The Big Debate On National Education Policy: Politicians To Academics Answer Six Big Questions

What Will a Switch from 10+2 to 5+3+3+4 in Schooling Mean?

M.M. Pallam Raju: If a five-year foundational stage is followed by a three-year preparatory stage, it is implicative that the vision of the foundational stage is not gelling with the preparatory stage. If grades 1 and 2 are part of the foundational stage and located in an Anganwadi, then who would be teaching in grades 1 and 2? Also, when there is no acknowledgement or mention of an extension of the RTE act, covering children in the age group 3-18, then the meaning of universalisation of school education becomes ambiguous.

Anil Sadgopal: The 10+2 structure emerged organically after decades of experience with school systems in the country and was accepted in the NEP 1968. Preceded by three years of pre-primary stage, the first 10 years of school education comprise primary school of five years, middle school of three years and secondary stage of two years, followed by the plus-two senior secondary stage (classes 11-12). The logic put forth by NEP 2020 to merge three years of pre-primary with the first two years of primary school (classes 1-2) is not convincing enough to dismantle a framework built over at least half a century, operating in 14 lakh schools. Why can’t the integrity of the foundational stage of 3+2 years, as proposed by the NEP, be reinforced by having a five-year ECCE programme built around the anganwadi structure itself?

One can’t avoid wondering if there is a hidden agenda. Starting from ECCE to senior secondary schools, the NEP keeps proposing an informal role for ‘trained volunteers from both the local community and beyond, social workers, counsellors and community involvement’ in the school system. Who are these people and what is their eligibility for being invited to undertake informal tasks in anganwadis or schools? The RSS leadership has publicly claimed that most of their ‘demands’ have been incorporated in the policy. It is obvious that RSS cadre would be assigned the aforementioned informal roles that would be supported out of public funds.

A.K. Shiva Kumar: The switch to 5+3+3+4 is perhaps the most progressive step announced in the NEP 2020. The plan is to reconfigure school education, and make it responsive and relevant to the needs and interests of learners at different stages of their development corresponding to the age ranges of 3-8, 8-11, 11-14 and 14-18 years. The NEP 2020 rightly recognises the importance of investing in ECCE for ensuring a child’s future well-being, learning and earning potential. If implemented, ensuring ­universal access to high-quality ECCE, through an expanded and strengthened system of anganwadis with appropriate infrastructure and well-trained anganwadi teachers, it could prove to be the most vital aspect of educational reforms. A logical next step would be to amend the right to education act to formally include ECCE, and extend free and compulsory schooling up to the age of 18.

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

Rukmini Banerji: The focus on continuum of the early years is important. That you have two years (pre-primary) before first standard and then standard one and two, all these seen as a continuum, is an important shift. So when the early years are based on play and cognitive-oriented learning, the child will gain.

How Will 'Mother Tongue' at Primary Levels Affect Learning Outcomes?

Anil Sadgopal: This has been debated since Mahatma Jyotirao Phule contended the significance of mother tongue as medium of education before the Hunter Commission (1882)—an idea that has been endorsed by educationists and linguists globally, and practised in advanced countries as well. Both Gandhi and Tagore were advocates of the mother tongue as the most potent cognitive medium for acquiring knowledge as well as for laying the foundation for learning any other language proficiently, including English. This rational and internationally accepted principle is rejected in India by the narrow interests of the upper castes and classes. It is nobody’s case that children should not learn fluent English. The issue being debated is whether English or any alien language is best learnt by using it as a medium of education or learning it as a subject. The NEP’s proposal on mother tongue/home language is confusing as it overburdens the child with the language curriculum, which includes the emphasis on learning a classical language (read Sanskrit) at all stages of education, including higher education, even as classical languages like Tamil and Pali are accorded a step-child status. Nor does the NEP take any stand against the Brahminical Sanskritisation of Indian languages—a phenomenon partly responsible for the exclusion of Bahujan children, who comprise 85 per cent of the child population.   

