National education policy to be prepared with opinion of all: Irani

Agartala, Sep 19: Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani has said a joint effort has been initiated from the national to the grassroots level to obtain opinion to formulate a national education policy.

"This is for the first time citizen of India at large from national to grassroots level would give their opinion in preparing the national education policy. The draft of the policy would be ready by December," Irani told reporters on Friday night after meeting Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar.

She said: "The first regional meeting covering all the eight northeastern states held in Agartala Friday. The education ministers and representatives of these states gave their views on the proposed national education policy."

The minister, who left for Delhi on Saturday, said the gram panchayat level to district, state to national level consultation on the education policy already begun across the country and the response was very enlightening.

On Friday, addressing the students and teachers of the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Agartala, she said to obtain experiences and expertise by the IIT and NIT students from world famous scientist, academician and technical experts, the MHRD has recently launched a scheme 'GIAN' (Global Initiative of Academic Network).

She asked the institute to provide a list of foreign experts, who can be invited.

"The travel and other cost of the guest expert would be borne by my ministry and the deliberations would be video recorded for future use by the students," she announced.

Irani also asked the all concerned to share experience among the students of various NITs and IITs of the country and requested the NIT students to share their experience, knowledge and inventions with the people living adjoining the villages of their institute.

She also announced that a web portal "e-soudh-sindhu" would be launched by January next year and over 90,000 e-books and 10,000 journals of across the world would be available in the plat form.

The minister accompanied by HRD Secretary V.S. Oberoi (Higher Education) and S.C. Khuntia (School Education) held a meeting here on Friday with the education ministers of the northeast states to discuss the proposed national education policy.

Tripura Education Minister Tapan Chakraborty said the Friday's meeting was held as the follow up meeting of the 63rd meeting of the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) that was held in New Delhi on August 19.

He told reporters that in the CABE meeting, most northeast states wanted to remove the 'no-detention policy' at the elementary school level (up to class 8).

Chakraborty said: "The eight northeast states along with most states of the country are not only against the 'no-detention policy' but are also in an awkward position due to the lack of trained teachers even though the Right to Education Act (RTE), 2009, made this mandatory."

The minister said the Left Front government strongly supported the plan for a new education policy, a process initiated by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government.

IANS