AMRITSAR: The Ministry of Education hosted the second meeting of the Education Working Group (EdWG) here from March 15-17. The meeting was chaired by Secretary, Higher Education, K. Sanjay Murthy with Secretary, School Education, Sanjay Kumar and Secretary, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Atul Kumar Tiwari as Alternate Chairs.
Over 55 delegates from 28 G20 member countries, guest countries and other multilateral organisations such as OECD, Unesco and Unicef participated in the meeting.
Four priority areas
The four priority areas of EdWG are ensuring foundational literacy and numeracy, especially in context of blended learning; making techenabled learning more inclusive, qualitative and collaborative at every level; building capacities, promoting life-long learning in the context of future of work and strengthening research, promoting innovation through richer collaboration and partnerships.
On this occasion, a seminar on ‘Strengthening Research and Promoting Innovation through Richer Collaboration’ was organised at Khalsa College by IIT Ropar with inputs from IISc Bengaluru, IIM Amritsar and TISS Mumbai. Govindan Rangarajan, Director, IISc Bengaluru made a presentation on ‘Research Initiatives in G20 Countries’ followed by two panel discussions – one on ‘Research in Emerging and Disruptive Technologies, Industry 4.0’ which was chaired by Rajeev Ahuja, Director, IIT Ropar, and the second on ‘Research in Sustainable Development Goals’. The discussion saw participation from France, the United Kingdom, Australia, India, Oman, South Africa, Unicef, China and the United Arab Emirates.
Need for synergy
Prof. Budaraju Srinivasa Murty, Director, IIT Hyderabad, stressed on the need for synergy between Government-academia-industry to find solutions to pressing world problems. He highlighted that the National Education Policy 2020 had brought in path-breaking reforms in education in India, andvarious programmes were helping promote cross-institutional collaboration in the country such as I-STEM portal, IIvenTive, IIT-R&D fair etc.
One of the panelists, Alison Dell, Assistant Secretary, Australian Government Department of Education, talked about the national collaborative infrastructure scheme in her country andwhat her Government had been doing in moving towards applied research. She emphasised theimportance of international collaboration in research and innovation, highlighting successful partnerships between Australian and Indian institutions in the past. She expressed hope that such collaborations would continue to thrive and contribute to the sustainable development of bothnations.
Research collaboration
The seminar focused on bridging the gap between Government-academiaindustry linkages fordesigning solutions for addressing global challenges. There is a need for bringing multi-disciplinarityin education. The discussion reached a consensus that research collaboration is need of the hourand countries as well as institutions need to break silos to promote translational research for achieving thesustainable development goals just as they did during the Covid-19 pandemic.
A multimedia exhibition was organised on the side-lines of the seminar which provided a physical format to the participating countries along with industry, academia to present best practices in research, innovation, collaboration and partnership. There were over 90 stalls at the exhibition with key participation from UAE, China and Saudi Arabia, NSDC, NCERT, National Book Trust, Indian Knowledge Systems Division (IKS), and several start-ups in education.
