Chennai: The first G20 Education Working Group (EWG) under Indian Presidency began here on Wednesday with a formal inauguration by Union Minister of State for Information & Broadcasting and Fisheries, Animal Husbandry & Dairying Dr. L. Murugan.
In his opening remarks, Murugan said the aim of the EWG under Indian Presidency is to work collectively and evolve solutions that will help all countries and societies to strengthen their education systems and attain the targets under the UN Sustainable Development Goal.
Education is the key driver for development, and a critical enabler for people’s empowerment. It needs to keep pace with the changes that are driving the world today, he said.
“In recent years we have seen rapid transformation in the way people live, work and interact with each other. In such times we need education systems that can equip all our young people, especially the more vulnerable ones, with the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes required in the 21st century so that they can live productive and responsible lives”, he added.
Every country in the world has evolved its own strategies for fulfilling this need, Murugan said.
Observing that India launched its National Education Policy in 2020, under which many initiatives have been rolled out for making education more inclusive, accessible, affordable relevant to emerging needs and of high quality, the Union Minister said some of these include addressing issues of early childhood care and education, preventing school dropout,
introducing innovative pedagogies, focus on teachers training, making higher education multi- disciplinary and flexible, with focus on quality research, mainstreaming skill education, providing opportunities for lifelong learning, extensive use of technology to improve the teaching learning process etc.
