The decision was made by the IIT Council, which is the apex body for all administrative and key affairs of the premier institutes. (Representational image: @IIT Delhi/Twitter)
The National Credit Framework was “unanimously adopted” during a council meeting of the IITs. It refers to a national credit accumulation and transfer system in line with the National Education Policy 2020
All the IITs across the country will implement the recently notified National Credit Framework. This was decided at the council meeting of the premier institutes held in Bhubaneswar on Tuesday, officials said.
During the meeting, the National Credit Framework (NCrF) was “unanimously adopted” by all the IITs. The NCrF refers to a national credit accumulation and transfer system in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. It allows integration of vocational education into mainstream education, where students can earn credits for different activities through their educational journey from school up to higher education.
The council, which is led by union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, has directors of all 23 IITs, governing body members, University Grants Commission chairperson and ministry officials among others. The council is the apex body for all administrative and key affairs of the IITs.
“Adoption of a national credit framework by the IIT council will provide a better equivalence of credits obtained in general (academic) education, technical education, and skill and vocational education. It will encourage the rest of the higher education system to adopt and implement the framework bringing a unified inclusive meta framework across the country,” said Prof M Jagadesh Kumar, chairperson of University Grants Commission (UGC), who made a presentation during the meeting.
Kumar said the NCrF is a comprehensive credit framework encompassing elementary, school, higher, as well as vocational education and training, integrating creditisation of learning in various dimensions – academics, vocational skills and experiential learning, including relevant experience and professional levels acquired.
The IITs have been conducting region-wise awareness workshops for teachers and administrators from school and higher education. The workshops were conducted by IIT campuses in Delhi (for north zone), Bhubaneswar (for east zone), Guwahati (for northeast zone), Mumbai (for west zone) and Chennai (for south zone).
The NCrF was launched in line with NEP 2020, which advocates that there should be “no hard separations” between vocational and academic streams. The policy also states that at least 50 percent of the learners through the school and higher education system shall have exposure to vocational education till 2025.
It will enable students, who have dropped out of mainstream education, to re-enter the education ecosystem. While a credit-based framework is already in place in technical and higher education, this will be the first time it will include school (from Class 5) and vocational education. Credits will be assigned on the basis of learning hours from Class 5 to PhD level.
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