NEP 2020: A Critical Examination

The 66-page policy document released by the government on 29 July 2020, is very impressive in its breadth of coverage touching every dimension of education. With the vision of transforming India into a global knowledge power the document promises to promote multi-lingualism and the power of language, impart foundational literacy and numeracy, achieve universal access to all levels of learning, honour teachers—treating them as the heart of the learning process, build synergy in curriculum and guarantee autonomy, good governance and empowerment. These grand promises are accompanied by a generous sprinkling of Sanskrit words and references to the sadly forgotten educational past of India.

A cursory reading of the policy would impress anyone by its attractive titles and phrases. There is no doubt that as an omnibus document, it is an exceptionally good collection of educational ideas, presented with an array of proposals; some new, some restated and some resurrected from previous policy statements. I read it and in the first instance felt happy, but soon realised that I had just been transported into an ideational world of words, acronyms and prosaic imagination, away from the real educational world of people and institutions along with their handicaps and capabilities. The disconnect between several policy propositions and the contemporary reality of education in India became more evident as I carefully studied the contents of the policy. This short note attempts to critically examine and illustrate some of the missing elements in the NEP 2020. It in no way undermines the many positive proposals contained in it. Rather it points to the challenges and pitfalls involved in drafting an ambitious, all-encompassing document.

When we write policy proposals for an existing system functioning for more than seven decades, irrespective of its flaws and inefficiencies, there is limited scope to dismantle the system and start afresh. The older the system, the less leeway it allows us to be radical as several institutions and organisational structures, along with entrenched bureaucracy, will have taken deep roots. While we need not be shy of disrupting existing practices and structures for achieving higher goals, it is necessary to prioritise and carefully select what we want to disrupt and what we would like to remedy and reinforce. A major part of policymaking will therefore consist of an agenda of reconstruction with a focus on strengthening, reforming and innovating the existing system with realistic goal setting and indicating pathways to be traversed. This is of course more challenging than writing the policy framework for a just born nation with no system on the ground. But there is also an advantage as we can capitalise on the lessons learnt from the past in introducing reforms and innovations. These lessons are of critical value in crafting our recommendations in such a way that they are realistic and implementable. They would also help us set priorities for action and allocation of resources. But the authors of the present policy seem to have freed themselves from those fetters of past experiences and ground reality allowing their imagination to fly into an imagined scenario where unlimited financial resources are available, supported by highly motivated human resources and high efficiency administrative system, and with free access to frontline technological devices and artificial intelligence algorithms. It is, of course, natural for a policy to envision a brighter future and set higher goals. This could be viewed as a positive move facilitating the entry of new ideas and innovations into the system. But we cannot aspire to climb that height with a fragile ladder which, in fact, is the real state of contemporary Indian education. Progress depends on rectifying the existing as much as envisioning the future. The likely consequence of such a policy which does not engage with the present predicament adequately is that there will be a set of elegantly crafted policy recommendations which will remain only on paper, as has often been the case in the past.

The NEP 2020 document makes a grandiose beginning with a diagram signalling a radical restructuring of school education. However, a closer reading reveals that this restructuring is only notional, acting as an academic guide while drawing the revised curriculum framework; thus the delivery structures on the ground are left unaltered. However, the undue focus laid on the changed framework for curriculum building has resulted in undermining the composite nature of the existing framework of elementary education constituting compulsory education period guaranteed as a Fundamental Right in the Constitution. Surprisingly, the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009 which had been described in the draft policy document as ‘the statutory lynchpin for school regulation and governance’ has been completely side-lined as if universal elementary education is not important enough. The policy makes a grand promise of universal access to high-quality and equitable schooling from early childhood care and education (p. 3 onwards) through higher secondary education (that is, until Grade 12). In the backdrop of the country’s struggle to provide even eight years of free and compulsory schooling of acceptable quality, it is difficult to take such promises seriously. The emphasis on early childhood care and education is a welcome move. But can we hope to usher in a pedagogic revolution as indicated in the policy with the existing arrangement of under-resourced Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) centres? It is impossible to expect that all the anganawadi workers and volunteers, receiving a paltry honorarium, be replaced by professionally trained and qualified child educators with commensurate remuneration. It would have been more useful if the policy had focussed on reforming the education component of the ICDS programme with enhanced resources. Similarly, highlighting the problem of poor levels of learning is a step in the right direction. Yet the proposals made for tackling the problem are somewhat bizarre. It requires no special study to conclude that poor learning levels are due to dysfunctional primary schools. The solution therefore lies in the provision of learning resources and strengthening teaching-learning processes in primary schools. In fact, there are ample experiments within India demonstrating that desired levels of learning outcomes could be achieved through innovative efforts made within individual schools and classrooms. It is difficult to comprehend the relevance and utility of establishing a National Mission on Foundational Literacy and Numeracy or a national repository in digital format for effectively imparting literacy and numeracy skills through classroom teaching in local languages. Instead, the policy needs to focus on ensuring basic infrastructure and academic resources, along with an adequate number of qualified teachers, in each primary school as mandated by the RTE Act. Making the primary schools function regularly coupled with effective teacher support and supervision at the local level holds the key, not national level missions and digital repositories. Teaching and learning basic competencies of reading, writing and arithmetic, a fairly simple unsophisticated task, cannot be accomplished in a project mode through a national mission. This, indeed, is what every school and teacher should be doing as a normal daily task.

