PM likely to review HRD ministry’s functioning

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to take stock of the functioning of the human resources development ministry later this month.

Sources said that a range of issues relating to the path ahead for the higher education sector will be discussed and that matters pertaining to Central universities will also come up. The meeting assumes significance as it comes a month after the suicide of dalit scholar Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad Central University.

The HRD ministry is working on launching several ambitious initiatives, like development of a national institutional ranking framework, a GIAN programme to attract foreign faculty and setting up six new IITs.

Meanwhile, in an effort to improve the quality of teachers’ education institutes, the government has, for the first time, decided to develop an accreditation and grading framework for them.

The decision was taken on Monday at a meeting of state education ministers and officials of state governments on teacher education chaired by Union human resources development minister Smriti Irani.

The meeting also decided to constitute a committee to develop a framework for the issue, a statement by the ministry said.

Based on the deliberations, it was decided to constitute a committee to suggest ways to institutionalise an internship of teacher education programmes in government schools.

The committee includes the state education secretaries of Rajasthan, Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Tripura and representatives of NCTE and KVS. The internship will be for a duration of 20 weeks, at the end of which the school will provide feedback on the teaching aptitude of the trainees.

For the first time a mobile app is being developed in collaboration with MyGov, by the Ministry of HRD to enlist citizens who are willing to volunteer as teachers. Eighteen States expressed their willingness to participate in the first phase.

During April-May, 2016, a 2/3 days Workshop for Educational Administrators in Higher Education will be organised by the UGC in five regions across the country. Modules for these workshops will be developed by IIMs. These modules may be adopted by State Governments which can carry the process forward by organising similar workshops.

It was also decided that NCERT will conduct a review of SCERTs and DIETs and prepare a road map for strengthening of these institutes. UGC will similarly undertake training of college principals.

All State Education Ministers were requested to prepare a state specific road map to address challenges in teacher education and find out solutions to deal with them.