Advisor to Lieutenant Governor, Rajeev Rai Bhatnagar, on Tuesday, reviewed the roadmap for implementation of National Education Policy-2020 in Jammu and Kashmir.

The meeting was attended by Principal Secretary, Higher Education, Rohit Kansal, Vice Chancellors of various universities of the UT, and other senior officers of the Higher Education Department.

Vice-Chancellors had a thorough exchange of ideas on steps for implementation of this ambitious nationwide policy in J&K.

The meeting was held as a follow-up of earlier meetings held on the same subject which were chaired by the Chancellor and Lieutenant Governor, Manoj Sinha.

Advisor reviewed actions taken on the decisions taken in previous meetings held in this regard besides taking stock of the status of formation of 6 Board of Studies each to be set in Jammu University and Kashmir University. He also assessed progress on the formation of curriculum committees.

Advisor Bhatnagar said that the process of implementation of the policy would be gradual in nature and posited that steps need to be taken immediately in this regard. He called for speeding up the creation of syllabus formation for first-year studies of different courses and creating a general framework for all courses, across course duration.

While addressing the meeting, Advisor said that NEP-2020 is supposed to be flexible in its approach adding that ‘Nothing is set in stone’ with respect to its implementation. Autonomy and freedom are its cornerstones, said the Advisor.

Innovation, incubation, and research would be given impetus under the upcoming educational reforms, said the Advisor while acknowledging the role of universities in giving a boost to research work in the UT.

Rohit Kansal remarked that with the introduction of NEP-2020, courses would become modular and tentatively provide various points of entry and exit in them. He also assumed the possibility of a need to update the syllabi regularly over subsequent years.

The pace of implementation of NEP-2020 may vary across institutions due to various challenges but we are certainly going ahead with its implementation with the upcoming academic session, said the Principal Secretary.

Rohit Kansal informed the meeting that according to decisions taken in previous meetings, all fresh admissions for undergraduate courses would be for a period of 4 years initially with the provision of exiting studies in subsequent years of the course. In this regard, he said, the courses may need to be reoriented.

Principal Secretary also shed light on the introduction of the Bachelor of Vocational Education course under the policy. He informed that 17 government degree colleges would start taking admissions for the course for session 2022-23. Further, 53 and 72-degree colleges would start teaching the course from academic sessions 2023-24 and 2024-25 onward respectively.

Corresponding Sector Skill Councils have also been identified, he said.

Speaking on encouraging innovation in J&K, Principal Secretary said, ‘Universities need to become a hub of innovation and in this regard, the UT government would organise a startup competition in collaboration with IIT Jammu. ‘Over the years, the government would put in greater resources for supporting such contests for fostering innovation’, he maintained.