In some areas, the NEP has resurrected old proposals with minor modifications. One such proposal is that of introducing vocational skills at an early stage in schooling. The original proposal on similar lines was made in the 1950s by the Secondary Education Commission. The strategy was to utilise local work settings and professionals without burdening the schools to recruit them exclusively; but the experiment ended within a few years. Thereafter, several committees have debated the issue and made proposals but have failed to get traction on the field. Some attempts were made in the recent past also to introduce vocational elements in secondary classes. Field studies have invariably attributed the failure of the programme to inadequate infrastructure facilities and human resources. While no one will deny the need for and value of integrating skill development with academic learning, integrating the subject in school curriculum requires much greater scrutiny based on learning from the past. Another example of this type is the creation of school complexes which has been tried out in different states with varying levels of success during the last five decades. The absence of reflective engagement in the NEP with lessons accumulated from past experience makes one sceptical about the practical value of reviving such proposals.

A striking feature of NEP 2020 is its tendency to treat Indian education as a monolith, a nationwide homogenous entity. Neither does it fully recognise the diverse state of development of education across different states, nor do the proposals adequately capture the complex nature of the system operating in different states. Indeed, India does not have one education system. But a national system of education in India is only notional; inclusion of education in the concurrent list does not obliterate historical reality resulting in wide regional variations. We therefore need an adaptive and accommodative policy at the national level which promotes progress in different states from where they are not a standardised pan-Indian prescription. This is not a matter of detail but one of perspective, recognising the diversity of conditions and articulating a pluralist framework. The NEP seems to seriously fall short in this regard. The proposals on reform of Boards of School Education and setting up of mega national structures for higher education illustrate the implicit move towards centralisation thus exemplifying a one-dimensional view of education in the country. There are ample lessons to learn from the past in this regard including the dismal functioning of various regulatory bodies. It was desirable that the policy engaged in examining centre-state relations and delineating principles for cooperative action and partnership in designing, implementing and financing of educational development initiatives.

Delinking the Education Department (Secretariat) from the Directorate of Education as proposed in the NEP will be a step in the right direction. But this is inadequate. There is an urgent need to critically examine the situation with a view to total recasting of the administrative apparatus largely inherited from the colonial past accompanied by a reformulation of various state-level legislations and regulations. The NEP should have engaged with the issue more extensively dealing with all levels from the ministry to the field- level administrators and institutional heads. In the final analysis, it is the administrative set up which will make or break the implementation strategies. Surprisingly, the policy makes only peripheral reference to reforming administrative and supervisory mechanisms. Instead it seems to lay its faith wholly in the proposed assessment and accreditation structures and regulatory bodies such as the State School Standards Authority to play a magical role in transforming the quality of functioning of the system. We have to recognise that these super structures could meaningfully function only when the basic administrative and supervisory systems are effective. Further, it is well established that administrative inefficiency in education is intricately linked to undue political interference in decision making often contributing to undesirable and unethical practices. While the NEP is vocal in highlighting the need for autonomy, it is totally silent on the subject of roles and relationship of the government or the governmental authorities in educational governance, particularly in the sphere of university and higher education.

The policy document is copious in visionary statements reimagining a new education system for the future generation. This enthusiasm to build a new educational future is well justified. But it has to be tempered by the reality of the present. Two concluding observations would be pertinent. First, a national policy document essentially articulates the policy of the state laying before the public what the government of the day wants to do. A primary focus of the exercise has to be on setting out the agenda for reforming the public system of education in which the government has a direct stake. This is also of central importance in India with its iniquitous social structure and increasing economic inequality where the people living in poverty and the marginalised continue to depend solely on public provisioning. It is therefore just and reasonable to expect that the NEP prioritised proposals and actions related to these sections of the population, even while keeping the overall development of the country in view. Unfortunately, this perspective is largely missing in the present policy. Secondly, envisioning the educational future of India demands policymakers to be unconventional and idealistic and cannot be wholly bogged down by present predicaments. But this does not give us freedom to be unrealistic and oblivious of the limitations placed by the social context and economic capabilities. What Indian education needs at the present juncture is a policy that engages with the immediate present first and then the distant future promising a new world class system. Is it wrong to expect that the policy should promise only what will be delivered? Perhaps for a small section of the Indian society the grand proposal of making India a global knowledge power with a world class education system may sound marvellous and fully achievable. They probably possess private means to reach those great heights but, in the process, leave behind those at the bottom of the pyramid who depend on public provisioning to try climbing up with the help of a broken ladder.