Union Education Minister Pradhan holds meeting with Finnish counterpart Honkonen in New Delhi

New Delhi [India], November 15 (ANI): Union Minister for Education and Skill Development Dharmendra Pradhan held a meeting with the Finnish Minister of Education, Science and Culture Petri Honkonen, in New Delhi on Tuesday.
The Ministers discussed topical issues of education in the challenging post-covid times. Both of them noted that a determined approach is needed to bridge the learning gap of the most vulnerable children. The Ministers also discussed the path-breaking educational reforms currently underway in India. They also had fruitful discussions on making knowledge a priority pillar of bilateral cooperation and deepening engagements in all areas of education, skill development and frontier research, the official statement of the Ministry of Education.

Speaking on the occasion, Pradhan expressed his happiness that Finland has evinced interest to collaborate with India on the knowledge front, especially as a result of the possibilities arising out of NEP. Both India & Finland can benefit from each other's best practices in ECCE, teacher training, and digital education among others, he added, the official release by the Ministry of Education stated.
Pradhan further said that Finnish Universities are welcome to collaborate with Indian Higher Education Institutions through joint/dual degrees and twinning programs.
During the meeting, Minister Honkonen pointed out that there are many components in the NEP 2020, which are similar to Finnish pedagogical thinking, noting that a student-oriented approach and activity-based pedagogy are core elements of the Finnish education system as well.
This makes it easier than ever before for our countries to collaborate in the domain of education, Minister Honkonen added.
"To foster this approach, the Ministry of Education and Culture of Finland has allocated specific funds of up to one million euros a year into a cluster of Finnish universities' as core funding to enable their collaboration with India in the domain of education. Global Innovation Network of Teaching and Learning, GINTL, started its function amid the Covid-19 pandemic in spring 2021 to tackle the learning crisis and to co-create joint activities between Finnish and Indian education institutions" he added
According to official statement, the Finnish National Agency of Education (EDUFI) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with NCERT to promote educational collaboration through sharing of information and content in different areas of School education. These include early childhood care and education, vocational education, teacher education and training, school leadership and management, application of ICT in education, curriculum research design and development etc. The MoU envisages utilizing the experience of EDUFI and GINTL in these areas.
Ambassador of Finland to India. Ritva Koukku-Ronde said that both sides aim at long-standing collaboration in the field of education, bearing in mind that education is not a sprint but rather a long-distance run, where teacher professionalism, school culture and deep learning evolve gradually, drawing on the previous structure of understanding",.
Another university network, the Finnish Indian Consortia for Research and Education, FICORE, puts another one million euros a year into Indo-Finnish collaboration, focusing on higher education and research. FICORE includes all academic universities in Finland and all IITs in India.The scheme is coordinated by Aalto University and the IITB, the press release said. (ANI)