India Education Summit 2021 Day-3 begins today (February 11, 2021), for discussions on ‘creating modern thinkers', 'from education to employment' and ‘coming together of two worlds’ in the line-up. The stellar Day 2 of the education summit saw panellists make astonishing revelations on how CBSE Board Exams to revamp by 2025 and online and offline teaching need equal enforcement to reach the 50% GER goal of NEP 2020.
Government, private sector, and administrative stakeholders discuss the impact of NEP 2020 and proposal to setup foreign institutes in India and Indian institutes abroad. Executing the new changes in India is a major concern and the Education Minister has already recommended setting up Task Force for NEP 2020 implementation.
For now, delegates bring in the importance of upskilling and about 43+ new in-demand skills that can help improve employability in India. Meanwhile, collaborations of Indian institutes with foreign universities will shorten the stay in foreign lands and reduce the overall cost of study. At the same time, students will be exposed to new ideas, technologies and leverage better technical knowledge.
India Education Summit 2021 was inaugurated on February 9, 2021, at 10 AM by Union Education Minister, Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal. This 3-day virtual education summit will be held from February 9-11 for an engaging discourse on the future of education in a post-pandemic world.
Union Minister Pokhriyal mentioned in his keynote address that National Education Policy 2020 would inculcate new content and curriculum to develop a new India. Following which, Former Chief of ISRO, Dr K Kasturirangan, addressed the India Education Summit 2021 saying, the future education in India needs reconfiguration. He said the NEP is a better replacement of the 30-year old education policy.
India Education Summit 2021: Day-3 Highlights
- Foreign Collaborations: MoU with foreign universities will enhance student exchange/short-stay programs. Foreign visits for students will expose them to a new environment of consumers, business and markets. This will enrich their knowledge of marketing aspects.
- Change Curriculum to Revamp Postgraduation in India: The undergraduate level education system in India is quite commendable however, there is a substantial lack of exposure and scope for development when it comes to postgraduation.
- India can be Research Hub: Even foreign universities suffer from resource crunch where Indian institutions like the top IIMs in India and IITs that provide world-class level education can enjoy an upper hand in grabbing the opportunity to build a global education hub.
- COVID cuts Travel, Foreign Lectures Overhaul: With the COVID-19 pandemic creating unruly disruptions in education and watering down study abroad dreams, universities in India have taken the right opportunity for organising virtual lectures with foreign faculty.
- NRF to Underscore Private-Public Divide in Research Funds: NRF is proposed to solve the disparity in research fund allocation for public and private institutions.
What is NRF?
National Research Foundation (NRF) will be an autonomous body envisaged under the New Education Policy (NEP) 2020. It will regulate funding to build ‘quality of research’ in India. NRF aims to fund researchers across streams: Sciences, Technology, Social Sciences and Arts and Humanities and bring the non-science disciplines under the research ambit. As known, lack of funds in research is cited as one of the reasons behind the lack of researchers in India and NRF will cater to the deficit.
India Education Summit 2021: Day 2 Highlights
- Government, academicians and private sector education providers should maintain the synergy and create a roadmap to offer affordable and high-quality online ecosystem which is inclusive in all respects.
- When access to education has not reached its full potential, online education may lead to a digital divide.
- About 33 million seats for higher education needs to be achieved for a 50% GER as the mentioned milestone in NEP 2020. This can be achieved by both online and offline teaching. Online education will bring down educational costs and make it cost-effective.
- CBSE Board Exam for Class 10 and 12 will be completely revamped by 2025. Every year MCQs in the board exams will be increased by 10%. Questions will be more fact-based to bring an end to superficial assessment and rote learning.
- Learning outcomes are key to imparting knowledge that stays with students. In such cases, qualified educators need to determine learning outcomes so that teaching does not become mechanical.
- To incorporate digital education, National Digital Education Architecture has been introduced to facilitate Edtech experts and private sectors.
- As Manish Sisodia, Deputy CM of Delhi says, Delhi government started preparing for digital education 2 years ago, which helped in managing pandemic better.
- Optimum use of technology is required in every sphere to sustain any challenges including COVID-era. Hence, a tech-based continuous assessment will be followed in Delhi Schools shifting from annual assessment system.
- NEP 2020 has covered several missing points that earlier educational policies did not mention. However, this will equally require financial backups from the central government as well.
