Telangana, AP get down to work on new education policy

Hyderabad: The Telangana and AP governments will hold multi-level consultations from next month to help formulate the new national education policy. Although the Centre had asked all the states to complete the consultations by August end, the two states have initiated the process only now citing technical issues.

Telangana, in fact, is a tad better as it held its first state-level consultation meeting on Tuesday. Both the states have formed committees comprising district education officers, mandal education officers, school principals, representatives of social groups/weaker sections, among others.

As part of the consultation process, the ministry of human resource development (MHRD) has furnished 13 themes in school education and 20 themes in higher education that each state needs to flesh out. On Tuesday, the DEOs along with representatives from the National Informatics Centre and the central government discussed an action plan focusing on these themes.

“The government is keen on covering aspects that can improve the education system even at the grassroots level. The motive of the consultations is to inform every village, mandal and district about the importance of the new education policy,” said S Jagannath Reddy, director of the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), Telangana.

The Telangana government has formed a question template which seeks views on topics such as dedicated teachers for primary classes, language teachers at the elementary level, integration of vocational education with mainstream education, computerised system for posting teachers and transfers, introduction of mobile labs and science centres, among others.

The AP government too has constituted four committees at the village, mandal, municipality and district levels. “Discussions will be based on the themes provided by MHRD. Mandal education officers would upload the details of recommendations given at each level. The process may not take long as our officials had meetings on the new education policy earlier,” said Narayan Reddy, lecturer at AP SCERT, who is supervising the process.

The AP government will focus on promotion of languages, discussing whether abolition of class X board would reduce the learning levels of students, new pedagogies and approaches for teaching science, math and technology in schools, inclusive education, and adult education, among many others.

Although the consultation process in AP is yet to begin, they plan to submit the report to the Centre by September 16. However, Telangana may take more time due to extensive deliberations they plan to hold. “The process in Telangana is expected to be completed by December,” said Jagannath.

All the states have to submit the reports for further deliberations by the public. After getting recommendations from all states, the Centre would then compile and formulate the new education policy, which is set to be implemented from next year onwards.

Source: PTI

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