‘New policy envisions imparting 21st century, employability skills’

Policy envisions imparting employability skills with quality: Kasturirangan ■

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 envisions imparting 21st century and employability skills with no compromise on quality, says its draft panel head K. Kasturirangan.

The idea of a liberal or a multi-disciplinary education at the undergraduate level and also a type of four-year structuring of secondary education provides a lot of opportunities for picking up many types of skills, which can be even used as employment opportunities, he said.

“These are all part of developing 21st century skills because education embeds these kinds of things to qualify the youngster with respect to what is needed in the 21st century which is communication, creativity, problem-solving and things of that type,” he told PTI in an interview.

The former chairman of the Isro said the policy was aimed at putting the education in the right track using best of technologies and developments in the field, strengthening institutions, increasing gross intake ratio, among others, and at the same time, ensuring that quality is not compromised.

On the rationale behind introducing four-year UG courses, under the policy, Kasturirangan said it would prepare a youngster to have a comprehensive knowledge base for him to pursue professional interest at a particular level of maturity.

Each one year of that period has the ability to carry forward education to the next step. It also has a provision at that particular point of time that if one wants to stop and engage in a certain profession, he would have developed a certain competence for “that kind of a thing”.

“So, if you work on that principle, first year you can have a certificate, because you need to show to the employer that you have done something... you get a certificate junior diploma, next level you will get a senior diploma, and then third level, you get a bachelors degree.

“And if you do some research and beef up your knowledge, develop new abilities to deal with issues and problems, you get a fourth year degree, it's a kind of an honours, undergraduate degree with honours,” he added.

The idea is to provide multiplicities of options with a certain level of maturity of knowledge and ability to take up certain responsibilities at those points.

“In four years, we can have reasonable comprehensive education to fulfill what an undergraduate education should.”

On abolishing the M.Phil degree, he said it has not had its effectiveness, especially because there were masters degrees whether it is science and arts, and different areas and subjects.

“M.Phil has not been able to compete with them (masters) but at the same time I think in a sense one finds when you have a better way to get a degree with a better quality of knowledge and a better ability to carry out a profession, we think M.Phil does not play that role today,” he said.

In four years, we can have reasonable comprehensive education to fulfill what an undergraduate education should — K. Kasturirangan, NEP draft panel head