Shashi Tharoor: Pedagogues tell us that mother-tongue instruction is best in one’s early education, though there are certainly those who argue that those are also the best years to learn additional languages. Anyway, as long as states and schools are given flexibility in determining what the 'mother tongue' is (especially in metro cities like Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi where children of multiple mother-tongues enrol) and optional additional languages are also available, I don’t object.

M.M. Pallam Raju: Undoubtedly, comprehension of the majority of students would be enhanced when they learn their lessons in the ‘mother tongue’. Students of rural areas will benefit more, but it may not be entirely advantageous for urban children. There is no word though about children whose mother tongue is going to be different from the local/state/ regional language. As there is increasing preference for English-medium education and private schools, prioritising the creation of a comprehensive environment in government schools, improving the quality of teacher education and fine-tuning pedagogy are more important to improve learning outcomes.

ALSO READ: Our Education Must Be Culturally Rooted And Suit 21st Century Needs: Ramesh Pokhriyal

A.K. Shiva Kumar: Learning two languages or even adopting a three-language ­formula has always been recommended by educationists in the best interests of the child. Learning outcomes are likely to be better when young children are taught in their mother tongue. Care should be taken to address glitches that might come up when imparting ­education to children in ­cosmopolitan cities where the mother tongue may not necessarily be the same as the regional ­language. Also, it is important not to sideline English, which will ­remain the aspirational language of many families regardless of whether they are rich or poor.

Anil Swarup: This has to be looked at from two aspects. At the conceptual level, researches have proved that understanding and comprehension is much better in the mother tongue. There are several good examples like Sardar Patel Vidyalaya and Jawaharlal Nehru Vidyalayas. While children become proficient in English, in many cases the fundamental understanding is in the mother tongue. So, teaching in the mother tongue is desirable. But to implement it properly would require enormous amount of effort, time and money.

Rukmini Banerji: At home, we speak a language that children understand. So why not do that in schools? As new vocabulary comes into the household, children learn that as well. We should use what we call the playground language, which is the children’s own language. The important qualification to teach in standard one to three should be that the teacher should be able to communicate with the children.

Where Are the Funds?

Shashi Tharoor: That is the big mystery. The six years of the Modi government reveal a steady decline in the allotment of funds to education. The finance ministry’s zeal to close the fiscal deficit has witnessed cuts in all vital social programmes, including education, health, child development (where the NEP expects under-funded and over-stretched anganwadis to take on the burden of pre-primary instruction in numeracy and literacy!) The percentage of GDP that India devotes to research has dropped from a peak of 0.96 per cent under Dr Manmohan Singh (itself too low) to an abysmal 0.5 per cent last year. The NEP is unfulfillable without a major financial commitment from the prime minister. We have been too accustomed these six years to lofty goals being announced without the means to fulfill them. The government must tell us where they expect the money to come from. And if they say the “private sector”, how will they ensure access of the marginalised sections of our society to the empowerment that good education makes possible? Without adequate government funding, a widening class divide in educational opportunity would damage India.

ALSO READ: NEP 2020: The New Language Formula Is Identical To What Macaulay Proposed In 1835

Anurag Behar: One of the most important things about this NEP is its unambiguous commitment to public education. This is backed by a commitment to increase public expenditure on education from the current (about) 3-3.5 per cent of the GDP to 6 per cent. The expenditure increase will have to happen for the Centre and states together. As the Kasturirangan Committee’s draft NEP mentions, this increase is not envisioned to happen over a year, but over 10 years. Once we have that 10-year perspective, it becomes visible that with appropriate fiscal strategy, the government can find the money to fulfill this commitment. As a related aside, we should remember that what the cabinet has approved is the education policy; it will have to be backed by the fiscal policy—but that is a separate set of processes.

