IMPACT OF DRAFT NATIONAL EDUCATION POLICY 2019 ON MATHEMATICS

Introduction

The Draft National Education Policy 2019 is the fourth national policy on Education. The first policy was formulated by Indira Gandhi's government in 1968. Later, in 1986, the Rajiv Gandhi government introduced the second educational policy giving importance to removal of disparities in education and promotion of equitable education. In 1992, the National Education policy was modified by the P.V. Narasimha Rao government [1]. The Draft National Education policy is a document comprising of 484 pages. It aims at a drastic reformation of the education system in India including the change in the name of the ministry (MHRD) to Ministry of Education (MoE) [2]. The policy has far reaching impacts on all disciplines. The impact on mathematics is discussed below in detail.

The impact on the field of Mathematics

The Draft National Education Policy suggests that the higher education must provide students with broad-based multidisciplinary education and 21st century skills [3]. It also recommends the engagement with real life problems which would foster innovation. The basic framework of many 21st century skills is paved on mathematics. The improvement of efficiency of the current machines and technology requires sophisticated mathematical calculations. The repeated emphasis on the improvement of problem-solving skills indicates that mathematical skills are inevitable and of prime importance in the coming years.

An HEI will be called multidisciplinary if it offers at least two programmes or majors in the arts and humanities, at least two in science and mathematics, and at least one in the social sciences. The recommendation of moving higher education into large multidisciplinary universities and colleges will increase the HEIs offering mathematics courses in India. This also leads to a higher number of students who learn mathematics and eventually the discipline will flourish.

The National Research Foundation (NRF) will be established to grant competitive funding for outstanding research proposals. This funding will improve the research in mathematics. The NRF will also act as a link between researchers, government and the industry. It will also recognize outstanding researches through awards and National seminars. This will motivate researchers to produce high-impact researches in Mathematics.

All HEIs, including all universities (Type 1 and 2), shall be required to offer liberal education undergraduate programmes. This would allow an arts or humanities student to opt for courses like mathematical sciences. The HEI will also innovate and develop relevant programmes for emerging areas of study, including areas of application. This would lead to more application-based courses in mathematics. The targeted Gross Enrolment rate is 50%. This enrolment is based on equity and access, hence the number of students studying mathematics will increase.

As part of a liberal education which is highly promoted in the Draft National Education Policy, students will be provided with opportunities for internships with local industry as well as research internships with faculty and researchers at their own or other HEIs or research institutions. This will increase the interests of the students to study mathematics as they would be able to appreciate the application of the theory that they learn in the classrooms.

Students will be given adequate flexibility in deciding which courses to take in order to satisfy the core curriculum requirements. This will allow students who have an aptitude for both arts and languages to take up courses in mathematics according to their wish. In the earlier system, an Arts student had little options to study a full course in mathematics.

New premier institutes called the Multidisciplinary Education and Research Universities (MERUs) / Indian Institutes of Liberal Arts (IILAs) will be set up. These institutes will offer courses in liberal arts which comprises of courses of various streams. This will be a hub of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research in mathematics.

The Inter-University Centres (IUCs) will foster interdisciplinary research and teaching in several areas, organise training programmes for researchers to enhance their research competence and increase their innovation capacity in both research and teaching. Access to high quality multidisciplinary libraries and online journals play a key role in liberal education and also in the performance of high-quality research. Thus, leading to the development of the faculty and research in the field of mathematics.

There are also provisions of international institutional collaborations in which students get a chance of completing parts of their studies in the foreign university. Also, the foreign students will be able to find cheaper education in countries like India. This will lead to the exchange of ideas across countries. The syllabi and course structure will be upgraded to global standards. Mathematics as a discipline will flourish due to the international collaborations that are planned to be established.

The empowering of the faculty will have an immensely positive impact on the teaching and research in India. There are directions to the HEI to be equipped with the basic infrastructure and facilities necessary to carry out good work in higher education and research. A merit-based career management and a 360-degree feedback assessment that is proposed in the Draft National Education Policy will also incentivise the faculty to perform better in terms of research and teaching. A student teacher ratio of 30:1 will also improve the engagements in the subject. The autonomy of faculty will encourage the faculty to use innovative methods to teach mathematics. This would remove the anxiety of students about mathematics being a subject that is difficult to understand. The institutional autonomy will allow the institution to improve and innovate the curriculum of the mathematics programme and also introduce specialised programmes which would lead to better research outputs.

            The policy also stresses on integrated programmes of teacher preparation for all levels of education across the higher education sector. Hence, it urges the multidisciplinary colleges to offer education courses along with the research programmes that they offer. The multidisciplinary education for the B. Ed. and M. Ed. courses has special mention for the collaboration of the Education department with the mathematics department so that teachers are equipped with necessary mathematical skills.

Setting up new HEIs will be made easier and there will be 'tight but light' regulations based on accreditation which is focussed primarily on outcomes (by National Higher Education Regulatory Authority-NHERA). This will increase the number of institutions that offer mathematics courses in the country. Hence, along with the premier institutes like IITs, NITs, IISc, Chennai Mathematical institute and TIFR, new premier institutes for mathematics can be introduced.

Adult Literacy has also been given importance in the Draft NEP. It aims at providing literacy, basic education, vocational skills and numeracy. This will increase the number of students who want a career advancement through higher education. Hence, more student enrolment in mathematics will be achieved.

The introduction of the National Education Technology Forum (NETF) will provide a platform to introduce technology to improve the quality of education. Mathematics, being an abstract subject, can be better taught using improved technology. The incorporation of mathematical tools like Maple, Mathlab, Mathematica, Maxima and Scilab will enhance the mathematical skills of the students and researchers. The knowledge of these softwares will enable students to do sophisticated mathematical calculations and also visualise the problems dealt in the class. Hence, the overall interest of the students towards mathematics will increase.

Conclusion

            The draft National Education Policy (NEP) aims at an improvement of the current education system in India. The policy has many recommendations that will improve research and teaching of the discipline of mathematics. But there is no clear roadmap as to how all these recommendations will be executed. Many changes and deadlines seem to be far from the realistic situation in India. While focussing on the multidisciplinary aspect of education, research in pure mathematics is not advocated in the policy which is equally important to the growth of the discipline. There is a chance that the premier institutes will be more likely to receive the funds allocated for research. But juxtaposing the positives and the negatives, it can be concluded that the Draft National Educational policy is opening a horizon of possibilities to improve the overall educational system in India. The mathematics discipline too will be benefitted from the recommendations in the policy. This improvement in quality in education and research will have far reaching impacts in the field of Mathematics including a new Fields medal from India.

References

 [1] "National Policy on Education", En.wikipedia.org, 2019. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Policy_on_Education. [Accessed: 05- Aug- 2019].

[2] Desk, "HRD Ministry drafts new National Educational Policy: 19 changes recommended", India Today, 2019. [Online]. Available: https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/news/story/hrd-ministry-drafts-new-national-educational-policy-19-changes-recommended-1540190-2019-06-01. [Accessed: 05- Aug- 2019].

[3] mhrd.gov.in. (2019). Draft National Education Policy 2019 (Revised) | Government of India, Ministry of Human Resource Development. [online] Available at: https://mhrd.gov.in/draft-national-education-policy-2019-revised [Accessed 07 Aug. 2019].

 

- Joby Mackolil (1942069)

Research Scholar

Department of Mathematics

CHRIST (Deemed to be University)

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