- IT industry will have to prepare itself for the post-COVID schooling system that will require skill development for technical heads and teachers as well.
- As per Vinod R. Rao, Secretary to Government (Primary & Secondary Education), Education Department, Sachivalaya, Gandhinagar, over 1.5 lakh teachers have been trained to teach over a tech-enabled platform. The initiative has been taken by IIM-Ahmedabad.
- State boards as of Gujarat has launched the e-version of NCERT. Named as GET, it will regulate as a single tech-based education learning platform, slowly accepting each school in its spectrum for them to access the learning material online.
India Education Summit 2021: Day-1 Highlights
- Union Education Minister said as per NEP 2020, school education will begin in the mother tongue. Students will have the privilege to study and express in their own native language.
- The Education Minister shared instances of countries like Israel and Japan who have created a niche by teaching in their own language. However, at any cost, no language will be imposed on students.
- In line with the Atma Nirbhar Bharat mission, since Class 6, students will be receiving vocational education.
- India is the first country proposing to introduce artificial intelligence (AI) in schools. For now, AI is primarily taught in top IITs in India and other specialised colleges, however, now schools will impart knowledge in AI.
- The central government has the next challenge of bringing 33 Cr students in the virtual space.
- As per Union Budget 2021, National Research Foundation (NRF) has been allocated a total fund of INR 50,000 Cr to focus on research and development in the country. NRF has been introduced as per NEP.
- NETF, which is a technological forum has been set up so that students aspiring to study abroad can stay back to pursue higher education in India.
- Top 100 universities in India as per NIRF ranking 2020 will begin online education. Thus, IITs, IIMs. KVs, IISERs are creating a base, so that regardless of any disruption, India can continue with either online or offline education.
- The government is attempting to reach out to the 10-20% student population that has no access to online education till today.
India Education Summit 2021: Panel Discussions from Day-1, 2
Earlier, India Education Summit 2021 was inaugurated on February 9, 2021, at 10 AM by Union Education Minister, Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal. This 3-day virtual education summit will be held from February 9-11 for an engaging discourse on the future of education in a post-pandemic world.
Union Minister Pokhriyal mentioned in his keynote address that National Education Policy 2020 would inculcate new content and curriculum to develop a new India. Following which, Former Chief of ISRO, Dr K Kasturirangan, addressed the India Education Summit 2021 saying, the future education in India needs reconfiguration. He said the NEP is a better replacement of the 30-year old education policy.
Former ISRO Chairman and the present Head of the Drafting committee of NEP 2020, Dr K Kasturirangan made his gracious presence at the India Education Summit 2021. He said the National Education Policy has integrated ICT in all teaching and learning procedures.
He further added, education institutes will be facilitated with devices and internet connectivity. This will ensure, if students do not have access to computing devices and internet connectivity at home, they can at least have them in their respective schools. Also, students who are deficit in availing devices will receive a one-time grant for availing tablets and so on.
Following which, India Education Summit Day-2 began with the topic of discussion for the day as ‘A Grassroot Approach’. The education summit observed, panel discussions on ‘Building a Strong Foundation’, ‘The Infrastructure Play’, ‘Educators of the new world’ and ‘Empowering all educators for digital transformation’.
The Day-2 of the education summit of India saw NITI Ayog CEO, Amitabh Kant making bigger revelations on online learning considering the infrastructural gap in India. Moreover, there are high ambitions set by the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 that will require 33 million seats for higher education for achieving 50% GER.
Meanwhile, Dr Wagheeh Shukry, Principal Assistant Director, Ministry of Education, Malaysia expressed his views in availing better quality of educational content. He added, Malaysia received support from different organisations like the UN and requested for quality as well as free content.
Additionally, Manish Sisodia, Deputy CM of Delhi, spoke at length on the NEP 2020 at the education summit and corresponding government funds required to materialise it. He said Delhi government has been preparing for online education for 1.5-2 years, which made them easier to transport learning material to online platforms. Teachers have been provided with smartphones and tablets in advance.
At the panel discussion held at the India Education Summit 2021, for education content and its accessibility, Rajnish Kumar, Director (Digital Education) of Department of School Education & Literacy Ministry of Education (Diksha PoV), said: “Content is available everywhere, curating right content is the key.” According to him, knowledge is just away by a mouse-click. School education curriculum that focuses on creativity and critical thinking will play a major role in shaping future generations. Thus, a better level of content is the need of the hour.
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