National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has been formally declared a deemed-to-be university, meaning it can now award its own degrees. In India, NCERT is the apex organisation for school education, which undertakes various activities and programmes, including educational research and innovation, curriculum development, and development of textual and teaching-learning materials.
"The Ministry of Education, on the advice of the University Grants Commission (UGC), NCERT, along with its six constituent units, have been declared as deemed to be a university under a distinct category," an official notification said. These constituent units include regional institutes of education in Ajmer, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Mysuru, and Shillong, along with the Pandit Sunderlal Sharma Central Institute of Vocational Education in Bhopal.
Three years back, the Centre had approved granting the deemed-to-be-university status to NCERT in the ‘De Novo’ category. A De-Novo deemed university is an institution that can apply to the UGC for setting up a new institution as deemed-to-be-university, which will undertake study and research in unique and emerging areas of knowledge that are not offered by any existing institution.
The notification has listed certain conditions for granting the status. These conditions prevent the NCERT from indulging in any activities that are "commercial" and "profit-making" in nature, and mandate that all academic courses or programmes must conform to the norms and standards prescribed by the UGC and the statutory bodies or councils concerned.
The notification also mandated the NCERT to start new programmes, off-campus or on offshore campuses, "only in accordance with the norms and guidelines issued by the UGC, from time to time, on the subject".
Currently, the graduate and post-graduate programmes offered by the NCERT’s Regional Institute of Education (REI) are affiliated with local universities like Barkatullah University, Bhopal, M D S University, Ajmer, University of Mysuru, Utkal University, Bhubaneshwar, and the North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong.
Further, the Ministry has said that the NCERT shall take appropriate steps to begin research programmes, doctoral programmes, and innovative academic programmes.
The government has also mandated the NCERT to start participating in annual rankings of institutes issued by the National Institutional Ranking Framework and has asked it to “compulsorily” create the Academic Bank of Credits (ABC), identities of its students, and upload their credit scores in digital lockers that can appear in the ABC portal.
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