This paper
was presented at the Silver Jubilee Conference of the Association of Indian
College Principals held in Goa -February 10-11,2023
National
Education Policy: The Issues Unaddressed
The Government of India announced a National Education Policy (NEP) on 29 July 2020. The policy document, couched in a language of what ought to be, ignored the ground reality, and not addressed the fundamental issues plaguing the Indian education system. The six fundamental issues in education that are not addressed.
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. As per the NEP, the 'fundational stage' consists of 5 years between 3-8 years, incliuding 3 years of pre-school education and 2 years of early primary eduation i.e.. Class I and II. Now the three years pre-schooling is made
formal. With nearly fifty percent of
teaching posts vacant in public schools in many states,the question to be asked is: who will fund this 'foundational stage' edcuation and who will teach the tiny- tots? Whose responsibility is it? If the first five years ‘foundational stage’ is
left to the commercial private players, it will seriously affect the mental
development of tender children, besides affecting the thrust and qulaity of teaching. 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 class rooms 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 quality basic
education- a constitutional obligation- even after 75 years of independence, to
the poor children who need it the most.
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. 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, 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.
Today, the Indian students are the largest in the US
and the UK, constituting 20% of international students. And most of the
academic programmes the UGC and the Education Ministry churning out are benefiting
mostly urban rich and affluent sections most of whom look for first opportunity
to migrate abroad to pursue higher studies and even settle there. Indian
students contribute 5.9 million US dollars to the US economy through expenses
(TOI 15/11/22). Why are the Indian students not willing to study in their
country?
Institutions of higher learning, due to loss of
academic autonomy and centralization of decision making, have been
incapacitated to innovate and discover new frontiers of knowledge. As Professor Michael
Polanyi argues “academic freedom is a fundamental necessity for production of
true knowledge.” Critical thinking is
the core of academic freedom both for teachers and students, that is the right
to question and reflect on their own knowledge and information presented to
them, without inviting institutional censorship. The critical thinking is necessary for
self-realization.
And the decline of public
institutions has contributed to downgrading the teaching profession. It is the public Institutions, where the
academic freedom flourished, that produced five Presidents of India-
Radhakrishnan, Zakir Hussain, Shankar Danyal Sharma, Abdul Kalam and Pranab
Mukherjee- and the noble laureates Amartya Sen and Abhijit Banerjee- all
teachers.
Issue 3:
Privatization
Indiscriminate privatization of education is a major
issue. As per the Global Education Monitoring Report
of UNESCO ,2022, out of every 10 schools established in the past eight years in
India ,7 are private schools. The report says, “inadequate supply and quality
of public education have driven private education growth in India… 73% of parents
in India chose private schools because public schools did not meet quality standards”
(TOI 13/11/22). The report warns that expanding access to duration through
non-state provision is inequitable. Since 2014, 67,000 schools, out 97,000
established, were private and unaided.
The fee charged by the private institutions is so
exorbitant that the weaker sections 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 the weaker sections. That is how higher
education is increasingly becoming an exclusive domain of the rich and
privileged.
It is an open secret that private professional
institutions take huge 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 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.
The technical and market-oriented courses provide no real education; do not provide platform for critical thinking. Even in academic seminars and conferences, there is no free exchange of views and ideas and the participants are told not to speak on issues that antagonize the establishment. When the learning and thought processes are conditioned and controlled, the human mind cannot grow and evolve. And conforming to the system and blindly accepting what authorities decide is a sign of serfdom and negation of human evolution. While academic freedom was critical to the vision of university system earlier, it is now increasingly devalued in favor of administrative centralization and political control, with Heads of Institutions preferring silence, not wanting to displease the authorities.
Issue 4: Educational Divide
The Educational Divide in India is three-fold:
First, the private schools
which used to cater to the needs of the better off now target the poor and
squeeze their meagre earnings. The entry of private players has resulted in
unqualified persons and non-state players getting involved in the foundational
literacy programme, particularly at the village level, compromising seriously with
the quality of instruction, dispensing with the requirement of qualified
trained teachers that the government is expected to employee.
