and multi-pronged consultation process for formulating the Policy. The three-pronged consultation process included online, grassroots and national-level thematic deliberations.
Apex level institutions and regulators, such as, UGC, AICTE, NCTE, AIU, NCERT, CBSE, IIAS, NlMA, NAAC, NUEPA, IGNOU, IITs, IIMs and Central universities have held detailed discussion on identified themes with participation of renowned academicians, experts, practitioners, NGOs, civil society, student & teacher representative bodies, industry associations, and stakeholder Ministries of Government of India.
An extensive, time-bound, participative, bottom-up consultative process across nearly 2.5 lakh gram panchayats, 6,600 blocks, 6,000 urban local bodies, 676 districts and 36 States/Union Territories was carried out between May to October, 2015 and so far 63,100 villages, 3,088 blocks, 822 UlBs, 247 districts and three States have uploaded their suggestions on https://survey.mygov.in. Some States have conveyed that they have completed the consultations and have asked for more time for uploading the suggestions.
Six zonal meetings were held by HRD Minister Smriti Irani in Eastern, Central, North-Eastern, Western, Southern and Northern Zones covering all States and UTs in September-October 2015 which were attended by Education Ministers and officials of the respective States/UTs.