New education policy to be unveiled after states' approval: Irani

Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani on Friday said the new National Education Policy will be made public only after approval from all the states.

"The education policy is not a property of an individual. We need to share it with the states and get their approval before making it public," Irani said at a press conference called to highlight the ministry's achievements in the last two years.

Her reaction comes in the wake of a statement given by former Cabinet Secretary T.S.R. Subramanium who said he will make the new policy public if the government did not do so.

Subramanium headed a five-member committee that formulated the new education policy and submitted it to the HRD ministry last month.

Irani said it was the first time in the country that an education policy had been chalked out after eliciting suggestions from students and their parents.

"We leveraged technology and received written suggestions from 1.10 lakh villages, over 5,000 blocks and 20 states," Irani said while elaborating on the procedure adopted for receiving public suggestions.

The minister said the Modi government had added six IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management), two IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) and five IIITs (Indian Institutes of Information Technology) to provide quality education to the students.

She said the new education policy had done away with "no-failure" system and re-adopted the system to detain students after class five in case they fail to meet required educational standards.

Irani said the government had also brought forth a mechanism to rank institutes of higher education to raise the quality of education all over the country.

"Medical and law institutions will be ranked separately from next year," she added.

The minister said her ministry was emphasising on the overall growth of children by promoting their interests in cultural activities and regional crafts.

--IANS

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