Suryakant Jena

Bhubaneswar: The draft National Education Policy (NEP) prepared by the nine-member committee will bring about a plethora of reforms for the entire education system in the country, member of the drafting committee MK Sridhar said.

The draft designed by a committee chaired by scientist K. Kasturirangan was released into public domain by Ministry of HRD on May 31, 2019.

While speaking to OTV during his Odisha visit, Sridhar on Saturday shared light on the various positive aspects of the proposed education policy.

“After 30 years, such a reformative education policy is in our hands which I believe will work towards reforming the entire education system in the country. Sincere work has been done in the last four years to draft the policy in its best form,” said Sridhar.

“Right now we are separately treating streams of education like science, commerce, arts and also phases of education like primary, secondary, degree and even various branches of professional education like engineering. But with the new policy we will treat everything under one umbrella,” said the drafting member.

Asked about the new policy’s reforms, he said from three to 18 years, students will have to undergo schooling for 15 years and we have divided it into four divisions.

Sources said, the new policy redraws the schooling system on a 5+3+3+4 formula instead of the current 10+2 model under which the students in the age group of 3-8 years will be part of the foundation stage, 8-11 age group for preparatory schooling, 11-14 years for middle school and 14-18 for secondary level.

As far undergraduate education is concerned, Sridhar added that a proposal for extending the course timing from 3 to four years has been included in the draft.

"After the policy comes into effect, students will have to cover four years of education instead of three years for degrees. With the completion of first year the students will get a certificate, and upon completion of second year, students will be awarded a diploma, then one year thereafter, a degree will be awarded. But in the final and fourth year, students will be promoted to contribute their time mainly for research upon completion of which they will be awarded an honours," he said.

Sridhar further added that the draft also suggests multi-disciplinary higher education system and a simplified university system.

Higher education institutions will be restructured into three types: (i) research universities focusing equally on research and teaching; (ii) teaching universities focusing primarily on teaching; and (iii) colleges focusing only on teaching at undergraduate levels.  All such institutions will gradually move towards full autonomy - academic, administrative, and financial.

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