New National Education Policy

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.