The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has been a contentious document right from its inception. Even state governments that had ideological disagreements with the ethos and prescriptions of the policy could not afford to take too strident a view as the centre held the purse strings. Besides, states have little elbow room as the new policy and the consequent administrative changes fast-tracked by the centre affect students who move to other states to pursue higher studies. The generally muted criticism of the NEP has conveyed the impression that the policy has generally found acceptance.
But there is considerable trepidation and anxiety among students and parents about the implications of these radical changes. At the political level, there is resentment that the centre, by its frenetic pace of implementation, has made education, a subject in the concurrent list of the Constitution, appear like a central subject. At the academic level, there is uncertainty over the future of public universities and colleges.
The NEP 2020 claims to address the “developmental imperatives of the country” and proposes to revise and revamp the structure, governance and regulatory mechanisms to create a system “aligned with the aspirational goals of 21st-century education”. Lofty as these ideals are, the trouble arises in the idea of “developmental imperatives” presumed in the policy. Unfortunately, that development vision is neither inclusive nor egalitarian and shows no sensitivity to social justice. It doesn’t even mention the Right to Education Act or try to imbibe its philosophy of social equity and inclusion. The major flaw of the NEP is the implicit message that everything needs to be deconstructed and re-imagined.
Poor enrolment, high dropout rate, poor access, teacher absenteeism, unproductive pedagogy, poor school infrastructure and several such factors are the well-known lacunae in our school education. Though the policy recognises some of these issues, the document is silent about the real causes of these maladies and glosses over the administrative and financial implications of effective remedial action. The policy is oblivious to the diverse state-specific scenarios.
The NEP proposes to bring Early Childhood Care and Education within the formal school system and replace the structure of 4+3+3+2 with the 5+3+3+4 design. This radical restructuring will throw up humongous academic, administrative and financial difficulties. Is the proposed structure the panacea for the deep-seated problems in school education? Is it going to bring fresh air into classrooms and unlock the creativity and academic curiosity of students?
The NEP proposes several new missions and institutions: A mission for achieving foundational numeracy and literacy, the National Assessment Centre, the Professional Standard Setting Body in place of National Council for Teacher Education, and several new bodies. In their eagerness to offer drastic solutions, the architects of the policy have not provided any prescription to enhance quality and remedy the major ills. They are comfortable with the increasing role of expensive private schools and the resultant elitism and social exclusion.
This eagerness to centralise and create new institutions while devaluing existing institutions seems to be the inbuilt limitation of the policy. While enumerating the ten major problems in higher education, the NEP identifies “large affiliating universities” as a problem “resulting in low standards of undergraduate education”. The solution proposed to “end fragmentation” is to transform “higher education institutions (HEIs) into large multidisciplinary institutions”, each of which will aim to have 3,000 or more students. The policy claims this as its “highest recommendation”.
In section 10.12, the NEP makes a key recommendation that the system of affiliated colleges will be phased out over a period of fifteen years through a system of “graded autonomy”. Distinctions such as deemed-to-be-universities, private universities and public universities will have no relevance, and the private sector will be encouraged to establish multidisciplinary higher education institutions. Public universities (bereft of any affiliating role) are envisioned as Multidisciplinary Education and Research Universities to aim for the highest standards in research. And there will be a National Research Foundation to guide the quality of research. The Foundation—which will control the course of academic research with “suitable incentives and recognition”—is evidently a Trojan horse for the political executive to directly control academic research.
A Higher Education Commission of India has been proposed as an umbrella organisation under which four verticals will function: the National Higher Education Regulatory Council, National Accreditation Council, Higher Education Grants Council, and General Education Council. The functions of these verticals are now being carried out by well-established institutions such as the University Grants Commission and the All India Council for Technical Education. Does the NEP presume that the absence of the proposed institutions was compromising the quality of university education and research? By weakening public universities and encouraging private entities to establish HEIs with degree-granting powers, higher education is poised to become prohibitively expensive for a student with meagre resources. The policy is woefully insensitive to this.
The NEP 2020, in its eagerness to create new structures and institutions, primarily belittles the achievements and accumulated experience of several important bodies in the education sector. It reiterates the innate desire to centralise and march towards the undeclared objective of ‘one nation, one education’. The whole premise of creating an array of new structures is evidently not the answer. In fact, it will only create new problems even as existing real problems are aggravated. Substantial national energy and resources will be frittered away in creating additional structures that will only centralise a subject in the concurrent list. It is a project fraught with the danger of deconstruction without being able to construct anything better. The NEP is a bundle of wrong prescriptions that cannot cure the maladies but can only aggravate them.
K Jayakumar
Former Kerala chief secretary and ex-VC, Thunchath Ezhuthachan Malayalam University
(k.jayakumar123@gmail.com)