- Institutions would be declared either accredited or unaccredited without specific scores or grades
The Indian government has been planning to overhaul the accreditation system for Higher Educational institutes by the end of 2024, replacing the current practice of assigning a score and corresponding grade with a binary system, where institutions would be declared either accredited or unaccredited without specific scores or grades.
The National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), the Union government’s primary body for assessing and accrediting Higher Education institutions, announced on January 27 that the proposed reforms in the current accreditation system, put forth by the committee headed by former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman Dr K Radhakrishnan, have been accepted by the Education Ministry on January 16. In light of this development, the NAAC’s Executive Committee decided to introduce “binary accreditation” and “maturity-based graded levels” by the end of 2024.
Under the proposed binary accreditation system, Higher Educational institutions would be given either an “Accredited” tag or a “Not Accredited” one. The Not Accredited would be divided into two categories – “Awaiting Accreditation” for those institutes that nearly meet the requirements but need improvement and “Not Accredited” for the ones that are far below the standards for accreditation.
At present, the NAAC assesses institutions and awards grades based on scores. If a Higher Education institution gets a score between 3.51 and 4, it gets an A++ grade. A score between 3.26 and 3.50 gets an A+ grade and a score between 3.01 and 3.25 gets an A grade. There are eight grades in total, including C for scores between 1.51 and 2, which means basic accreditation and D for scores below 1.51, indicating unaccredited status.
Another reform that NAAC announced on Saturday was the implementation of the “Maturity-Based Graded Accreditation”, in addition to the binary system. The former is for higher education institutions that have secured the “accredited” tag under the binary system and is for them to graduate “level one” to “level five”. From level-one – an accredited institute – the plan is to incentivise improvement up to level-4 where an institution will become an “Institution of National Excellence” and then further move to level-5 to get the tag of “Institution of Global Excellence for Multi-Disciplinary Research and Education”.
“The levelled accreditation shall enable Indian institutions to significantly improve their quality and position themselves among global top institutions,” a NAAC statement said. There are two phases to the intended implementation of the Radhakrishnan Committee’s recommendations. First, the binary accreditation will be put in place over the course of the next four months, after which no more applications would be accepted using the current process.