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Finance Minister Arun Jaitley wants Indian schools to shift from “black boards to digital boards” as part of the government’s attempts towards ICT-enabled learning transformation.
He said education has to be treated holistically from nursery to class 12, with a special emphasis on science. “We have proposed to introduce a system of measuring annual learning outcomes in our schools. Emphasis will be given on science education and flexibility in curriculum to promote creativity through local innovative content,” he said.
The Minister announced an allocation of Rs 1.38 lakh crore for 2018-19 from Rs 1.22 lakh crore in the current fiscal on health, education and social security.
An Innovation Fund for Secondary Education will be created to encourage local innovation for ensuring universal access, gender parity and quality improvement. This will include ICT enabled learning transformation.
“In higher education, we will undertake reforms in the UGC. Good quality institutions would be enabled to have greater administrative and academic autonomy. Colleges will be identified based on accreditation and ranking, and given autonomous status,” he said.
A revised framework will be put in place for outcome based accreditation and credit based programmes. “We propose to leverage information technology and launch SWAYAM platform with at least 350 online courses. This would enable students to virtually attend the courses taught by the best faculty; access high quality reading resources; participate in discussion forums; take tests and earn academic grades,” the minister said.
Access to SWAYAM would be widened by linkage with DTH channels, dedicated to education. “We propose to establish a National Testing Agency as an autonomous and self-sustained premier testing organisation to conduct all entrance examinations for higher education institutions. This would free CBSE, AICTE and other premier institutions from these administrative responsibilities so that they can focus more on academics,” Jaitley said.
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