Ministry of Education is committed to ensure physical, psychological, and emotional well-being of the students – Shri Dharmendra Pradhan

New Delhi/ Bhubaneswar: The Ministry of Education has taken stock of its plans shaped to ensure a healthy and safe academic life for the students. A high-level meeting, on Tuesday, chaired by Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan picked up subjects like Mental health and discrimination for discussion.

The Ministry of Education is committed to ensuring the students’ physical, psychological, and emotional well-being, said Dharmendra Pradhan. He noted that academic life is a crucial phase when a student undergoes changes in his psychological and behavioral patterns. Scores of factors are there challenging his mental health.  Academic stress, peer stress, and an educational environment with tough competition are among the challenging factors. Behavioral issues and career concerns are also there to add.

In this context, with the Education Ministers’ directions, a framework for operational guidelines is being prepared that would cover schools and higher educational institutions as well, that would protect a student from all sorts of threats and assaults like physical, social, cultural, linguistic, and discriminatory that cause psychological distress leading to self-harming tendencies among students.

In the meeting, Shri Pradhan asked the senior officials to put in place an effective grievance redressal system with shared responsibility. The Minister has also asked to invite suggestions from all the stakeholders through online medium. He touched upon various subjects such as gender equality, caste sensitivity, easing academic pressure, robust system of counseling, etc. He said that the Ministry of Education is committed to ensuring the physical, psychological, and emotional well-being of the students.

Ministry of Education has undertaken various steps from time to time to ease academic stress. These include peer-assisted learning, the introduction of technical education in 13 regional languages, entrance examination in 13 languages, Manodarpan initiative to provide psychological support to students, and guidelines on prevention, detection, and remedial measures for mental health-related issues.