Prime Minister Narendra Modi today launched 10 new schemes in the area of education as part of the one-year completion of the National Education Policy or NEP 2020 implementation.
Among this was the flexible entry/exit scheme in colleges where students can exit their academic course after the first, second or third year.
"Multiple entry/exit will help students break away from the shackles of sticking to one stream. One can select their course and can exit if they are not interested. This is a revolutionary change," said PM Modi in a virtual address.
Flexible entry and exit grants academic credit for partially completed courses. A student who quits a degree course after one year gets a certificate. A diploma is earned after two years and a degree after three/four years.
On July 29, NEP completed a year since the cabinet approval. In July 2020, the Union Cabinet headed by PM Modi gave its nod to the National Education Policy. Consequently, the Human Resource Development Ministry was renamed the Ministry of Education. This was a policy launched 34 years after the old policy.
"We are entering the 75th year of independence. In a way, implementation of NEP is become a vital part of this occasion. This will play a key role in creating a new-India and future-ready youth," said PM Modi.
The first scheme launched was Vidya Pravesh for early childhood education. This is to ensure that all early childhood education is available on an equitable basis.
He launched AI for all which is a scheme to learn artificial intelligence (AI) scheme for students. PM Modi said that this digital evolution in education will help students to compete globally.
The prime minister said that India's future will also depend on the education being provide to the country's youth.
Also Read: Here is the one-year report card of NEP
PM Modi said in a statement that the aim of this policy was to transform the education sector and place it on par with world-class systems which bring out the best in our students.
"Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, students had to adopt to online education and our education ministry has taken a slew of steps to promote this initiative," he added.
PM Modi said that the DIKSHA platform is seeing 5 crore hits on a daily basis. The DIKSHA platform offers teachers, students and parents learning material. Students can download the DIKSHA application and scan the textbook QR codes for accessing study materials.
Learning assessment is also a crucial area under NEP. The prime minister launched Structured Assessment for Analysing Learning levels (SAFAL) where Classes 3, 5 and 8 will have competency based assessments and examinations.
As part of the one-year anniversary of NEP 2020, the prime minister launched schemes including Indian sign language as a subject, an academic credit bank for multiple entry/exit in institutes and first-year engineering programmes in regional languages among others.
Moneycontrol had reported earlier how technical education will be offered in regional languages. This means that engineering school students will have an opportunity to study their courses in their mother tongue.
"All over India, there are 14 engineering colleges in eight states that will offer courses in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi and Bengali. This will benefit those from economically disadvantaged families," said PM Modi.
He added that there is a translation tool developed to translate technical education into 11 regional languages. The prime minister said that mother tongue-based instruction n the area of school education is also being developed.
Further, PM Modi also released guidelines related to the internationalisation of higher education. This could include the study in India scheme and other incentives to foreign institutes setting up campuses in the country.
"Office of international education has been set up at 250 plus universities and this will enable attract foreign education," said the prime minister.
Also, he launched a new version of teacher training, called NISHTHA 2.0.
NISHTHA is a capacity building programme for improving the quality of school education through integrated teacher training. It aims to build competencies among all the teachers and school principals at the elementary stage.
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