New National Education Policy (NEP) ::
The present Central Government has drafted a new National
Education Policy 2016 based on a report submitted by a committee
headed by retired bureaucratic T.S.R.Subramanian. Our understanding
and critique of the suggestions made in this Report are briefly presented
below, along with reasons for such a critique and alternate viewpoints
that would support universal, quality education in India.
Performance & Merit
Performance of the student and of schools should be determined
not only in terms of learning outcomes based on examination scores.
Instead, quality should be assessed, prospectively, by the process through
which the child acquired her knowledge and skills, and also the ability
to produce new knowledge and, retrospectively, by the way in which
she reproduces her knowledge in actually existing social conditions of
life and work. The concept of merit in fact contains hidden biases,
for example variations in the social and family background of the
student, and in the learning environment at school and at home including
the additional assistance available to the student from parents or private
tutors. Often “merit” reflects examination performance of the urban
elite rather than of the average student especially in rural areas. High
quantitative scores in controlled examination conditions based on
stereotypical questions and rote learning can also be manufactured by training and coaching prior to actual testing, itself a big business, from
small towns to metropolitan cities and “coaching malls” in special service
centres like Kota. Thus “merit” as defined in the NEP supports only
one kind of learning, rather than the well-rounded accrual of knowledge
and life-skills.
Value education
Value education is addressed as religion and religious morality,
rather than the principles and values of secularism, freedom of religion,
pluralism and freedom of opinion, democracy and critical thinking as
called for in the Constitution, and not a word is said about academic
freedom stressed by all educational thinkers. No mention is also made
of the fact that in some States such as Gujarat and Rajasthan, Hindu
scriptures and mythological epics have been introduced into school
curricula and textbooks, and observance of Hindu rituals and quasireligious
performances such as recital of Vande Mataram, performance
of Surya Namaskar and Yoga are being made compulsory, even though
there are many cross-cultural and non-sectarian prayers, cultural
performances, observances, parables and lessons in humanistic ethics
and morality that could have been included in school curricula and
routines. The effort to impose majority community
Role of Students’ Unions
In a country where voting age is 18, where multi-Party democracy
prevails, and where participation of citizens in governance and policymaking
is norm but a duty or responsibility, active participation of
college and university in student union and other such representative
bodies is natural and should be welcomed. However, despite the fact
that all political parties have links with student bodies on college and
university campuses, at the government level and among the bureaucracy
there has always been an active dislike for student unions. This is reflected
sharply in the TSR Subramanian Committee’s recommendations
towards the NEP, as well as in the prevailing Lyngdoh Committee’s
rules regulating students’ union functioning, elections etc. This aversion
is partly based on the perception that students unions divert students
away from their primary academic responsibilities by encouraging them to “engage in politics,” and often mirror party politics even with active
engagements of Political Parties including in conduct of elections, and
thus bring in various malpractices associated with party politics in India.
It must be made clear that there is nothing wrong in principle
with students “engaging in politics,” if politics is understood in its correct
sense of the conceptual underpinnings of governance, policy-making
and civil society. All aspects of social, economic, cultural and civic life
involve politics which guides the very functioning of nations. In
democracies in particular, it would in fact be unnatural if any section
of the citizenry, especially adult and enlightened students, did NOT
engage politically with all issues including those they study and those
they observe and interact with outside their classrooms. Indeed, as we
have seen in this booklet, educational policy is a deeply political subject.
Party politics is only an organized reflection of politics in general. If
students aged 18 and above are expected to understand issues and
vote intelligently in national elections, they there can be nothing wrong
in their having an active political engagement with issues within their
campuses as well.
The NEP visualizes various administrative measures to “deal
with” this problem, On the contrary, all experience show that selfregulation
by the student body along with the academic community at
large is the best defence against undesirable elements or activities on
campuses.
Recent events in various Universities and Institutions of higher
learning in India, such as in JNU, University of Hyderabad, IITs in
Chennai and Mumbai, and the Film & TV Institute in Pune only highlight
the contrast between the enlightened and vibrant participation of student
bodies in the democratic life of the country, and the draconian and
bureaucratic measures taken by the political leadership to crush opinions
they do not like.
