Kolkata: The state Education department has constituted a six member committee with noted educationists in the state eliciting opinion about the National Education Policy (NEP) that has been passed at the central Cabinet recently.
The department has also asked the different mass organisations working in the education sector to share their opinion on NEP.
"We have formed a six member committee which has been asked to give their opinion about NEP. They should submit their valuable feedback by August 15," said Partha Chatterjee, state Education minister on the sidelines
of a programme to mark Raksha Bandhan at Behala on Monday.
The committee has MP Saugata Roy who is an educationist, Nrisingha Prasad Bhaduri, Pabitra Sarkar, Aveek Majumder, Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury (Vice-Chancellor of Rabindra Bharati University). Chatterjee has also requested Suranjan Das (V-C of Jadavpur Univeristy) to be a member of the committee.
Not only teachers' organisations or mass organisations working in the education sector but any educationist who is not a part of the committee is free to share his/her opinion about NEP.
The opinion can be e mailed to the Principal Secretary of the department or to the Personal Secretary of the minister. The submission of opinion will be on till August 15. The state will deliberate upon the opinions and form its own views about NEP.
Chatterjee asserted that the state government has not been consulted regarding NEP. " Education is in the concurrent list. The Prime Minister had said that he had consulted the states in this matter. But we have never been consulted. When the draft of the NEP was circulated we had raised our objections. But no one from Bengal was part of the committee that had framed the NEP, " said Chatterjee.
He said that there are several serious questions about the policy that involves whether the Centre has developed the infrastructure for proper implementation of the policy or how can a matter in the concurrent list can be implemented without passing it in Parliament.
"The financial implications involved for developing the infrastructure is also very much there," he added, reiterating that Trinamool Congress as a party has also its argument about NEP.