The National Council for Educational Research and Training has been granted ‘deemed to be university’ status, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan announced on Friday while addressing a gathering at the 63rd Foundation Day celebrations of the NCERT.
“NCERT is already engaged in research and innovation. It is an institution of national importance and hence it has been granted the ‘deemed to be university’ status,” said Pradhan at the main NCERT campus in the national capital while unveiling a notification for the same.
The regional and state councils of education across the country will function as the off-campuses of NCERT, he added.
The council, a think-tank of the school education system, is the apex organisation for developing textbooks for school education in India and is also the body that is implementing the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. The council is engaged in educational research, innovation, curriculum development as well as developing teaching-learning materials and pedagogy tools.
While universities have been demanding that the nomenclature ‘deemed to be’ must be dropped and that these should be declared just ‘universities’, the Union Minister said that once the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) Bill is introduced and passed, the title will change automatically.
Besides, he also asked top officials, including the Secretary of Department of School Education and NCERT director DP Saklani to develop a national curriculum framework for teacher education.
Earlier this month, the final version of the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) for school education was released.
Talking about developing textbooks, Pradhan said that the council must also come up with small content on recent national developments such as the successful launch of Chandrayaan-3 and the effective management of Covid-19 pandemic in India.
“We must have content like a booklet of about less than 10-pages on massive national developments and achievements such as landing of Chandrayaan on the moon and how we fought Covid-19,” said Pradhan.
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The minister also hinted at another important change that may be in the works on launching professional courses directly after completion of Class 10 instead of upgrading in Classes 11 and 12.
“I am in talks with the department on introducing professional courses after Class 10 that are linked to the job market so that students can enrol in it directly. We are still brainstorming on whether these courses would be titled diplomas or something else. It’s being worked out at the moment, but we plan to bring this crucial change in secondary education,” said Pradhan.
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