Context: Union Finance Minister announces several initiatives to boost Education Sector.
Measures announced:
- A comprehensive initiative called PM e-VIDYAwill be launched which unifies all efforts related to digital/online/on-air education. This will enable multi-mode access to education, and includes:
- DIKSHA (one nation-one digital platform).
- 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.
- IITPALfor 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.
- The Manodarpan 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 – 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.
- 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.
- A National Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Mission will be launched, for ensuring that every child in the country necessarily attains foundational literacy and numeracy in Grade 3 by 202 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.
Need for these measures:
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.