Meeting
of BRICS Ministers of education was held on 5th July, 2017 at
Beijing, China. The Indian delegation was led by Shri Prakash Javadekar,
Minister of Human Resource Development, India. Delegation of all the five BRICS
countries participated in the two-day deliberations.
Speaking on the occasion, Minister of Human Resource
Development, Shri Prakash Javadekar thanked China for hosting the meeting in
Beijing. He said that the Education, being the universal good, empowers everybody.
It will set the tone for the world of the future. Education is a universal,
apolitical agenda. It’s not negotiation, but cooperation all the way. So,
increased cooperation in education is the need of the hour.
He
appreciated the creation of institutional mechanism in the form of BRICS
Network University and BRICS Think Tank Council. BRICS Network University,
where 12 universities from each of the 5 countries will engage with each other
in education research and Innovation, is another commendable initiative. Five
areas of cooperation are prioritised which are Communication and IT, Economics,
Climate Change, Water Resources and Pollution, and BRICS study. India will
participate whole-heartedly in all these cooperative efforts.
Shri Javadekar also said that under the dynamic
leadership of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the government is reforming
and reprioritising its education. In School Education, it is the learning
outcomes which are being eMphasised upon, and efforts are on to promote
creativity and keep alive curiosity and inquisitiveness amongst students. In higher
education the focus is on skilling, research and innovation. He emphasised the
steps taken to achieve equity through increased scholarships, education loans,
remission and fee waivers for disadvantaged and marginalised sections.
Minister
Javadekar highlighted some of the initiatives of the Govt. of India in
education. He specifically spoke about the National Institutional Ranking
Framework (NIRF) which provides a relative ranking of Indian institutions,
India’s indigenous MOOCs platform, SWAYAM, which has already hosted over 480
courses online and, this year, plan to host 2000 courses and GIAN (Global
Initiative for Academics Network) under which 600 professors from 62 countries
have already conducted their courses in India and, this year, we expect to
receive another 800 faculty from across the world. The Minister spoke about
India’s research initiative, IMPRINT, which identifies priority areas for
research for India, National Digital Library, which provides over 7.2 million
online resources free of cost and is ever expanding National Academic
Depository (NAD), Smart India Hackathon, which involved over 40000 students in
solving over 300 problems received from various sources.
Delegations
from other BRICS Member states, similarly, spoke about education systems of
their countries, initiatives taken by them and identifying the areas of future
cooperation among BRICS Member States. There were deliberations on the Beijing
Declaration on Education which was discussed thereafter in the Senior
Officials’ Meetings held a day before on the 4th July 2017. Beijing
Declaration identifies some specific activities to deepen the cooperation among
the BRICS Member States, encompassing the entire spectrum of education from
school and higher education to vocational and technical education.
Before
the meeting of Education Ministers, an international conference of
Vice-Chancellors of the Universities participating in the BRICS Network
University (BRICS-NU), meeting of International Governing Board (IGB) of
BRICS-NU and meetings of International Thematic Group (ITGs) of BRICS-NU were
held in Zhengzhou, China on July 1-3, 2017. During the meeting, the
participating countries signed the Regulation for the IGB and the statutes for
the ITGs, thus completing the structure of the BRICS-NU.
At
the conclusion of the BRICS Education Ministers’ meeting, a bilateral meeting
was also held between the Minister of Human Resource Development, India and the
Education Minister of China, Mr. Chen Baosheng when bilateral cooperation
between India and China was discussed.
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GG/AK/RK
