BENGALURU: Under the New Education Policy (NEP 2020) the Centre recently issued a circular for creating a new identification card for students and teachers – the Automated Permanent Academic Account Registry (APAAR) also called ‘One Nation, One ID’.
While the government and some stakeholders opined that digitisation of the educational system is necessary, some experts say centralising every act in schools is not required. Meanwhile, school administrations are worried about being held up in only admin work, leaving no time to focus on academics.
Anil D Sahasrabudhe, Chairman of, the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) and National Educational Technology Forum (NETF) who worked on the registry system said, “The introduction of APAAR ID will be a much-needed revolution in the educational sector. This will also reduce forgery of documents and become a lifelong CV for a student.”
He added that this ID will be valid for teachers as well, enabling an easy flow of information when their transfers take place and their qualification in the sector can be mapped all over the country. “Many industries are now looking at an employee capability beyond their results, authentic certification such as these will be helpful,” Sahasrabudhe said.
Sheshagiri Madhusudhan, Educationist, UNICEF said using digital platforms for monitoring services in institutes is a welcome move however monitoring the performance of teachers and students will be a narrow accreditation of their effort and talents. “The threat to data security is also a grey area when such policies are finalised. Blindly updating educational systems and standardising them can be counterproductive, one must proceed with a lot of caution,” he added.
APAAR ID will be a lifelong number for students to track their academic journey and achievements, which will include all certificates, transfer documents, performance cards, credit scores and more.
Beneficial to the medical field
Speaking about Karnataka and hoping for its adoption, Sacchidanand Sarvajnamurthy Aradhya, former Vice Chancellor, of Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, said, “The centralised data will help keep an eye on dropouts and also help analyse the reasons, especially in Higher Education. It will be beneficial for the medical field as duplication of documents is common. The ID will aid in understanding the shortfall of doctors, engineers and other fields in the country.” He added that despite various councils currently, the data is very vague.
Aradhya emphasised that tracking of scholarships will become transparent and agencies can keep a tab on them.
The education department has asked schools to obtain the consent of parents and organise briefings between October 16 and 19. Meanwhile, the government has assured that students’ and teachers’ Aadhaar numbers will be masked while sharing data with other government agencies.