The Minister of Education Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’, in a review meeting of the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), held today, has asked officials to take steps to “increase the transparency” of the institute.
The Minister focussed on transparent working of NIOS to produce better results and to strengthen the examination process “so that no one can question the integrity of the prestigious institution”. The Union Minister suggested creating a dashboard with detailed information and contacts of all NIOS centres across the country. The dashboard will seek to provide information and suggestions from stakeholders so that transparency will be increased in the system.
The review meeting of NIOS was also attended by Secretary, School Education and Literacy, Ms Anita Karwal; Joint Secretary, School Education, Ms Sweety Changsan and senior officials of NIOS.
The minister also suggested remodelling of NIOS syllabus along the lines of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) syllabus. Talking about widening the scope of the institution, the minister directed NIOS officials to form a team to review whether the institution can be used “to provide education to the grass root level” and “provide literacy to illiterate people of our country”.
A statement issued added: “The Education Minister said that NIOS is the world’s biggest open schooling system and we should use it more effectively to provide education to the grass root level. He said that we should also use its network to provide literacy to illiterate people of our country. He directed officials to form a team to review the possibility on this matter.”
Mr Pokriyal while reviewing various activities of the institute also mentioned about the use of fresh papers for their book publication instead of recycled papers.
NIOS briefed the minister that they are running four channels for their students out of which two are dedicated for secondary and higher secondary level. NIOS officials informed that they are now providing six hours fresh content daily to their students including weekends which were only for two hours before the COVID-19 crisis, the statement added.