This story is from August 2, 2020

Need to overhaul education system to conform to NEP standards: Himanta Biswa Sarma

Need to overhaul education system to conform to NEP standards: Himanta Biswa Sarma
Himanta Biswa Sarma
GUWAHATI: Assam education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Saturday said that the present education system in the state will have to be completely overhauled to conform to the standards of the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020.
Terming the NEP a historic decision by the Centre, Sarma said, “We have to bring complete structural reforms in the present education system in our state to implement the new education policy.
Few sectors in the new policy are already being followed in Assam and so conforming to the new policy will be somewhat easier for us.”
He added that a 40-member committee is being set up to prepare the blueprint for implementation of the NEP in the state. The committee is headed by state education department principal secretary.
“We are starting the process by next week and the committee will start functioning accordingly within the next seven days. We hope that the committee will submit its recommendations by December 31, 2020,” Sarma said.
“Accordingly, the sub-groups comprising the panel would study all aspects of the new policy, be it implementation of pre-primary education in the state with compulsory teaching in mother tongue or regional language during the foundational level (till Class II), introducing vocational education from Class VIII or the process to make educational institutions autonomous,” Sarma said.
“The introduction of mother tongue or regional language as a medium of instruction at pre-primary foundational level will open up opportunities for a large number of people to be associated with the education system. There are 35,000 villages in the state and hamlet-wise, we would need to build 75,000 new infrastructure units for teaching in each regional language,” he said.

“Under the new policy, by 2030 all colleges will become autonomous bodies and will come out of control of universities. Of course, there will be a regulatory body for the colleges,” he added. He further said that education will now be universal under the new policy and no student till Class XII would be deprived of education.
The NEP also provides for state to spend 6% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in education sector. “Assam is already spending close to 6% of our GDP in the education sector and we are among the few states to do so. Our allocation in education department is Rs 21,5000 crore per annum , which is 5.8% of our GDP,” Sarma said.
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About the Author
Prabin Kalita

Prabin Kalita is a journalist at The Times of India and is currently the Chief of Bureau (northeast). He has been reporting in mainstream Indian national media since 2001. He has been a field journalist reporting gamut of issues from India’s northeastern region and major developments in neighbouring countries like Myanmar, China, Bhutan and Bangladesh concerning India and northeastern region. He has been covering insurgency—internal and cross-border, politics, natural calamities, environment etc. He is a post-graduate in Geological Sciences from Gauhati University.

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