New Education Policy: The Issues Unaddressed

New Education Policy: The Issues Unaddressed

The Government of India announced a new National Education Policy (NEP) on 29 July 2020.  The policy document is more a hype and rhetoric, couched in a language of what ought to be ignoring the ground reality of what is happening, and not addressed the fundamental issues plaguing the Indian education system.

Issue 1: School Education: The NEP seeks to replace the present 10+2 system by 5+3+3+4 for the children in the age group of 3-18 years.  The three years pre-schooling is now made formal.   With nearly fifty percent of teaching posts vacant in schools in many states, who will teach the tiny- tots and whose responsibility is it! If the first five years ‘Foundation Stage’ is left to the commercial private players, it will seriously affect the mental development of tender children. Whether it is desirable to expose the children of 3 years to such a grueling process is a matter of debate, the Indian school system being so awful. One out of four teachers is absent in government schools and one in two is not teaching.  Nearly half the students in Class 5 are unable to read Class 2 text and do simple divisions. Most of public schools run by Panchayat Institutions and Municipal bodies do not have even basic facilities such as classrooms and benches, drinking water, toilets for girls and boys.  A large number of poor parents are withdrawing their children from government schools, where education is free, and enrolling them in private schools, spending their hard meagre earnings on their children’s education. This is a bad reflection on the India State of failing to provide basic quality education- a constitutional obligation-, even after 73 years of independence, to the poor children who need it the most. It is disgraceful.

The craze for English medium schools is making the public schools redundant, with a massive 20.4 million children leaving the government schools and joining private schools between 2011 and 2018, resulting in mushrooming of sub-standard private schools across the country. Today, 47.5% children (120 million) are in the private system, making it the third largest in the world.  And unless the State takes the responsibility of providing free and compulsory quality education up to secondary stage, the children of poor and marginalized will never receive good education, the children having no future. A good school education is a sine qua non for sound higher education.  The thee-language formula is flouted by the states, by giving undue importance to the state languages and neglecting Hindi and English. Consequently, children are doing badly in higher education and losing out in employment market eventually. If the mother tongue is the medium of instruction till Class 5 or 8, it will make the inter-state mobility of children difficult.

Issue 2: Higher Education: The NEP promises “to ensure holistic, and multidisciplinary education through the flexibility of subjects” and raise the  GER from 26% to 50 % in higher education by 2035, adding 30.5 million seats. But who will fund the institutions which are likely to grow? It is a utopian idea to assume the charitable philanthropists would come forward and set the educational institutions with a motto of ‘no profit’.  There are about 1,000 universities and more than 51,000 colleges in the country with almost 50% teaching posts vacant. 

The academic autonomy of universities has eroded, with the people leaning towards a particular political ideology being appointed to top academic-administrative positions. The freedom of academic expression and intellectual growth are stifled. As Pratap Bhanu Mehta rightly observes, “the emphasis in the document on critical thinking and free inquiry is well placed. But it is difficult to read those words in a context, where universities are being intimidated into political and cultural conformity. A free education system cannot flourish without a free society…”   The NEP recognizes “vibrant campus life is essential for high-quality teaching learning processes.” However, the recent developments in premier universities-JNU, Hyderabad,Jamia, AMU and Jadavpur - are an indication the campus space to nurture critical thought, political argument and debate is increasingly embattled. And the proposal to permit selected top 100 universities in the world to operate in India will knockout the native marginal universities, with students being crazy about acquiring degrees from foreign universities. In 2018, according to the Ministry of External Affairs, some 752,725 Indian students were studying abroad, predominantly in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia, but also increasingly in the UAE and China.  The aspiring young people should know that former Presidents S. Radhakrishnan, Abdul Kalam and noble laureates Amartya Sen and Abhijit Banerjee were the products of Indian Universities.

Issue 3: Privatization: Indiscriminate privatization of education is doing more damage to quality of education. The fee charged by the private institutions is so exorbitant that the weaker section cannot afford.  The NEP says “the fee will be fixed within the regulatory framework and no extra fee will be charged beyond the cap”. This is more said than done. The unaided private institutions charge high fee to meet huge salary bills. Their problem is two- fold: Most of them find it difficult to pay the salary to teachers on par with those in public institutions. And if they charge high fee, the education becomes inaccessible and unaffordable to the poor and weaker section. That is how higher education is increasingly becoming an exclusive domain of the rich and privileged.  It is an open secret private professional institutions take capitation fee running into lacks and even crores of rupees, all unaccounted. To-day over 60% of higher educational institutions in India is controlled by private players. And many of them are not reputed for providing quality education.  As per 2017 report of the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India, only 20% students from business schools land jobs. About 67% graduates are from private institutions. They incur debt to complete their higher education. However, with low rate of employability, many of them are unable to pay back the loans, the burden falling on their parents ultimately.

The disparity in pay scales and terms and conditions of services of teachers is very huge in private institutions vis-a-vis aided institutions.  It is important the private players are confined to    selected professional courses. And the conventional degree courses in Science and Liberal Arts and Humanities- the core subjects of real learning- should be funded by the State so that the higher education, which is an instrument of social upliftment, is accessible and affordable to all, particularly the marginalized.

Issue 4: Commercialization: The NEP will only exhilarate privatization and commercialization of education.  It is ironical that in a country with a massive poor and backward population the State should allow commercialization of education. The commercialization is a natural corollary of privatization. Education has become a means to squeeze money from the poor and the deprived. The self financing courses in higher education have become profit making commercial ventures, resulting in exploitation of teachers and compromising on the quality of education. Teachers are hired and fired at will. They are employed on contract. There is no security of service, many states pay pittance to teachers.  The courses offered cater to the needs of market driven economy.  There is hardly any real learning about the challenges and vicissitudes of life, the holistic education going for a toss.  The NEP says “multiple mechanisms with checks and balances will combat and stop the commercialization of higher education.”  But how!

Issue 5: State Funding:  Even in the advanced countries like USA, Germany and Japan, the budget allocation for higher education is between 10% and 15% of GDP. But in a backward India education is not a priority. The Union Budget 2020-21 has allocated a paltry 0.7% to States for the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyaan.   The NEP emphasises the “Centre and the States will work together to increase the public investment in the Education sector to reach 6% of GDP.” This is what the Kothari Education Commission recommended way back in 1966. And yet the successive governments have neglected the education. The budget allocation for education should not be less than 10% of GDP both in the Union and State budgets. Otherwise all the high platitudes of “access, equity, quality, affordability and accountability”, as the document exalts, will remain only on paper.

We need to understand India’s hugely diverse social structure rather than aping the West and making cosmetic changes.  What Indian education system needs urgently is: (a) massive funding by the Centre and the States;(b) arresting the indiscriminate privatization and commercialization;  (c)stopping the exodus of poor children from government schools by improving basic infrastructure and raising standards of these schools- elevating to the level of Kendriya Vidyalayas;(d) restoring academic autonomy of institutions of higher learning; (e) recognizing the importance  of public universities and stopping their downsizing;(f) ensuring non-discriminatory service conditions for teachers both in public and  private institutions; (g) providing an effective credible supervision and control mechanism and (h) a non-corrupt competent transparent academic-administrative structure so as to make education universally accessible and affordable.. The rest is secondary.