Education Highlights 1st – 31st August

Union Cabinet has cleared a new National Education Policy (NEP). The new policy has brought promising changes in school and higher education.

• The NEP policy emphasizes those students till Class 5 should be taught in their mother tongue or regional language.

• The NEP policy focuses on reducing the syllabus to retain “core essentials” and focus on “experiential learning and critical thinking”

• Teachers will be encouraged to use a bilingual approach, that also includes bilingual teaching-learning materials so that the students whose home language may be different from the medium of instruction can also understand the concept easily. 

• According to the four-year programme proposed in the new NEP, students can take an exit from the course with a certificate, after two years with a diploma, and after three years with a bachelor’s degree.

• The mid-day meal programme will be extended to the pre-school stage.

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2. JEE, NEET 2020 Exam Dates: Students have moved to Supreme Court and demanded exams after normalcy returns. 

• A group of students have demanded the cancellation of JEE, NEET 2020 Exams. Now, the examination is scheduled to be conducted in the month of September, but students want exams to be conducted once normalcy returns.

• Now, students have moved to the Supreme Court to seek cancellation of the examination to be conducted in September.

• Around eleven students from eleven states have filed the plea in the Supreme Court. The plea has also urged to conduct the exam after normalcy returns post COVID19 crisis.

• A group of parents has also written to Dr. Pokhariyal, the HRD Minister to cancel exams fearing the risk of health for their wards.

• However, some students also wish that the exams should be conducted as per schedule, so that entire academic year doesn’t get negatively turned off. 

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3. Unlock 3.0: Schools and colleges may open from September. Guidelines will be out on 3^rd August.

• The Central Government is planning to reopen schools and colleges from 1^st September to 14^th November

• The decision have come out considering the fact that continuous online mode may endanger lives of students and staff.

• It is being planned that students of class 10^th and 12^th would attend the classes for only 15 days.

• Sections and A and C would come on particular days, while B and D would only come on the remaining days.

• Schools are likely to run only with 33% of teachers, students and staff as a preventive measure and would need to comply with the standard operating procedures.

4. Guidelines for DU Open Book Exam for final-year students will start from 10^th August

• The Delhi High Court had given nod to the Delhi University for conducting online Open Book Examination (OBE) for final year undergraduate courses from 10^th August.

• Justice Prathiba M Singh has declared that the questions papers will be sent to the students’ email ID and soon will be uploaded on the varsity’s portal.

• An extra hour was given to the students to upload the answer sheets.

• The varsity is directed to send an auto-generated email to inform all the students that their answer sheets have been received.  

• The high court announced the judgment through video conferencing.

5. The National Testing Agency (NTA) released JEE Main Admit Card 2020 on the official website jeemain.nta.nic.in.

• Amidst Corona pandemic, NTA has decided to conduct the JEE (Main) exam from 1^st September to 6^th September.

• The exams will be conducted in two shifts – the first will be from 9 AM to 12 Noon and the second shift will be from 3 PM to 6 PM. 

• JEE advanced exam will be held on September 27^th and NEET examination will be held on 13^th September. 

• Candidates are advised to report at the Examination Center two hours before the examination starts. 

6. IIT-Kharagpur researchers have developed an e-Classroom – Deepshak for teachers

• Researchers at IIT Kharagpur have developed unique software named Deepshak that can help teachers improve online classroom sessions.

• The unique software was developed by Professor Raja Datta of the Electronics and Electrical Communication Department alongwith their postgraduate students 

• Its current version is being used within a campus LAN.

• It is a single-session platform where the teachers can concentrate on the screen with the teaching materials, while also viewing queries on a live chat box, where each student can send their queries.

• IIT Kharagpur, Director Prof Virendra K Tewari had said that we need more platforms like Deepshak for addressing challenges faced by India and has offered more personalized interaction to improve the act of teaching.