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Initiatives To Boost Education Sector

  • 20 May 2020

  • On 17th May, 2020, the government announced several initiatives to boost education sector across the country.

Need

  • Investing in the human capital is equivalent to an investment in productivity and prosperity of the nation.
  • The present pandemic situation has presented new challenges and several opportunities for our education system.

Major Initiatives

PM e-VIDYA

A comprehensive initiative called PM e-VIDYA will be launched which unifies all efforts related to digital/online/on-air education. This will enable multi-mode access to education. It includes the following-

  • DIKSHA (one nation-one digital platform) which will now become the nation’s digital infrastructure for providing quality e-content in school education for all the states/UTs.
  • TV (one class-one channel) where one dedicated channel per grade for each of the classes 1 to 12 will provide access to quality educational material.
  • SWAYAM online courses in MOOCS format for school and higher education.
  • IITPAL for IITJEE/NEET preparation.
  • Air through Community radio and CBSE Shiksha Vani podcast.
  • Study material for the differently abled developed on Digitally Accessible Information System (DAISY) and in sign language on NIOS website/ YouTube.

Manodarpan Initiative

  • This initiative is being launched to provide such support through a website, a toll-free helpline, national directory of counselors, interactive chat platform, etc.
  • This initiative will benefit all school going children in the country, along with their parents, teachers and the community of stakeholders in school education.

Expanding e-Learning in Higher Education

  • Government is expanding e-learning in higher education – by liberalizing open, distance and online education regulatory framework.
  • Top 100 universities will start online courses.
  • Also, online component in conventional Universities and ODL programmes will also be raised from present 20% to 40%.
  • This will provide enhanced learning opportunities to nearly 7 crore students across different colleges and Universities.

New National Curriculum and Pedagogical Framework

  • There is a need to promote critical thinking, creative and communication skills, along with experiential and joyful learning for the students focussing on learning outcomes.
  • Therefore, it has been decided to prepare a new National Curriculum and Pedagogical Framework for school education, teacher education and early childhood stage to prepare students and future teachers as per global benchmarks.

National Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Mission

  • This Mission will be launched, for ensuring that every child in the country necessarily attains foundational literacy and numeracy in Grade 3 by 2025.
  • For this, teacher capacity building, a robust curricular framework, engaging learning material – both online and offline, learning outcomes and their measurement indices, assessment techniques, tracking of learning progress, etc. will be designed to take it forward in a systematic fashion.
  • This mission will cover the learning needs of nearly 4 crore children in the age group of 3 to 11 years.

Impact

  • The host of initiative will help transform the education system and bring out holistic development of students of the country.
  • It will boost the access and equity in education and improve the gross enrolment ratio in the times to come.
  • Further, it will ensure learning for all, with equity, so as to cover all students at all levels of education and in all geographical locations, even in the remotest parts of the country.