Updated textbooks to be ready by December 2024: Dharmendra Pradhan

Dharmendra Pradhan

India aims to ready updated school textbooks by December 2024 under the new education policy (NEP), education and skill development minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on March 29.

"We target that by 2024 December, class 1–12 textbooks will be ready under NEP," Pradhan said at the News18 Rising India Summit.

Pradhan said that the government is not aiming at correcting history but stories of many unknown regional freedom fighters will be incorporated in the revised textbooks.

The minister said that India's education needs to evolve going forward and should fulfil global requirements.

Foreign institutions through policy reform will now open institutes in GIFT City in Gujarat. With Australia's Deakin University starting courses in subjects including cybersecurity and business analytics from the next academic year, he said.

Pradhan also mentioned that new technologies like the artificial intelligence-based chatbot ChatGPT have brought new challenges and anxieties for parents as students are increasingly using it to complete their homework.

When asked why renowned institutions like the Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management featured in the top 150 list, he said, "We are preparing our own standards of ranking of educational Institutes. I do not agree that global educational rankings like QS World University Rankings are the only ones."

Some global ranking systems for educational institutes have the condition for a specific number of foreign students, which our institutes may not have, he pointed out.