The Union Cabinet, on Wednesday, approved the new National Education Policy which is being introduced to bring some major changes in the current Indian education system. The policy has been announced by the Union Information and Broadcasting Minister, Prakash Javedkar and Union Human Resource Development Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal.
Both the ministers of the cabinet have announced and walked through the whole policy through a media briefing.
The press briefing began with the Human Resource Development Minister, Prakash Javedkar, addressing the media and introducing the new National Education Policy. “Cabinet has approved the new Education Policy and I hope it will be welcomed and accepted by people from all sections of the society”, quoted Javedkar.
After the initial address, the panel, which consisted of Higher Education Secretary Amit Khare and Secretary School Education, Anita Karwal, went down to business and initiated the walk-through of the policy.
Amongst the major changes brought by the government, a prime one would be the shift of Ministry of Human Resource Development to the Ministry of Education.
The policy has predominantly focused on the much needed education reforms, which would now focus on multi-disciplinarity, research and better funding for the state academic houses. The government has altered the budget by increasing the stake of education from 4.43% to 6% of the GDP.
The revised policy also focuses on strengthening E-learning in India which would require a great amount of capacity building in terms of technological infrastructure. The policy also enables learning in regional languages so as to impart and increase the expanse of thinking and understanding skills in children.
The National Education Policy was drafted in 1968 and was updated in 1992 and has been the same ever since. Since 1992, this is the first time the policy is being updated and thus the learning approach is shifting towards research oriented curriculum and inter and multi disciplinarity, which surely is the need of the hour.
