Draft education policy may be announced by December: Smriti Irani

Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Smriti on Friday said the draft national education policy will be announced ‘hopefully’ by December.

“For the first time, a collaborative effort has been taken from the grass root level to formulate the national education policy. We are talking to teachers, students, district magistrates and other sections of the society to formulate the policy. Hopefully, the first draft would be published in December,” Irani said. She presided over the North East Zonal Consultative Meeting here with the Education ministers and Education secretaries and other officials of the region.

However, Education ministers of only Tripura, Manipur and Sikkim were present in the meeting, though representatives of all the states were at the meeting.

During her visit to National Institute of Technology (NIT), Agartala, on Friday, she said a special meeting of the NITs of the North East would be convened soon to discuss their problems and opportunities for improvements. She also directed authorities of NIT Agartala to invite at least one foreign academician in the institute for delivering lectures at least for 15 days

Asking the institute to furnish a list of foreign academicians, who may be invited, to the ministry, Irani said, “The cost of travels of the academicians would be borne by the ministry and the lectures would be video recorded for future use by the students,” she added. She also stressed on the need for student exchange with other NITs of the country for benefit of the students.

The HRD minister also met the Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar.