The NEP 2020 will replace the 1986 policy when the TSR Subramanian Committee submitted its report back to the Union Govt. The final NEP intends to bring sweeping changes to the prevailing education system in India through a number of latest measures. there’s a stress on foundational literacy and numeracy during a mission mode through National Mission on Foundational Literacy and Numeracy to be attained by 2025.
Another significant change would be the rename of the Ministry of Human Resource Development as the Ministry of Education. A number of the provisions of NEP are as follows:
School Education
The NEP highlights integrating the Indian education system with global standards by doing away with a commitment to memory. It lays emphasis on universal access to colleges for all children by 2030. It stresses increasing the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) to prevent the spiralling dropout rate in India. As far as the policy is concerned, NEP talks of bringing almost 2 crores (20 million) of children back to mainstream education through developing infrastructure, innovative teaching centres and appointing trained teachers and counsellors to attain this goal.
NEP proposes to interchange the 10+2 education system with the 5+3+3+4 curriculum including three years of pre-schooling in Anganbari centres for youngsters by 3-8 years followed by 12 years of formal schooling. The inclusion of babyhood education was a long-standing demand of the CSOs working on the problem. the first childhood education is a collaborative effort between the Ministries of Education, Women and Child Development, Health and Family Welfare and Tribal Affairs.
The NEP talks of introducing new subjects like coding and other foundation courses from Class VI onwards while students will have greater flexibility in choosing subjects as the rigid demarcation between Arts and Science, curricular and additional-curricular subjects or vocational and academic streams will cease to exist. It also proposes board exams in modular form in Grades III, V, VIII, X and XII redesigned to check the conceptual understanding of the scholars.
Another noteworthy proposed change is that education up to Class V –VIII is going to be imparted within the maternal language of the scholars. The policy adds breakfast to the prevailing Mid Day Meal program within the government schools.
There are certain provisions that are questionable and desire further clarification from the govt. the ultimate policy removes the proposal from the 2019 draft to increase the proper Education to any or all children between the ages of 3-18 years and it merely states that efforts are made to confirm universal access and opportunity for any or all children to get holistic education.
It also removes the draft proposal that the recent amendments to the RTE Act on continuous and comprehensive evaluation and therefore the no-detention policy be reviewed. The policy barring once doesn’t mention the Right To Education Act. It fails to redress the issues faced by RTE Act. Among the ten pointers that the RTE has laid all the way down to improve school education, only 12.6% of the standards were fulfilled within the last 10 years.
There is a disproportionate specialisation in vocationalisation of education at an early age that would counter the claims of holistic learning. it’s not clear how the govt plans to implement teaching in the first language, especially in a diverse country like India.
NEP talks of universalization of college education from 3-18 years without making it a right. there’s no mandatory mechanism for the union and authorities to create it a reality. the stress on digital education and private-public partnership for philanthropic schools can cause further segregation and commercialization of education resulting in increasing inequalities.
The policy talks about the rationalisation of college complexes which can be resource centres for college kids and teachers but past trends show that this has led to high school closures in states like Bihar, Orissa and Jharkhand. Increased distances to colleges have often been the explanation behind girls quitting faculties or not enrolling altogether.
Teachers Training
The NEP propose to line up common national professional standards for Teachers (NPST) which can be developed by National Council for Teachers Education by 2022 in consultation with NCERT, SCERT, experts and teachers’ organizations. The policy talks of ensuring merit in hiring and promotions that are not defined concretely within the NEP.
Public Investment in Education
The NEP endorses a considerable increase in the public investment in education both by the Central government and state governments. The policy states that the centre and also the states will work together to extend the general public investment in the education sector to achieve 6% of GDP at the earliest. This has been a stated goal in the 1960s since the Kothari Commission’s report but is yet to be achieved. In 2012-13 education expenditure was 3.1% of GDP. It fell in 2014-15 to 2.8% and registered an extra drop to 2.4%.
