news 7.06.12

 

 

59th Meeting of Central Advisory Board of Education : Summary Record of Discussion

            The Fifty Ninth Meeting of the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) was held here, today under the Chairmanship of Shri Kapil Sibal, Union Minister of Human Resource Development. Smt. Krishna Tirath,   Union Minister of State (I/C) for Women & Child Development, Dr. Narendra Jadhav, Member (Education), Planning Commission along with 18 Ministers-in-charge of Education from various States/UTs attended the meeting. Smt. Anshu Vaish, Secretary, Department of School Education & Literacy, Shri Ashok Thakur, Secretary, Department of Higher Education and Member Secretary (CABE),  Dr. M. K. Bhan, Secretary, Department of Biotechnology, Dr. T. Ramasami, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, eminent educationists, authors, artists, linguists etc. apart from Heads of different autonomous organizations and senior officials of different departments of the Government of India attended the meeting as its members.

2.         The CABE is the highest advisory body to advise the Central and State Governments in the field of education. The previous meeting i.e. 58^th meeting of CABE was held on 7th June, 2011. The minutes of the previous meeting were confirmed today along with the Action Taken Note on them.

3.         In his opening remarks, Shri Sibal  indicated that this august body would be charting the course of action in the education sector. While making policy prescriptions, the child’s interest is of paramount importance and this should be the foremost consideration for all of us.  Education is one sector which greatly impacts the socio economic fabric and the changes that are taking place in the society are such as were never envisaged earlier. The challenge therefore is how to cope with these changes and address the issues of access, inclusion and quality that concern this sector. The multilayered problems require a holistic approach. 

Shri Sibal highlighted the importance of teacher and teacher education in the society as also the use of ICT in education. He said that we propose to have a National Mission mainly to address the quality related issues.  Teacher is no longer the sole repository of knowledge and inputs of information flow from different sources.  Therefore, we should have a national mission to address issues relating to teacher education in a holistic manner. Referring to the higher education sector, HRM mentioned that a major challenge before us is to increase our GER which is less than the global average.  To achieve higher GER, we need to explore newer ways of access as the existing conventional models would not be adequate and concept of Meta University needs to be considered.   He also proposed to set up a Credit Guarantee Fund to facilitate larger numbers of students to gain access to higher education.  HRM also highlighted the use of ICT in education and appreciated the work done by the CABE Committee on ICT in School Education which has submitted its report.

The HRD Minister also thanked the outgoing members of the previous CABE Committee for their valuable contributions and stated that he looks forward to this august body in furthering the course of action to give every child the opportunity for a quality education.

4.         Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Women & Child Development Smt. Krishna Tirath in her speech thanked the Shri Sibal  for his endeavour in educational development of the country particularly of the girl child.  She highlighted various issues related to education of girls and women, both at school and higher education levels. 

5.         Dr. Narendra Jadhav, Member (Education), Planning Commission expressed delight in participating in this august forum and mentioned that Education and skill development have been identified as a priority area in the Approach Paper to the XII Five Year Plan.  Highlighting the broad contours of the XII Plan as far as the education sector is concerned, he said that we need to align education to the growing aspirations of a large youth population as well as with the economy and labour market.  The three Es of Expansion, Equity and Excellence in both school and higher education call for a holistic approach.

6.         After deliberations on all the agenda items, the CABE resolved as under:-

(i)           CABE decided to constitute a Committee for assessment and implementation of Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) in the context of the no detention provision in the RTE Act.  While there was agreement that Board Examinations are not required, guidelines for implementation of CCE need to be evolved for examining and testing the child during the elementary education cycle.  The CABE Committee would be chaired by Smt. Geeta Bhukkal, Minister of Education, Haryana which will include other State Education Ministers with representation from academics and civil society.  The Committee will submit its report in 3 months after consulting State Governments and other stakeholders.  

(ii)         CABE appreciated the initiative to launch the National Mission on Teachers and Teaching.  It was decided to constitute a CABE Committee for developing the framework and processes of the National Mission on Teachers and Teaching.  The CABE Committee would be headed by Dr. D. Purandeswari, Minister of State for HRD.  The Committee will include other State Education Ministers with representation from academics and society.  The Committee will give special focus on Teacher Educators and developing teachers for inclusive education for children with special needs.  

(iii)       The report of CABE Committee on ICT in School Education and the draft National Policy on ICT were unanimously adopted.  Suggestions were made on making available digital version of test books on Akaash Tablet for use by both teachers and students in schools, focus on capacity building of teacher educators and need for States to review their current ICT Policy and strategies in light of the provisions of the National Policy.

(iv)       The proposed concept of Meta University as a collaborative platform for a network of universities with a view to utilise create and synergise between different programme activities and institutions providing credit based multi disciplinary courses was appreciated by members.  It was felt that the States universities and other state institutions could take similar innovative measures to bring a paradigm shift in higher education.

(v)         Members endorsed the initiative to create a Credit Guarantee Fund to ensure better flow of credit to deserving students.   

New Department of Disability Affairs Created under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment

The Central Government has recently created a new Department of Disability Affairs which was earlier a part of the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment. On the initiative of the Union Minister of Social Justice & Empowerment Shri Mukul Wasnik, the proposal was moved for the creation of new Disability Department, considering the need of the large population of Persons with Disabilities which, as per 2001 census is 2.1 crore. Now the Government has created two Departments under the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment vide notification dated 12th May 2012, namely:-

(i) Department of Social Justice and Empowerment (Samajik Nyaya aur Adhikarita Vibhag)
(ii) Department of Disability Affairs.

