The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has approached the University Grants Commission (UGC) seeking deemed-to-be university status under the de novo category.
According to media reports, the matter is to be discussed in the Executive Committee (EC) meeting of NCERT today. EC is the highest decision-making body of NCERT and is headed by a union education Minister. The agenda listed for the EC meeting said that the status of a deemed-to-be university would enable NCERT to confer its own undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral degrees with the program, course structure and autonomy to conduct examinations and management. will allow. ,
Presently, the undergraduate and postgraduate programs offered by the Regional Institute of Education of NCERT are affiliated to local universities including Barkatullah University, Bhopal, MDS University, Ajmer, Mysore University, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar and North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong. , RIEs are focused on research to make school education more effective in the country.
The proposal for grant of deemed university status pitches for greater autonomy, with the claim that NCERT is dependent on these universities for approval to launch new programs despite offering various innovative courses.
However, the proposal is also getting opposition from some members of the NCERT faculty, who feel that the status of a deemed-to-be university would be a compromise on the autonomy of the council.
“Just as UGC is the academic authority for higher education, NCERT is the academic authority for school education. Assistant Professor Abhay Kumar, an elected member of the NCERT’s Establishment Committee, said, “The status of the university would seriously erode this right.”
Established in 1961, NCERT has been involved in the development of the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) in 1975, 1988, 2000 and 2005 and the National Policy on Education (NPE) in 1968 and 2022. Additionally, textbooks published by NCERT are used in schools following the curriculum of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and various other education boards.
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