India Education Service
The NEP recommendations include the suggestion to form an elite cadre called the Indian Educational Service (IES), similar to the
IAS, to administer and over see educational policy. While a prestigious
cadre of teachers and educators would indeed serve the cause of
education well, it is highly doubtful that an administrative cadre would
achieve the desired results. This is part of a number of administrative
measures advocated in the Report, clearly revealing its bureaucratic
inclinations and a perception that sees educational institutions as
administrative entities with teachers and students at the bottom, governed
from above by such an elite cadre, perhaps drawing from the role the Committee sees being played by the IAS “ruling” over the general
population In fact, such bureaucratic functions will not serve the very
principles of academic freedom and autonomy of higher education
institutions that numerous expert committees have recommended and
which the government itself professes to agree with.
Centres of Excellence
The Report has no specific recommendations to improve the
functioning of state Universities. Instead, the Report recommends the
establishment of new “centres of excellence” that provide quality
education and facilitate. This proposal, made earlier too under the UPA
government, has not led to either more research or innovation Instead,
such centres have caused State Universities to follow their own paths,
often leading to loss of direction, faculty members leaving, and the
decay or death of many departments.
Innovation is used here as a catch-word for outputs that could
be patented and commercialized. Such programmes leading to
innovation have long been recommended by various bodies, but no
assistance has been forthcoming from the Government especially to
State Universities and other Institutions to build an ecosystem necessary
for truly encouraging students, researchers and faculty to explore new
ideas, question established notions, and engage in critical thinking and
problem-solving. Instead of supporting a lower-grade kind of
interaction with industry and defining “excellence” accordingly, efforts
should be made to stimulate knowledge creation in existing Universities
and reward the display of exemplary capabilities, especially of those
from downtrodden classes and rural areas.
A policy that nurtures special “centres of excellence” contradicts
the vision of a socially inclusive and democratic system of Higher
Education in which all citizens get equal opportunity to access the best
quality of education. Such a proposal will promote an unwarranted
hierarchy in the quality of education and training in institutions, and
freeze exclusivity in students and faculty.
Teacher Quality
The NEP Report has suggested putting in place a mechanism
of assessment of academic performance of teachers including peer
review so as to ensure academic accountability of public-funded institutions. The Report also suggests assessment of teacher performance
by looking at the examination performance of students. However, an
enlightened education system would have a more rounded assessment
methodology looking at all aspects of the study environment along
with teacher and student performance judged over a period of time.
Judging teachers purely by examination performance of students may,
in fact, put a premium on the teaching methods of coaching malls as in
Kota and reduce teachers to mechanical operators! Teachers are induced
to reach their full potential in an environment of democracy, operational
freedom and freedom of expression befitting an academic professional.
And students would reach their full potential when provided with quality
teaching, a challenging learning environment and encouragement to
question, apply acquired knowledge to solve problems, and invited to
open up the horizons of her curiosity.
Pre-school education
One welcome recommendation is that pre-school education be
declared a right, and that cadres of pre-primary teachers be developed.
Similarly, pre-primary education also does not require a common
curriculum, as indicated by the Report, but a common perspective
based on Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) for which
specific curricula will have to be devised as per concrete local conditions
by States. The common schools will be the mainstream of school
education at the secondary level as well, the role Central Board of
Secondary Education (CBSE), Indian Council for Secondary Education
(ICSE) and other streams will have to be regulated on the basis of a
common concept based on the RTE, instead of being indiscriminately
organized as they are today.
On Curricula
Given the diversity of the education system in different States
and between different types of schools, it is clear that a centralized
curriculum is not feasible. Only curricular guidelines should be worked
out at the central level, with the States being asked to develop detailed
curricula. For Higher Education, the same task should be entrusted to
the Universities as is the practice today.
Regulating Higher Education
The NEP recommends a “comprehensive new legislative
framework” for regulating higher education, the underlying principle
of which would be to provide financial support and full autonomy to institutions ranked at the top and “to weed out institutions, which are
on the lowest rung of the scale.” Autonomy for highly ranked institutions
would mean providing incentives “to raise additional resources by
starting new programs on cost recovery basis, employment of parttime
and contractual staff on market-determined salaries, optimum
use of buildings and other assets, and regular increase in fees without
Government approval”. This virtual division of higher education
institutions into an elite category that would be financially supported
and encouraged including through autonomy, and an ordinary category
that would be slowly weeded out or in other words closed, would
mean a sharp restriction of access to higher education, as discussed
under “Centres of Excellence” above and “Accreditation” below
New approach to Accreditation
So far, the concept of accreditation and quality evaluation was
aimed at deciding eligibility for Government grants, as the NEP 2016
itself records. Now it recommends a reorientation towards assessment
of quality and the promotion of competition between institutions for
funds. This means needs of institutions w would be ignored and, instead,
focus would shift to their ability to raise funds which may be attracted
for a number of reasons unrelated to quality of education provided.