M.M. Pallam Raju: The track record of the government of the past six years shows that there is a continuous decline in expenditure on education. The budget is being drastically slashed, ­evident from the closure of a number of schemes. Take the case of organisations like UGC, RUSA etc, where most schemes are closed for the want of funds.  The shrinking economy, the pandemic and the challenges have affected the nation’s ­finances. After the RTE act was enacted (2009), great care was taken for provisioning resources to the states for more classrooms and schools, recruitment of teachers. The NEP seems hazy on this. Unless an adequate percentage of the GDP is committed, as envisaged by the Kothari Commission in 1966, this might dilute the objective.

Anil Sadgopal: The lack of resources for education is a myth since Macaulay’s Minutes of 1835, propagated primarily by the upper classes/castes to maintain their hegemony over knowledge, employment and upward social mobility. The question of allocating adequate resources is not at all a question of lack of funds, but a question of political priority. How does the government find more than Rs 1 lakh crore for a Bullet train from Ahmedabad to Mumbai that less than half a per cent of people travelling on those tracks will use? A straightforward, pragmatic solution to ensure equitable, discrimination-free and state-funded, cost-free education from ‘KG to PG’ should be a political priority.

A social welfare tax of 2 per cent should be levied on the richest 1 per cent of the country in order to generate almost Rs 10 lakh crore a year for achieving the goals of education (and health) as mandated in the Constitution.

ALSO READ: 'Light But Tight Will Promote Corporate Interests'

A.K. Shiva Kumar: Gross under-funding of government schools has been a cause of and an exacerbating factor in the challenges of inequity, inadequate availability and reach, unequal access, and poor-quality of education. The ­economic crisis due to COVID-19 put additional pressure on resource ­mobilisation. Hopefully, the fiscal situation will improve. When that happens, a strong political commitment can ensure adequate funding for education. Outlining a time-bound fiscal plan to raise funds to six per cent of the GDP will signal the ­intent and commitment of the ­government to the NEP 2020.  

Anil Swarup: Going by past evidence, funds are a major problem. In the past five to six years, the actual allocation for school education has come down. States are crying hoarse because the central government has not been delivering on its promised allocations. Another problem is that 80 per cent of funds are going towards paying salaries to teachers—who are not performing—leaving little for development work. The best part of the new policy, which is doable, is the emphasis on teachers.

Rukmini Banerji: We at Pratham have achieved this by working with state governments with little additional costs. We should start with the money we already have and then do more when there is more money. People should not wait for that six per cent of GDP to come and start only after that. States like Punjab and Himachal Pradesh have already put a pre-primary class in their schools. There is a lot of sensible ground-based budgeting for this.

Dinesh Singh: For the first time, a government has committed six per cent of the GDP to education. However, there have to be other means of generating support as well. The government could think of ensuring that CSR funds are largely used for funding ­state-aided schools. In higher education, universities and colleges must devise ways by which they can get society to see value in what they offer through education. If that happens, I expect society too shall see value in funding such institutions.

M.A. Baby: There are misleading promises in the NEP. Many educationists have long been demanding at least 6-7 per cent of the GDP for education. But it has never happened. In 2013-14, the spending on education was pegged at 0.71 per cent; it came down to 0.54 per cent in 2018-19. Where will the finances come from? The government has come up with a dubious plan—public-private partnerships. The private sector will promote its own interests. This is going to be a line drawn on water.

What Qualitative Changes Will the Proposed Overhaul of Higher Education Bring?

Shashi Tharoor: If all the aspirations of the NEP are ­fulfilled, it should change our higher education, which is ­currently over-regulated and under-governed, into an instrument fit for the 21st century, with greater autonomy for institution, flexibility of learning and standards benchmarked to the world’s best. I ­welcome this approach, while remaining sceptical about this ­government’s ability to fulfill it.

