On October 19 Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan launched a draft of the National Credit Framework (NCrF) for public consultation. "The government has developed the NCrF to enable the integration of academic and vocational domains to ensure flexibility and mobility between the two," he said.
Giving more details on how this will be an advantage for the students, the Union Minister said, "NCrF would be a game changer by opening numerous options for further progression of students and inter-mingling of school and higher education with vocational education and experiential learning, thus mainstreaming skilling and vocational education," as stated in a report by PTI.
"NCrF will also enable students who have dropped out of mainstream education to re-enter the education ecosystem. The National Credit Framework is an umbrella framework for skilling, re-skilling, up-skilling, accreditation and evaluation encompassing our people in educational & skilling institutions and workforce," he added.
Additionally, considering the high-level inter-ministerial committee report on NCrF as the basis, the Ministry of Education (MoE) has started a national-level public consultation on Wednesday on the same. What is the aim of the framework? It aims to formulate a unified credit accumulation and transfer for general and vocational education and from school to higher education.
As the National Education Policy 20020 envisioned making education more holistic and effective with an emphasis on the integration of general (academic) education, vocational education and experiential learning, it becomes imperative to establish and formalise a national credit accumulation and transfer system. Therefore, the NCrF provides creditisation of all learning and assignment, accumulation, storage, transfer and redemption of credits, subject to assessment.
Development of NCrF...
The NCrF was jointly developed by the University Grants Commission, All India Council for Technical Education, NCVET, National Institute of Open Schooling, CBSE, NCERT, MoE, Directorate General of Training, and Ministry of Skill Development. It was last year that the Ministry of Education (MoE) approved the constitution of a high-level committee to develop a National Credit Accumulation and Transfer Framework for both vocational and general education.
What does the report say?
The Report of the High-Level Inter-Ministerial Committee on National Credit Accumulation and Transfer Framework led by Nirmaljeet Singh Kalsi, Chairperson of the National Council for Vocational Education and Training (NCVET) stated that while a student can earn up to 40 credits for learning up to 1200 hours per year, for pre-school up to Class V, the learning hours range from 800 to 1000 hours. With regard to this, the Minister appealed to all institutions, schools, ITIs, AICTE-affiliated engineering colleges, centrally-funded HEIs, state universities and regulatory authorities and bodies to host the public consultation for National Credit Framework on their website for seeking suggestions from citizens.
"Accordingly, the learning shall not be limited to only instructional hours but also encompass all other activities in the educational institutions, earlier categorised as curricular, co-curricular, and extra-curricular," it added.
Also, it mentions the NCrF credit levels for various school education. Namely: for higher education from Level 4.5 to level 8 (undergraduate levels 4.5, 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0, postgraduate levels 6.0, 6.5 and 7.0, and PhD level 8) and for vocational education and training level 1 to level 8.
"The credit points may be redeemed as per the guidelines of ABC for entry or admission in school, higher, technical or vocational education programs/ courses at multiple levels enabling horizontal and vertical mobility with various lateral entry options," said the report.
