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The Annual Meeting of National Consortium for Open Schooling (NCOS) was organised by the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) on 15 February 2010 at the India International Centre, New Delhi.
The National Consortium for Open Schooling (NCOS) is a forum of Open Schools in India. This includes the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) and fourteen State Open Schools (SOSs).
The meeting was inaugurated by Sri.Kapil Sibbal, Hon’ble Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Govt. of India. In his inaugural address, Sri. Sibal said that a framework of the vision and mission of NCOS needs to be evolved in order to move forward in the area of Open Schooling (OS).
Expressing concern over the enormous challenge of reaching out to 15 million learners who are out of school, he empahsized on the need to improve the methodology of programmes in the Open Schooling system. States, he said, should consider themselves as active stakeholders in the OS system.He also stressed on the need for a system to monitor the outcome of learners enrolled in the NIOS to ascertain whether they were sufficiently empowered. Considering the fast pace in which the country is moving forward, the Open School should be in a position to deliver not as a stand alone programme but as a centrestage programme. He impressed upon the states that they had not done enough to meet the challenges of open schooling and appealed to each one of them to take adequate steps in this direction.
The Minister said that the option for Open School should be regarded not as a poor alternative but as an effective empowering alternative, by producing high quality delivery materials which also needs to be continuously evaluated by an outside agency. Speaking on the importance of skill development, he advised Open Schools to keep their vocational programmes open to all to make the system more flexible, enabling learners to shift from academic to vocational and vice versa. He advised the NCOS to evolve a policy through incentives to attract regular schools to embrace the Open Schools to increase its credibility and improve its national acceptance. He also appealed to the NCOS to work out an effective policy to meet the challenge of reaching out to about 15 million learners by the year 2020.
Presiding over the meeting, the Hon’ble Minister of State, HRD, Smt. Purandeswari lauded the efforts of the NIOS which had earned the experience of more than two decades of representing the ODL system at the national level. Keeping in view the recommendations of the CABE Committee, she said that it has become imperative for existing State Open Schools (SOSs) to upgrade themselves and others to establish SOSs. Commenting on the need to strengthen its programme delivery at the regional level, she said thet the NIOS should explore the feasibility of setting up a Regional Centre in every State, specifically a disdvantaged region like Vizakhapatnam to take care of the enrolment of the girl child and marginalised groups. In this regard, she also stressed on the need for a strong advocacy programme to make people aware of the learner friendly open school system. NIOS, she said should offer consultancy programmes for promotion of Open Schooling in States where no Open School has been set up as well as resource support right from planning to operationalisation of State Open Schools.
Expressing the need for the Hunar programme to be extended to other minorities, Smt. Purandeswari felt that the NIOS can contribute enormously to the task of reaching out to the 22 million children who are in school and 16 million who are out of school. Quoting that ‘choice is the hallmark of freedom’, she said that it should be the endeavour of the educational system to expand the Open and Distance learning system to meet this need of providing alternatives to its learners.
The logo for NCOS , a document titled ‘NCOS-Vision and Mission’ as well as support material on the Adolescence Education Programme were released on the occasion.
Earlier, in his welcome address, Dr.S.S.Jena, Chairman, NIOS said that the Open Schooling System through the NIOS is today at the centrestage of the education arena by growing into an institution covering the length and breadth of the country with a cumulative enrolment of about 1.6 million learners. He mentioned that the NIOS is in the process of developing equivalency and skill development programmes to support the Sakshar Bharat Mission and reach out to neo-literates. Speaking on the need to ensure universal access to secondary education by 2017 and universal retention by 2020 through the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) programme, he pointed out that Open Schooling should be expanded to target the enormous number of children who drop out of school as well the 12 million school going children. In this regard, he said that the Centrally Sponsored Scheme was under active deliberation to expand the open schooling system. Facing the challenge of developing an appropriate curriculum, the National Consortium for Open Schooling (NCOS), he said, would deliberate on the Student Assessment Process specifically with regard to the grading system to provide mobility between educational systems.
The
meeting concluded with a vote of thanks by Sri. Sunil Kaura, Secretary, NIOS.