Quality Education to All Is Our Motto

“The five pillars of education policy for any country and particularly for our country will always be accessibility, equity, quality, affordability and finally accountability. So, these five are the pillars on which our new education policy will be based,” said Union Human Resource Minister Prakash Javadekar in an exclusive interview to Prakash Nanda and Deepak Kumar Rath. Excerpts:

- Prakash Nanda and Deepak Kumar Rath

The main point when one talks of education is that quality is becoming a huge problem in the sense that among the 200 top universities of the world, we don’t stand anywhere. So what precisely is the problem, given the fact that the government has launched various schemes like Make in India, which ultimately depends on quality and quantity is immaterial in this case?

No, quantity also matters because when Britishers started education, they started it not for teaching everybody but to develop workforce to sustain the regime in the country. Therefore, during the freedom movement, right from Gandhiji to Gokhale to Ambedkar, all the Congress leaders started taking interest in education and it became national education movement actually. So, expansion was not the interest of the British and after freedom we started it and in the last 70 years we have reached every nook and cranny of the country and now there is 98-99 percent of enrollment, which is a good thing. So, expansion is also necessary because access is also important. Now there is the question of quality. Immediately after I took over as the HRD Ministery on 5th of July, there was an Inter State Council Meeting of all state Chief Ministers called by Prime Minister after a gap of 10 years. In that meeting, one point that was discussed extensively was of quality. All chief ministers, not a single exception, laid emphasis on quality and rededicated themselves for improving the quality of both primary and higher education. I think that was a good beginning. So, our agenda is to improve quality. “Sabko shikhsa achchi siksha” (Quality education to all) is our motto.