Keeping in mind the need of the hour to expand technical and higher education facilities for catering to the needs of lakhs of students,  the Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, Manish Sisodia came out with an innovative idea. In order to solve the infrastructure problem, he suggested institutions to start teaching students in schools, malls and rented buildings.

This announcement was made at the inauguration of a techno-business incubation centre at the Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University for Women.

There are several gaps which needs to be filled in the education sector such as the infrastructure needs to be developed so as to accommodate more than 1.5 lakh students. For this institutions should start teaching students in schools, malls and rented buildings. He also assured that there will not be any procedural and financial hurdles in this regard. An ‘out of the box’ technique is needed to educate students.

The Delhi education minister while giving motivational tips to the students, also mentioned the need to think by at least 25 years ahead of our times due to the fast changing technological space.

In a rarest of rare incident, the government at the central has found support in the form of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) led Delhi government regarding the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET).

Last month, the supreme Court had ruled that NEET would be the only test for admission to medical courses in the country.

Coming out in full support of the NEET, the Delhi government requested the Centre to implement and check alleged irregularities in the enrollment process as early as possible.

In this regard, Delhi Health Minister Satyender Jain had said that the medical education is INR 20,000 crore industry and is marred with corruption and capitation run by a nexus of politician and businessmen. He also expressed hope that the present ruling by the Supreme Court will help to put an end to the malpractices prevalent in the industry.

This decision by the Supreme Court has a twofold aspect, first it will force the private institutes to reserve 50 percent of all India students and secondly, no more donations have to be paid to the private institutes.

Health ministry sources reveal that the private medical institutes charge exorbitant money for a single seat.

Union Health Minister, J P Nadda said the state health ministers have informed him about the plight of students appearing in the state medical entrance examinations. Considering student’s future, their problems have to sorted out before making NEET a reality across the country.

With the BJP government completing its second year, all are waiting anxiously for the new education policy. Putting everyone at rest, the HRD Minister Smriti Irani announced few important policies which would be given priority in the education policy for this year. She laid special focus on the ‘Unnat Bharat Abhiyaan’, the programme started by the government to spread technical education. Under the programme, ITs, IIMs and central universities have adopted five villages in 90 districts across the country to boost education and technical know-how.
For 2016, some of the other essential policies which shall be implemented and few which needs changes were suggested by Smriti Irani recently:

• NCERT to address all challenges facing the education system of the country. More stress would be added to teach kids about our national heroes who laid down their lives for the nation.
• Reviewing the ‘No Detention policy’. With this policy being implemented by the UPA government, many of the students find it difficult to cope in higher classes, which is a concern.
• Implementing ‘Swayam’ to provide free online education to children for classes 9 to 12, including Board examinations. This would be with the help of IITs, IIMs, Central Universities, NITs and few Private Universities. ‘Swayam’ would altogether be a new initiative, especially for the upliftment of the poor students. It is planned to be started within two months.
• MoUs being signed with MIT in the USA and Stanford University for improving syllabi in NITs, besides creating a separate cadre for teacher trainers.
• The government has roped in a very experienced professor  from IIT Kanpur (H C Verma), to undertake training exercises at government schools in Uttar Pradesh to promote interest in science.

With the private universities growing rapidly, the share of state private universities out of the total universities in India has raised from around 3 per cent in FY2009 to 29 per cent in FY2015,  according to data from the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD).

Some private universities have even created a class for themselves within a span of four to five years or even less on the back of efficient faculty, tie-ups with reputed international universities, less administrative intervention from the government, updated syllabi of courses, and state-of-the-art infrastructure.

Moreover, a leading research agency has estimated that the education sector of India is set to reach Rs 7,80,000 crore in size in Financial Year (FY) 2016-17 from earlier Rs 6,42,300 crore, thereby registering a growth of 20 percent.

The report attributes the growth potential to the stupendous gap between the demand and supply. At present, there is an additional requirement of 200,000 schools, 35,000 colleges, 700 universities, and 40 million seats in vocational training centres in India.

In a letter to the chairman of the Rajya Sabha, Allahabad University Vice Chancellor RL Hangloo said that Union HRD minister Smriti Irani has “never interfered in the functioning of this university thereby clarifying his previous allegation of political interference.

Prof Hangloo also mentioned in his letter that his earlier statements have been twisted by the media and that Smriti Irani in her capacity as a minister has always encouraged the university administration with her rare flash of brilliance.

Professor Hangloo had earlier alleged interference by the ministry on the context of conducting offline entrance test after streaming it entirely online.

Students allege that an online-only admission process discriminates against students from villages who do not have access to the Internet. They have called off their strike after Mr Hangloo rolled back his decision.