Minister for Education, Naeem Akhtar today pitched for evolving an empowered, vibrant and sustainable educational sector in J&K which can dish out ingenious human resource to serve both the contemporary and traditional sectors.Speaking at the state level consultative meeting on ‘New Educational Policy’ convened here today, the Minister sought to infuse new lease of life in the existing educational system by making it vibrant enough to meet the future challenges.“By empowerment of education, I mean to say that education which vests the students with dignity and enough power, no matter from which background they have come,” he said.The meet was attended by educational experts from the state universities and colleges, including vice- chancellors, senior faculty members, Principals of Colleges and senior functionaries of school and higher education departments.
The state level consultative meet was held after holding series of consultations at Village level, district level in case of school education and block level, district level and divisional level in case of higher education.Reiterating that the state government is all set to bring about a skill development revolution in the state, the Minister said the education in schools and universities has to be inclusive where side by side academics, skills of students are also honed to make them productive assets.“We have to empower child from an artisan family by making him literate as well as add new dimensions to his inherited skills so that he could compete with dignity with his/her counterparts,” the Minister said.For promoting entrepreneurship there is need to produce literate and skilled hands for heritage industry, traditional trades, modern trades and agriculture based enterprise, he said adding this is what the Skill Development Mission envisages.
On having dependable educational institutions to meet these cherished targets, Naeem asked the participants to make recommendations which can help turn the existing and upcoming academic institutions into self-sustaining and vibrant assets.“We are going to establish two cluster universities and two engineering colleges in the State. Let us work towards making these self-sustaining and resourceful in all respects,” he called upon the experts.“For that we will need to make these institutions as real hubs of education buzzing with activity round the clock. We need to introduce multi-shift courses that would attract and produce best of the minds. This will provide students sufficient opportunities as also open avenues for the huge army of scholars who are looking for jobs,” he said. He also called for including in the school level syllabi the activities that could help children to develop expression and shape their personality.“Expression and articulation are key to success and that is the main area where our children are lacking. This aspect is to be taken care of well,” he suggested.