New Delhi, June 9, 2025: Countering allegations of deleting the history of Mughals from school textbooks, Union Education Minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, said, “We are adding many other facets and people from Indian history who were omitted by the previous Governments. Hence, space taken by Mughal dynasty has reduced.” He was speaking at ABP Network’s Smart Education Summit 2025. 5k3q3p
As India takes confident strides toward its vision of becoming a developed nation by 2047, ABP Network hosted the Smart Education Summit 2025 in the national capita, with Union Minister for Education Dharmendra Pradhan gracing the event as Chief Guest. This year’s summit delved into the theme ‘Education for a Future-Ready India’, placing a sharp focus on the intersection of learning, technology, and future skill development.
Giving clarity on change in Board examination patterns, Dharmendra Pradhan said, “Boards examination will happen twice to destress students. Students themselves have expressed the need for this, so that the better score out of the two attempts can be considered.”
Speaking about ensuring care of young children, he said, “A child’s mental development happens by the time it reaches 5th standard. Therefore, for the first time, Union Health Ministry and other bodies are looking closely at improving early childhood care and education.”
Highlighting the challenge faced by education sector, he said, “The biggest challenge is that we have a dropout rate of 40% from entry level to senior school years.”
Regarding native languages, he remarked, “We are promoting the local and native languages of our citizens by promoting education in mother tongue. There is a mindset that if we don’t teach English; our children will not stand out in global competition. Other countries, like China, Japan, Korea, and Israel, are not dependent on English.”
Sharing his views, he said, “Competencies matter more than degrees. Education should not be about degrees but it should increase competencies. So, we are making an education ecosystem that’s outcome oriented. We are preparing our young students to be part of the global workforce.”
“Three language formula is not debated in any other state except Tamil Nadu. Our policy is clear, we will not impose any language from a different state on the citizens of a particular state.” Dharmendra Pradhan further added, “Tamil Nadu state board schools teach three languages, including Tamil, English, and as a third language, Telugu, Kannad, Malayalam, and Urdu are taught. In fact, people spend more in Tamil Nadu to learn Hindi.
On being asked the need for Apaar ID, Dharmendra Pradhan said, “Till some time before, some elite institutions used to practice a Credit system in imparting education. Under NEP, we are creating a credit infrastructure for everyone. To record all credit earned by an individual student, so that they are duly preserved, validated, and utilized, an academic bank of credit has been conceptualized and now implemented. To access this repository of credit, a unique ID. Apaar is a byproduct of Aadhar for the education sector. When Aadhar was imagined, many sectoral byproduct IDs were imagined.”
On reservations introduced in Odisha for socially backward people, he remarked, “Odisha had scope of incorporating 11.25% reservations for economically weaker sections. We rectified the anomalies of last many decades and have implemented this.”
Regarding education systems, he said, “In India, higher education GER is about 28%. We have to make it 50% by 2035. For that we are leveraging technologies to make personalized learning modules, build smart classrooms. Technology adoption is must to revolutionize education in the country. This will be the 5th year of NEP implementation. We are a promoting education system that’s Indian knowledge system and centers on people, fosters Indian language, advance technologies adoption, and initiating several other measures.”
Commenting upon Central Government objectives, Dharmendra Pradhan said, “Welfare is a major agenda in the Indian Government; another agenda is to build confidence of the Indian nation. We have been focusing towards advancing India after taking people along.”
Regarding International universities coming to India, he said, “15 Foreign Universities will establish their branches in India in next few years. We are sending our institutions outside.”
Earlier, setting the context of changing education landscape in the country, he mentioned “Today, India has 14.72 lakh schools, with most schools in the villages. We have over 98 lakh teachers who are diving education in India.” He further added, “Education sector got derailed in India due to colonization. We once contributed 25-30% of global GDP. While we are the 4th largest economy, we are not in the same state as we were once before. Hence, we need to pursue the vision of Viksit Bharat @ 2047, shared by our Hon’ble Prime Minister. The efforts have to come from every sector, but we can achieve this fundamentally if our education sector is robust. For the same, we ed the National Education Policy in India, which is in different stages of implementation.”
ABP Network’s Smart Education Summit 2025 is a high-impact platform for furthering discourse on building synergies between academia and industry, bridging the digital divide, and integrating smart learning technologies in classrooms across the country. A curated set of insightful sessions, keynote addresses, and fireside chats brought together distinguished educators and institutional leaders to explore the transformative potential of technology in education.
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