New Delhi: In a significant move, the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) on Thursday revamped the CBSE affiliation process for new schools with a greater emphasis on learning outcomes.
The announcement was made by Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar during a press conference held at the PIB Conference Hall in Shastri Bhawan.
“CBSE has done many changes in giving affiliation process to the schools; we have avoided unnecessary duplication of NOC at the state level and central level,” Javadekar said.
The Minister said that there are currently 20,700 schools affiliated with the CBSE in the country and every year the board receives 2,000 to 2,500 applications for opening new schools.
He said that earlier the affiliation process involved a NOC inspection done at the state level and then same NOC inspection was done by CBSE.
MHRD has done away with this process, he said. Javadekar further explained that the CBSE affiliation bylaws have been revamped to ensure speed, transparency and ease of doing business with the CBSE. He said district education officer will now inspect the form for CBSE affiliation.
The Minister said, the inspection of schools will now be outcome based and the board will not visit any of the aspects vetted by the state during the inspection.
He said, on a satisfactory inspection report, the board will issue a letter of intent to the school. Javadekar said the new bylaws denote a major shift from the highly complex procedures followed earlier to a simplified system based on preventing duplication of processes.
One major change that has been introduced by the HRD Ministry is that the whole process has been made online to ensure more transparency.
He said that there were many pending affiliation requests from school. About pending 8,000 school applications, some requests were pending since 2007, have been decided by MHRD. Out of these about 2, 000 schools have been granted affiliation.
The affiliation has been granted on the basis of merit. He said that there are 10 lakh CBSE teachers and approximately 2 crore students.
He said that CBSE is also going to ask schools to give an undertaking on some very vital matters – making sports mandatory.
CBSE schools will have to mandatory make fee disclosure. He also said that there should not be any hidden cost. Schools will have to provide an undertaking on all these matters and any school which does not follow these will be disaffiliated.
He also said that CBSE schools cannot ask students to buy uniform or books from a particular shop or establishment.