National Education Policy Draft, 2019- A review

 

THE IMPACT OF NATIONAL EDUCATION POLICY DRAFT, 2019

 

VISION: The National Education Policy 2019 envisions an India-centred education system that contributes directly to transforming our nation sustainably into an equitable and vibrant knowledge society, by providing high quality education to all.

HISTORY: The National Policy on Education was framed in 1986 and modified in 1992. Since then several changes have taken place that calls for a revision of the Policy. The Government of India would like to bring out a National Education Policy to meet the changing dynamics of the population's requirement with regards to quality education, innovation and research, aiming to make India a knowledge superpower by equipping its students with the necessary skills and knowledge and to eliminate the shortage of manpower in science, technology, academics and industry.

NEED OF A NATIONAL EDUCATION POLICY:  The National Policy on Education (NPE) is a policy formulated by the Government of India to promote education amongst India's people. The policy covers elementary education to colleges in both rural and urban India.

A new policy in place is very crucial for a country where the population of youth is larger than the entire population of Europe, hence the supposed investments in the education and skill development is an obvious step.

The draft NEP 2019 advocates building new institutions of higher education which are essentially multidisciplinary in nature, in addition to ones focusing on the study of Pali, Prakrit, Persian and Sanskrit. It further departs from existing policy in the way it seamlessly weaves the professionalisation of higher education with a redefined notion of what 'liberal' education entails.

HIGHLIGHTS OF NEP DRAFT 2019 PERTAINING TO HIGHER STUDIES AND RESEARCH:

Establishment of a National Research Foundation: A new NRF will be set up through an Act of Parliament, as an autonomous body of the Government of India, to fund, mentor, incentivise, and build capacity for quality research across the country in all disciplines, primarily at universities and colleges, both public and private. Appropriate infrastructure and a trained staff will be provided to enable it to fulfil its mission. The NRF will consist of four major divisions - Sciences; Technology; Social Sciences; and Arts and Humanities - with the provision to add additional divisions (e.g. health, agriculture, environmental issues), whenever it may be determined to be beneficial by the Governing Council of the NRF.

The Masters and Doctoral levels are being strengthened with provision of at least three routes into the Masters' degree - a one-year degree, a two-year degree, and the integrated five-year degree. The Masters' degree will also have a strong research component to strengthen the appropriate professional competence in the domain area, and to prepare students for a research degree. The biggest lacuna in the present education system is the lack of a coherent direction for planning and implementation of research at the university level. We have addressed this critical lacuna in this Policy by introducing, for the very first time a new National Research Foundation (NRF) that will focus on funding research within the education system, primarily at colleges and universities. The Foundation will encompass the four broad areas of Sciences, Technology, Social Sciences, and Arts & Humanities. Besides strengthening the presently weak support that subjects such as the Social Sciences and the Humanities receive, NRF will also bring in cohesion among the various research endeavours of multidisciplinary character. Besides providing funding, NRF will also take care of the need to seed and build research capacity in universities and colleges through a formal mechanism of mentoring that will be instituted. In enunciating the principles of the functioning of the NRF, the need to:

bring in synergies between the stakeholders and research groups,

create a mechanism for monitoring and mid-course corrections, and

strengthen the linkages between universities and their counterparts at the global level will all be addressed.

The NRF will catalyse research in universities and colleges, institutions that have hitherto not been big players in the research scene of the country and help build the capacity to do research through an institutionalised mentoring mechanism, involving expert researchers from premier institutions in the country.

Another change that the current draft is planning is to create beneficial linkages among government, industry, and researchers. Currently, there is no direct link between research being conducted in the country and relevant government entities, which makes it much more difficult for breakthroughs in research and innovation to be implemented for the benefit of society. The NRF will help in playing this linking role. The NRF will also help link both researchers and government with industry, in order to increase collaboration and synergy of purpose with respect to research, innovation, and implementation among all three parties. The Governing Board will stay in constant contact with relevant government entities and with industry for this purpose. Furthermore, in addition to the annual grant to the NRF from Government of India, NRF may also receive additional funds from various ministries of the Government of India and from State governments for funding research. Similarly, Public-Sector Units, the private sector, and philanthropic organisations will also be encouraged to fund research of interest to them through the NRF. The infrastructure that will be created by the NRF for end-to-end management of the life-cycle of research projects, covering evaluation of proposals, disbursement of funds, mentoring for helping to achieve project goals, and regular monitoring and assessment of research outcomes, will be invaluable to ministries and other agencies that require research towards their own endeavours. Different models of collaboration between the NRF and ministries and other governmental entities, industry, and philanthropic organisations can be explored.

