Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) has announced a new Scheme in Public-Private Partnership basis, National Educational Alliance for Technology (NEAT), for using technology for better learning outcomes in higher education. The education ministry would act as a facilitator to ensure that the solutions are freely available to a large number of economically backward students, said an official statement. As part of the scheme EdTech companies - -which operates in Education Technology sphere --- would be roped in and they would have to offer free coupons to the extent of 25% of the total registrations for their solution through NEAT portal.
The ministry would create and maintain a National NEAT platform that would provide one-stop access to these technological solutions, it said.
EdTech companies would be responsible for developing solutions and manage registration of learners through the NEAT portal.
They would be free to charge fees as per their policy.
As their contribution towards the National cause, they would have to offer free coupons to the extent of 25% of the total registrations for their solution through NEAT portal. MHRD would distribute the free coupons for learning to the most socially/economically backward students.
The ministry also said All India Council for Technical Education or AICTE, the national level regulator for technical education in the country, would be the implementing agency for NEAT programme.
The scheme shall be administered under the guidance of an Apex Committee constituted by MHRD.
Independent Expert Committees would be constituted for evaluating and selecting the EdTech solutions.
MoUs will be signed with the shortlisted EdTech companies.
Awareness programs would be taken up by MHRD to create awareness of the NEAT solutions to teachers and students.
The objective of the scheme is to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to make learning more personalised and customised as per the requirements of the learner.
The statement said that there are a number of start-up companies developing this and MHRD would like to recognise such efforts and bring them under a common platform so that learners can access it easily.
MHRD proposes to launch and operationalise NEAT in early November 2019.
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