Second, the Rural-Urban and Gender Divide. According to the ASER, 5.5% rural
children are not enrolled in schools in 2020. The difference is the sharpest
among the youngest children (6-10 years) where 5.3% rural children have not
enrolled in schools in 2020, compared to just 1.8% in 2018. Around 300 million
children are reported to be out of schools in India due to the pandemic. The
poor children are deprived of midday meals, which have been an incentive to
make them attend schools, resulting in increase in dropout of children from
schools. The boys and girls in country
side are now more involved in assisting their parents in manual work and doing
house hold chores and are unlikely to return to formal schooling. The unholy
trinity of patriarchy, poverty and pandemic has led to a surge in child
marriage. There has been a clear link between keeping girls in schools and
delaying their marriage. That link is now broken. And online education means an end to girls’
education in rural areas, with in-class learning shuttered, girls are forced to
drop out from schools.
And third, the Digital Divide. The indiscriminate privatisation of education at all levels, has already divided the school and college going children into haves and have-nots, making good quality education more a privilege of the rich and the affluent. Now the digital divide has sharpened the divide between the poor and the rich and the rural-urban children. Online education is no real education; it is killing the formal education system. As per the ASER 2020, only one in ten households in India has a computer- desktop, laptop or tablet- with most of the internet enabled homes being located in cities, which have 42% internet access; while in rural India, just 15% are connected to the internet. The latest UNICEF data reveals, only one in four children has access to digital devices and internet connectivity in India, and there is a large rural-urban and gender divide. Then what is this hullabaloo about the online education?
Issue 5: Commercialisation
The parents, keen on their children
taking coaching for JEE, NEET, and now CUET etc. rather than ’waste’ time in a
regular classroom, are enrolling them in dummy institutions. A large number of
students are enrolling in ‘dummy schools’- a euphemism for schools that do not
require physical presence, but instead allow them to spend time for coaching in
competitive examinations like engineering, medicine, CUET and the like,
undermining or making the school system redundant. Some schools have found a
novel method of surviving by collaborating with prominent coaching institutes.
Today, Kota is a coaching factory for students. It is driving students to suicide, unable to cope up with the stress levels This year some 14 students have committed suicide in Kota. The education system is responsible for mushrooming of coaching centres. Professor Avijjt Pathak, who taught sociology at the JNU, says we should ‘strive for and initiate a social movement to rescue education from the psychic/pedagogic/ethical decadence, the Kota symbolises…as teachers we ought to introspect and open the windows of consciousness of young students…as parents, we ought to ask ourselves some uncomfortable questions. Are we ready to realise that our children are not investments...we must make the political class accountable. Our children are suffering, government schools, colleges and universities are in steady decline with the management quota and capitation fee, private medica/engineering colleges are further exploiting the anxiety-ridden and ambitious parents, and there is no sincere effort to create job opportunities in diverse fields.” (IE,17/12/22)
Issue 6: 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 Rastriya Uchchatar Shiksha
Abhiyaan. The NEP emphasizes 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.
However, the
expenditure on higher education, the Centre and states taken together,
nosedived from 0.86% of GDP in 2010-11 to a measly 0.52% in
2019-20. And the Centre’s expenditure on higher edition dropped from
0.33% of GDP to a mere 0.16%. This is despite the Centre’s revenue increasing
three times from Rs.7.5 lakh crore in 2011-12 to more than Rs.22 lakh crore in
2019-20, and the total receipts from Rs.13.07 lakh crore to Rs.33.44 lakh core
in 2022-23. As a percentage of the total receipt, the allocation for higher
education fell from 1.49% to 1.04% during the corresponding period (The
Hindu 6/9/22).
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 NEP 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: (i) massive funding by
the Centre and the States;(ii) arresting the indiscriminate privatization and
commercialization; (iii)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;(iv) restoring academic autonomy of institutions of
higher learning; (v) recognizing the importance
of public universities and stopping their downsizing;(vi) ensuring
non-discriminatory service conditions for teachers both in public and private institutions; (vii) providing an
effective credible supervision and control mechanism and (viii) a non-corrupt
competent transparent academic-administrative structure so as to make education
universally accessible and affordable. All else is secondary.
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