The Ministry of Education (MoE) has announced that registration of students for a Unique Student ID will begin in August 2023. This initiative is being carried out by the National Educational Technology Forum (NETF), which is currently working on the draft of the Education Ecosystem Registry.
This registry will serve the dual purpose of being a digital edulocker where students can store their certificates and skill grades. This will help unify the entire academic journey of a student starting from Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE), school, vocational education, higher education and skilling, by making the otherwise standalone systems inter-operable, said Anil D Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, NETF, on the sidelines of a G20 seminar in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, on Wednesday, April 26, as mentioned in a report by The New Indian Express.
Sahasrabudhe explained that several new components like multi-disciplinary education, academic bank of credit and multiple entry and exit option, brought in by the National Education Policy (NEP) would require the transfer of grades from one institution to another or from one discipline to another in an authentic manner. And to avoid a mix-up of grades between students, each student needs to have a unique ID.
An edulocker
For this purpose, NETF started the Education Ecosystem Registry project where separate digital registries will be maintained for students, faculty members and also for educational institutions. "Once a child enters school at the age of three, an edulocker, just like DigiLocker, will be created under the Registry and the child will be provided an Aadhaar-verified unique ID," Sahasrabudhe said.
"Credentials and details on family, education, certificates, scholarships, fellowships, skills earned at various stages of the education cycle would be kept in the edulocker," he added. When all certificates are digitally verified and signed at every education stage, it will become easier for a student to shift from one institution to another either within or outside the state without any hassle of physical submission and verification of certificates. This way, the authenticity of a student's degree can also be ascertained.
The NETF has recommended that student registries be hosted at the regulator/board/state level, whereas, the management of such registries could be done at the institute level. MoE has invited public opinion on the draft education ecosystem registries till May 5, as per TNIE.
