NCERT Demands For Institute Of National Importance Status

National Council for Educational Research & Training (NCERT) has forwarded a request to Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) for granting of ‘Institute of National Importance’ status to it. This status will enable the institute to confer degrees and to conduct a number of innovative teaching courses.

The institute had, recently, sent a proposal on the same to the HRD Ministry after a committee headed by Govardhan Mehta recommended granting of this status followed by the approval of Executive Council.

Addressing the audience at NCERT’s 56th Foundation Day, Director of NCERT Hrushikesh Senapaty said that the problem lies in affiliation of NCERT’s regional institute to different state universities. “All our institutes are affiliated to state universities and have to run programmes as per their guidelines only”, said Senapaty. This makes it difficult for the regional centres to run innovative programmes.

Quoting an example, the NCERT chief added that one of the regional centres was unable to introduce semester system since it did not comply with the norms of the state university it is affiliated to.  He also added that each state should have at least one Regional Institute of Education in order to provide quality training to the teachers.

Senapaty further said that NCERT can run various spec aliased programmes on education technology, teaching special children, curriculum & textbook designing, etc. But its implementation is difficult in the current framework. 

Minister of State for HRD Upendra Kushwaha, who was also present at the event, assured that the HRD Ministry will look into the matter of granting the status and will try to resolve this issue. Institutes like IITs and IISc have been granted with ‘Institute of National Importance’ status allowing it to confer degrees to the students.