Such accreditation would also work against the effort towards
social inclusion. For instance, public-funded colleges and universities
are required to function in very different conditions compared to wellfunded
private or foreign universities. The former admit more students,
have typically under-funded infrastructure and under-staffed labs,
libraries and offices. Yet, they play an important role towards ensuring
a more inclusive environment for both students and faculty, which
should be encouraged. The social, cultural and intellectual diversity in
these institutions should be utilized to lay firmer foundations for social
justice and democracy.
Accreditation as proposed in the NEP Report will effectively
push public institutions towards privatization due to the very criteria
of ability to attract funds. In fact, if Government notes that certain
institutions are not well managed, it should take appropriate measures
to rectify the situation and improve these Institutions instead of devaluing
them and permanently relegating them to some inferior grade.
Right to Education (RTE)
If one accepts the spirit of the RTE act and wants to implement
it seriously, then the only possibility that emerges is that the entire
education from 6 to 14 is integrated under a framework of common
schools, without gradations such as KVs, Navodaya Vidyalayas, various
transitional schools to CBSE and other Board examinations and so on.
The common school, will strictly work on a neighbourhood principle
admit all children without caste, class, gender, religion or region teach
children in the mother tongue as the medium.. Furthermore, worldwide
the common school has helped society advance and provide quality
institutions for all the people.
Two other suggestions also militate against the spirit of the RTE.
The NEP Report attempts to make a proviso that all minority
schools should admit 15% of students from economically weaker
sections which, minority institutions assert, will work against their minority
character and dilute it. On the contrary, effort should be to actively
assist the endeavour of minority institutions to reform and improve
themselves instead of imposing external conditions.
The second is to amend the no detention policy, with the policy
being limited up to the fifth standard, and after that a suitable form of
remedial teaching being adopted for children who lag behind. Such
compromises are cumbersome and unwarranted.
Over-centralization and bureaucratization
India has come a long way as regards the organization of its
education system. One of the dominant trends has been to gradually
centralize the system with the Union Government playing an ever greater
in framing the system and regulating it. This trend is further accentuated
in the NEP Report which seeks to centralize all ideas and processes,
based on the premise that performance of State governments is poor
and that only the Centre can deliver. The Constitution provides
considerable autonomy to the States in education and this need to be
safeguarded If left unchecked, this trend will be a major impediment in the
development of local and regional initiatives which are very important
in the growth of education in a country of great diversity such as India.
This becomes even more important as education is a field that is
essentially participatory and democratic, which cannot be carried out
without the active participation of the teachers, students and the
neighbourhood community. The very dynamics of this process is impeded if the whims and fancies of a group of individuals in the
capital are imposed on the States, however brilliant or innovative these
individuals may be. In the present context, this also sharply increases
the dangers of imposition of a saffron agenda with religious, linguistic
and caste-based biases being thrust upon States, regions and communities
with very different cultures and backgrounds. Disturbing trends along
these lines are already visible in both school and university education.
For instance, the emphasis being put on Sanskrit and Vedic–
Puranic traditions, with both being associated exclusively with ancient
Indian culture to the exclusion of all other cultures and traditions, is a
dangerous trend. An understanding of the ancient Indian civilization
which consists of many religious and cultural strands, and includes both
indigenous and international inputs, are extremely important for
cultivating a multi-cultural pluralist national identity and building a
humanistic value-system for India’s precious democratic system.
Imposition of an idea of India based on unitary conceptions of Indian
religion, culture and language, and a false history deliberately constructed
to promote such a view point, is not only contrary to the real history
of the Indian civilization and nation, but also to the direction in which
modern India needs to go. The educational system in India must be
protected from such wrong ideas so that the citizens of tomorrow are
not brought up on distorted ideas.
The New Education Policy as currently structured does not offer
a new vision of the school and university as required for playing a
critical role in the development of a modern India.
