digitalLEARNING-Aug-2011- [6]-World Education Summit 2011

REPORT Inaugural Session

World Education Summit 2011 The Beginning...

The first World Education Summit envisaged as a major global platform for dialogues, debates and deliberations upon policies, tools and methods of learning towards education for all was inaugrated by leading global dignitaries on 13th July 2011

Shri Kapil Sibal (centre) lighting the lamp at the inaugration of World Education Summit; L-R: Dr Taseer Al Nuaimi, Dr M P Narayanan, Loynpo Thakur S Powdyel, Prof V N Rajasekharan Pillai

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he World Education Summit-2011(WES) was organised by the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) along with Center for Science Development and Media Studies (CSDMS) and Elets Technomedia in New Delhi.

The sprawling function was inaugurated by the special guests of honour Loynpo Thakur S Powdyel, Minister of Education, Royal Government of Bhutan, Dr Taseer Al Nuaimi, Minister of Education, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and Shri Kapil Sibal, Minister of Human Resource and Development, Government of India. Participants were from academic programmes/ services of 33 participating educational institutions including IGNOU attended the event.

Education industry is undergoing a paradigm shift, which aroused the need of a platform where global leaders, civil society, academia, industry can con-

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verge to plan and share knowledge, plans and recommendations for educational reforms. The World Education Summit proved to be that platform. The three-day event was attended by more than 1000 national and international stakeholders from development, government sector, academia, NGOs, and industry.

The summit witnessed various sessions on school education, higher education, vocational and skills, and distance and open learning.

Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Human Resource and Development (HRD) and Information Technology emphasised upon the parallel system of vocational education, which will be exactly like the formal system of the Central Board of Secondary Education.

“It is hoped that in the next 10 years, India will emerge as a developed nation. But this also means that India will require 500 million skilled individuals and 250 million graduates to achieve this dream. But at the moment, out of every 100 children that go to school, only 13 reach college. The global average is 23 out of 100 and in all developed countries, it is above 40. Thus, any developed nation has a critical mass of children going to college,” said Sibal, while inaugurating the WES 2011 at the Ashok Hotel in New Delhi on July 13.

“In higher education, to collaborate between the universities, you need mobility and choice of set standards to easily move to reform the examination system so that the entry should be based on one exam. You need a semester system to allow that mobility,” said Sibal Reflecting upon what is happening globally in the education sector he analysed the reasons for global renaissance. “Unless we have the critical mass going to the university system for cross fertilisation of ideas, it is not possible to reach our desired goals. The Gross Enrolment Ratio in Jordan is 43 percent but there are many parts of the world where it is less than 10 percent. In India it is less than 15 percent, we must ensure that it moves from 15 percent to 30 percent,” he added

Inaugural Session

REPORT

L-R: Shri Kapil Sibal, Dr Ravi Gupta, Dr Taseer Al Nuaimi, Loynpo Thakur S Powdyel, Prof V N Rajasekharan Pillai, Dr M P Narayanan

“We need flexibility and change of mindset. Discipline of knowledge is only acquisition of knowledge.

What we need is skills for tomorrow, with a change in content of education. We must ensure that a child develops employable skills during school days.”

“A major challenge in this endeavour, however, is absenteeism of teachers. This is an infrastructural challenge. We are trying to ensure quality infrastructure under this act by setting out minimum parameters for a school – like, teacher-pupil ratio, the presence of a playground, a classroom of certain dimensions. But the immediate task is to remedy teacher absenteeism especially in the rural areas and to fill in the gap of 5 lakh teachers.”

“As you know India is setting up a National Intelligence Grid and one of our objectives is to ensure that the connectivity of various intelligence agencies, and will also link enforcement agencies as sometimes enforcement agencies don’t have access to information with intelligence agencies and vice versa.”

“Globally 80 million are out of school and 8 million are from India. Unless there is a collaborative effort from the government, private sectors and the corporates, there will not be a significant change,” he said.

“We in India are concentrating on delivery and not concentrating on content. So you may have another 500 million mobile phones and broadband in place connecting every village and district but we may not have the content then it is of no use. We must shift our emphasis to create IT solutions. It is much beyond cyber security or disaster management, the entire developmental process is baseless without content. We are going to connect 26,000 colleges and 700 universities in the next two

years through the National Knowledge Network. We will connect but we need open source material and content to actually empower the students, this is a great opportunity for the IT industry,” Sibal concluded.

Dr Taseer Al Nuaimi analysed the reasons for why the reforms in education sector have failed.

“Firstly, reforms are often rushed from design to implementation without meeting requirement. Secondly, what works in Jordan will not work in India and vice versa. The context needs to be analysed. And lastly, leadership is fundamental and critical for reforms,” said Dr Taseer Al Nuaimi.

Loynpo Thakur S Powdyel emphasised upon the need to create a platform for the whole education community. He said, “We truly need a new education civilisation. No nation can succeed when its educational system fails.”

Prof V N Rajasekharan Pillai, Vice Chancellor, IGNOU while delivering his opening address said, “India is witnessing a great change in terms of quality and quantity at all levels. Establishing universities, instituting reforms, creating a national vocational framework, technology integration, all these are important areas to network. Education today is not just about spreading knowledge and skills but developing, training and capacity building.”

Dr M P Narayan presented the concluding remarks.

He said, “I am truly honored to have Shri Kapil Sibal.

I am also thankful to everyone who has supported directly and indirectly to make the summit happen.

I am sure that the outcomes, recommendations and solutions of this event will help us in making education sector digitally sound.”

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