Anurag Behar: The NEP changes the fundamentals of our higher education ­system—matters that have been hobbling the quality of education for decades. It will make regulation ‘light but tight’. This regime will put a ­definitive stop to the rampant ­commercialisation in higher ­education. The current overbearing, inspectorial regulatory regime is one of the most ­important ­reasons for the sorry state of our higher education. We regulate too much with too little ­effect. The new HECI with its four verticals will empower and enable higher education institutions (HEIs). All HEIs will be given complete administrative and academic autonomy—and will become self-governed ­autonomous institutions—which is the norm across the world. The ­‘affiliation’ system will be stopped. All colleges will have to become good enough to stand on their own, academically and adm­inistratively. Currently, we have over 60,000 HEIs (universities, colleges etc). The NEP has devised an ­architecture to consolidate these to 20,000 or less. Naturally, all these are dependent on good ­implementation of the policy.

Anil Sadgopal: The ‘overhaul of higher education’ boils down to—(a) Starving the government colleges and state universities of funds and/or forcing them to become indebted to the market, eventually leading to their closures. (b) Incrementally handing over HEIs to private capital under the pretext of promoting philanthropy. (c) Exacerbation of the present rate of exclusion of the Bahujans (SCs, STs, OBCs, Muslims and denotified tribes and also the disabled, with even higher rate of exclusion for the girls in each of these sections) from higher education by not just giving freedom to the HEI to hike fees as per their wishes, but also by essentially withdrawing the social justice agenda, especially reservations and distortion of the concept of scholarships/fellowships by linking it to the so-called ‘merit’. (d) Demolishing the research-based knowledge production in HEIs by over-centralisation of the research agenda. (f) Establishing the hegemony of online education to homogenise knowledge as per market requirements.            

Dinesh Singh: I hope that we have enormous academic flexibility and freedom so that a ­student is able to truly gain ­knowledge of the self and through that gain fulfillment in the real world. Thus, I am hopeful that through a trans-disciplinary, practical and hands-on approach, students shall become creators of knowledge and entrepreneurship in accordance with their own inclinations. In due course, if implemented in the right fashion, I expect India to start moving towards becoming a genuine knowledge economy.

M.A. Baby: I find the proposal of the ‘National Testing Agency’ for college admission as another problem area. It is envisaged to serve as a premier, expert, autonomous testing organisation to conduct entrance exa­minations in HEIs. But it is actually going to be a ‘National Denial Agency’. This system will work against the poor and the marginalised. The framers of the Constitution considered education as a state subject. It was during the Emergency that Indira Gandhi moved education from the state list to the concurrent list. Now the BJP government has transferred it from the concurrent list to the central list. The decision to constitute an HECI, replacing UGC and AICTE, is an example of over-centralisation.

M.M. Pallam Raju: The NEP has reiterated a number of old recommendations without looking into the reasons for their non-implementation. The idea of research-intensive and teaching-intensive universities cuts into the very concept of a university. Similarly, the idea of transforming all colleges into autonomous institutions having the power to award degrees without laying down norms of ensuring parity is going to be detrimental. The idea of transforming all premier higher educational institutional institutions (like IITs, IISERs) into multidisciplinary institutions is not free from monumental risks either.

How Will the Entry of Foreign Institutions Affect Higher Education?

M.M. Pallam Raju: The entry of foreign institutions would be a welcome opportunity to enhance the ­academic credentials of the nation. But the NEP has laid down an unreasonable bar—allowing only top 100 FEIs. While in the short run, the entry of foreign institutions may cause a shortage of faculty to the indigenous institutions and drive up the cost of education, it is bound to usher in best practices worldwide, and improve the academic and other standards of comparable Indian institutions.

Dinesh Singh: If managed properly so that institutions of ­repute are allowed to function unfettered, I expect that much good can happen. I also feel that Indian institutions just need to hunker down and focus on getting their act together. If they do that, they can give foreign institutions a run for their money. We should aim at attracting students from across the globe and we should think big so that in the near future we can set up campuses in other countries. Had my FYUP programme at Delhi University not been so arbitrarily interrupted, Delhi University would have set up campuses in Africa and the US.

