The recently announced new National Education Policy (NEP) resounds with sound and substance, reminding us of the Pokhran moment. This EduPokhran is a potent intellectual weapon that can propel India’s march in the global eduscape. Visionary policies like these lay down education highways for high-speed growth. The key to a successful journey lies in the policy and implementation pathway that needs to be free of unnecessary roadblocks, speed breakers and ‘toll booths’.
As articulated by PM Narendra Modi, the NEP has successfully managed to polish the rough contours of policymaking by dismissing the ‘one size fits all’ model to accommodate emerging models of teaching and learning from KG to 12 to PhD with a MIDAS golden touch of Modularity, Interdisciplinarity, Diversity, Accessibility and Sustainability. This is through a gentle touch, different from the dreaded squeeze that the education ecosystem was hitherto confronted with. Here are some major relief and reform announcements spanning the entire education value chain along with certain suggestive prescriptions.
New-age school education: The learning life cycle of school-going kids is poised for a transformational 5+3+3+4 punctuated by fun, arts, skills, mother-tongue exposure, modularity and academic curriculum, minus heavy school bags. The multilingual formula provides scope for various state-driven policies for mutual mobility of language teachers and students in the true spirit of language diversity and national unity. The assessment and vertical school level mobility is all set for a merry-go-round journey with ups and downs having different levels of joy and no sorrow.
The gross deviance from rote rigour to fine vigour is certainly a boon for the future school-going generations. The triple balance between the body, mind and soul ensures the four-dimensional growth of the five senses to ensure a perfect six-pack learning outcome with prescriptive and interdisciplinary choices. There is also a need to assess and grade schools based on student learning outcomes to ensure that school development coexists with students. High-performing schools need to be incentivised and encouraged with more autonomy and support to propel them into uncharted territories as followed by the schooling system of advanced economies. Such a new-age school education policy provides the much-needed fertility for India’s intellectual produce.
Acharya Devo Bhava: The collateral policy shift in teacher education ensures a good value chain linkage, which is essential considering the important role of teachers in school education. The phasing out of standalone teacher education institutions and the four-year integrated B.Ed. programmes will hopefully bring to an end the sorry saga of the existing antiquated and outdated teacher education policy vehicle. There is a need to integrate teacher education with attractive career incentive mechanisms and restore the glory of the noble profession of teaching. In fact, the author, while submitting his comments for the NEP, called for 100% I-T exemption for teachers who submit annual self-attested academic audits that cover the four dimensions of development—self, syllabus, school and society, with wrongful submission leading to penalty and job loss. Still a worthy proposition to pursue in the spirit of ‘Acharya Devo Bhava’.
HigherEd gets taller: Higher education, the catalytic engine with occasional cataclysmic potential, is up for complete revamp. The gradual integration of statutory bodies like the UGC, AICTE, NCTE, etc., into a Higher Educational Council of India (HECI) is a welcome wedding provided there are enough invitees to the muhurat stage. The HECI must have a broad representation not only from all Central and state agencies, but also from private institutions, industry and civil societies. The HECI must recognise that there are thinkers and doers outside the existing orbit of policymaking, which has its own exclusivity. The characterisation of higher educational institutions into three types with inbuilt interdisciplinarity and modularity through academic innovations and diversity through technology-enabled access is a boon that needs to be granted when asked for.
Moving forward, higher education institutions shall emerge as differentiators and not just aggregators and for this transformational shift, the HECI must be fuelling change agents and not gruelling approval engines. The shift in higher education to taller heights of governance, standards, funding and accreditation needs a broader policy outlook, failing which the intended objectives may fall flat. Research excellence: The NEP’s research encouragement through the NSF-type National Research Foundation is symptomatic of equal treatment to all institutions; one hopes that this symptom continues on the field.
Recognising the fact there is good amount of research happening in private higher educational institutions, funding should flow outside the conventional portals of public institutions that have so far been receiving all the required encouragement to make the research funding diversity a big plus. The NEP also mentions tax incentives raising the hopes of the revival of the accelerated tax exemption given by the Ministry of Finance to corporate donors who provide the much-needed financial support for research institutions.
I am reminded of Nani Palkhivala who once said, and I twist a little—“Five-year governments in four-year action with three-year tenured bureaucrats having two-year targets and one-year reviews will rely on the common man to solve their day-to-day problems.” Hope it doesn’t happen for education, as the MIDAS touch of NEP has left its fingerprints in all educational spheres and dimensions. It is for the policymakers and implementing agencies to harvest this gold mine of opportunities.
S Vaidhyasubramaniam
Vice-Chancellor, SASTRA Deemed University
(vaidhya@sastra.edu)