Education is the backbone of every nation. In order to scale new heights, it is very important for a country to have education system that caters to the needs of 21st century learners. Guided by this need, MHRD (Ministry of Human Resource and Development) has taken up an initiative to revamp the New Education Policy by appointing a Drafting Committee for it. The great news about this revamping is that MHRD is ensuring that the transformation is executed through an exceptional collaboration of multi-stakeholders on the basis of multi-pronged consultation process for the formulation of New Education Policy. This consultation process would be tri-dimensional and would include online, grassroots and national level thematic discussions.
Chairman of this Drafting Committee has been finalised and he is none other than Mr T.S.R. Subramanian, a former Cabinet Secretary. Apart from him four other members who have been appointed are: Shailaja Chandra(former Chief Secretary, NCT of Delhi), Sewaram Sharma(former Home Secretary, NCT of Delhi), Sudhir Mankad(former Chief Secretary, Gujarat) and Professor J S Rajput (former Director, NCERT).
The most significant aspect of the Drafting Committee is the intention to have transparency in working that will be monitored by yet another National level agency, NUEPA (National University of Educational Planning and Administration). NUEPA will act as the Secretariat of this Drafting Committee and it will work to submit the draft as well as the framework for action for National Education Policy, before the end of this year i.e. 31st December, 2015.
The Drafting Committee has worked from the very outset to operate on lines that are pertinent to the requirements of the various educational institutions. Ministry of Human Resource and Development to ensure 100% success of National Education Policy has organized an online competition for creating the logo, slogan and tagline for the Committee. This competition was launched on 26th January, 2015 on 33 different decided themes across schools and higher education institutions.
The online competition turned out to be a huge success as grassroots consultation across nearly 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats, 6600 Blocks, 6000 Urban Local Bodies, 676 Districts and 36 States/Union Territories was conducted between the period of May 2015 to October 2015. 63,100 villages, 3088 Blocks, 822 Urban Local Bodies, 247 Districts and 3 States have uploaded their suggestions so far and the process is still in continuation. Some states have conveyed that they require more time for uploading the suggestions. New uploads are expected by the first week of November 2015.
The 33 themes were decided by apex level institutions and regulators, such as, UGC (Union Grant Commission), AICTE(All India Council for Technical Education), NCTE (National Council for Teacher Education), AIU (Association of Indian Universities), NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training), CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education), IIAS (Indian Institute of Advanced Studies), NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council), NUEPA(National University of Educational Planning and Administration), IGNOU (Indira Gandhi National Open University), IITs (Indian Institute of Technology), IIMs (Indian Institute of Management) and Central Universities, after detailed discussions on the identified themes. These discussions included participation of renowned academicians, experts, practitioners, NGOs, civil society, student and teacher representative bodies, industry associations, and stakeholders of different Ministries of Government of India.
The process of forming the Committee also included consultation with state representatives, district level representatives, and other local bodies. Consultation process was one of the agenda points in the meeting of Central Advisory Board on Education (CABE) held on 19th August, 2015. The nation and its learners must gear up for the long awaited change in education system that would remodel the design and set-up, leading to better education and skill acquisition.
I must say that like your submission of your Journal articles, this article is also well researched and very informative. I want you to take up more articles on education background as it will help people understand that there is no need to run after US universities when the CEO of Google is none other than an Indian. Great going !
It’s a great attempt. Very informative and yes if this becomes a success our educational system would be revamped.