Affirming that the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has carried many of the recommendations made by the State Government, Education Minister Adimulapu Suresh said that Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan has been ahead of times to visualize a level playing field to all students and termed the news published in a section of press as opinionated.
Speaking to media here on Thursday, he said, the Chief Minister wanted education to be accessible, affordable, have equity, quality, and accountability, and all these reflect in the NEP 2020. He has been advocating that poverty should not be a barrier to higher education and 12 .1 of the Policy says that no one should be deprived of education.
Amma Vodi has been launched incentivizing mothers to send her children to school and the NEP in 6.4 talks about incentivizing parents by cash transfers to bring down the dropout rate. Our Government has brought in legislation to monitor and regulate education incorporate education institutions and the NEP clearly states that education is not a commercial activity.
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The previous government, however, behaved like a brand ambassador to corporate education and went about closing down government schools, while our government has revived them and under Nadu, Nedu is bringing in the infrastructure and ambiance. The State has earmarked Rs 12,000 crores for educational institutions.
Our Chief Minister was the first to say that the Degree course should be of four years and announced the pre-primary 1 and pre-primary 2 which was echoed in the new policy, which also spoke about bilingual approach, he said.
The nomenclature of the Ministry of Human Resources Development was changed to the Ministry of Education by this government while the previous government dilly-dallied its entire term.
On the English medium, he said since the matter is in the Court, it is not fair to speak about it but the news appearing in a section of the press does not touch the core issues that we have implemented. We have taken the opinion of parents and 95 percent were in favor of the government decision which was taken after careful consideration and consultations with NCERT. Wherever possible, the NEP said, about home language and the importance of multi-language possibility.
We have thoroughly discussed the NEP 2020 and will apprise the Chief Minister about the outcome, he said adding there was a review on the quality improvement in the education system. The digitalization of education was also a feature of our policy which found its place in the new policy.
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