The Draft National Educational Policy 2019 Part 1 – School Education

The draft National Education Policy 2019 has been the longest documented policy till date. It has been a  rigorous, exhaustible and challenging policy where the vision is to create an 'India-centred' education leading to an equitable and vibrant knowledge system.

I, being a lecturer in Physics in St.Joseph's Indian Composite P U College, Bangalore would like to highlight the pros and cons of implementing the school education policy in a nutshell.

The idea of clubbing the local Anganwadis to the pre-primary schools is quite thoughtful as it solves the problem of lack of teachers in the government schools. Yet, what has to be given a thought is whether the already existing pre-primary schools are provided with adequate space and infrastructure to accommodate the Anganwadis nearby.

Looking at the present situation in India, there are lack of primary teachers in most of the schools. Although the policy talks about the filling in all the teacher vacancies with a Pupil- Teacher Ratio of 30:1 (P2.14), it seems to be extremely impractical especially when there is an idea of clubbing the surrounding standalone schools with the already existing bigger schools nearby where the resources are shared. The introduction of IAs and NTPs is a fairly good idea (P2.6 & P2.7) since it increases the employment opportunities of many. However, there could also be a possibility where the number of IAs and NTPs can be greater than the number of teachers in the schools itself. Teachers not been given any other administrative work other than teaching is a strong point as it helps the teachers to concentrate on their work.

Although the idea of free and compulsory education sounds impressive, it has not been made clear about the funding. The funding should include the uniforms, text books, infrastructure, salaries of the teachers, Institutional Aides for the entire nation. If the government does not increase the budget in education sector, it can either lead to the policy being pushed to a Public-Private Partnership, with a larger control of the private sector in terms of finance and administration or inadequate funding of the schools in parts of India where social media is unreachable.

 

The medium of instruction in home language (P4.5.1) is unreasonable due to the lack of teachers to teach all the subjects in the home language. India being a country of diverse languages, the implementation of the medium of instruction in the mother language/ local language will cause immense damage to the students especially when they are having state- to- state transfer for various reasons. This will force the students to remain in the same state till 12^th standard.  Also, some of the local languages which do not have their own script will be forced to use the script of another language. There will be no teachers to teach the subjects in these languages as they are not trained to do so. Hence, English being the universal language should be made as the medium of instruction so that the students can convey their thoughts and ideas which can reach everybody throughout the world. The flexibility of choosing or changing the language at grade 6 (P4.5.9) is too early for a child to decide his/her skills on the language. The choice of students to take up Board exams whenever they are ready (P4.9.5) will result in procrastination for the wrong reasons. Although the idea is to de-stress the students in the name of reducing the syllabus, the proposed plan will make the students to stress out all the more especially by learning the subjects in two languages, especially science (P4.5.8). As much as the idea of memorizing is not encouraged, there are certain subjects where memorization plays a very important role ( eg: formulae in Mathematics). Certain subjects which go hand in hand has to be made compulsory for the students while choosing the subjects of their choice for the board exam. Eg : a student who wishes to take up Physics for the board exam should compulsorily take up Mathematics. The introduction of the foreign languages (P4.5.10) is also a good initiative, yet at the outset, students will have more of language learning than the actual content of the subjects.

 

The point of having a two year B.Ed degree even for those who have completed the four year integrated B.Ed course (P5.5.2) remains unclear. Considering the fact that the education is free throughout the school stage, the funding for the salaries of the teachers is not spoken about. Unlike the present day scenario, the teachers should be given good and consistent remuneration in order to attract professionally qualified people into teaching.  With the elaborate plans of introducing new teachers, the older teachers and their capacity building are not given much attention.

The current situation of the mid-day meals in various schools have a lot of hygiene issues. If the breakfast also is going to be served in the similar quality of the mid-day meals (P6.1.6 b ), it has to be given a second thought. The inclusion of the transgender children in the school education is to be highly appreciated. Although emphasis is given on the Muslims as religious minorities (P6.5.2), there is no mention about the Christians as a minority, giving rise to a suspicious thought about where the Christian community lies. Does the Christian community lie in the "other minorities" section have to be thought of.

As much as the idea of clubbing the public schools into school complexes (P7.1.1) sounds fancy, it creates a huge  burden on the Principal of the secondary school to take care of the administrative work of the school complex (P7.1.3). The sharing of resources especially when it comes to sharing audio-video systems, sending out library books to the neighbouring schools (P7.2.1) is unrealistic as these schools can be extremely far away from each other, particularly in a rural set up. The Principal of the secondary school will be responsible for the sharing of these resources (P7.2.1), making it all the more strenuous for the him/her to run the administration. Skimming through the points in chapter 4, we see that a lot of importance is given to the language, music, art, physical education teachers to promote the overall well-being of the students. That means that these teachers should be appointed on full time basis for each school and sharing of these teachers from one school to another will be taxing to the teachers (P7.2.2). In the rural set up, where the schools are situated extremely far away from each other and painful to commute, the schools with no resources will remain unnoticed. This will contradict the statement of not burdening the teachers with unnecessary work. Commuting from one place to the other is a burden.

 

The involvement of the stakeholders into the concept of education is deceitful as there will be a possibility of them taking complete control of the institution in the name of funding. The SSRA will report to the Rashtriya Shiksha Aayog. Having a clear- cut distinction between the private and the public schools, it is not been made clear whether the amalgamation will also be implemented within the private schools. Since the private school is expected to share its resources with the public school, which also includes the teachers, the question of who will pay the salary of such teachers will be debatable.

           

To summarise, the entire idea of the school education policy sounds fantastic in paper. It is a highly ideal phenomenon. Considering a very realistic situation in India, especially in the remote areas where there is absolutely no access to any kind of basic necessities, the implementation of this policy has to be a slow and steady process. The timeframe given to implement this policy is too short and this cannot be done overnight. India being a country with wide diversities in religion, caste, culture, there is nothing mentioned about teaching the students about a secular nation. Religious tolerance is nowhere spoken about, yet there is a clear mention of India – centred education which makes the policy quite sceptical about the hidden agendas. The point of whether the reservation categories will remain or not is not spoken about. The definition of a private philanthropic institution is not clear.  The question of whether the minority-based institutions, which is known for its excellent education system worldwide be considered as a philanthropic institute still remains uncertain. The entire document needs to be subjected to careful analysis in terms of gender, caste, class, disability, minority rights, and rights of tribal populations. To make it meaningful, inclusivity must inform the entire policy, as well as the curricula, syllabi, and textbooks. It will also require a transformation of the attitudes of administrators, teachers, students, and staff within educational institutions. This is far more important than dismantling the existing structures and replacing them with  the ones of higher standards which we can see in the draft document.

 

References :

1.      The Draft National Education Policy -2019

2.     New Education Policy Draft : the 'goods', the 'bads' and the 'left outs' by Qweed desk.

3.     A case of confused thinking : On Draft National Education Policy – Rohit Dhankar.

4.     Examining the draft of National Education Policy – Kumkum Roy.