The Ministry of Education (MoE) is a central government institution of India responsible for the implementation of the National Policy on Education. It was first formed on August 15, 1947, following India's independence. The Ministry's name was changed in 1985 by the Rajiv Gandhi government to the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), with the aim of bringing all education-related departments under a single umbrella.
The Ministry works through two main departments: the Department of School Education and Literacy, which oversees primary, secondary, and adult education, and the Department of Higher Education, which manages university-level and technical education. The Department of Higher Education is empowered to grant "deemed university" status to institutions, a mechanism outlined under Section 3 of the University Grants Commission (UGC) Act, 1956. The MoE connects to key institutions like the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). Its work is also intrinsically linked to major legislation such as the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009.
The Ministry underwent a significant recent change in 2020 when its name was officially changed back from the MHRD to the Ministry of Education (MoE). This renaming was a key recommendation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which replaced the previous National Policy on Education of 1986. While the name was restored to its original post-Independence form, its core function of overseeing the nation's education system remained the same.