'Govt's redraft education policy in two to three months'

Mumbai: Union Minister for Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar today said the government is on the verge of completing its redraft education policy and hopes to release it in two to three months.

Speaking at the India Today Conclave 2017, Javadekar said the government is emphasising on redrafting education policy, with complete autonomy to the IIMs and focus on research and innovation.

"We have completed our exercise and hope to release the redraft policy in two to three months. To improve the quality of education, certain earlier decisions also need a relook," he said.

According to the statistics, there are 270 million students in India from the KG to the PG level with 14 million in higher education alone. Of the 230 million in schools, 130 million go to the government schools while 100 million go to the private schools.

"That's a figure that the government wants to change. We want to improve the quality of the government and municipal schools to such an extent that people will withdraw their children from the private schools and enroll them with the government schools," Javdekar said.

He further said the innovation and research are the other areas of focus and the government is implementing the new ideas like offering autonomy to IIMs, encouraging incubation centres and start-ups at IITs and giving scholarships to the students for research while taking steps that would check the brain drain and keep the best brains in the country.

"Autonomy also helps institutes innovate and improve their quality of education. Autonomy is the essence of higher education. So, all the IIMs have been given autonomy," said the minister.

The government is also encouraging start-ups and we invite research proposals, he said, adding, "There are incubation centres at IITs and 200 research proposals have been shortlisted from 1500 applications."

Reforms in the UGC are on the cards and will be implemented this year, he added.