_{To popularise distance education, human resource development (HRD) minister Kapil Sibal wants government and private schools to go beyond the regular face-to-face education and dole out degrees through open schooling. This means that schools would be allowed to enroll students under the distance education system. These students will get somewhat similar study material prepared by the teachers for regular students and will be allowed to take exams. At the end of their study, such students will be called a product of that school. Sibal believes this will increase the market value of distance education and make it more acceptable. According to the minister, the major problem in distance education was its non-acceptability among the students as an effective and efficient alternative for the regular schooling system. Sibal said if regular schools adopt distance learning, these programmes would become more acceptable to students. He said regular schools would also be able to assess the drawbacks in the open schooling system and make them more market-oriented. The government is already contemplating framing a policy to enable regular schools adopt distance education programme. For this, the minister is willing to give schools flexibility to improve the quality of study material and evaluation system so that distance education can become an efficient alternative to the regular system. His idea includes having a flexible distance education system under which there could be credit transfer for certain courses. The distance education in schooling is offered mainly by the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS). Some states also have their own open schooling institutes. Of one crore children in the 14 to 18 age group pursuing secondary education, roughly 16 lakh are enrolled through open schooling system. “This number [16 lakh] is not good enough. It should be increased to about 70-80 lakh by the end of the 11th Five Year Plan and should be 1.5 crore by 2020,” Sibal said. The government also plans to provide financial support to the state governments to start open schooling system.}

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