New panel on education policy this week

Degrees to have photos and Aadhaar to prevent fraud

The Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) is about to announce a committee to draft a national education policy, after it decided to junk a similar report from the T S R Subramanian committee.

“We will announce the committee by the end of this week. The name of the chairperson is being deliberated,” HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar told Business Standard. Officials in the ministry said the Subramanian committee report was a “mere compilation” of various reports and they wanted “a fresh and comprehensive report”.

A MHRD official said the government was also planning degrees with photographs and the Aadhaar numbers of students from the next academic year to prevent fraud. The government said it would be easier to store the degrees in a digital format in the National Academic Depository, a database of copies of degrees, from where online ones can be issued. This would also help employers identify the right candidates.

Subramanian said it was up to the government to discard or accept the recommendations. “A lot of hard work has gone into our report,” Subramanian, a former cabinet secretary, added.

The five-member Subramanian committee, which submitted its report on the national education policy to Javadekar’s predecessor Smriti Irani last year, had demanded that the report be made public. Irani had refused, stating the government didn’t want the education policy to become the legacy of one person.

 

The Subramanian committed had suggested various reforms, including raising the outlay on education to six per cent of gross domestic product; setting up an India Education Service with cadre-controlling authority with the MHRD; compulsory licensing of teachers in government and private schools; no detention till Class V; extension of mid-day meal scheme to secondary students and allowing foreign universities to open campuses in India.

The previous education policy was made in 1986.