Abstract
Ancient Indian education was value-based consisting of Gurukul system and world-famous “Nalanda and Takshashila Universities.” The value-based education policy reforms were the basis for utilizing the knowledge for benefits of mankind. In ancient Bharat, there were knowledgeable personalities like Sushrut, Aryabhatta, Panini, and Chanakya who set examples in front of the world. The national long-term impact is its shift from 10+2 pattern to 5+3+3+3+4. This decision will bring a major change in Indian education system after three decades. The new National Education Policy is promoting Indian value-based education with all-inclusive ecodevelopment of Holistic Education, Bharat-centric Education, Development of Knowledge-based Society, and Emphasis on Knowledge-based Education.
Education is the most powerful weapon through which you can change the world.
These words by Nelson Mandela make true sense with reference to good reforms by new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. Moral value reforms in NEP after three decades in education sector are revolutionary to the world for building strong characters and values especially when there is a huge crisis of moral values in society.
About Ancient Indian Value-Based Education
Ancient Indian education was value-based consisting of Gurukul (where students live in their teachers’ home and study) system and world-famous Nalanda and Takshashila Universities (Vidyapeeth). The value-based education policy reforms were the basis for utilizing the knowledge for benefits of mankind. In ancient Bharat, there were knowledgeable personalities like Sushrut, Aryabhatta, Panini, and Chanakya who set examples in front of the world—Aarti Sharma (2018) proposed that the student is expected to get value based education system to transform social, intellectual and political contexts.
Relation of Values to Education
Education is a methodical effort toward learning basic facts about humanity. And the core idea behind value education is to cultivate essential values in students. Value education is important to help everyone in improving the value system they hold and put them to use.
Importance of Value Education in India
Value education in India from the ancient times has held a prime place of importance. From the Gurukul stage, the child learnt not only skills of reading and archery but more the philosophy of life in relation to its impermanence. Hence, education in India was born of this vision to achieve one’s experience in the absolute as a spark of the divine, and in this process practice of one’s duty accompanies the acquisition of knowledge. Values such as cultural values, universal values, personal values, social values, national integration, and character building were imbibed in students.
Objectives of Value-Based Education
In modern days, all teaching professionals are equipped with technological gadgets and pedagogical practices. They are required to serve to compensate the increasing demands associated with the teaching profession. Establishing a theory of interrelation between NEP and value-based education will be easier due to this assignment of objectives. Let us assign some of the specific objectives that will fulfill value education:
To provide value-based education to inculcate word peace to add on moral, spiritual, psychological, and cultural values in students.
To provide value-based education useful to develop a community with humanity approach along with scientific view with pure intention of growth of country and world toward betterment.
To provide value-based education which will useful to identify ethics relating to activities involved, which will be related to the implementation of education for critical thinking.
To provide value-based education with multidisciplinary approach that must be useful for implementing self-resilient vibrant personalities providing motivation to others
To provide value-based education which will be useful to provide opportunities for students to think about and to clarify their own values and compare them with those of others.
To provide value-based education which will develop instructional e-content materials and lesson plans with which values can be taught effectively.
To implement ways in which education will motivate the acceptance of certain social values such as tolerance, spirit of cooperation, and team work.
What Is Exactly NEP 2020?
New NEP 2020 Structure
The Indian Education Ministry is implementing NEP 2020. All schools across India will educate students on NEP basis. Previous education policy of school education pattern is changing to stages 5+3+3+4. The stages are as follows
Stage 1: Anganwadi/preschool/Balvatika: Students aged 3 to 6 years will be involved in play and other learning activities.
Stage 2: Foundational stage (Classes 1–2): Children aged 6 to 8 years will study multilevel, play/activity-based learning only.
Stage 3: Preparatory stage/primary level (Classes 3–5): The students aged 8 to 11 years will learn to play activities and will be involved in discovery learning and interactive classroom learning.
Stage 4: Middle stage (Classes 6–8): The students aged 11–14 years will receive experiential learning in the sciences, mathematics, arts, social sciences, and humanities, subjects.
Stage 5: Secondary stage (Classes 9–12): The students aged 14–18 years will be involved in a multidisciplinary study, will have a choice of subjects, and so on.
Important Value-Based Highlights of New NEP 2020
However, the main features of the India NEP 2020 for school education and higher education are described as per their levels of implementation as follows:
Values at school education
(a) Universal access at all levels of school education is ensured. Early childhood care is provided and new curricular and pedagogical structure is proposed, so community bounding value is increased.
(b) With new pedagogy, foundational literacy and numeracy are accomplished so that play and learning activities could be accomplished.
(c) The proposed policy has approval for multilingualism, so integrity and social bounding are increased.
(d) The proposed policies have inclusive education with robust teacher recruitment and career, so train the trainer, and inclusiveness values are proposed.
(e) The proposed policy has approval for assessment reforms and governance at school level only. So decentralization of power is increased.
Values at higher education
(a) Six percent of gross domestic product (GDP) is proposed for education. School fees will be decided as per student’s category of performance so that the values of efforts increase.
(b) Students are motivated for critical thinking skills.
