IITs to adopt National Credit Framework | Know what it is and BENEFITS
Officials have announced that all Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in the country will be implementing the National Credit Framework (NCrF) recently notified by the government. The decision to adopt the framework was made during the council meeting of the premier institutes in Bhubaneswar on Tuesday. The NCrF is a national credit accumulation and transfer system that integrates vocational education into mainstream education, allowing students to earn credits for various activities from school to higher education.
The council is led by Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and includes directors of all 23 IITs, governing body members, University Grants Commission chairperson, and ministry officials, among others. According to Professor M Jagadesh Kumar, chairperson of University Grants Commission (UGC), the adoption of the NCrF by the IIT council will provide better equivalence of credits obtained in general (academic) education, technical education, and skill and vocational education. It will encourage the rest of the higher education system to adopt and implement the framework, bringing a unified inclusive meta framework across the country. The NCrF encompasses elementary, school, higher, as well as vocational education and training, integrating creditisation of learning in various dimensions.
The workshops have been conducted by IIT campuses across the country to raise awareness of the framework among teachers and administrators from schools and higher education. The NCrF was launched in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which advocates for "no hard separations" between vocational and academic streams. At least 50% of learners through the school and higher education system shall have exposure to vocational education till 2025, according to the policy. The credit-based framework assigns credits on the basis of learning hours from Class 5 to PhD level and will include school (from Class 5) and vocational education for the first time.