Technical education will be offered in eight regional languages in certain institutions on a pilot basis from the academic year 2021-22, said education minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
The regional languages include Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada, and Malayalam.
Responding to a question in the Lok Sabha, Pradhan said this will be offered in some AICTE approved institutions from the academic session 2021-2022 on a pilot basis.
This means that engineering school students will have an opportunity to study their courses in their mother tongue. This initiative is part of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 implementation.
Pradhan explained that the translation of reference materials for courses of engineering in regional languages under SWAYAM platform, which has been offering online courses in disciplines such as science, engineering & technology, humanities & social sciences, law and management.
SWAYAM (Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds) was launched in July 2017 to enable anytime, anywhere learning. It is a part of the education ministry initiatives.
Engineering and technical institutes that want to introduce programmes in regional languages will have a separate AICTE approval process.
The Government announced the National Education Policy, 2020 (NEP) on July 29, after a gap of 34 years. One of the major recommendations in this regard is to promote more and more use of regional languages in education.
The minister said there will be an 'AICTE Translation Automation Artificial Intelligence Tool' to translate English language online courses into eleven different languages like Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi, Assamese & Odia.
The Student Induction Program (SIP), which is now a mandatory part of the curriculum for students of the first year in engineering, will also be delivered in regional languages, he added.
As part of the NEP, the education ministry is also setting up a task force for preparing a roadmap for imparting technical education in the mother tongue. This would include programmes like B.Tech in Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).
This is to enable students from across geographies to get access to technical education. Translated journals will also be made available to these candidates.
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