National Education Policy Promises ‘Large-Scale’ Changes, But Can It Complete Unfinished Lessons?

A is for apple, B for ball, C for curveball—bec­ause someone has to walk the cat that defined Indian school and college education since British colonialists seeded the subcontinent with the Western primer. But the cat comes as a default setting, no matter how much one tries to move it aside. That’s the case with education policies of the past; the cat among the pigeons. That also brings to context the revised national education policy (NEP), overhauled on PM Narendra Modi’s watch after 34 years. Will it keep pace with a hyperlooping century, where Windows and Androids shift shape with changing seasons? Time will tell, although history has seldom been kind to change.

Take the 1968 attempt for perspective, when Indira Gandhi’s government announced the first NEP that stressed the need for “a radical reconstruction” of the system to improve its quality, exp­and opportunities, provide free and compulsory education to all children up to 14, and focus on science/tech and “cultivation of moral values”. The user manual for this policy based on recommendations of the Kothari Commission—the aka for the more business-like Indian Education Commission (1964-66)—had all the to-dos that would touch the lives of every citizen, empower them to contribute towards “national progress and security”, promote “sense of common citizenship and culture”, and strengthen “national integration”. But the product didn’t sell. Education was a state subject constitutionally and the states didn’t buy the policy primarily because of their reservation towards a proposed uniform educational structure—the 10+2+3 system (ten years till matriculation, two years in pre-degree/higher secondary, and three years for college graduation).

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The 1968 policy remained on the fringes until Emergency happened, the government amended the Constitution—the 42nd—and brought education into the Concurrent List in 1976. Next year, the 10+2+3 pattern was instituted. India witnessed considerable expansion in educational facilities in the following years, but the policy never got fully implemented. As a result, the problems of access, quality, quantity, utility and financial outlay continued to pile up. To address these issues, the Rajiv Gandhi government brought India’s second national policy on education in May 1986, which gave “highest priority” to universalisation of elementary education, retention of children (up to 14 years) in schools, and improving quality and standard. This was modified in 1992 during P.V. Narasimha Rao’s rule to incorporate additional tasks, including reforms in examination.

Adult literacy, early childhood care and education (ECCE), vocational training, promotion of Indian languages, value education et al were key mandates of the second NEP, besides boosting research and encouraging students to consider “self-employment as a career option”. And in 2009, a full 41 years after the first NEP of 1968, India enacted the right to education (RTE) act—a legal binding on the State to provide free and compulsory education to children till they are 14. The nation has grown significantly by now, demographically and economically. India has the third-largest network of higher education institutions after the US and China, with 993 universities, 39,931 colleges and 10,725 standalone institutions. The latest All India Survey of Higher Education says so. The country has 15.50 lakh schools and at least 24.78 crore students. Yet, the first and second NEPs remained on the margins.

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The third NEP was rolled out this August in the middle of a pandemic that has shaken the foundations of imparting education globally. The 2020 policy proposes “large-scale transformational reforms” in school and higher education systems to improve quality and make them competitive internationally. There’s hardly any rhetorical gap between the 1968 prototype and the 2020 model—“radical reconstruction” and “transformational reforms”—but the design changes in the new one are of course large-scale. From the ground up, the 10+2+3 structure would make way for 5+3+3+4 to make ECCE an integral part of formal schooling for students from three to 18 years. This, the policymakers believe, would help universalise school education by 2030. But the policy does not provide legal backing to the proposal by extending the ambit and scope of the fundamental right to education.

The policy has ticked several boxes such as teaching computers in schools, vocational training from Class 6 to ensure at least 50 per cent of students are exposed to such skills by 2025, reduce examination stress and end rote learning by truncating the curriculum content, and teaching in mother tongue/local language at least up to Class 5. Medium of instruction has often posed a barrier whenever changes were proposed, alt­hough experts—including the Yashpal committee report of 1992-93—have favoured local language for primary students. Besides, Section 29(2) (f) of the right to education act says the “medium of instructions shall, as far as practicable, be in child’s mother tongue”. But will the public, especially those in cities, approve of “local-medium” when the rush is for “English-medium” right from Montessori/kindergarten? Whether English has been able to make Englishmen out of Indians is debatable, but the country has more speakers and writers of the language than where it is the native tongue. It is an advantage Indians have over non-English-speaking nations like China, Japan and South Korea.

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Changes in the college and university levels are more palpable. The policy proposes a four-year undergraduate multidisciplinary programme, with multiple entry and exit options, that will offer a student a certificate after the first year, a diploma after second, a bachelor’s degree after third, and a degree in research after the fourth. University enr­olment will be through a common entrance test. There will be two types of master’s—a two-year course for those who had chosen the three-year undergraduate programme and one year for those who did four years in college. MPhil has been done away with, while the requirement for PhD is either a master’s degree or a four-year bachelor’s degree with research.

There are proposals to phase out university accreditation to colleges, which will function as autonomous institutions but answerable to the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI), a super agency to oversee four verticals that include funding and overseeing academic standards. The HECI will subsume regulatory agencies like University Grants Commission (UGC), All India Council for Technical Education and National Council for Teacher Education. A National Research National Research Foundation will be created to foster “research culture” and build capacity across higher education. Besides, top foreign universities will be allowed to open campuses in India within a regulatory framework.

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But all these may get lost—like it did with the previous NEPs—because of the funds crunch in education, experts say. The NEP 2020 addresses the issue, saying the Centre and states will work together to increase public investment in the sector to reach six per cent of the GDP. It also calls for raising funds through private philanthropic activity. That six per cent cap was recommended in 1968, reiterated in 1986 and reaffirmed in 1992, but “India has not come close to the recommended level”, the revised policy states. One of the BJP’s promises on its 2014 Lok Sabha poll manifesto was increasing government spending in education from 3.84 per cent of the GDP in 2013-14 to 6 per cent. The NEP, however, sets no time-frame towards this commitment.