New Delhi, June 11: Days after assuming office for thesecond term, the government led by Prime Minister NarendraModi has initiated significant steps towardsmodernisation of ‘Madrassa’ education and to link it with formal education.
The programme will be rolled out next month with thetraining of teachers of such informal institutes of Muslims, Minority AffairsMinister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told IANS in an interview here on Tuesday.
He said the government is also working on a plan to ensurethat the students who come out of madrassas get formal and higher education ininstitutes like JamiaMilliaIslamia and Delhi University.
“We want to link Madrassas with the formal educationsystem,” Naqvi underlined.
A Madrassa is an informal educational institute wheregenerally Islamic studies are imparted to the pupils. According to someestimates, there are lakhs of such institutes spread all over the country.
Giving details of the plan to modernise the Madrassaeducation, Naqvi said as a first step, the teachers of the Madrassas will beprovided training in formal education.
“We will ask Madrassas themselves to identify theteachers for the formal education . We will train them so that they can provideformal education in Madrassas,” said the minister.
The programme will start from next month, he said, adding,”In the first phase, we will try to train at least 200 teachers from allover the country.” It will be a one-month course.
Talking about another related initiative, the minister saidthe government will also help the students who come out of Madrassas with a’bridge course’ so that they get formal degrees.
“We have talked to JamiaMillia. I am talking to DelhiUniversity. We will be talking to more such institutes,” said Naqvi, whowas the Minority Affairs Minister in the first term of the Modi government aswell.
The bridge course will be available from eighth standardonwards so that the children coming out of the madrassas can at least getformal Secondary School or Higher Secondary School degrees.
He said in the Madrassas too, the government wants tointroduce formal education in the form of subjects like English, Hindi,Science, Maths, Computer Sciences, among others.
Explaining the need for such an initiative, Naqvi said poor people and villagers generally send their children to madrassas because of lack of availability of formal schools to them. “There are a lot of Madrassas. First thing is why do madrassas come up? They come up because in small villages there are no schools and colleges. The formal education is not available,” he said. IANS