Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank on Tuesday through a virtual platform interacted with the teachers. The Minister congratulated and lauded all the teachers of the country, for wonderfully helping and supporting students, through online education.
Pokhriyal further eulogized the country’s education system saying that because of our rich and high standard of education, we are becoming a major contributor or helper of supporting other Nations of the world. But we need to be more self-reliant and self-sustaining for upgrading the development strategy of our education to a better state.
Answering the question bothering lakhs of students, Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal has confirmed that there would be no practical examinations in January and February. Answering the questions, the minister clarified that at the present situation, it was not possible to conduct CBSE board examinations for Class 10 & 12 in the months of January and February 2021. He also said that the exact dates will be announced soon and our government is in favour of students.
After that various teachers from different corners of the country opened up questions and miseries to him about the present pathetic status of education due to the horrific impact of the Novel Coronavirus.
A teacher from Punjab asked the Minister to start Vocational education for the school students, to which Pokhriyal answered that India is planning to begin Vocational Education from class 6th standard very soon.
Another teacher suggested merging, Ancient Indian education with modern Indian education, to which the Minister said that both the sections of education are important and highly relevant to today’s’ world, therefore, he will surely step forward to merge them.
Pokhriyal further added that India is the first country in the world that is under the process to begin Artificial Intelligence from the school level instead of starting it later at the time of research so that students get friendly of using it and applying it to their lives.
Talking about online education, Pokhriyal pointed out that ‘Nistha’ which is an online portal, is a great initiative by the Centre to bring 25,000 to 30,000 students together under one platform for giving them education.
One teacher from West Bengal asked the Minister to focus more on technical education rather than textbook education following the present trends of jobs in the market, technical education seems to be more useful than textbook lessons, to which Pokhriyal agreed and said that he will work for the same in future.
Chatting further with the teachers, a topic was aroused where a teacher elaborated how man these days, have become more of a machine rather than becoming humans, so that shows how schools should more focus on value-based education and generate behavioural development in students.
Talking on mental health, Pokhriyal said that students should readily practice yoga at their homes and follow ‘Manodarpan’, a Psychosocial Support for Mental Health and Well Being of Students during the COVID Outbreak and beyond, a step taken by the Centre, especially for students.
Proceeding further, when a teacher of Jharkhand narrated how students of the extreme rural and impoverished areas are facing the problem of getting access to digital gadgets for their education, the Minister explained about the Centre’s plan of initiating, ‘One Nation, One Digital’, which is going to eliminate the problems of the rural people soon.