To strengthen higher education institutions a committee to prepare a roadmap for accreditation

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In a bit to continuously strengthen higher educational institutions in the country, the Government of India has constituted a high level committee. The committee will oversee and prepared a road map for the assessment and accreditation of higher institutions and suggest ways to strengthen them. This move promises to ameliorate the quality taking into considerations the changing needs of the market and global patterns. India being one of the largest and diverse education systems in the world, there is always a need to oversee the pattern. In recent years, with the concerted efforts of the government there has been widespread expansion in the higher education sector.

Road map for the National Accreditation Council

The high level committee has been constituted under the chairmanship of Dr. K. Radhakrishnan, chairperson, Board of Governors, IIT Kanpur & Chairperson, Standing Committee of IIT Council. The mandate of the committee includes strengthening the Assessment & Accreditation processes and preparing a road map for the National Accreditation Council envisioned in the National Education Policy.

Accreditation plays a vital role

It is important to note here that accreditation plays a vital role in making quality assurance an integral part of the functioning of higher educational institutions. Accreditation assists the higher educational institutions to understand their strengths and weaknesses through an informed review process, thus facilitating identification of internal areas of planning and resource allocation by them. Accreditation status of any higher educational institution serves as a source of reliable information for the students, employers and the society regarding the quality of education being offered in the Institution.

The high level committee has other members like – Prof. Mridul Hazarika, Vice-Chancellor, Mahapurusha Srimanta Sankaradeva Viswavidyalaya, Assam; Prof. Bharat Bhasker, Professor, IIM, Lucknow and the Joint Secretary, Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education, Government of India.

Steps to improve school education

In the meantime, Government of India is taking a number of steps to improve the education system at various levels also. Ministry of Education released a detailed report on Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) 2021-22 on school education of India.

Online data collection from the schools

The UDISE+ system of online data collection from the schools was developed by Department of School Education & Literacy in the year 2018-19 to overcome the issues related to erstwhile practice of manual data filling in paper format. In UDISE+ system, improvements have been made particularly in the areas related to data capture, data mapping and data verification.

In UDISE+ 2021-22, additional data on important indicators like- digital library, peer learning, hard spot identification, number of books available in school library, etc, have been collected for the first time to align with the NEP 2020 initiatives.

Gross Enrollment Ratio improves

Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) which measures the general level of participation has improved in 2021-22 at primary, upper primary, and higher secondary levels of school education, as compared to 2020-21. Notably, GER in higher secondary has made significant improvement from 53.8% in 2021-21 to 57.6% in 2021-22.

Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR) improves

95.07 lakh teachers are engaged in school education during 2021-22 out of which more than 51% are female teachers. Further, in 2021-22, the Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR) stood at 26 for primary, 19 for upper primary, 18 for secondary and 27 for higher secondary, showing an improvement since 2018-19. The PTR for primary, upper primary, secondary and higher secondary was 28, 19, 21, and 30 respectively during 2018-19.