Another significant aspect of the budget is the proposal that legislative reforms would be undertaken to simplify, rationalise, and merge the existing labour laws into 4 codes. This is going to help in reducing the perceived barriers to doing business as mentioned by foreign investors.
The FM presented some interesting and potentially useful proposals in the area of education:
1. Introduction of a system of measuring annual learning outcomes in schools and an emphasis on science education and flexibility in the curriculum to promote creativity which is woefully lacking in our highly bureaucratic educational system. There are many reports on school education that show the abysmally low levels of learning outcomes in our schools in arithmetic and language ability. These lacunae get translated into un-employability of our youth when they are old enough to look for jobs in the organised sector.
2. Creation of an Innovation Fund for Secondary Education to encourage local innovations to ensure universal access, gender parity, and quality improvement.
3. Proposal to undertake reforms in the UGC to encourage greater administrative and academic autonomy based on outcome-based accreditation and ranking. This is in line with the recommendations made by the Group of Secretaries who had suggested that the top universities in the country be unshackled from the UGC's stringent regulations to give full expression to their ambitious dreams. It is hoped that autonomy based on accreditation and ranking and funding linked to performance would enable the dream of our country to be in the forefront of research and teaching at the world level.
4. Creation of a National Testing Agency as an autonomous and self-sustained testing organisation to conduct all entrance examinations for higher education institutions that would free the CBSE and AICTE of conducting routine examinations and enable them to concentrate on academics.
5. Launch of the next phase of STRIVE (Skill Strengthening for Industrial Value Enhancement) at a cost of Rs. 2,200.00 crores. It's very important for the country to lay stress on high-quality vocational education that would enable the vast majority of our youth who do not have interest in academics per se or are unable to pursue the same due to a variety of reasons to get gainful employment opportunities. I would; however, recommend that the education system in our country should be so designed that people who are left out of higher education at the time of leaving school can re-enter higher education when they develop the interest or are able to finance their higher education.
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About the Author:
Prof. Shekhar Chaudhuri, Director, Calcutta Business School is a respected name in the Indian B-School circles. Dr. Chaudhuri served as the director in IIM Calcutta for two consecutive terms where he was responsible for launching new academic programs and significant thrust in research activities, accreditations many academic initiatives.
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