India’s education system, while being one of the biggest in the world, is plagued by a number of problems and shortcomings as several reports point out, like those of the World Bank, the British Council, ASER and NITI Aayog. Huge dropout rates, incompetent faculty, shortage in the number of teachers, dismal sex ratio, incompetent curriculum, and widespread corruption are just a few of the many issues that are highlighted when discussing the education system of India.
According to a report by the UN, India has the world’s largest population aged between 15 to 24 years of age (241 million) which is a lot more than that of China (169 million). This population is set to almost double (to almost 500 million) by 2020, according to a report by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. And as the country is nearing this proportion there is a rising panic over the dismal state of affairs of the failing education system which if not fixed would only lead to a situation even more critical than now, as is evident by these reports1, 2, 3, 4.
The government’s answer to the concerns
Addressing the beforementioned issues, the government undertook a massive collaborative action in 2016 wherein they, “…embarked on a time-bound grassroots consultative process, [through which it] aimed at reaching individuals across the country through over 2.75 lakh direct consultations and also took input from citizens online.” The aim was to ask the citizens directly for their inputs on what would go on to become the new/revised National Education Policy. The second revision after the original policy of 1986 and its modification in 1992.
This is your chance to influence the national education policy. Join the discussion today. https://t.co/MbshsLJlEd pic.twitter.com/OqdXavRTKO
— Ministry of HRD (@HRDMinistry) April 1, 2015
Watch the New Education Policy TVChttps://t.co/6pW3ci8vEz and send us your suggestionshttps://t.co/Br6iPphZ2M
— Ministry of HRD (@HRDMinistry) March 30, 2015
Once the discussion period was over, the wait began for the draft of the New Education Policy to be made public. In 2017, the then Minister of Human Resource Development, Prakash Javadekar invited the former ISRO chief Dr K. Kasturirangan to form a committee and draft a new National Educational Policy within 6 months. But what was supposed to take 6 months turned into a huge effort of building a new policy from scratch. Almost 3 years after the commencement of the task, finally the first draft of the much-awaited New Educational Policy, 2019 was unveiled on 31st May by the drafting committee and the current Minister of HRD Dhotre Sanjay Shamrao.
Draft New Educational Policy 2019 being submitted to the Hon’ble Minister for HRD by the Drafting Committee. pic.twitter.com/qvYstJMKzT
— Ministry of HRD (@HRDMinistry) May 31, 2019
The new education policy
The new policy’s draft is divided into 4 parts. The first part – School Education – as the name suggests, deals with the aspects of School Education covering everything from early childhood care and education to school education up to 12th Grade. The second part – Higher Education – deals with the aspects of education after the 12th Grade i.e., at the level of College and University. The third part – Additional Key Focus Areas – deals with four topics peripheral to the previous two parts, namely Technology in Education, Adult Education, Vocational Education, and [the much debated upon] Promotion of Indian Languages. The fourth part of the report is short (almost 10 pages) and deals with the committee’s proposal of constituting a new apex body for education – the Rashtriya Shiksha Aayog (RSA) – which would be responsible for, “…developing, articulating, implementing, evaluating, and revising the vision of education in the country [at all levels].” This part lays out the structure and functioning of the RSA.
Throughout the span of its 484 pages, the draft proposes an upheaval of the present structures of education at all levels and restructure them with significant changes so that, “…it touches the life of each and every citizen, consistent with their ability to contribute to many growing developmental imperatives of this country on the one hand, and towards creating a just and equitable society on the other.” The preamble of the Policy states, “We have proposed the revision and revamping of all aspects of the education structure, its regulations and governance, to create a new system that is aligned with the aspirational goals of 21st Century education, while remaining consistent with India’s traditions and value systems.” The draft of the policy can be read here.
As quoted in the report, “…[the new structures encourage a focus on inclusion of] Indian and local traditions as well as ethical reasoning, socio-emotional learning, quantitative and logical reasoning, computational thinking, and digital literacy, scientific temper, and languages and communication …
