New Education Policy Draft restructure the UG courses

The Committee set up by MHRD for framing new Education Policy has submitted it’s recommendation. Among the major changes, it suggests the renaming of the MHRD as Ministry of Education (MoE) and restructuring of Undergraduate courses.

The drafting committee, set up in 2017, led by the Chairman and eminent scientist K Kasturirangan submitted the draft report to the HRD Minister Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal and Minister of State for HRD, Sanjay Shamrao Dhotre on May 31 in the presence of R. Subrahmanyam, Secretary Department of Higher Education and Rina Ray, Secretary Department of School Education & Literacy and other senior officials of the Ministry.

The committee proposes a major reconfiguration of curricular and pedagogical structure at school level. It includes Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) as an integral part of school education. The Committee also recommends the extension of Right to Education Act 2009 to cover children of ages 3 to 18.

It suggests restructuring school curriculum and pedagogy in 5+3+3+4 design which is 5 years of foundational stage (pre-primary school, grade 1 and grade 2), 3 years of preparatory (grade 3, grade 4 and grade 5), 3 years of middle stage (grade 6, grade 7 and grade 8) and 4 years of high stage (grade 9, grade 10, grade 11 and grade 12).

The committee proposes for massive transformation in teacher education by shutting down sub-standard teacher education institutions and moving all teacher preparation or education programmes into large multidisciplinary universities/ colleges. The four-year integrated stage-specific BEd programme will eventually be the minimum degree qualification for teachers.

In higher education, a restructuring of higher education institutions with three types of higher education institutions is proposed: focused on world-class research and high-quality teaching, focused on high-quality teaching across disciplines with significant contribution to research, and high-quality teaching focused on undergraduate education. This will be driven by two missions — Mission Nalanda and Mission Takshashila.

A new apex body, Rashtriya Shiksha Ayog, is proposed to enable a holistic and integrated implementation of all educational initiatives and programmatic interventions and to coordinate efforts between the Centre and the states.

The National Research Foundation, an apex body is proposed for creating a strong research culture and building research capacity across higher education.

It has also recommended setting up three new national institutes for Pali, Persian, and Prakrit and an Indian Institute of Translation and Interpretation (IITI).

The MHRD has sought feedback from stakeholders on the draft report.