(c) During education, as per students’ social, economic capacity, multiple exit or entry is possible.
(d) Students are provided facility of self-evaluation. Teachers’ remarks are helpful but students do their self-evaluation, so they know at what level their performance is and the value of self-reliance increases.
(e) Students have to give feedback about their peers’ work. This leads to team spirit and peer learning. So social integrity values are increased.
(f) Top 50 foreign universities can enter the Indian education system. This increases healthy competition to provide quality education.
(g) In a school/college, there will be separate student-centric departments like syllabus, infrastructure, scholarship, and so on. So student-centric activities with critical thinking increase.
Thus, NEP has been drafted for value-based education.
Analysis of New Education Policy 2020
The draft of NEP 2020 with all changes is already available for free to download; some of my personal observations are as follows.
The NEP 2020 has the potential to create profound long-term impact with its shift from 10+2 pattern to 5+3+3+3+4. This decision will bring a major change in Indian education system after three decades. This change was the need of the hour because students’ potential needs much fair and precise analysis. Most important measures are presenting new structure to board examination and providing the autonomy to higher educational institutions. This policy reduces hurdles of bureaucratic way of implementation. This sets a new horizon for higher education in the country, which in turn opens up new doors of opportunities for students. Multidisciplinary institutions for skill building are outcome of the proposed NEP 2020. In a nutshell, the proposed new education policy is useful for holistic and overall multidimensional development of students (Higher Education Digest, 2020).
How NEP Is Addressing Indian Value-Based Teaching Learning Ecosystem?
The traditional Indian value-based ecosystem and NEP interrelation can be established in the following ways
All-inclusiveness
Development of Holistic Education
Bharat-centric Education
Development of Knowledge-based Society
Emphasis on Knowledge-based Education
All these points can be explained as follows.
All-inclusiveness
(a) Each village panchayat was involved by a committee headed by Mr. Kasturirangan in the process of drafting the NEP.
(b) Approximately 2 crore school students who left school in between will be able to join back to educational institutes through this NEP approach.
(c) According to the NEP 2020, 5+3+3+4 structure will replace the existing 10+2 structure. So all-inclusiveness can be attained. This structure is focused on student’s formative years of learning. This 5+3+3+4 structure corresponds to ages from 3 to 8, 8 to 11, 11 to 14, and 14 to 18. In total, there are 12 years of schooling, 3 years if Anganwadi and preschooling are included in this structure.
(d) For children up to the age of 8 years, a National Curricular and Pedagogical system for Early Childhood Care and Education will be designed and developed by a well-deserved national institute National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).
(e) Project-based learning, learning of life skills, and inclusion of technology and vocational learning at an early age are helpful for a child for realizing ambitions and gaining multidimensional knowledge and universal skills This value-based education will result in the foundation for higher education. In addition, a new system of self, peer, and teacher assessment will give parents and children a 360° progress report imbibed with new skills learned during the academic year.
Development of Holistic Education
To make students self-reliant and complete, the world holistic development of learners is proposed as follows:
(a) NEP has focused work on the knowledge-based society with emphasis on quality education. Without any examination, gaming education will be provided in primary years. The outcome of this is no stress and no examinations, but completion of syllabus of Classes 1 and 2. Students become fond of the schools, and students dropping from schools automatically get reduced.
(b) At preparatory level, the outcome of NEP in Classes 3 to 5 is complete with totally activity-based learning with preference for regional Indian language. At middle school level, that is, Classes 6 to 8, vocational education to make students self-reliant in their preferable areas like gardening, tailoring, and so on is provided. Outcome is students learn computer, coding Maths at preparatory level.
(c) At secondary school level (Classes 9–12), critical thinking and skills development based on syllabus are promoted in science, commerce, and arts.
All these above points will lead to holistic education.
Bharat-centric Education
Global world and Bharat-centric values are to be learned by students in NEP 2020. Blending of Bharat-centric values is done by blending culture and languages.
Development of Knowledge-based Society
Practical and skill-based knowledge is imparted.
Emphasis on Knowledge-based Education
Creativity along with education is imparted in the following ways:
(a) Fostering, recognizing, and identifying the unique capabilities of each student. All these actions lead to the development of teachers and parents.
(b) Prioritizing foundational literacy to each child by Grade 3.
(c) Adapting learner-centric approach for choosing trajectory of interest of own path in life and providing multidisciplinary holistic approach.
(d) Making no hard differentiation between arts, commerce, and science and providing sustainability of social impact value-based education implementation
(e) Prioritizing vocational program.
(f) Providing flexibility to learners and implementing integration of knowledge.
(g) Allowing equal access to knowledge.
Conclusion
NEP is promoting Indian value-based education with all-inclusive ecodevelopment of Holistic Education, Bharat-centric Education, Development of Knowledge-based Society, and Emphasis on Knowledge-based Education. Students will be better prepared before they reach college, will have opportunities to explore their passion and interests, and will learn to study in a better manner. Teamwork, resilience, and communication are enhanced. All in all, the NEP seems like a good deal (India Today, 2020).
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
