Shri Kapil Sibal calls for Quality in Education
INAUGURATES CONFERENCE OF STATE EDUCATION SECRETARIES: NCTE PORTAL LAUNCHED
Quality should be at the forefront of the education system, and access to quality education must be available for all. The nation cannot move forward with good education being limited to an elite class of people. This was stated by the Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Shri Kapil Sibal, while inaugurating a conference of State Education Secretaries, to discuss Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and school education here today. The Minister, while complimenting the efforts of the SSA in reaching out to 99 per cent habitations in the country, cautioned that as certain recently published reports on the state of education in the country had indicated, the quality of education and high drop out rates continue to be a cause of concern.
The HRD Minister suggested that at the level of the nation, we need a core curriculum in Science, Commerce and Maths. In the future, he added, for Humanities also a core curriculum could be mulled and regional/state specific diversities can be part of the syllabus as core plus. He underlined that the quality of teachers will need to be improved and the RTE also has specific clauses in this regard. He also called upon the officers presents to ensure girl child has equal access to education.
Shri Sibal inaugurated the ‘NCTE Portal’ during the Conference and released the ‘User-Manual’ of the NCTE Portal to be used by the officers of NCTE and other stake holders. The Portal would provide various services, including on-line application for recognition of teacher education institutions, on-line submission of appeals, on-line registration of teacher education institutions, teacher educators and teacher trainees, and electronic processing of applications submitted on-line through MIS-integration. He welcomed this endeavour of the National Council for Teacher Educational (NCTE) as a major step forward in e-Governance and transparency in the education sector.
