India News | Pradhan Launches Draft of National Credit Framework for Public Consultation
Get latest articles and stories on India at LatestLY. School students will soon be able to earn credits from academic and non-academic activities which will will be stored in the Academic Bank of Credit (ABC) just like in higher education with the Ministry of Education planning to introduce a National Credit Framework (NCrF).
New Delhi, Oct 19 (PTI) School students will soon be able to earn credits from academic and non-academic activities which will will be stored in the Academic Bank of Credit (ABC) just like in higher education with the Ministry of Education planning to introduce a National Credit Framework (NCrF).
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan launched the NCrF draft here Wednesday for public consultation.
"The government has developed the NCrF to enable the integration of academic and vocational domains to ensure flexibility and mobility between the two. NCrF would be a game changer by opening numerous options for further progression of students and inter-mingling of school and higher education with vocational education and experiential learning, thus mainstreaming skilling and vocational education," he said.
"NCrFwill also enable students who have dropped out of the mainstream education to re-enter the education ecosystem. The National Credit Framework is an umbrella framework for skilling, re-skilling, up-skilling, accreditation and evaluation encompassing our people in educational & skilling institutions and workforce," he added.
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Taking the high-level inter-ministerial committee report on NCFr as the basis, the Ministry of Education (MoE) has started a national level public consultation on Wednesday on the same.
The framework aims to formulate a unified credit accumulation and transfer for general and vocation education and from school to higher education. As envisaged in the National Education Policy 2020 to make education more holistic and effective with an emphasis on the integration of general (academic) education, vocational education and experiential learning, it becomes imperative to establish and formalize a national credit accumulation and transfer system.
The NCrF provides for creditisation of all learning and assignment, accumulation, storage, transfer and redemption of credits, subject to assessment.
According to the Report of the High-Level Inter-Ministerial Committee on National Credit Accumulation and Transfer Framework led by Nirmaljeet Singh Kalsi, chairperson, National Council for Vocational Education and Training, while a student can earn up to 40 credits for learning up to 1200 hours per year, for pre-school up to Class 5 the learning hours range from 800 to 1000 hours.
The Minister appealed to all institutions, schools, ITIs, AICTE-affiliated engineering colleges, centrally-funded HEIs, state universities and regulatory authorities, bodies to host the public consultation for National Credit Framework on their website for seeking suggestions from citizens.
Doing away with hard separation between different areas of learning, i.e. arts and sciences, vocational and academic streams, curricular and extra-curricular for the purpose of assignment of credits and credit levels, the assignment of credits is independent of the streams, subjects or any learning subject to assessment.
"Accordingly, the learning shall not be limited to only instructional hours but also encompass all other activities in the educational institutions, earlier categorised as curricular, co-curricular, and extra-curricular," the report said.
The NCrF credit levels for school education are up to level 4, while for higher education from Level 4.5. to level 8 (undergraduate levels 4.5, 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0, postgraduate levels 6.0, 6.5 and 7.0, and PhD level 8) and for vocational education and training level 1 to level 8.
"The credit points may be redeemed as per the guidelines of ABC for entry or admission in school, higher, technical or vocational education programs/ courses at multiple levels enabling horizontal and vertical mobility with various lateral entry options," said the report.
The NCrF has been jointly developed by University Grants Commission, All India Council for Technical Education, NCVET, National Institute of Open Schooling, CBSE, NCERT, MoE, Directorate General of Training, and ministry of skill development.
The Ministry of Education (MoE) had last year approved the constitution of a high-level committee, to develop a National Credit Accumulation and Transfer Framework for both vocational and general education.
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