Anil Sadgopal: The obsession of the Indian ruling elite with ‘foreign universities’ (read those from the Western ­capitalist, White-dominated countries) does not permit them to see the truth. The joint document of the World Bank and Unesco (The Task Force, 2000) reported, “there are prestigious universities from developed nations offering shabby courses in poor and developing countries, using their renowned names, without assuring equivalent quality”. What else one would expect? Several US universities are being compelled to open their campuses abroad due to severe fund cuts—their primary purpose being to make money to support the original campus. The truly great universities of North America and Europe have earned their reputation by building upon their rich ­intellectual legacy over 100 to 150 years. It would be naïve to assume that this inherent legacy can be mechanically transposed to their Indian campuses.

M.A. Baby: The government’s proposal of inviting foreign universities is lopsided and erroneous. The government estimates that foreign university campuses in India can attract over seven lakh students who go abroad for higher education every year. It is absurd to assume that foreign universities like Oxford and Cambridge will set up the same quality arrangements in our country. Most foreign universities will look for profit and run like self-financing institutions. The way out is to improve the quality of our educational institutions. To cite an initiative by Kerala in 2011, we introduced inter-university centres where scholars from Indian and foreign universities undertake joint scientific research programmes in universities across the state. The Union ­government should implement similar programmes.

Anurag Behar: I don’t think it will have any real effect. I am unable to appreciate the brouhaha about foreign ­institutions. It is one of the minor and less important parts of the policy, and it is just a couple of lines. All it says is that top universities of the world will be allowed to operate in India and these will be treated on a par with other autonomous institutions of India. If some of these universities come, it is good. We need more good institutions. But I doubt they will. Higher education is financially stressed in most parts of the world. And since our regulatory regime will ­insist that these institutions operate on a not-for-profit basis, I don’t think many will be attracted since too often their intentions are commercial.

What Is the Value of the Emphasis on 'Indian Ethos and Values' in Education?

Shashi Tharoor: The concerns about this reflect the BJP’s performance in those states where it came to power and began changing history textbooks to reflect their preferred version of the past. But “Indian ethos and values” need not mean “saffronisation”; for instance, I have been saying for years that schoolchildren of every faith in India should be familiar with the Ramayana and the Mahabharata the way European kids read the Iliad and the Odyssey. Having been brought up in India to sing nursery rhymes about Santa Claus’s sleigh riding through the snow, I was conscious of the disconnect between such aspects of my ­childhood education and the socio-cultural reality amid which I was living. Having Indian children grounded in knowledge of Indian traditions, ­stories and history would be a good thing, so long as their minds are not closed to learning about other countries and cultures as well.

M.M. Pallam Raju: India is an ancient civilisation with rich heritage and cultural depth, which has been diluted over time with a widening disparity in living standards and an ­increasingly heterogeneous composition of ­society. Relating to the Indian ethos and values in imparting knowledge forms a relevant framework towards inculcating the ethical and moral ­standards necessary for a just society.

M.A. Baby: The NEP proposes to inculcate traditional Indian and constitutional values. The reference to constitutional value is a travesty of truth. And which Indian values are they talking about? Is it the content of Manusmriti? This will only create more Rohit Vemulas in our universities. More ­institutional murders will take place in our country. During my ­tenure as Kerala’s ­education minister, the first exercise we undertook was to evolve a state curriculum ­framework based on the National Curriculum Framework of 2005, which laid emphasis on universal human values. That’s what Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Rabindranath Tagore stood for. In the NEP, it’s going to be totally done away with.

Rukmini Banerji: The localisation of language, local stories and songs, which any good teacher already does, should be the way to go rather than what gets printed in books from the state capitals. Even the old national curriculum emphasised about connecting to things around you. Giving more space to local literature and songs will bring more people into the ambit.

*National Education Policy (NEP), *Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE), *Higher Education Institution (HEI), *Higher Education Council of India (HECI), *Right to Education Act, 2009 (RTE)