Govt finalising new national education policy, says MHRD official

New Delhi The government is in the process of finalising the new national education policy which aims to transform India’s education system and make it a learner-centric one instead of teacher-centric. To make the country a global player in education, the entire system is also being liberalised with renewed push for private sector participation.

Such changes are necessary as India is also a nation with a high outflow of students, spending about $20billion on international education.

This was part of the conversation at the 13th FICCI Higher Education Summit 2017 today, with Dr N Saravana Kumar, joint secretary, HRD ministry, saying in a special address that the highly regulated education sector is being liberalised to ensure India becomes an attractive education destination.

Sudhanshu Pandey, joint secretary, ministry of commerce and industry, said globalisation of Indian education was key as the country spent billions on students studying abroad and was one of the few nations with a high outflow of students. In the wake of protectionism, knowledge-sharing and student exchange programmes were critical. Around five million students move around the globe for education.

The summit, with the theme Leapfrogging to Education 4.0: Student at the Core, was organised by FICCI with the support of the HRD and commerce ministries, Services Export Promotion Council and All India Council for Technical Education.

Pandey said students had been at the core of education and will remain at its epicentre in future as well. The need was to create and facilitate an ecosystem where students could attain excellence in their chosen domains. He added that a bridge of understanding needed to be created between industry and academia to enable both to move forward together.

In a video message, Prakash Javadekar, HRD minister, said that the government had come out with learning outcomes and was providing greater autonomy to the institutes to pursue research, development and innovation. Several programmes such as Swayam had been initiated to promote online learning. Quality benchmarking of institutes had also been done to make them competitive globally.

Suresh Prabhu, commerce minister, in his message, urged the stakeholders, including industry and academic, to recommend ideas to promote the business of education globally. With internet, new business opportunities had emerged and India must take advantage of it, he said.

Representing Finland, the partner country, participating in the summit with a 15-member delegation, Nina Vaskunlahti, ambassador of Finland to India, said her country’s education system stands on four pillars of equality, efficiency, quality and internationalism. With an education system rated among the best in the world, the country will be forthcoming in sharing its knowledge, technology and best practices in the education domain with India, she said.

On the occasion, FICCI-EY report Leapfrogging to Education 4.0: Student at the Core and FICCI Report on Social Outreach in Higher Education were released.