8 semesters, 40 odd theory papers, 20 not-so practical laboratory courses, 100s of assignments and 1000s of lectures later, I stand here today, to witness the reforms in Indian Education materialize at the policy level after a decade of creating and receiving numerous articulate essays, debate speeches and street-plays that criticized it. And not to mention, my generation has pioneered performance pressures varying from CCE to JEE. From cramming thirty chapters of History or English Literature before the D-day to toiling for two years in the finest assembly line manufactured by the supplementary education industry, my peers have seen it all.
The New Education Policy 2020 is a dream that we saw but won't, unfortunately, get to live through, because time doesn't reverse.
I believe this has been both: a huge sigh of relief and a piece of rare good news during the dark times of this pandemic. Also, I think that this is one of the sure wins in the series of controversial and debatable reformations that PM Narendra Modi led NDA Government has introduced since its sweeping victory in 2019.
After promising in their agenda for 2014 elections, the government asked a panel led by ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) chief K Kasturirangan to submit their draft to Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' in 2018. It was later made public in 2019 after their win for feedback. A pipeline dream for the student fraternity, this policy has more or less been welcomed wholeheartedly by all stake-holders.
It's a bottoms-up reform in the current pedagogy which from suggesting guidelines on early childhood care to offering flexible higher education, has tackled a lot of parameters in between. Although the policy is radically deviant from the current scenario, the phases of its implementation have been stretched out and hence, will require a lot of energy, time, financial resources, and will-power of educational institutions because this sort of change is never easy.
I've linked a video (here) that provides a detailed analysis and description of the policy, but to bring to the surface, the highlights of what it aims to do and why I hold it up are laid here in these 20 bullet points.
1. Focusing on Early Childhood Care.
2. Financially and structurally promoting Gender Inclusion
3. Empowering differently-abled, gifted children in the mainstream educational institutions.
4. Promoting models of adult education, peer learning, and community learning.
5. Prioritizing skill-based and application-based knowledge and curriculum.
6. Judging students based on core competencies.
7. Reducing hard boundaries between co-curricular, extra-curricular, and classroom learning.
8. Promoting vocational training, craftsmanship, and local industrial learning.
9. Stressing on developing 21st-century skills.
10. Mandating technological integration of learning resources and teaching methods.
11. Increasing the flexibility in choosing study subjects.
12. Increasing the flexibility and diversity of higher education options available with the credit banking system.
13. Unifying monitoring committees and college entrance aptitude tests.
14. Simplifying accreditation and increasing the autonomy of higher education institutions while setting a financial cap.
15. Increasing the GDP spending and sponsoring research work.
16. Promoting Indian languages and local cultures.
17. Bridging the gap between private and public school systems by resource sharing, setting up community enrichment centers, and pairing.
18. Empowering teachers and mandating their training also by diversifying the portfolios of all multi-disciplinary premier institutions.
19. Promoting foreign educational Institutions to be set up in India and premier Indian Institutions abroad.
20. AI-based continuous evaluation and holistic monitoring, reporting, and counseling of students.
In several phases, over the next two decades, the newly named Ministry of Education hopes to implement these changes. The key take-away, even from this high over-view of NEP is that we're looking at a more flexible education system that creates a richer learning experience for students, a more skilled and employable incoming work-force, and a technology intense medium of learning with equal emphasis to the acquirement of technical skills. Above all that, I sense a greater deviation towards the "Think Global but Act Local" philosophy because such education systems are modeled after internationally acknowledged best practices.
For example, the Early Childhood Care is a follow-up on UNO's Sustainable Development Goals and takes inspiration from our Norwegian counterparts. The inclination towards vocational training and skill-building has been tantamount in the German education system, and the aptitude test models and suggested reforms in the secondary stage (Class 9-12) have been predominantly western concepts. However, these international practices will render a truly competent and culturally aware young generation as they get to interact with local languages, cultures, and industries.
One could even hope for an extrapolation in the trend of formalizing the unorganized sector of the Indian Economy – the potters, the craftsmen, and the cottage industry; if the policy is well implemented even on the grassroots level in the rural parts of the country.
That is where one needs to take a halt before painting such a bright picture. For all its claims, NEP is in itself just a policy, not an Act or a Law. It will take perhaps decades, to implement these suggestions in our organizations and institutions. And the process of change will definitely be met with resistance, lack of technical know-how in the current community of educators, insufficient ideological compliance by parents and teachers alike. Students themselves, who are too familiar and contrary to their likes, comfortable with the current pedagogy will, for few batches have to go through a patch-work of coursework, evaluation, and learning as the education system gradually transforms. And we know that these changes would take even more time, energy, monetary resources and manpower to penetrate to schools in villages, tribal areas, and rural communities.
However, my chief complaint is that this policy is twenty years late in coming. The period between 2020 and 2050 has been held as one where India will have the greatest demographic dividend in its favor to push the GDP, growth, and income levels because of the highest percentage of young employable earning individuals. After this period, this percentage would predictably drop. And if our hopes that this policy would boost the employ-ability of forthcoming generation are well-set then we can say that we've lost at least a good twenty years of this progress, already.
Nonetheless, a new India is in the making and hopefully, the future governments recognize the sincerity of this policy and put its implementation above political propaganda. I also hope that the subsequent reviewing committees are diligent in observing what's relevant to the twenty-first century, as far as skills are concerned; and that curriculum designers, academicians, trainers and teachers alike are all pro-active and not reactive in anticipating and suggesting a change in this era of digital and sociological disruption.
The pandemic has shaken the core of the modern economy from manufacturing to markets by showing how ill-prepared we are for disruption. Education is supposedly the worst-hit sector in terms of larger externalities and so policymakers, students, and educators alike must take this as a lesson in history that systems that are agile, robust, proactive, inclusive, and equitable are the only ones that sustain.
In my concluding thoughts, I would like to congratulate the generation that's stepping out of the pandemic into the new age of learning, by saying to them that although your online classes this summer have been a practical crash course and a disastrous introduction to how learning could look like in the future, you should at-least know that what you'll receive perhaps, even without asking, has been a long-awaited dream of an entire generation of passionate souls who lost themselves somewhere between the boundaries of science, arts and commerce.
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