Education should be child centric and not the curriculum,says Kapil Sibal

Sibal has previously held HRD and Science&Technology Ministries.

Speaking here on the occasion of the two-day CII global university-industry congress,the Minister said that education needs to concentrate on the child and not the curriculum. Its efforts should be to bring out the brilliance in the child.

He also propagated a 10-year vision to create a road map to facilitate reforms in education to ensure that India comes to the forefront of world’s education scene.

Commenting on the plight of education,Sibal said that ironically,while,satellite (Mars Mission) is being guided,”many institutions under the AICTE,engineering institutions,are closing down in India.

“They are winding up because of lack of quality and a feeling among students that these institutions lack on individual structure and other things,” he said.

He further said: “We have a level of excellence that we have achieved which is symbolised by the launch (Mars mission) and you have the lack of excellence that is staring us in the face and that is the irony of India.”

He emphasised on the need to make education compatible to leverage technological advancements like cloud computing and low cost access devices.

Sibal advocated providing students with low-cost devices that can facilitate access to educational material and global information anytime,anywhere.

The Minister added that investment in education will suffer in absence of legislation saying it could create chaos and uncertainty.

He called on academic institutions and industry to create enough pressure to bring about the required legislation for reforms in education.

Earlier,Sibal told an event organised by the CII that in India the discourse at the political level kept looking back to the past.

“In the dicourse at political level,you always remember the past,we never talk about the future. That what our Prime Minister had said in 1950. You should talk about what your PM will say in 2025,” he said.

Sibal said that was the kind of change needed and the academic world could speak out and bring that change.

“People must provide a vision for the future,an alternative vision for the country. Nobody talks this is my policy,this is what I want to do. They only say your policy

is bad. Have you ever heard one person in the opposition saying this should be the education policy of India,” he said.

“Why because they don’t think about it. They only think of what wrong has been done. We are not superhumans that everything we do is right,” he added.