Strategic partnerships between universities in India and abroad will be used to expand research collaborations. The NRF will provide funding support for the two-way movement of talented research students and post-doctoral fellows, as part of funding joint research projects. Once again, factors such as visas, registration, extension of stay, etc., must be facilitated by their International Offices – set up to develop and deliver on an internationalisation strategy, and offer services and supports to international students – working with the newly set-up Inter-University Centre for International Education.

Masters, doctoral, professional, and vocational programmes will also be significantly enhanced by being located in vibrant multidisciplinary institutions, by the breaking of silos, and via the overall liberal education approach. The draft recommends both traditional and open and distance learning modes to be offered by institutions.

NEW KNOWLEDGE:

A knowledge economy is ability to create and disseminate knowledge and use it for economic growth and improved standard of living. It is important is to understand the characteristics and the dynamics of knowledge economy and chart out a path of economic development of India in which knowledge management assumes a key role. Knowledge economies have become quite vulnerable and exposed to external forces and need internal mechanisms to be created to exploit opportunities and mitigate threats. In knowledge economy, therefore, human resource endowed with education and skill is considered important as knowledge can only be produced by human resources who can then transform knowledge into tangible products- technology and goods and services – for the market. A country, therefore, rich in educated and skilled workforce has great potentials to produce, disseminate, adapt knowledge to enhance growth. It is for this reason that educated youth in the age group 18-24 years is an important index of knowledge economy for reaping the benefits of knowledge. Changing demographic composition worldwide has altered the paradigm of development in terms of centre and periphery debate in favour of developing countries, notably India and China, with high number (if not proportion) of highly educated youth in total population. Highly endowed human resource of a country, however, is no guarantee of the economic development of a nation. The reason is that educated and skilled human resource, so far not so mobile, has become too mobile and hence the use of the human resources may not be specific to the country of origin. The knowledge may be produced and used by countries which can attract talent. Emerging global labour market has enabled easier access to expertise and skills and knowledge embedded in professionals, on the one hand and produced threats of growing brain drain and loss of advanced human capital.

All fresh PhD entrants, irrespective of discipline, will be required to have taken 8-credit courses in teaching/ education/ pedagogy related to their chosen PhD subject, during their doctoral training period. Exposure to pedagogic practices, designing curriculum, credible evaluation systems and so on, is desirable since many research scholars will go on to become faculty. They must also have a minimum number of hours of actual teaching experience gathered through teaching assistantships and other means. PhD programmes at universities around the country must be reoriented for this purpose. Opportunities for PhD students to assist faculty as teaching assistants must be created as part of all PhD programmes.

As far as psychology is concerned, there seems to be a lot of opportunities coming up in the school sector. Though teachers have the central role in student care and well-being, each school complex will have one or more capable counsellors available. The counselling available will range from career guidance to mental health. While there may be other areas of counselling that can be identified and mechanisms established to offer them, the following will be provided:

·         Counselling on choice of subjects in secondary grades, including vocational subjects, and on choices in higher education, leading to potential career choices

·         Support and counselling on age related growth and development issues, especially during the adolescent years

·         Support and counselling on mental health issues, including stress and mood disorders.

The counsellors may have to work on areas like monitoring students' attendance in school, monitoring students who may be falling behind, tracking out-of-school children etc.

The mechanisms to make such counselling available will have to be responsive to the practical reality of the school complex, including training some of the teachers or social workers to be able to play the role of counsellors, appointing full time counsellors for one or more school complexes, and arranging for counsellors to visit the schools frequently. This counselling support should also be able to identify cases requiring clinical mental health support - and the school complex must have the tie-ups necessary to provide this. The State departments of education and health will have to coordinate closely for enabling this.

 

CRITICISM: A lot of emphasis is given to India's heritage in the NEP draft 2019. It would have been relevant then, may not be entirely suitable to the current evolved education system.

This policy tries to push softly the agenda of the predominant religion of the current ruling party. 

'Social science' missing from the preamble of the policy, is missing in the construction of the framework as well. 

Sexual abuse was another issue of concern that is ignored. Although this policy has given space for sex education in 9th to 12th-grade time, it is still inadequate to deal with the issue of child abuse.

If implemented, the new draft will require a lot of investment like creation of new school complexes and merging, establishment of new institutions National Higher Education Regulatory Authority (NHERA)-in place of UGC, National Research Foundation for funding of researches, expansion of mid-day meal program for breakfast, brand new set of curriculum, extensive teacher training, which in the last 5 years, the government has been cutting down.

Submitted by Jyothi.K.C

Student No: 1951085