Stake holders to be consulted on new education policy

Set to draft the new education policy, the government will launch an exercise from early next year to collect views from a cross section of the society, involving 2.5 lakh village education councils and organising thousands of meetings at block levels.

The initiative to involve stake holders right from the grassroot level is aimed at making the process broad based, HRD Minister Smriti Irani said here today.

The initiative will involve some 2.5 lakh village education councils and organise 6,600 meetings in the block level to get views and suggestions from cross sections of the society, she said at a function here.

"It would be a top-down approach," Smriti said.

"Unil now, deliberations on formulation of the new education policy were restricted to only some officers, politicians and some academic experts. And they decided how to educate the country. Today, the world has changed. People should also be heard who are going to be most impacted by the policy," the Minister said.

She said the best practices across the world also need to be studied as also those practices which have failed "so that we can learn from the failure and course correct".

Irani said the first meeting would start with the 2.5 lakh village education councils, giving them an opportunity to share their suggestions. This would be followed by deliberations at the block level where the stakeholders can decide how the new policy should be.

At the district level, parents can participate in the deliberations along with the MPs and MLAs, she said.