The new disability department will have a separate Secretary, 3 Joint Secretary level officers and other officers. The entire strength would be about 150. Earlier, the disability department was just one bureau under the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment and had only one Joint Secretary and a staff strength of around 40 which was very inadequate considering the large population of PwDs and their problems. The process of creating new posts has already been started.

The Minister for Social Justice & Empowerment Shri Mukul Wasnik said that our Government is committed to the cause of PwDs. With the creation of this new Department, we will be able to focus more on the policy issues and problems of the PwDs. There would be a separate budget for this department which would help in strengthening the existing schemes and formulating the new ones, and also for technological innovations, which is very much required in this sector. It is pertinent to mention here that Hon’ble President of India in her address to Parliament on 12th March 2012 had mentioned about the creation of this new department.

He also stressed that it would now be more easy to coordinate with various stakeholders, NGOs, State Governments, other related Central ministries and international organizations like United Nations, as India is a signatory to UNCRPD.

The subject of “Disability” figures in the State List in the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution. It also figures in the illustrative list of items for devolution to Panchayati Raj and Municipal bodies (in accordance with relevant State laws) as given in the Eleventh and Twelfth Schedules of the Constitution. Notwithstanding this, the Govt. of India has always been proactive in the disability sector. Not merely is it running seven National Institutes (NIs) dealing with various types of disabilities and seven Composite Regional Centres (CRCs), which provide rehabilitation services to PwDs and run courses for rehabilitation professionals, but also funds a large number of NGOs for similar services, and also a National Handicapped Finance & Dev. Corporation (NHFDC) which provides loans at concessional rates of interest to PwDs for self employment.

                                                                       

On ‘World IPv6 Launch Day’ today Global Deployment of IPv6 begins

Architectural Change in Internet Addressing System to enhance addressing capacity

Major ICT Stakeholders to Permanently Enable IPv6 for Products and Services

27 Indian Websites brought on IPv6 Platform

All Government Websites to migrate to IPv6 by December 2012

Global transition from Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) to Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) began today. To mark the ‘World IPv6 Launch Day’ an event was organized here. Speaking on the occasion Shri R Chandrasekhar, Secretary Department of Telecommunication, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said, for India this transition is not only urgent but also very important. Expressing faith in achieving transition well in time he said transition period will be more difficult than end period.

Today major Internet Service Providers, networking equipment manufacturers and web companies around the world are coming together to permanently enable IPv6 for their products and services. This day, being organized by Internet Society, represents a major milestone in the global deployment of IPv6. Last year, one-day ‘World IPv6 Day’ event was held on 8 June wherein, top websites and Internet Service Providers around the world, joined together for a successful 24-hour global-scale trial of the new Internet Protocol, IPv6.

In India 27 websites have been brought on IPv6 platform. Further, a direction has been issued to all the Government organizations to migrate their websites to IPv6 (dual stack) by December 2012. As IPv6 is not backward compatible with IPv4, the transition to IPv6 is likely to be a complex, mammoth and long term exercise during which both IPv4 and IPv6 will co-exist.

The IPv6 improves on the addressing capacities of IPv4 by using 128 bits addressing instead of 32 bits, thereby practically making available an almost infinite pool of IP addresses. IPv6 will affect all kinds of devices. In fact the large address space of IPv6 makes it possible for every device on earth to get connectivity. Therefore, the Internet would no more be a network of people but a network of things or the“Internet of Things”. The devices could be of any, such as Smart Phones, Smart Tablets, Traditional Internet desktops, Data-enabled mobile phones, Consumer appliances, Embedded systems, Sensors etc.

Possibilities of IPv6 applications across different industry segments are also immense. Some of the possibilities in various sectors include - Communication - Use by service providers in their networks, Data centers, ASP, Web Hosting; Energy Sector -Smartgrids, Smartmeters; Transportation -Intelligent transport systems, Smart vehicles; Media -IPTV, Mobile TV; Healthcare -Emergency rural healthcare management, Smart healthcare management systems and Defense Sector -Intelligent warfare systems.

India has at present 35 million IPv4 addresses against a user base of about 360 million data users. In addition, Government is planning to have a target of 160 million and 600 million broadband customers by the year 2017 and 2020 respectively. Moreover, there is a strong security requirement to provide unique IP address to each individual data user. In addition to addressing capacity, IPv6 also offers several other advantages over IPv4.

a) Security – Internet Protocol Security (IPSec) is mandatory in the network layer and is a part of the IPv6 base protocol suite. It supports end-to-end security, authentication and non-repudiation thereby simplifying end to end security into applications.

b) Autoconfiguration – This is a plug and play feature which simplifies network configuration especially when the number of devices / nodes is very large like in typical sensor networks. It helps networks to quickly respond to crisis situations and facilitate adhoc network reorganizations.

c) IP Host Mobility – This feature enables a mobile node to arbitrarily change its location on an IP network while still remaining reachable and maintaining existing connections. Some practical uses of Mobile IPv6 could be enterprise on the move (e.g. courier companies etc.), globally reachable home networks, and internet enabled transport (cars, buses, trucks etc.)

d) Innovative Applications – IPv6 has been designed with many new features which make it possible to develop entirely new applications which are not possible in the IPv4 protocol e.g.Centralized Building Management System,Intelligent Transport Systems, Rural Emergency Health Care, Tele-education / Distance Education, Smart Grids etc.

IPv6 is not just about addresses but about applications taking advantage of the new features built into the protocol. Only a few applications have been mentioned and there are many more applications possible. The Department of Telecommunications is actively pursuing with industry, Central and State governments through regular meetings to propagate the adoption of IPv6 for the benefit of the country.